Brothers, Grief, and Identity: Nico Slate on navigating sibling loss, love, and race dynamics

How does grief intersect with race and identity when growing up in a multi-ethnic family?

In this powerful episode, host Nina Rodriguez sits down with historian and author Nico Slate to explore the layered experience of sibling loss through the lens of race, identity, and love.

Nico shares the deeply personal story behind his memoir Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race, which honors the life and legacy of his late brother, Peter. Raised in a multi-ethnic family, Nico reflects on Peter’s experiences as a Black man in America, the traumatic events that shaped their lives, and how writing became a path toward healing and understanding. Together, they discuss the evolving nature of grief, the power of storytelling, and how we continue our relationships with those who have passed.

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This episode offers an intimate look at the grief of losing a sibling, the emotional complexities of family dynamics, and the profound impact of racial identity on mourning and memory. Whether you're navigating your own loss, reflecting on race and family, or seeking a heartfelt conversation about healing, this episode offers insight, vulnerability, and hope.

Key Takeaways:

• Grief often feels abstract—until it becomes personal.
• Sibling loss can profoundly shape one’s identity and worldview.
• Writing a memoir can be a powerful tool for healing and reflection.
• Love and grief transcend racial and cultural boundaries.
• Navigating grief within a multi-racial family brings unique challenges and insights.
• Processing loss through storytelling helps preserve memories and deepen understanding.
• You can't separate the beauty and pain of life—they often coexist.
• Grief evolves over time and may include struggles with identity and belonging.
• Relationships with the deceased don’t end—they shift and continue.
• Historical figures and family legacy can serve as anchors of hope in grief.
• Self-compassion is essential on the grieving journey.
• Complex or unresolved relationships may carry their own form of grief.
• Being kind to yourself is not optional—it's a necessity.
• Honoring grief publicly can invite connection and community.
• Racial grief is real and deeply entwined with personal and societal loss.

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Connect with Nico Slate:

• nicoslate.com
• Buy his Books

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• @griefandlight
• griefandlight.com
• 1:1 Grief Support

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

Chapters

• 0:00 Preview & Intro song
• 0:56 Introduction to Grief and Identity
• 2:53 Understanding Grief Before and After Loss
• 6:15 The Decision to Write a Memoir
• 9:12 Parenting while Processing Grief
• 13:42 Race, Identity, and Family Dynamics
• 20:00 The Ongoing Journey of Grief
• 24:29 Crafting the Narrative: What to Include in the Memoir
• 27:49 The Power of Writing and Personal Reflection
• 28:42 Navigating Complex Relationships and Grief
• 30:47 Understanding Identity and Struggles
• 35:23 The Impact of Physical Loss and Disability
• 38:31 Continuing Bonds and Ongoing Relationships
• 41:19 Reconciling Rocky Relationships in Grief
• 47:12 Exploring Cultural Connections and Legacy
• 51:29 Hope Amidst Darkness: Lessons from History

Transcript

In the end of the day, I want people to know that we were a multi-ethnic, multi-racial family. We had our struggles, but there was also so much love that my brother shared with me, that my mom shared with both of us. And that I think is where the hope in the story lies, right? I mean, our society continues to be divided along racial lines in all sorts of different ways, but there's also a whole lot of people who are loving across those divides, whether

in multiracial families or through friendships of one sort or another. And I think that ability for love to cross those divides is an equally important part of the story for me.

You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. How does grief intersect with race and identity when growing up in a multi-ethnic family? If you're new here, welcome to the Grief in Life podcast. My name is Nina and I am your host.

And today we are hearing from Nico Slate, a professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University and author whose deeply personal memoir, Brothers, a Memoir of Love, Loss and Race, explores the complexities of sibling loss and racial dynamics. Nico's brother, Peter, who was African-American, unfortunately was attacked in a club, an incident that cost him not only his eye, but it deeply impacted his life.

and ultimately played a role in his passing. This traumatic event also profoundly shaped Nico's understanding of race in America. And we're going to deep dive into all of the nuances that all of this implies and how grief plays a role, not only in the physical loss of somebody, but in the aftermath and in the lived reality of, especially race in America. So with that said, this is going to be a fascinating conversation. Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast, Nico.

Thank you so much, Nina. It's a real honor to be here with you.

Likewise, thank you so much for your time and for the audience. You may have seen him, if you've been following me for some time, you may have seen that I connected with Nico through Reimagine's Surviving a Sibling three-part series. So we talked about his memoir there along with another author. And I found his story particularly interesting, not just because obviously we have the sibling loss aspect in common, but because there's also his particular take on a very unique reality.

that he lived growing up and it touches on so many aspects of what we're experiencing today in our society. And I just want to deep dive into all of that. with that said, I'll start easy. What was your relationship with grief prior to Peter's passing?

Prior to my brother's death, grief was incredibly abstract for me. I think that's true for many young people who haven't had the experience of losing someone in their closest orbit. I had lost a father before I was born. I was raised by a single mother, but I didn't experience that as grief because it wasn't something I ever knew.

By contrast, my brother's father had left and come back and left and come back. And so I think he actually had experienced grief repeatedly as a child, losing a parent and then having the parent come back in. I was very blessed that for me, grief was incredibly abstract. And maybe that's part of why when my brother did die, I had no idea how to process what I was feeling. I think it felt very new to me.

Yeah, I could definitely relate to that in that, you know, it's not until it touches us so personally. And one could argue that, you know, there could be grief in hindsight with the relationship or lack thereof with your father, for example. But it's like you say, sometimes it's more about getting that person ripped away from our lives that we really get that visceral introduction to what grief is. So I could see that. And who was Peter? Who was, I know Peter wasn't his given name, I believe, and Peter

wore many hats, if you will. do you remember him? Who was Peter?

He was a wonderful brother and a wonderful human being. He had his struggles, uh, in part because of the challenges of his own childhood. And I think for other reasons as well, he struggled a lot as a kid and later as a young adult, he struggled with addiction to alcohol. He struggled with, um, persistent lack of self-esteem, but at the same time he was the

most joyful, charismatic person I've ever known. He was the life of the party. He loved to sing and to dance and eventually, as you know, became a hip hop artist. He loved to rap. He was incredibly creative. He wrote screenplays and short stories and poetry and was always inventing and imagining new things. And for me, he was both my older brother and my best friend and in many ways my father as well because he was

seven and a half years older than me. And because he chose to take that role on, I think a lot of older siblings might not have done what he did for me. I think he found real purpose and meaning in being a good older brother. And he was, he was the best.

love that. And in my case, I'm the older sister and there's definitely a caretaker aspect to our younger siblings. There's just that sense of we need to be their keeper, we need to look out for them. So I could definitely see that, especially with the age gap as well. And, you know, for context for those who haven't read the memoir, just give a little bit of background as to why you decided to write this in the first place. Your other books seemingly have not as much to do with sibling loss, if anything.

What made you take on such a personal project?

really appreciate the question. Well, let me start briefly by just saying that when my brother passed away on July 4th, 2003, I had no idea of writing anything about it. was overwhelmed by grief and also overwhelmed by the need to care for my mother who was also grieving and in a much more dramatic fashion. I think like a lot of siblings, I...

bottled a lot of my grief up and focused on supporting my mom who couldn't work, struggled to eat, couldn't sleep, and moved in with me. And so I was just caring for my mom for years as my main form of connection to my brother. And it wasn't really until I had my first child that that started to shift for me. I actually remember really vividly in the hospital room,

with my wife and our newborn son, recognizing the profundity of the loss, both for me and for my son, because I realized that he, my son, would never know my brother, at least never know him the way that I did. And that really drove my desire to write the book. I wrote it first and foremost for my own children.

Speaker 2 (07:41.166)
so that they could know their uncle Peter and so that he could play as much a role in their lives as possible. And of course it's not enough. Of course I wish he were still here to be their uncle in the world fully. But it has given me some sense of solace to know that.

When they get old enough, they're not quite there yet, but when they get old enough, they'll be able to sit down and read the book and at least to some degree know their uncle.

Thank you for that. And there's that deep desire, especially if it's your only sibling, to be that keeper of memories. And I could definitely understand that need to say, you know, this is the only way that they're going to get to know their uncle. And this is the only way that they're going to understand our relationship and our dynamic and maybe even on a personal level preserve those dynamics through the book. It's something outside of ourselves that...

lives on beyond our own existence. So I definitely see that. And like you said, it's not until you had your children that you gained that additional perspective, right? I would imagine that's almost like you could see yourself in third person and just have that self-compassion. How did that help you or did that help you process your grief about losing Peter?

I know, I really appreciate the question. I really appreciate the question.

Speaker 2 (09:12.024)
On the one hand, yes, certainly raising kids has not just helped me, but really forced me to grapple more directly with my grief because raising kids is so hard and challenging that it forces at least me to really get to my strongest place, to be my best person as much as I can.

And at least for me, and maybe this isn't true for everyone, but at least for me, one of the key ways I do that is by getting in touch with the full range of my life and my experience, not just the happy, joyful times and the things I love, but really confronting the struggles that I've had to go through and that my family's had to go through. And when I can really feel, you know, not just who my brother was and the love that he shared with me,

but also feel his loss and the tremendous hole that that created in me. It can help me be more real and more empathetic and more patient with my own kids and their struggles, right? Because we're all struggling. Even kids who haven't had that kind of grief, I'm very grateful for the fact actually that my kids have had relatively stable lives. They've had their own forms of struggle as we all do. And I think that

to the degree that we as individuals and human beings can get in touch with our own sorrow and our own pain, we're better able to be there for others too. So I've really tried to do that. That's all the good side. The other side though, I will say Nina, is that it can be hard to have the time and space to really engage one's grief when your days are full of parenting.

And I expect many people who struggling with grief have this challenge too, because you have to be in the right state of mind and place. And it's just, it's very easy to distract oneself when you've got 35,000 things to do and kids, you know, needing one thing or another. So that's, I think that's the challenge. And that's part of why I actually am so delighted to be talking with you here now is that

Speaker 2 (11:34.914)
When I have the opportunity to go deep and really confront and try to engage my grief, try to learn from it, try to feel it, I welcome those opportunities because they're not always there in these busy days.

That's such a good point and it's already demanding enough to do that alone and then you have to add grief to that. what I found is grief is patient, right? So what you just said about, you you welcome these opportunities. I think this is ultimately how it's done, especially in the context of we still have a life to live and have to function in society. And it reminds me of a friend of mine who

Her aunt lost her husband in the 9-11 attacks in the Twin Towers. And it wasn't until the 20th anniversary, which recently passed, that she said, I just now started to grieve because that entire time I had to immediately step into the mother-father rule and raise the kids and they're finally out of the home. And now it's when I'm like, my gosh, this happened. So 20 years had passed. And that's when she said,

she told my friend it would be stranger to me to say that he's not coming back than if he just randomly walked in the door and said, I've been away on vacation. You know, it's just reconciling the reality. So this comes up quite a bit, the whole when can we grieve? How long do we have time to grieve? Do I have the capacity to deep dive into the memories and the processing and all of this? So I love that you brought that up because sometimes it's as, I guess, simple

are straightforward as these types of conversations. It's the fact that you sat down to write the book and pour your heart out and your memories out and everything. taking it back to Peter and when you were kids and, you know, I know that race played a role because he was, his father was Nigerian and you are white, a white man, and he was black. And all of that entails in the society, especially in the nineties and early 2000s. So

Speaker 1 (13:42.488)
Take us back there. I know that a lot of the work around race and reconciling so many of the experiences, including the attack where he lost the eye, is something you're dealing with now. So take us back to that time, wherever you like, and talk to us about those dynamics and how they played out then versus now.

Thank you. Okay, well, I'm drawn to start actually by narrating the way my own thought about how to approach that question in the book changed over time. So when I first started writing the book, I really wanted it to be a book about my brother. I didn't want to put myself in it at all. I'm far less interesting to myself than my brother. He had such a dramatic and interesting life.

I wanted to be about him. And so I filled the book up with stories about him and the remarkable life he lived. But I quickly realized that part of what was remarkable about his story was how great a brother he was. That was one element of his life. And so I started to bring in stories about just how amazing a brother he was. You know, there's one a few pages into the book that is about the night when I was.

I'm terrified to sleep because someone had mugged the Domino's delivery guy outside our house and my brother came into the room and told me that the iron bars on our windows could only be cut by a particular saw that had a diamond blade and that it was incredibly expensive and very few people had it. And even if they had it, it would make this terrible noise that would wake everyone up. I think he just made all of this up, right? But it was such an imaginative story that it helped me sleep.

And he did that kind of stuff all the time. He was an amazing brother. So I started putting those things into the book, right? And so I had this draft that was really about how amazing my brother was, how wonderful he was as a brother. And then, of course, I had to grapple with the fact that he had been attacked in that nightclub in Santa Monica and had lost his eye. And the men who attacked him were white. He had been dancing with a white girl. And the role that race played that night,

Speaker 2 (15:53.688)
had in my family's history always been really straightforward. Our understanding was that the men who attacked him were white supremacists. They were skinheads. They attacked him because he was a large black man dancing with a young white woman. That was a story that I had held on to from my years growing up. But when I found the police report and I started to dig deeper into the story, and as you mentioned, I'm a historian. I do that kind of historical detective work all the time. It's part of what I love about my job. Here I'm doing it.

in the case of my brother, it was much harder, but also tremendously revelatory because I realized that the story had been told was it was much more complicated. The reality was much more complicated than the story I had. Um, and it forced me to grapple more with the complexities of race at that moment in history. And, and that then led me to realize, wait a minute, um, actually I need to bring myself more into the story and I need to complicate my own racial identity.

which growing up, I just never really had. And some of that is the special privilege of being a white guy. You don't have to think that much about race in many contexts, right? Whereas my brother as a mixed race black man was constantly being reminded that he was black, constantly being reminded he was mixed. It was a much more of a regular part of his identity than it was for me. And I had never reflected on that fact growing up, right? So I started writing into that and really just...

grappling with a tremendous difference in our lives because of his racial identity in mind. And I had a second draft that really played up the reality of those differences and grappled with why I hadn't confronted them, why I had been really oblivious to them as a child and even as a young man. But then I started sharing that with people who know me and know my brother and they said, okay, look, it's good to talk about those differences.

But in the end of the day, your brother didn't see you as a white man. He saw you as his little brother. And race was a huge role in his life and a huge role in our family, but it wasn't the defining thing. Ultimately, the love that he shared for me was much more important for him and for me. And so I couldn't let that love get clouded over by the problems that race introduced. So had to find a way to do justice to the...

Speaker 2 (18:17.1)
realities of race and the role that race played in my brother's life and in my own. And the realities of the way it divided us. But I couldn't end with that. I had to find a way to keep coming back to the love that we shared with each other across those divides. And that's where I hope the book ultimately goes is, you know, in the end of the day, I want people to know that we were a multi-ethnic, multi-racial family. We had our struggles, but there was also so much love.

that my brother shared with me, that my mom shared with both of us. And that I think is where the hope in the story lies, right? I mean, our society continues to be divided along racial lines in all sorts of different ways. But there's also a whole lot of people who are loving across those divides, whether in multiracial families or through friendships of one sort or another. And I think that, that

ability for love to cross those divides is an equally important part of the story for me.

Thank you. And it's so true. We just see our people as whatever role they play in our lives. So our brothers, our parents, our cousins, or whatever that relationship is. And you do want to focus on that. And ultimately, I could absolutely see how you didn't even want to put yourself in there. It's more like, how can I preserve this person and my memory of this person and his legacy and his greatness as much as I can capture of it in this book? And yet, you cannot.

completely do that without inserting your own experience. So at what point did you feel that helped you process your grief and if so, how? How did that show up for you?

Speaker 2 (20:00.502)
No, no, I love that question. I really feel like it opened a door and it's– it's– it's the kind of door that you're always moving through. It's not like, you know, it opens the door, you walk through it and then now you've figured everything out and you've processed your grief, but it's like you enter a process and then the process is one you have to just keep carrying with you and keep coming back to. So it's not– it's not as if writing the book solved anything or–

ended anything, but it brought a lot of things up and into the light in a way that I could grapple with it. I'm not much of a crier. I wish I were. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with crying. I don't think it's a gender thing. know often men are taught not to cry, but my mom never did that, nor did my brother. I don't think I imbibed. I just think emotionally it's not easy for me in the way that say it is for my mom or my

for many people I know. But I cried a lot writing the book and I've cried a lot since then reading it, sharing it with other people. So that is very tangible evidence for me that it helped open a certain emotional door for me. know, of course before the book came out, I felt grief on many levels. Often it felt like a heaviness or it felt like a

attention in my heart or in my stomach, but I wasn't getting it out and through in the form of tears. And that is something that the book, made, made possible for me. and it also just created an opportunity to talk to a lot of people who knew my brother and loved him and still love him. and that's something I really cherish and value both.

the chance to talk with people who didn't know him like you, which I really do value deeply, but also the chance to interview a lot of his friends, a lot of our family members to try to better understand his life and who he was. And you know, when I did those interviews, I had my historian's cap on. I was trying to write, you know, a factual and good book, but I was also, you know, I was there as a grieving brother and it's really meaningful to hear people talk about your sibling.

Speaker 2 (22:22.002)
I'm sure you know this and have experienced this too, because you learn whole new things about them, right? I mean, you encounter whole stories that like, I didn't know that, you You know, I had known, for example, I knew that my brother had a sort of brief career in reality TV. He had a small role in the Osborne show about the famous heavy metal star Ozzy Osbourne and his family. You know, he was on that show for, you know,

season or two. It a very small role. But I didn't realize that he had actually tried out for probably the sort of first big reality TV show called The Real World. It on MTV many, many years ago. And there was video footage of him auditioning for this show. I just didn't know. I didn't know any of that. But one of his friends still had this video footage. So I'm able to see my brother as he was, you know, it.

at a 22 year old kid, I can't remember how old it was, in his early 20s, auditioning for this reality show, you know, he still had both of his eyes then and he was such a dreamy, you know, imaginative young, young man sort of trying to present himself and it was so fascinating to me. And that came to me because I had started talking to people asking questions about my brother. so writing the book, I did,

help me process my grief in all sorts of ways, it's obviously an ongoing journey. You know, it's not something I expect will ever be done. But I feel really grateful that I'm able to engage that journey in a new way.

Thank you. And, you know, as a writer going through that process and engaging with your grief, engaging with the memories, giving it shape, I'm always curious about how you decide what stays in the book and what goes out. And I know a lot of that is the editor's job, but there are some things that you really, really want incorporated in the final product. So what was your North Star with that and how did you decide what stayed and what went?

Speaker 2 (24:29.486)
I had two North stars. There were some things that I just knew this has got to be in the book because this is so central to how I understand my brother and his story that even if it isn't the most important element from the perspective of writing a great book, it's just got to be in there. And that's everything from, you know, the night that he performed on stage at the

Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas, which is one of his lifelong dreams. You know, he gets to open for Cypress Hill and the rush of the crowd and the elation for him. know, that I, you know, I have to put that in the book because that's central to who he is, right? To, you know, his experience of Alcoholics Anonymous AA, which was a huge and very positive role in his life. Had to talk about that. To, you know, stories about our family, like,

you know, Christmas Eve that we spent in this little trailer out in the Mojave Desert where we had moved and, you know, playing board games together and, you know, putting the milk on the front step of the cooler to stay cold because we didn't have a fridge but it was cold enough, you know, that those little memories and think I knew that I knew that it has to be in there, right? It has to be in there. But there was a whole lot that got cut because it wasn't making for a good book.

And that's actually Nina, great weakness as a writer. Other people struggle as too, but my goodness, I am not good at cutting things, but I was blessed with having a wife who's a poet and a fierce editor. And she has a bunch of friends who very kindly read the manuscript for me who are memoirists or novelists. And one in particular, I still remember, you know, she must have, she had a red pen and she must have cut out two thirds of the draft I shared with her. And she was right.

You know, a lot of that stuff, I don't think I cut it all out. But you know, there was a lot there that meant so much to me, but it wasn't important for the reader. anyway, two North stars. Some things I knew had to stay in because they were so important to me. But also ultimately, I was guided by trying to write a book that would be compelling to a reader. And you can't put everything in, because otherwise it'll be, you know, 20,000 pages and

Speaker 2 (26:55.085)
you know not not the most riveting of reeds

Yeah, I like asking that question because each writer has a different answer or perspective and I love knowing what drives each person and what was like a hard line, no, the stage, you know, like this has to make it into the book. Yes. So I appreciate that. I did a writing workshop with Mirabai Starr. She's an apprentice of Ram Dass. I don't know if you're familiar with Ram Dass. Yeah. But one of the things she said, you know, sometimes just the act of writing in and of itself is all the honoring you need to do to that part of the story.

So whether or not it makes it onto the book, sometimes it's just the fact that you got it out there and you wrote it. And I've heard some people repurposing the parts that were left out into articles or blog posts or whatever, some other form of writing. And some people just keep it. The act of putting it outside of yourself is a beautiful act of honoring that memory in and of itself.

I agree entirely and I would say, know, for anyone listening that doesn't see themselves as a writer and has no intention of publishing, just getting things down on paper can be so helpful and important. Even if you don't envision sharing it with anyone else in the world, I think just getting it down on paper, at least for me, is a very powerful act.

Thank you for that. Somebody told me once we have a tendency to make martyrs out of our loved ones and just make them into these awesomely perfect, flawless people. And you included some parts that, like you mentioned, there was more nuance to the situation. And I say that through my own experience, if anybody knows my story, my brother passed away from functional poisoning. So it's something I've had to reconcile with myself and how I tell his story because I don't want him remembered that way. But

Speaker 1 (28:42.444)
that is what took his life ultimately. So in your case, you're looking at the race aspect of it in hindsight, and there is a red string that runs from that incident at the club to his ultimate passing, which initially you thought it was an act of white supremacists attacking this black man in a club for dancing with a white woman. And because of that, he lost his eye and because of the ripple effect of losing his eye. So no depth perception and, or

struggling with that perception and driving it ultimately caused his death. So how do you reconcile the great areas of it all?

Yeah. Well, I'll just say I, I really connect with your own struggle to figure out how you share and make sense of your brother's story. Even the parts that can be shameful in our society and even the parts that one wishes were different. I feel like in my case,

to do him justice and his story justice meant to tell all of it and to tell it as honestly as I could because as human beings, you can't separate the good from the bad. I mean, it's all bound up together and who we are is who we are because of a lot of the struggles that we've been through. In fact, one of the reasons, one of the many reasons I wish my brother was still here to be an uncle to my children is precisely because

he goofed up with almost everything that a teenager could deal with, you know, like drugs and alcohol and all of that stuff. And I was such a boring teenager and I'm still boring in so many ways that I'm just like, oh no, how am I gonna speak authentically to my kids? Anyway, I'm, I've got to turn to other friends for this because I not gonna be able to do it. I knew that

Speaker 2 (30:47.286)
his life was complicated. I didn't know that the night he was attacked was complicated. And when I realized that fact, it was hard for me. It really shook me. First and foremost, because I didn't want in any way to shift somehow the blame to him for what was ultimately not something that he should be blamed for. When I learned that the men who attacked him weren't overt white supremacists, right?

They very likely had some prejudices. think most people in our society do have prejudices of one sort or another to one degree or another, whether they're aware of them or not. And certainly in the early 1990s, for a group of white men to look at a large black man dancing with a white woman and then attack him, I think there is likely some role that race played in that scenario. But it also mattered a lot that everyone was drinking. The men were drinking, my brother was drinking.

and that my brother, especially when he was drinking, could be very confrontational. And he was such a loving, warm, and charismatic figure, but he had a temper. He had an angry streak that would come out when he was drinking. And we still don't know exactly what happened that night, but I came to feel that, again, the full and honest story is that

there were aspects of it that involved my brother's drinking. And he knew that too. mean, he not long after losing his eye, joined AA and tried to give up alcohol, which he did for many years. so he recognized that his drinking had played a role. And he knew that that was part of what led to that incident that night. And part of what the book tries to do is to see all of who he was.

and see how it all came together. You know, that his childhood growing up with a on again off again father growing up in a multiracial situation as a mixed race black man, trying to figure out who he was, trying to grapple with the fact that he had such huge dreams and hopes for himself. But that there you know the reality was often very difficult, especially you know, if your dream in life is to be a dental hygienist.

Speaker 2 (33:09.15)
That's great because it's not that hard. mean, you know, you still have to work at it. have to study for it. But that's not the same as say wanting to be a rock star, which is what my brother wanted, right? That's really hard to pull off. there's a whole lot of people in our world that want to be rock stars and just, you know, you need a whole lot of luck as well as talents and everything else to get there. So seeing how all of that came together for him and in him meant being honest and open with the—

the hard parts. You know, another thing that kind of strand in his life that even before he died was a huge source of sadness for me because I really wanted the best for him was that he really struggled to have deep and lasting relationships with women. It was just something he really struggled with. He had many, many relationships but they never lasted. Only at the very end of his life actually did he really fall in love with someone and one of my great regrets

Well, I'll tell you my regret and I'll tell you the happy part. One of my great regrets is that at the time I couldn't see it for what it was. I just didn't, I underestimated this young woman because my brother had never really had a deep relationship with someone because she fit sort of on paper the kind of characteristics that tended to be his girlfriends, former beauty queen, dating hip hop stars, et cetera, et cetera.

I had my own prejudices. So I didn't recognize the depth of the love that they shared with each other until after he died. And the good side to this is that that was one of the people that I spoke to when writing the book. it really, I don't know that it should, Nina, but it made me happy to know that this person still loves him.

20 odd years later, she still loves him. She still cares for him. Is she still a part of her life? He would find that profoundly meaningful. And so I found some solace and even some happiness in knowing that that love, the love that they had shared is still here and still in the world.

Speaker 1 (35:23.032)
Thank you for your honesty. I bring these points up because sometimes it part of what I hear grievers struggle with a lot is they weren't a perfect person and newsflash nobody is right. We all were so long as we're human. We're going to have something we struggle with. We also have to remember the context of when this was happening. There was a lot of that drinking party culture in the 90s and hindsight is 20 20 and we see so many things we didn't in the moment. But

Again, perspective, we gain perspective with time. And for context also, you know, when we talk about losing the eye physically, that's a huge adjustment from the aesthetics of what your face look like to being able to function or not and how that limits you. And you touch on how it's technically now a disability, he struggled with the acceptance or lack thereof of.

being labeled as disabled. So could you touch on that? Because that is a form of grief when we have a life altering loss and a physical loss at that.

Yeah, he really struggled. He struggled both as you said with the physical realities of losing an eye, which isn't just sort of half your vision, but also it impacts your depth perception really dramatically because the eyes work together to judge depth. And so it was hard for him to drive. It was hard for him to play basketball, which was always one of our great passions. That was hard. But also the way he was then perceived in the world was hard.

Part of it was just that he was a very handsome guy who was always used to being, you know, seen in that light. And now often he was seen as the guy with one eye. And sometimes he wore an eye patch actually quite often. Sometimes he didn't. He had a prosthetic eye that was made, but it was far from perfect as these things are. And there were lots of problems with it that were hard for him in terms of his own self image and self esteem.

Speaker 2 (37:24.194)
And then as you said, he struggled with the idea of being disabled. The story I tell in the book, and I'm sure this happened to him more often than this, but I vividly remember when we took a cross-country trip, my mom, my brother and I, and we went to a national park and the park ranger very helpfully, you know, noticed the eye and asked him if it was permanent. And my brother said, yes. And then said, you know, you could get this special pass. I remember what it's called.

you know, for people with disabilities where they get discounted rates or free admission. don't remember the details either. I just remember the park ranger offering this idea to my brother and him just very curtly saying, maybe next time. he didn't want that. He didn't want to accept and embrace that identity. And he never really did. that just wasn't a part of his self understanding. He did come to find some meaning in wearing the patch, particularly as a hip hop artist. having the patch was kind of cool.

and gave him a certain sort of street cred that I think he embraced. But it came with a lot of cost too.

Yeah, it definitely changes one's life and that acceptance is more of a muscle. It's not a one-time thing and it's something that we do over time. I don't know if you share the sentiment, but I believe in continuing bonds like death ends a life, not a relationship. And we continue to have a relationship even though they're not physically with us. Talking about them is one of the ways in which I feel we can form connection. And so...

You've realized some things since his passing. You're a different person. You see things from a different perspective. How did his passing and his life, more importantly, shape the work you do today?

Speaker 2 (39:06.952)
very dramatically and directly. As a historian, as you noted earlier, most of my books are not about grief. Most of my books are about the history of struggles against racism and other forms of inequity and injustice. And when I first came into that kind of history, I didn't do so deliberately to sort of live out my brother's memory or his life. In fact, I don't think I was consciously making those connections at all.

But there's no question about it that part of what has made that kind of work so meaningful to me and has driven me towards it is the linkage to my brother's own experience of being a mixed race black man and navigating all those complexities. So it's shaped my professional work very dramatically and directly. And then there are other ways that, you as you said it quite beautifully, that the relationship is ongoing. I talk to my brother quite often and you know, it's a mixed experience because

He was a wonderful conversation partner, in part because he was often surprising. And so there are some times when I'm talking to him and I feel pretty clear about what he would say or how he would respond. And then there are other times where I just really wish I could hear him respond because I actually want to know what he would say about something, what advice he might have to offer. And I can't. So it's mixed. It's not always a profound

connection. Sometimes it's just an amplification of my my sense of loss. But I still do it. And then you know, the relationships he had with other people, my mom being first and foremost, but also other people and in his life. That's another way that that my connection to him is ongoing. I talked to I talked about him often with my mom. I also try to talk about him often with my kids.

My son has my brother's name as one of his middle names and I try for both kids to know him and know their connection to him. And I feel good about that. That's something that I feel really happy about that they do know him.

Speaker 1 (41:19.682)
That is beautiful and that's a way we can keep their legacy and their essence with us through time. And I don't know if you could touch on this, but I would invite you to in whatever perspective you can offer in terms of, I remember when we were doing the third panel with Reimagine, some of the audience questions were around, it sounds like you had a great relationship and I'm so happy for all of the siblings that had wonderful relationships with their brother or sister who passed.

But what if you didn't? What if you had a layered, rocky, painful relationship with your sibling and they pass? How do you reconcile that with grief? So I guess I just open the door to whatever you want to share about that.

Dr. sure. Well, I mean, the first thing I'd say is, I don't know anyone that had a flawless, perfect, always easy relationship with a sibling. There's always bumps in the road and complexities of one sort or another and there were certainly plenty of those in my relationship to my brother, especially towards the end of his life. He struggled a lot and the struggles meant that I had to play the very awkward role of

trying to give him advice. He was very happy to be the big brother and to give me advice and support, but he was very uncomfortable with me taking on that role. That's not surprising. But when he started drinking again towards the end of his life, and both my mother and I felt strongly that was the wrong choice, we confronted him about it repeatedly.

It went about as well as I think most such confrontations tend to go, which is it didn't go very well. He got really angry with us, know, um, told us we were trying to control him. He was an adult. All the stuff that you would see in a movie or expect to see, wasn't, it wasn't easy. We still felt compelled to do it and it didn't sunder the relationship. We were able to stay connected, but I think there was some space or some, um,

Speaker 2 (43:28.718)
tension that grew up between us because– because he was struggling and because his choices he knew didn't align with the things that I thought and my mom thought would be best for him. Uhm– and I still value so deeply the few moments when we were able to really clearly cut through those things. This is a super small thing but I remember– I don't think this actually ended up in a book. Uhm– just like a month or two before he died.

I had come back from doing a master's degree in the UK and all my money was in a British bank account but I needed to buy a used car. It was a Saturn. I don't even make Saturns anymore. I was gonna buy this Saturn for like a thousand dollars. It was very cheap old used car but I had literally almost no money because I had still I hadn't done the transfer whatnot. So I had to ask him for money which I didn't even think about it much at the time in retrospect. It was like the best thing I could do for our relationship.

because it returned us to sort of the rightful order of things that he was comfortable with, I was comfortable with. Here I am asking him for money. I like, you know, I had done that many times before in our lives and he was always willing to, he loved doing that. You know, he loved being helpful in that way. So, you know, we had moments of connection but there was a lot of distance in those times. There were months where we didn't speak which, you know, was weird for us because we were so tight growing up. And this is kind of a weird thing to say maybe.

I don't think I felt guilt about this exactly but I feel uncomfortable. I have had the idea at various points that if he were still alive, I don't know how he would be doing. Like often when I imagine him still alive, I imagine this sort of golden image of him having found his life partner, having kids, thriving in a profession. Uhm but I also have thought to myself sometimes, wow, what if he–

was still struggling with addiction and what if he was still struggling with relationships and having a hard time and that whole dynamic, who knows where that would have gone. I don't know. Uhm— and so that uncertainty sometimes— again, I— I don't know exactly emotionally what it does to me but it makes me feel uncomfortable when I— when those sorts of thoughts come to me. And I— I expect that those who had—

Speaker 2 (45:54.638)
Um, and even rocky relationship with their sibling or less, less of those positive times that they, um, I don't know, maybe this isn't true, but I could imagine people sort of imagining forward and wondering, what if my sibling had lived? Maybe we would have been able to reconnect. Maybe we would have been able to get past those things. Maybe we would have found a better place. And I would like to think that that would always be true.

You know, I would like to think that if my brother was still alive now that we would be sitting on a porch somewhere with our kids all running around and playing. But we don't know. You know, we don't know what the future would bring or where it would go. So I think, you know, at this point, at least for me, all I have is I have my memories and then I have my dreams.

That's a beautiful perspective and a beautiful question to just leave open ended because we get to live in the mystery of what potentially could have been or what we imagine could have been. And yet we will never know. feel like so much of grief is just living and making peace over and over again with the fact that you're never going to know exactly how this would have played out. But you can imagine in one way or another and there's some reconciling there that can be had.

Through writing, actually, writing is a very powerful tool, using our imaginations to maybe like, and maybe this is a journal prompt, like, what would our life would have been like? know, would we be sitting on the porch? What would that be like? Thank you for that. And we're towards the end here, but I do want to make sure I include this in the conversation. Your other books have to do a lot with India. So if you could just touch on your relationship with India and whatever you like sharing in the time that we have.

It's actually, it's very connected to where we just ended because one of the things I've often wished is that I could have taken my brother with me to India. I took my mom twice, once when my brother was still alive and once afterwards. And I remember when I took my mom the first time, really wishing that I could find a way to bring my brother too, because that would have been such a transformative experience for him. India came into my life in the way

Speaker 2 (48:08.75)
sort of strange way that many things come into our lives, which is just one thing leading to another and you end up somewhere where you're like, how in the world did I get there? Because growing up, I had no direct connections to India. I didn't even eat Indian food growing up. You know, my family was pretty boring and uncultured in such ways. And it wasn't until college that I ended up taking a trip to Nepal, just a Himalayan kingdom just to the north of India. It's where Mount Everest is.

And I loved mountains and being outside and Nepal was a wonderful place to be. I just didn't even know really when I went there that it would also be really fascinating from a cultural perspective. It's predominantly Hindu country. There's a lot of Hindu temples, also a lot of Buddhism. And I became very interested in those things, interested in the culture of that part of the world more broadly. And so then I took the opportunity to go to India the following year.

And I just fell in love with India and Indian culture and the remarkable richness and diversity and vibrance of Indian people and Indian society. And so I started just going back more and more, learning various Indian languages to the degree that I can. And then it ended up becoming a part of my historical work, which I also didn't expect. So that now I've written a book about Gandhi and food and a book about a famous Indian feminist and

socialist revolutionary named Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay and a lot of my work is about nonviolence and the way that moved from India into the American Civil Rights Movement. So it's become a huge part of my life. But I never had the chance to share that much of it with my brother. You know, a little bit, a little bit. You know, he lived long enough that I was able to share some things with him. But goodness, I wish I could take him on a trip to India. That would be so fun. And it would be amazing just to see.

him sharing, you know, his love for music, for example, with Indian musicians. There's just so many possible connections there that I think would be wonderful if, if, somehow it could come to be.

Speaker 1 (50:16.238)
Thank you. And I would love to think that in some way unseen and perhaps unfelt, they are somehow enjoying all of these experiences we're having from their perspective, whatever that is, at least one can dream. And where could people find more information about your work? And if they wanted to get a copy of Brothers or some of your other books, where can they find that?

So, you know, they can Google me or the book through Amazon or through whatever bookseller they prefer. I have a website, nicoslate.com and there's links from there to my various books and the ability to learn more. That's probably the two easiest ways to do it.

And usually by now I'm winding that on the conversation, but I do have one more question. One more big question with your work experience, your curious mind, your historian experience in education and what you're seeing today in the United States and really worldwide, but we live in the U.S. so I'll narrow it down to the context of the U.S. What's your take on what you're seeing? Because it feels to me like we're regressing in so many ways and

with what you've learned and what history teaches us, is there hope for the future? know, I feel like we're entering dark times and I'd like to believe that there's hope. What perspective can you offer in just this little bit? I know this is like a series in and of itself, but whatever you feel like sharing.

Well, I share your sentiments and I appreciate the question. I feel really blessed to do the kind of historical research I do because on a daily basis, I'm reading about and writing about people who lived through extremely dark times and found ways to believe in a better future and found ways to actively fight for those better futures. I get great inspiration from those people.

Speaker 2 (52:17.87)
people like Gandhi or Martin Luther King or lesser known figures, thousands of whom are not well known in our world today, but should be because they were heroic people who stood up for what they believed in and never stopped hoping for a better world. I feel like we're all called to do that. We're called to grieve, you know, and we can grieve the current state of our country or the world just as we would grieve other losses.

but we're also called, I think, to keep dreaming and keep hoping and keep doing what we can to create a better future.

beautifully stated. I completely agree we can fall into the grief and despair. Grief is not despair, but it could lead to despair. because grief is living in the and, we could also give room to both things, to the sorrow, to the parts that we feel like maybe are changing too a little too fast and we're losing, and to the world that we want to see afterwards and be those brave people that have come before us. And it's our turn, I guess.

So thank you for that perspective. Final question is, what would Nico today say to Nico after Peter passed?

I really value that question.

Speaker 2 (53:35.618)
Well, I mean...

hang in there, you know? And, you know, my brother always had the same thing that he would put on his answering machine. He would always end the message saying something like, remember to be good to yourself, remember to be kind to yourself, some variant of that. And I think I would say the same. I was so focused in those days on my mom and her grief and sorrow and wellbeing, but.

I would try to remind myself to not forget to take care of myself too.

Thank you so much, Nico. It has been an absolute honor. Thank you for your generosity of time and for the work that you do.

Thank you, Nina, very much.

Speaker 1 (54:22.686)
That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at griefandlight. Or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you. And always remember, you are not alone.