Getting Back to Human, with Asjah Monroe
a conversation on race, homelessness, healing and solidarity
“It's about asking where's that human dignity in me and where is it innate in other people? How do I honor that? And how do I receive from them? How do I receive from their innate dignity? And how do I give to them from mine?”
— Asjah Monroe
I’ve been excited to do this for a long time! Today is the first interview I’m publishing here on Toward Solidarity. I couldn’t think of a better person for the inaugural issue of this format (which will *hopefully* show up from time to time going forward) than my friend Asjah Monroe.
Asjah and I met two years ago when we were both participants in a racial equity learning cohort for emerging leaders in Boston. Her questions, vulnerability, and wisdom were a shining light in that space. In the time since, we built a relationship through three hour coffee shop conversations that cycled through honest reflections on whiteness and getting free, the challenges of nonprofit start-up leadership, being accountability buddies for each other’s writing side-hustles, and just having fun. Finding a way to share one of our conversations with the public is something Asjah had a vision for from early on. I’m so grateful to bring it to you here. I know you will enjoy the brilliance, goofiness, wisdom and compassion of this remarkable leader.
Peace y’all,
Nathan
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This conversation was edited for length and clarity. Enjoy the full audio version here:
Nathan (NDH): All right, Asjah, my friend, I am so excited to have this conversation with you today. Thank you for being here.
Asjah Monroe (AM): Likewise, it's so good to see you and be in conversation with you, too.
NDH: I want to just start by asking: what's giving you life right now?
AM: Yes, what's giving me life?! So I don't know if you know this about me, Nathan, but I really love anthropomorphism, like, I love talking animals. That's Asjah 301 right there. So I just finished rewatching Madagascar 2 — that's when the zoo animals go back to Africa, they land on African soil, and the whole thing. I'm feeling life from that. Because I love it!
NDH: I love it! I wanted to start these interviews with the question, "What’s giving you life?" because I think we need to get better at mapping this as a community — at learning what is giving life and what's taking life. Because there's a lot of things that are bringing death in our communities. And I want us to celebrate the things that give life, particularly when they're simple and silly (like talking animals!), and be able to embrace them.
Asjah, as I was prepping for this interview, it was always at the front of my mind that you are one of the best question askers I have ever met. You have an ability to ask a question that can totally turn a conversation towards something way more vulnerable and true, and sometimes scary in its authenticity. And I think you have this almost — an "innocent boldness" was the phrase that came to my mind — where you can so gently lay a question on the table that cuts all the way to the quick, but in a way that can actually heal those who are willing to go there with it. So I wanted to start by asking, how do you think you came by that skill? What gives you the courage and self assurance to ask deep, bold, scary questions?
AM: Well, first of all, thank you for that question. I love how you describe that. Because part of it for me, is that I'm just naturally curious about a lot of things. There's this combination of curiosity, a need to understand -- I'm very driven by the need to understand -- and desire to observe and really figure out what's going on. So I think that's the internal drive. But when people constantly reflect back to me, "Oh, that was a really good question." Or they almost seem, I don't know, surprised by the question, I think that kind of feedback is helpful and useful for me. My questions are always geared toward the ultimate end goal: I want to commune. Whoever the person happens to be in that moment, I want us to commune. Whether it's a friend, a few other people, or it's a group trying to move toward a certain goal and trying to really do some deep emotional work.
That's always my end goal with my questions. I really want to know, “Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?”. I think it's really easy to assume that you know what you're seeing, that you already understand what you need to understand and that you get it. But especially when it comes to group process, I need to rely on questions. That's the only way we're able to move each other forward and still remain intact — again, communing with each other.
I think questions are also so powerful. There are all sorts of ways that they can be used because questions are a tool. Sometimes people use them to tear down or people use leading questions that can be manipulating. They want to lead you to a certain thought process or outcome. But really all I want to do is move forward together. I want us to be in community. So ultimately, that’s where my questions usually come from.
Then finally, I don't remember who said it (you might know, because you just know stuff like this all the time) but someone once said, “every time a person passes away, [it’s as though] a library closes.” So I want to get everything I can from every person I come in contact with. I want to know what they know, and to learn about how they see the world, because I'm just gonna be better for it no matter what. Questions do that for me, they help me gain [knowledge and understanding] from other people as well.
“I need to rely on questions. That's the only way we're able to move each other forward and still remain intact — communing with each other.”
NDH: Before we get too far, I want to give folks context for who you are and what you do. So you are the founding Executive Director of an organization called Small House. For those who aren't familiar, can you tell us a little about the work of Small House? Why was it important for our city to have your organization filling the gaps that you're now filling?
AM: I founded Small House, Inc. about two years ago, in March 2021 when we were right in the thick of it with the pandemic. Our mission is to help youth and young adults 18 to 24 transition out of homelessness by offering them professionalized life coaching, life skills, and ultimately we're working toward offering affordable transitional housing.
I don't think people really think about the fact that youth and young adults are experiencing homelessness. We have an idea in mind, a prototypical version of homelessness — middle aged man, who is usually a veteran, maybe they have a tent, or they sleep outside. These are the images that come to mind. But often, we don't think about youth and young adults, who are very vulnerable. Because if you think about the stage of life they're in, usually, those of us who transition “normally” or maybe more organically from childhood and youth into adulthood — we were doing odd jobs, or going to college or doing something that gave us time to kind of figure things out. Many of us had all kinds of natural supports, maybe parents or other family members or caretakers.
For youth and adults who lacked that transitional time and those supports, it's a loss of community that's at the root of this issue of youth homelessness. Not only do they not have a steady place to live, but they’re also missing out on that period where they’re able to figure things out, and to gradually get to that point in adulthood where one has achieved stability, and has developed a sense for where they want to go, who you want to be in this world and how they want to show up, even if it's a burgeoning sense. Not having that can just be so devastating.
You've heard me talk a little bit about my own lived experience. Though my experience was relatively brief as compared to what so many of our young people are out here dealing with in the difficult circumstances they're managing, I know from experience that when you literally do not have a place to live everything else goes by the wayside. A place to call your own is the linchpin, that's the thing that holds everything together. You're not thinking about school or work. You're in survival mode, wondering, “Okay, well, how am I gonna get my stuff? Where am I gonna sleep tonight?”
I always knew I wanted a career in the human services space. I felt like I was born to do it, like I was built for this. But what I was discovering over my years working in the space was that people who have lived the experience weren't the people who were making decisions. And these people were rarely able to advance to a place in their career where they were able to help inform some of those decisions. So the kind of ideas that people were coming up with about how to address the issue and the resulting responses to the issues somewhat were off. I decided I was gonna figure out how to create something where youth and young adults who have a certain experience in certain, who have certain social locations can come in and not be penalized for who they are. Somewhere where they're not constantly feeling like their equilibrium is off, because the environment is giving them false messages about who they are that doesn't align with who they actually are. The young people say this phrase, I don't want to mess this up: Nothing for us that it doesn't have us…?
NDH: Nothing about us without us!
AM: Right! And I think we think sometimes that we're bringing folks to the table, and we just have them complete surveys, or we have them come and speak, among all these periphery activities. But until you can have providers who understand at a deep level their lived experience and who understand what needs to be done, then you're probably not doing enough, unfortunately.
NDH: What are some of the other biggest misconceptions about that 18 to 24 year old community of young adults who are in and out of the streets? What are the myths or misconceptions you see most often regarding the young adults you work with?
AM: People really believe that [these young people] are homeless because of a lack of volition: “you just weren't able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. We see this in policy. Once they're over 18, as far as our laws are concerned — if they're able bodied and presumably able to work — they should be able to get out there and do what they need to do for themself, just like everybody else. There are other groups of people experiencing homelessness, like those coming out of foster care, like veterans or like folks living with a disability, that there are organizations set up to help immediately. That’s not necessarily the case with single, unaccompanied young adults.
There's that whole myth of meritocracy and American rugged individualism that has people thinking, “well, if they don't have what they need, it's because there's some deficit of character. So maybe they need to just ,like, go get a job or something.” I think that's why [our culture] emphasizes vocation, places so much emphasis on vocational services. Just give them some skills, train them real quick. It’s this assumption that they're struggling because there's some issue with them personally. In actuality, there's three primary reasons that young people end up in homelessness. First, because they were already experiencing it at about 16.5 years of age with their families. Second, because they've been asked to leave their homes due to conflict, or because of reasons related to gender expression or sexual identity. And then the third is that they are transitioning out of foster care. About %50 of young adults experiencing homelessness have come though the foster care system.
For me, it's just heartbreaking, actually. It's anger provoking, because I know these young adults as individual people. They're so talented. They're so funny. They're enjoyable. They're just everything that you and I and everybody else were at that age, you know what I mean? So they have so much potential, and I want to see them realize that potential.
NDH: One of the things that I reflect on a lot in this newsletter — after seeing so many friends burnout who are on the frontlines of various struggles around justice, or doing work that brings them face to face with people going through trauma — is how we sustain ourselves and how we cultivate health in the midst of really difficult work. I'm curious how you are doing in the midst of that. What are you doing to be able to have the capacity for this kind of work? And obviously, to caveat, we all know that we don't feel great every day, or every month or every year in the midst of this work. But what are you doing to be able to sustain this work, these relationships, and your own wellbeing?
AM: Yeah, we hear people talking about the idea of self care, and I think it's a completely different challenge to figure it out in the contexts you just described. This is a little spicy, folks might not agree with it, but it's been my experience: I've done a lot of direct human services work early in my career — and on the one hand, people are emphasizing were self care, encouraging you to make sure you're replenishing and giving back to yourself. And that's a psychologically valid and sound assertion. Because yes, your capacity to function literally diminishes more and more as you do not get that replenishment.
But I started to realize, ‘okay, but if I do what you're asking me to do — give back to myself, focus on myself, like, do right by myself’— that’s going to literally be in opposition to the work I’m trying to do because of the way this whole situation is set up for me to function in this work. I remember one time I was working in education for a very brief time. Not only was I working 10 hour shifts with maybe like a 15 minute break, but then it was set up in such a way that you needed to spend additional time working, not just on the evenings of the weekdays, but on the weekends, you needed to prep and there was just no way around it. It was set up in such a way that you really couldn't take time for yourself.
And so, I think for me, it's been about a using self-care as form of resistance. It's been about really discovering and centering an awareness of what the consequences are in the absence of self-care. In life when you have more and more responsibilities, and you're farther along, and you just get to a point where it's just like, “either it's gonna be y'all, it's gonna be me” and “I gotta figure something out. Because this ain't sustainable.” So on a practical basis, I think what that looks like for me is doing internal emotional work. Because a lot of my negative emotional responses have come from a place of just needing to be in a better, a different emotional place from wherever I was at that moment. So doing personal work like journaling, reading books about trauma, talking to people, getting with people —healing happens in community. And that's literally true. That's a fact. So I’ve been intentional about being with people in a way that I wasn't before, and I’ve felt the difference.
NDH: Our relationship started when we were both part of a racial equity cohort for nonprofit leaders around Boston, and we started having our own deep conversations on the side. I've often heard you say — in the midst of these conversations around race and whiteness, and getting free — you talk about this phrase, “getting back to human.” Could unpack that idea? What do you mean by it? And how might it be a little bit different than what some folks are used to hearing?
AM: It really just kind of came to me as I was thinking about global colonialism, and also nationally the kind of the struggle we're in. I'm a student of history, and I realized that the colonists, particularly those who were policymakers at the time, had a goal in mind primarily having to do with profit and industry. They had some ideas about what was the most efficient way to create economy. I don't think that anyone — neither the white American forefathers or all the different folks worldwide that were involved in making the transatlantic slave trade a thing — thought future forward about the consequences, about the fact that for centuries to come, people will just be trying to get back to being human. Just trying to make our way back. In my more petty and less dignified moments I could be found thinking to myself about those people, “I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth it…
In the American context as well as others, it is complex, irrespective of your social location and where you are. It is complex to try to get back to dignity. That's what I think of when I think of ‘getting back to human’. It's my way of understanding and describing that challenge that we’re facing. So to ‘get back to human’ is to get back to a place of honoring, protecting, and receiving from innate human dignity. In order to do that, you have to shed these previously held misconceptions that you've been given about who you are and about who other people are.
For me personally, what this looks like is asking: how do I live a life where I'm deciding who I am and how I'm showing up? What does it mean to honor my own group, in this case black Americans? How do I honor the traditions, the sacrifices, and show up in such a way that I'm continually doing that while still establishing my individual identity? How do I become who I want to be in resistance to these inaccurate notions of ‘what I'm supposed to be’?
What’s at the crux of the issue of domination is the right to impose your way of life on others. How do I resist those impositions in my interpersonal interactions with people on a day to day without also breaking another person? I think you can become angry, and anger will cause you to want vengeance. How do I negotiate all of these different things is really the question? It's about asking where is that human dignity in me and where is it innate in other people? How do I honor that dignity? And how do I receive from them, how do I receive from their innate dignity? How do I give to them from mine?
“To get back to human is to get back to a place of honoring, and protecting, and receiving innate human dignity. And to do that, you have to shed these previously held misconceptions that you've been given about who you are and who other people are.”
NDH: I appreciate that you started that by talking about how European colonialism and the slave trade were what broke authentic humanity and dignity for everybody. On one end of the spectrum, I hear you saying, you could be an African getting enslaved. You were being denied your dignity entirely in this situation — being told it didn't exist. On the other end of the spectrum, you could be the enslavers, the masters, the colonizers who were coming to think that they acquire their dignity through what's ultimately a false and empty source: by stealing it from others, by being in power above others. They had this false dignity of believing they were dignified because they could enslave but not be enslaved. And that is a way of loosing your innate dignity, your true humanity, as well. And you framed it as, they were creating an economy. And it is inside of this economy that dignity is being broken down for everyone involved, but in really different ways.
So I want to reflect more on this “journey back to human” and how it differs or is the same from these different positions of loosing one’s humanity. We all need to get there. But we've got pretty different things to through in order to get there based on where we are in the hierarchies of race, class, gender, etc. I think that's part of what I've appreciated about our conversations over the last couple of years so much — we're both longing for this common humanity and want to be on the journey to get there. And we know that we're moving towards it from really different places and trying to understand one another’s journeys. So I'm just curious, if you could say more about how these journeys back to human are different for us based on where we're coming from? And what might be shared in those journeys, regardless of where we're coming from?
AM: Yeah, you know, I honestly think the only thing that's different is — and this is not reductionistic — the only thing that's different is the level of complexity of the process that each of us undergo, the depth of it.
What’s similar is that we're trying to get back to and reestablish being human. That's the North Star. But if it’s a gentleman like yourself coming from your social location, for example, you're going to need to pass through different things than what I might need to. I think that that's the difference.
What comes to mind for me is a mechanic or a person who does auto body work. Think about when there's a lot of damage to the body of the vehicle, and they have to do repairs. There are some dents that may appear small, but the mechanic actually has to get inside the car and bang it from the inside, you know, to recreate the original shape, to restore it. It may look small and simple, but it's actually quite a bit of work and expense to fix it irrespective of how it looks. Some damage may require you to take off the entire fender and just replace the whole thing, or an entire part of the vehicle and replace the whole thing. And it comes with a tremendous amount of work, time, and expense to do that — emphasis on the expense part! Those pockets, that's where you feel it. And so I think perhaps our journeys are also analogous to that: irrespective of how it looks, the process really depends on what will be needed to bring about repair. *note: I once heard this particular car analogy used in a different context and I found that it fits really well with the idea of racial healing and identity development.
NDH: Wow, there is a lot inside of that metaphor, that’s fire! I want to follow one thread that came up: about how there are dents on the outside, but you actually need to go on the inside to do the repair work. I'm curious for you what is the role of the spiritual life or maybe, more broadly, we could just call it the inner work of repair? How does that play into your own life? And what do you think is the role of this inner work in racial justice and repair — particularly in this context of “getting back to human?”
AM: I don't think it's any coincidence that when we see these freedom movements, nationally and worldwide, and people standing hand in hand, willing to throw themselves on the line to sacrifice it all up to and even including their very lives — a lot of times the people who are doing that are people who have a profound belief, often times a faith belief, that's driving them. A belief about the innate value and worth of other humans, you know? Working for justice and racial healing, it's a higher calling which in and of itself is spiritual.
If you really think about the people who created these systems — not only just the actual structural systems of [racism] but the systems of [racialized] thought you were talking about before — what did they have to believe to be able to do that? And that's a whole other conversation I can go into all day.
I think people who feel a sense of connection and do that inner work are the people who are most prepared to sacrifice in that way. Because what is love other than sacrifice, ultimately? Love in his purest form, I think? I think you're talking about spiritual work when you're talking about that. People love to say the word 'love'. Actually doing love is an act of the will. People always say things like, “all you need as love" or, “let's just love one another.” but often times we're talking about something different. We may be saying the same word, but we're talking about different things. Love is really sacrifice, it’s putting yourself forward for the betterment of someone else, or a group of others or future others. Love is the essence of sacrifice, which to me is the essence of love.
“I think people who feel a sense of connection and do that inner work are the people who are most prepared to sacrifice in that way. Because what is love other than sacrifice, ultimately? Love in his purest form, I think? I think you're talking about spiritual work when you're talking about that.”
NDH: That's so good. And it leads me to my next question. This newsletter is called Toward Solidarity. So obviously solidarity is a concept we’re trying to think about, but it's also intentionally framed in a way with that word “toward” there to say, “we want to be that, but we might not understand it yet, much less be living it authentically. We might be talking love, but we may not be living the sacrifice. We may not even really understand what that means yet.” So I'm curious, is solidarity a word that resonates with you? What does it mean to you? And I wonder if you could share a story of a time that really epitomizes what solidarity looks like or could look like?
AM: Yeah, solidarity. I think the story I have just needs to be shared because it's one of the more profound experiences of solidarity I've had with another person when it comes to class or culture or race. It's a very precious experience for me.
So, a couple years ago, I went back to China for the first time since I was in college. It was like a homecoming for me. I love the people of China. They’re so emphatic about hospitality and about honor. There's just so much about the culture that resonates personally with me as an individual. So much of the culture is grounded in Confucianism, which I just love. So, I went back to China. We were doing this teaching tour where we'd go to different schools in different regions and demo Western modes of teaching, of classroom style, etc. They brought one person from the US, one person from Britain and you go as a team. You go to one school in the morning, and in the afternoon you go to another. Then you travel to a different region the next day and do it again.
So the person I’m paired up with was a lovely person. I mean, we hit it off as soon as we met. Have you ever met a person and you're like, “oh, like, how did we just become best friends?!” So we would go into these schools and it was custom for the administrators to meet us at the gate, to welcome us and give us this walking tour before we went to do our session. Afterwards, there would be a panel discussion where a handful of teachers would ask us their questions.
I immediately began to notice that when we would arrive at the schools and go in, the administrator would be waiting there for us at this huge gate, but they would quickly begin to engage with him and just kind of be in conversation with the British teacher. They weren't being totally rude to me or anything like that. And I wasn't exactly being treated with disdain or disrespect. But there was certainly a difference. I noticed the pattern. And in some of the pictures, you can kind of see it; you might even think I was his secretary or something. (And now to be clear for all the listeners, I just want to say that I've never really had any particularly racial experiences during my times in China. But there was always a certain admiration for teachers who were White American or European. Everybody treats them like a star.)
Eventually over dinner or breakfast before we're about to go out to our next school, I just kind of casually mentioned it in passing, “Yeah, I noticed this pattern….” He just listened. He didn't respond, just listened, as though he was taking note. And then we just moved on to talking about other things.
From that point on, the next school we went to, he did this thing where he would walk directly next to me. He would keep pace with my steps. He would position his body in such a way that there was no way that the administrators or whoever was coming to greet us and talk with us during our walking tour, there was no way that they could physically get in between us. And he just did that for the entirety of the rest of the trip. He never said anything about it. Never once. And honestly, I never mentioned it to him either. It was such a subtle, and gentle and, at the same time, firm way of showing up.
For me what was particularly striking about it was he didn't second guess me. That's often the typical response. Someone tries to say, “That's not what’s actually happening,” you know? He didn't gaslight and then he also didn't draw attention to himself. It was just a simple, subtle act of solidarity.
I think that, for me, was one of the most memorable moments of solidarity. It was rooted in friendship, it was rooted in a genuine sense of “well, what can I do about this? I can do something. I'll do this thing.” I think it's in the simple acts. The simplicity of it, in combination with what he chose not to do. I think it’s the combination that makes it really special.
NDH: Thank you, my friend. This is so good. I'm grateful for you.
AM: Likewise, thank you for having me on your esteemed platform. I appreciate you.