Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King: Get Ready to Laugh & Cry

Hasan Minhaj recently crushed it at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. And he has been consistently killing it on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, offering up field pieces that touch on his Muslim-Indian-American background and the personal ramifications of the current administration's policies. But if snippets of his comic genius aren't enough to sate you, Netflix has you covered with his brilliant comedy special, Homecoming King.

The special is an hour-long extravaganza that alternates between hilarious and heinous tales of growing up in "The New Brown America." Minhaj's childhood tales are fantastic and will ring true to any brown person who had to deal with the generational gap between their parents' expectations of the American Dream and their own. His description of how he met his sister will have you in hysterics (yes, he "met" his sister, ask no more questions and watch the special), and his explanation of the Indian obsession with what other people will think is dazzlingly accurate.

This is also the first comedy special I've seen where the set is used to display screenshots and Facebook posts and help Minhaj tell his stories in even more effective ways. He is an engaging raconteur, playing to the live audience but also looking directly at the camera and playing to his viewers, drawing you in with his energy and vulnerability and making you feel his every emotion as he narrates his stories. As a Muslim-American, he of course discusses post-9/11 racism, and the story that runs through the entire special is full of twists and turns, but ultimately gives us all some hope for our society. In his own words, Minhaj might just be the "cure for racism."

For me personally, I was most struck by his description of what his family was like at home. I was raised Hindu, and until now, I never realized how much I had thought of Muslim families as living a very different life from my own. Perhaps it was because I grew up in Bahrain, so I only knew Arab Muslims, but it turns out Indian Muslims are indistinguishable from Indian Hindus. When Minhaj described his horror at inviting a white friend over and having his family be as brown as possible with his mother frying pakoras in the kitchen, his dad lounging around in a baniyan, and Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham blasting on Zee TV in the living room, I was shocked. Turns out that regardless of your religion, at home we are all just brown folk eating samosas and watching K3G.

Homecoming King offers a glorious insight into the American immigrant experience and is yet another attempt to highlight the nonsensical barriers we've built amongst ourselves. Minhaj deftly weaves back and forth between impeccable jokes and heartbreaking truths, and this is a special that seems equally calculated to make you cry with tears of laughter as well as sorrow. It is a truly mesmerizing feat and I heartily recommend you watch it and then tell everyone you know to watch it as well. If we could get everyone to see that we're all embarrassed by our parents and worried about what other people will think of us, maybe we'll stop acting as though we can't understand each other.