This week I interview Nono Osuji, a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Nigeria. Nono is a writer, producer, and actor. She is living with lupus, which is hard enough. She’s also living with being “Broke, Gifted, and Black,” the title of her podcast. We had a gritty, deep-down conversation about race in this country.
Nono is the youngest in her family, born to her parents after they’d immigrated with their three children to the U.S. She had a huge desire to assimilate, so she adopted an English name, Cynthia, because teachers would botch her name. For much of her childhood, she shunned being Nigerian because it made her different.
When Nono was in grad school, she got diagnosed with lupus. She sought help from eastern medicine and began getting expensive injections and paying for them out of pocket. That could not last long as a grad student living in New York, so after two years when her hair started falling out, she moved home to Texas so her parents could help. “Less than a year later, I was hospitalized for the first time with kidney failure due to lupus.” She was put on high-dose steroids, which caused her to develop severe edema.
“I felt like this thing had robbed me of the life I wanted. I was supposed to be working in film and media...I wasn't supposed to be frequenting doctor’s offices and taking 67 pills a day…that wasn't supposed to be my life and it just put me in a very deep depression.”
Although Nono’s lupus is not currently active, it has ravaged her kidneys, with only 16 percent kidney function. Her best hope is a kidney transplant. She’s found solace in being part of a community of artists and starting her “Broke, Gifted, and Black” podcast. I asked her about generational trauma and the latest trauma facing Black people.
First we talked about the death of Prince Philip and how he was part of the colonization of Nigeria. Because of its oil interests, Britain supplied Nigeria with weapons and military intelligence, used to slaughter a million Igbo people, Nono’s tribe, and created a nation that never should have been a nation.
Nono had some passionate thoughts about policing in America. “There can be no good cops in a system that does not allow it...When your job is literally to protect state property, whether it is a person or a thing, it is not meant to have good cops when the other part of your job is to build revenue, it is all about money and power and systemic racism…the history of policing in America is simply continuing what we see today.”
Nono and I agreed that the system needs to be dug out from its core, completely redone. “We have police living above the law with qualified immunity. We have police that don't face any financial repercussions because the payouts come from the city taxpayers. So how do you have a system where you don't go to jail and you don't pay anything?”
Nono volunteers with an organization called Texas Organizing Project, which works to better the lives of black and Latino communities.
Nono shared her experience of being pulled over because she had Texas license plates. She challenged the cop on why, so he arrested her for outstanding parking tickets.
After discussing racism and policing in America, we moved onto “Lovecraft Country.”
We concluded by talking about Nono’s podcast, “Broke, Gifted, and Black,” about the entertainment industry and interviews with gifted people who turned their art into a living.
“Just think of what it would actually be like if we had equity, just think of how much better our world would be and when you help to lift the least among us, all of us get better. It's our responsibility. There's no other choice.”