Hasan Minhaj’s “Emotional Truths” Are a Slap in the Face
Truth hurts
I’ve never been a fan of comedy. Not in my younger days, and certainly not now. I was unamused by the likes of Bo Burnham and John Oliver. I was unamused by just about everyone except for my little sister. Willingly watching comedy shows was generally out of the question for me.
Hasan Minhaj changed that.
The first time I watched “The King’s Jester,” my sister and I were still reeling from our first experience of homelessness. It was, as it always is during Rochester winters, bitter cold. We were sleeping on air mattresses, which was a welcome change from the way that we spent our first nights in this particular apartment: on makeshift mattresses made of blankets layered atop dirty clothes.
Most of my memories from this season of life are a caffeinated, traumatic blur, but I remember the emotions I felt while watching this comedy special. I remember laughter; I remember tears.
Hasan Minhaj mattered to me because he was the only South Asian-American comedian I’d heard of — and since he was the only one, he represented all of us. Every quote, every anecdote, every carefully crafted concoction of a story mattered.
From what I could gather, even in my sleep-deprived fog, Hasan had done it. He had dared to…
