"'I Love You's Are For White People"

Is there much more we can say about love? Well, according to the late and brilliant bell hooks, as a society we seem simultaneously obsessed with love and yet find it very difficult to define. And that it's perhaps "our confusion about what we mean when we use the word 'love' that is the source of our difficulty in loving." In this episode we explore what hooks defines as the "original school of love" - that of our childhoods and our families. I also sit down with Lac Su to discuss his memoir, "'I Love You's Are For White People," in which he describes the difficult and tumultuous relationship he had with his father after they settled in the US as new immigrants after having to suddenly flee post-war Vietnam. Before that I talk to Dr. Aneesa Shariff, a clinical psychologist based in the UK, who has done work on first and second generation South Asian families and on the tensions that arise when multi-generational households move from Asian countries to more Western countries. Although love might be experienced as a universal emotion it is certainly not expressed or demonstrated in the same ways, universally.

To purchase Lac Su’s book, please visit: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Yous-Are-White-People/dp/0061543667

To learn more about Dr. Aneesa Shariff's work please visit her website: https://leedsanxietypsychologist.co.uk/ and you can find her on Instagram @aneesashariffphd

Please follow our page on @letstrythatagainpodcast