You're listening to Comedy Central.

BAM!

Representative Jayapal. Welcome to the Daily Social Distancing Show.

Thank you. It's so great to be with you.

You have a new book entitled, Use the Power You Have, A Brown Woman's Guide to Politics and Political Change.

What are some of the tips and tricks that you would teach a woman who wants to get into politics, who has melanin in her skin?

Yes. Well, you know, Congress does not look a lot like me. There are only 79 women of color out of 11,000 that have ever served in the US House of Representatives.

And so it is different. We have to assert our voice. We have to use our power.

And we have to be ready for all the sexism and racism that we face when we walk into those halls.

Not super different than other places we might have been in some ways.

But you would think that the House of Representatives, the People's House, should be different. And it's not yet.

So this is saying to women of color everywhere, frankly, women in general, that when you come in, know that you have power.

Don't let somebody else intimidate you. They're most probably intimidated by you.

And claim your space. But also be ready. Do the work. Be ready because you will be subjected to far more than most of your colleagues.

You have an interesting journey in that you came to the US at 16 to study. 18 years later, you became a US citizen.

And you're now serving representing American citizens and non-American citizens alike.

Do you feel like there's ever a conflict of interest as an immigrant or as a US citizen? Or do you think that that's a fallacy that people have created?

Yeah, it's very much of a fallacy. I mean, I think it's funny because, you know, 16 and now 40 years later almost, I'm not quite, not quite at 40.

But I am now in the United States of America. This is my home. Where am I supposed to go back to?

So this idea that somehow you're never going to be American enough is ridiculous. And I think it's important that for those of us, they're 14 of us that are immigrants born outside of the United States naturalized serving in Congress today.

This is also an important part of the story of America.

When you think about this country and the conversations that are being had now, I feel a lot of the time it's easy for people to say,

...