Things You Didn't Know About Hasan Minhaj

Minhaj's parents emigrated from India to the United States just before he was born and settled in Davis, California.

As Minhaj revealed to NPR in 2015, his mother returned to India after his birth to complete her medical degree. So, for the first eight years of his life, it was just him and his dad. "We were basically two brown dudes trying to make it in America," the comedian said. "He's trying to navigate being the only brown guy at his work. He's this single guy, but he's married. And he has this kid, this son he's raising. And I'm navigating growing up in this sea of white. I'm this one brown speck in my class photo."

Growing up as a first generation Indian-American Muslim has informed not only much of Minhaj's comedy, but also his identity. As the comedian told NPR in 2017, "I exist in this hyphen. I'm an Indian-American-Muslim kid, but am I more Indian or am I more American? What part of my identity am I?" 

As the satirist described it, he often felt like a "third culture kid" — meaning he struggled with not truly fitting in with either the Indian culture of his parents or the predominantly white society of his hometown. This challenge and the racism he often faced as a young person are commonly showcased in his comedy — painful personal anecdotes, in particular, formed the basis of Homecoming King.

Minhaj first discovered his love of comedy while studying political science at the University of California, Davis.

As the comedian expressed to Master Chat Magazine in 2016, he initially found his inspiration in Chris Rock's work. "When I grew up, we didn't have cable in the house and so I had never really known what stand-up comedy was," he explained. "I thought it was the stuff at the beginning of Seinfeld where he's standing in front of the brick wall like [doing a Seinfeld impression], 'What's the deal with laundry?' And I thought, 'eh that's not funny. I don't like stand-up.'" 

However, that all changed when a college friend introduced him to Chris Rock's Never Scared special during his sophomore year. "I was like, 'Oh my God, I love this!' And that was the end of it. That was the moment when I knew I wanted to do it. I wanted to try stand-up comedy."

After this epiphany, Minhaj began sneaking out of the house to do stand-up at open mics and college campuses around the Bay area.

And in 2008, he got his first big break: He won Comedy Jam's Best Comic Standing competition in San Francisco. This win led to other stand-up opportunities, including opening spots for bigger comic acts, such as Katt Williams, Pablo Francisco, and Gabriel Iglesias.

As Minhaj expressed to Bust in 2017, "Fighting for equality is the most American thing you can do." And as an outspoken equal rights activist, he certainly lives up to this ideology. Following the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide in June 2015, he teamed up with Iranian-American scholar Reza Aslan to pen "An Open Letter to American Muslims on Same-Sex Marriage".

"Hey there. It's two of your brothers. We're writing to you about the Supreme Court's decision," the duo began. "The good news is that a whopping 42% of you support marriage equality ... At the same time, many of you are scandalized by the ruling (we know because you keep tweeting about it)."

"Here's the thing," the authors asserted. "When you are an underrepresented minority — whether Muslim, African American, female, etc. — democracy is an all or nothing business. You fight for everyone's rights (and the operative word here is 'fight'), or you get none for yourself ... Either we are all equal, or the whole thing is just a sham."

And in the letter's impassioned conclusion, Minhaj and Aslan argued, "Bottom line is this: standing up for marginalized communities, even when you disagree with them, is not just the right thing to do, it's the Muslim thing to do. Remember that whole God is merciful and compassionate thing? That extends to all people, not just those who are straight. Celebrate. Don't tolerate. Love really does win."

Before taking on the WHCD gig, Minhaj hosted the Radio and Television Correspondents' Dinner in June 2016. His speech went viral after he blasted Congress for their inaction in passing gun control legislation in the immediate aftermath of the Pulse Orlando shooting.During a four-minute rant, the satirist impassioned, "What we saw in Orlando was one of the ugliest cocktails of the problems that we still see here in America: A cocktail of homophobia, xenophobia, lack of access to mental healthcare, and sheer lack of political will."

"Every day in our workplaces, our homes, and our religious institutions, there is covert or overt discrimination or phobia towards people of different religious, racial, or sexual walks of life. And we just sit there and we let it happen, because it doesn't affect our bottom line," he asserted.

And in a sharp tone, Minhaj powerfully concluded, "When I got into comedy, when you guys got into the media, when you guys got into politics, we wanted to do the best work we could possibly do. And is this what you want your legacy to be? That you were a 'could've done something' Congress, but you didn't because of outside lobbying; that you were complicit in the deaths of thousands of Americans? And look, I know being a member of Congress is hard ... But please, persevere. Because our thoughts and prayers are with you."

Minhaj's deeply personal, insightful, and hilarious one-man show Homecoming King originated on Off-Broadway in 2015, and is now out on Netflix. In this acclaimed stand-up special, Minhaj has married comedy with his personal experiences as an Indian-American Muslim — particularly painful ones — to tackle racism, immigration, and "prom night horrors." In a profound statement of his identity, there are entire bits done in Hindi, forcing members of the audience who don't understand the language to simply catch up to it.

As Minhaj told Exclaim in 2016, Jon Stewart once told him to "'move toward your discomfort and talk about things that people aren't willing to talk about and do the show you feel needs to be done.'" Which is exactly what the comedian has done with this special.

"In the show," he told the publication, "I talk about my journey through all of that but from a place of empathy. I'm acknowledging systemic problems within our country but at the same time I believe there's a tremendous amount of potential within all human beings for empathy, forgiveness, and love. I think there are people from every side who are allies for justice and good."

As Minhaj expressed to Vulture in 2017, "The goal of the special was, this will be my first platform to say, 'This is what it means to be a brown American. Hopefully you can pronounce it, but if you can't, this is what I am, regardless. I am who I am.'"