Q&A: Xorje Olivares talks ‘conversation and cultura’ in new KQED podcast, ‘Hyphenación’
By Amaris Castillo, staff writer
My ears perked up when I first heard the term “hyphenación.” At first, it sounded like a mish-mash, but my brain quickly put together that it’s a blend of two words — “hyphen” and “nación,” Spanish for nation.
“Hyphenación” is the name of a new video podcast series from San Francisco’s KQED. Host Xorje Olivares, a self-proclaimed border kid from South Texas, admits it’s a made-up word.
“I knew that I wanted something that felt true to my identity,” Olivares told me. “It’s very Spanglish.”
That identity — and others like it — is what the series, which premiered last month, is all about. Olivares hosts conversations with what he calls “hyphenated Latinos” about the personal choices that shape their lives: family, careers and everything in between.
I wanted to learn more about KQED’s new podcast, so I called up Olivares last week. Check out our Q&A below (edited for clarity and brevity).
Amaris Castillo: Can you describe the genesis of the “Hyphenación” podcast?
Xorje Olivares: I grew up on the border and my entire family is there, so I feel like everything I’ve done is very Latino-coded. That’s why I feel so at home in the Bay Area, because there’s so many Latinos there. So I was excited to do something that’s maybe Latino-forward.
That also aligned with where KQED was going; they wanted to create some new things that were geared towards the Latino community, because there is such a high proportion of Latinos living here. Some research said that Latinos were excited about features content, soft news content, and that they were most likely going to be found on YouTube. They much preferred using YouTube and streaming. So we took all of this feedback and this research information and we said, “How can we make a show out of this?”
We piloted this show for several months. We wanted to get it right. If I was a listener of this show, I wanted to know that it was done with a lot of love and care. And we definitely put a lot of love and care into it. And then as we kept going, we realized what resonates the most with folks — internally and externally — was when we talked about real-life stuff. Talking about creating boundaries with your family. What is it like when you’re dating somebody, and that impacts your friendships? These big life questions that I thought I should have the answers to as an older millennial. I don’t. And it turns out a lot of people don’t have the answers.
Castillo: Your show plays into the idea that U.S. Latinos live in a hyphenated space. What does that space look like for you?
Olivares: My hometown is, no joke, 99% Mexican. Everybody looks like me. Everybody’s last name is Gonzalez, Rodriguez, Gomez, Sanchez. That is all I knew. But at the same time, I am a predominantly English speaker. Yes, I understand Spanish and I speak Spanish somewhat comfortably with the people that I’m close with, but a lot of my navigation in the world is in English. I also have a very Latino name; it’s spelled with an X. Every which way I turn, there’s like an American side to me and a Mexican side to me. They go hand in hand.
That led to what we were thinking about with the name of the show, because I knew that I wanted something that felt true to my identity. It’s very Spanglish. I say my first language is Spanglish more so than English, because it was just everywhere that I turned. So we created a show where there are some episodes where there’s more Spanglish than not, but if you wanted to speak Spanglish, you could speak Spanglish.
We created an identity for this show that’s built in this duality, where it’s neither English or Spanish. It’s this beautiful blend of both because I feel like that’s kind of where we all stand. We ride that line. We ride that hyphen between one or another. We’re introducing folks to a new type of identification.
Castillo: I would love to have listened in on your first brainstorming session on which topics to cover. What was that like?
Olivares: We tried to be smart about it. Even though we’d been planning this show for months — probably at this point at least a year-and-a-half — we had no idea what kind of world we were going to be living in. Once we realized that we were going to be in production, we saw that we were going to be a new show during the second Trump administration. We took that responsibility to heart. We knew that there were members of our community that might have felt a particular way about where the political world was going and where society was going in terms of conversations about Latinos.
We felt like, if we’re going to create a space for Latinos, let’s do what felt authentic. We have a conversation about citizenship, which might feel a little on the nose for some people, but it’s a conversation that’s being had right now by our community. With the different immigration policies that are being proposed by the administration, we felt like we had to talk about it. And so we tried to think about some things that felt right in the moment.
Castillo: What do you hope listeners take away from your podcast?
Olivares: We don’t have to be relegated to a Latinx vertical on a website where we’re not seen as being worthy of front-page coverage. We’re talking about stuff that anybody could find relatable. Recently, my Vietnamese-American friend texted me about the caretaking episode, and then I had another friend who is not Latino-identified who messaged me about the monogamy episode. There’s some aspect of this that is universal, which is what I love about the show.
We are only featuring hyphenated Latino voices on this show. I don’t know where else that exists — where you could have three people talking about stuff that isn’t necessarily gossip-coded.
One of the taglines of our show is “Where conversation and cultura meet,” because I feel like that’s very much what’s taking place. It’s about having easy conversations about hard things. I think so long as we allow somebody to leave the episode like, “Huh, I never thought of it that way,” or “Ooh, I’d love to talk about this with my friends” — that is when we realize it’s a success.
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