5SR - January 15, 2024

Hitha on the Houthi, cringe, and remembering Martin Luther King Jr. as the man he was

Author

Hitha Palepu
January 15, 2024

Today’s curator is the founder of #5SmartReads, Hitha Palepu. She’s a consummate multihyphenate - CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals, author of WE’RE SPEAKING: The Life Lessons of Kamala Harris and How to Pack: Travel Smart for Any Trip, and professional speaker. Hitha is an unabashed fan of Taco Bell, Philadelphia sports teams & F1, romance novels, and is a mediocre crafter. She lives in NYC with her husband and two sons.

The many sides of Martin Luther King (Financial Times)
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It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, and one meant to be spent in service for a more equitable, peaceful life for all.

His work continues to be urgently necessary, given the state of the world. But what I love about this piece is its focus on King as the man (and depicted through famous portraits of him), versus the hero whose legacy continues to live longer than his life of 39 years.

There’s a timeliness and timelessness to Enuma Okoro’s words that we all should heed, both in how we remember King and also how we view our leaders (from the past, in our present, and looking towards the future):

“It is a beautiful thing to celebrate MLK, and to draw inspiration from his tireless efforts. And yet, as we are often prone to do with great leaders, we tend to remember him at the moment of his crowning achievements. But we can also learn much from recognising the ways in which he was a human being like the rest of us. To consider that there were many sides to Martin Luther King Jr might be not just a deeper way of honouring him, but might help us to look again at the possibilities within our own lives, reminding us of the call of unfinished work.”

Any article that begins with “it’s a dreary Thursday afternoon in early December at a Taco Bell in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood” was written specifically for me, and you can’t convince me otherwise. Thank you, Neha.

This may be the first time you get to know Avantika (highly recommend her Disney Channel original movie Spin, where she plays an aspiring DJ reconnecting with her late mother through music), and it won’t be the last. Her turn as Karen Shetty is both familiar and memorable, expanding the South Asian smart stereotype that has long dominated pop culture.

I’m inspired by the scale of Avantika’s ambitions (who’s executive producing a Disney+ series she sold to the streamer, pursuing her degree at Columbia, wanting to continue producing and acting and pursuing a fashion collaboration), and I’m so deeply proud to see a Telugu girl shatter what our culture still expects of a nice Indian girl and build her big life, on her terms.

Especially when that big life involves trips to Taco Bell.

While this article is 7 years old, it provides the best explainer of the Houthi movement in a fairly unbiased manner, compared to much of the reporting today.

Yes, the Houthis are a proxy ally of Iran’s Islamic Republic. But to reduce them to this is a disservice to a more complex conflict between Sunni and Shiite (and within the Shiites, the Zaydi) Muslims in the Middle East, which is one of the biggest factors in the changing politics in the region.

It’s a long read, but it’s one worth your time.

IT’S. ABOUT. TIME.

As Henna Pryor writes in her book Good Awkward, cringe is no longer limited to being embarrassing by someone else’s standards. Rather, it’s a powerful way to cultivate a real connection with others, one free of judgement and expectations.

And as someone who replays every interaction and thing she said from an event in her head and cringes for the entirety of the mental replay, I feel so relieved and freer in reading this interview (reading how Francesca tested Pryor’s thesis in the interview, with immediate relief, was even more reassuring).

I appreciate the tactics outlined in the interview - especially the one reminding me that awkwardness is temporary - and immediately purchased a copy of the book.

For all the concerns I have about the future of the United States, one thing that gives me such reassurance is how our First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, and that there are platforms for independent journalists and creators to amplify our messages outside of the traditional media ecosystem.

And yes, this freedom and these platforms have their own issues with amplifying hate speech and their algorithms spreading misinformation or suppressing critical news.

But we have a voice and platforms to share our voices. In India - which purports itself to be the world’s largest democracy - voices and journalists that are critical of the current administration are being pushed out from their jobs, with YouTube being the last bastion of free speech they have. And even that comes with significant risk to their safety, their ability to earn and care for their families, and to survive.

I’ve seen directly how the government’s control of the media has shaped the perception of my family members and loved ones’ view of the current administration (so much that I can’t even discuss Indian politics with them anymore).

This is a chilling and necessary read.

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