Stepping Into Truth: Conversations on Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Season 3 Episode 16

Hari Ziyad

In this episode I got to speak with the author of the upcoming memoir Black Boy Out of Time, Hari Ziyad. Hari uses his experience of growing up queer with a Hare Krishna mother and Muslim father to illuminate the experience of being outside. As an outsider, both as a consequence of being queer but also as a Black boy in a world that has little space outside of set roles for Black children Hari dissects some of the impacts that our carceral system has on children of color.

Talking with Hari made me braver about sharing more of my own story. Hari brings rigor to the discussion of our systems with a grace and sensitivity that creates space for all of us to more fully own our stories.

I'm really glad that I got to speak with them and think you're going to find what they had to say fascinating.

Hari Ziyad is a cultural critic, a screenwriter, the editor-in-chief of RaceBaitr, and the author of Black Boy Out of Time. They are a 2021 Lambda Literary Fellow, and their writing has been featured in BuzzFeed, Out, the Guardian, Paste magazine, and the academic journal Critical Ethnic Studies, among other publications. Previously they were the managing editor of the Black Youth Project and a script consultant on the television series David Makes Man. Hari spends their all-too-rare free time trying to get their friends to give the latest generation of R & B starlets a chance and attempting to entertain their always very unbothered pit bull mix, Khione. For more information about the author, visit www.hariziyad.com.

For a written transcript of this conversation click here.

Black Boy Out of Time will be published on March 1, 2021. You can pre-order a copy from any bookseller.

Connect with Hari:
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Credits: Harmonica music courtesy of a friend