The Black Tax, Brown Tax, Utang Na Loob
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
First of the 90-Day Black Tax Series There is a number most of us have never written down. Not because we cannot do the math, but because writing it down makes it real. In this solo episode, Simone opens the first installment of a ninety-day series with a topic she has carried personally: the black tax, the ongoing financial responsibility so many of us hold for family and community back home, or family who followed us here and never quite landed the way we did. Simone walks through what the black tax actually is, the phone call, the tuition, the medical bill, the funeral, the moment saying...
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Simone on Speak Harmony Podcast - "Are You Lost In Translation?" (Ep. 224)
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
I recently sat down with Sharon Thompson and Dr. Sharon Reid on the Speak Harmony Podcast to talk about something most of us carry quietly — the self we translate away just to feel acceptable in a new place. We got into what "lost in translation" actually means. It is not the word that gets lost. It is the self. The version of you that was shaped by a particular soil, a particular faith, a particular way of understanding respect, time, and belonging — and what happens when you land somewhere that runs on entirely different, unspoken rules. From there, the conversation moved through third...
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Cafecito Cultural Interview: Are You Lost in Translation? (Ep. 223)
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
In this episode of The Immigrant Experience in America, Simone W. Johnson-Smith joins Rosa Bel and the Cafecito Cultural community of educators for a conversation on what actually gets lost when we cross a border: "Are You Lost in Translation? How Culture Shock Shapes the Core of Our Identities." Drawing from her own journey as a Jamaican immigrant and 15 years in U.S. federal service, Simone unpacks why culture shock is not a single event but a slow identity negotiation, one that can quietly reshape a person over a decade or more if it goes unnamed. This conversation explores the three stages...
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Machan Taylor - The Voice Behind the Legends
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
Before she ever stepped onto the world stage with Pink Floyd, Sting, Foreigner, Pat Benatar, George Benson, Michael Jackson and more, was a little girl relocated from Japan to suburban America, carrying the lifelong ache of not fully belonging anywhere. That experience of being wrenched from the life and culture that was familiar to her, growing up in a deeply dysfunctional family, with an American born father who cheated on her native Japanese mother and came home from work each night drunk deeply scarred Machan for decades. She struggled to find her identity, struggled with...
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MaChan Taylor (Episode 222) - Part 3
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: Listen to more episodes on: 💼 Apple Podcast: 💼 Spotify: 💼 Amazon: 📱Support our Patreon: 📱Connect with Simone! 💼 Website: 📱 Follow us on Social Media: 💼 LinkedIn: / simonewjohnson 💼 Instagram: / theimmigrantexperiencepodcast 💼 TikTok: / theimmigrantexperience 📱 Share your story with us: 💼 Disclaimer: The Immigrant Experience in America podcast is produced in my personal capacity. The views and opinions shared by me and...
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MaChan Taylor (Episode 221) - Part 2
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: Listen to more episodes on: 💼 Apple Podcast: 💼 Spotify: 💼 Amazon: 📱Support our Patreon: 📱Connect with Simone! 💼 Website: 📱 Follow us on Social Media: 💼 LinkedIn: / simonewjohnson 💼 Instagram: / theimmigrantexperiencepodcast 💼 TikTok: / theimmigrantexperience 📱 Share your story with us: 💼 Disclaimer: The Immigrant Experience in America podcast is produced in my personal capacity. The views and opinions shared by me and my guests are...
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MaChan Taylor (Episode 220) - Part 1
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: Listen to more episodes on: 💼 Apple Podcast: 💼 Spotify: 💼 Amazon: 📱Support our Patreon: 📱Connect with Simone! 💼 Website: 📱 Follow us on Social Media: 💼 LinkedIn: / simonewjohnson 💼 Instagram: / theimmigrantexperiencepodcast 💼 TikTok: / theimmigrantexperience 📱 Share your story with us: 💼 Disclaimer: The Immigrant Experience in America podcast is produced in my personal capacity. The views and opinions shared by me and my...
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Ukranian Migrant Using AI to Build a Business - Dima Negodiuk (Episode 219)
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
In this powerful episode of The Immigrant Experience in America, Simone speaks with Ukrainian immigrant Dima Negojuk about his family's extraordinary journey from war-torn Ukraine to rebuilding their lives in New York. Just days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Dima's young son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. When war broke out and hospitals shut down, the family faced two battles at once: a devastating war and a life-threatening medical crisis. Forced to leave everything behind—including their business, home, and financial security—they arrived in the United States with only two...
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Mental Health of Immigrants | Neither Here Nor There (Episode 218) - Part 3
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
In this powerful episode of The Immigrant Experience in America, Simone W. Johnson sits down with Dr. Leide Porcu, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and author of Neither Here Nor There: A Guide for Immigrants and the Therapists Who Walk With Them. Drawing from her own lived experience as an immigrant and decades of clinical practice, Dr. Porcu unpacks the emotional and psychological realities many immigrants carry but rarely name, identity fragmentation, suppressed distress, and multilayered grief. This conversation explores why immigrants often feel unseen in their mourning, how cultural...
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Mental Health of Immigrants | Neither Here Nor There (Episode 217) - Part 2
The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)
In this powerful episode of The Immigrant Experience in America, Simone W. Johnson sits down with Dr. Leide Porcu, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and author of Neither Here Nor There: A Guide for Immigrants and the Therapists Who Walk With Them. Drawing from her own lived experience as an immigrant and decades of clinical practice, Dr. Porcu unpacks the emotional and psychological realities many immigrants carry but rarely name, identity fragmentation, suppressed distress, and multilayered grief. This conversation explores why immigrants often feel unseen in their mourning, how cultural...
info_outlineBefore she ever stepped onto the world stage with Pink Floyd, Sting, Foreigner, Pat Benatar, George Benson, Michael Jackson and more, Machan Taylor was a little girl relocated from Japan to suburban America, carrying the lifelong ache of not fully belonging anywhere.
That experience of being wrenched from the life and culture that was familiar to her, growing up in a deeply dysfunctional family, with an American born father who cheated on her native Japanese mother and came home from work each night drunk deeply scarred Machan for decades. She struggled to find her identity, struggled with looking different than everyone around her, wrestled with lasting psychological pain and grieved the loss of a loving childhood she could never reclaim.
Even as she sang on some of the world's biggest stages securing fame and fortune she struggled to find the things that eluded her, happiness, connection, love. Her trauma led to years of self-destructive behaviors and choices, including marriage to a physically and mentally abusive husband. At the peak of her fame so often her life felt hopeless. Like she would always be that little girl who never fit in.
That journey became Naked Out Loud, a memoir with extraordinary music stories at its core, and something much rarer. It is a deeply human conversation about what it means to be Asian American, to navigate life between visibility and invisibility, and to finally tell the truth about the life behind the applause, that trauma affects even people who win personal acclaim.
Machan is a singer, songwriter, educator, and author whose career took her to the highest levels of the music industry. She has lived inside the kind of music history most people only know from album covers and arena lights. But what makes her an exceptional guest is not just the world she moved through. It is the emotional intelligence, honesty, and perspective she brings to everything those experiences meant. Ultimately her story is about finding healing through meditation, practicing Buddhism, guided psychedelics and gaining awareness, finding love and ultimately finding herself and reinventing herself at the age of 60. For your listeners it is a story of hope.
In Naked Out Loud, Machan traces a path from postwar Japan to New Jersey suburbia, to finding her voice on some of the world’s biggest stages, all while wrestling with identity, race, trauma, silence, reinvention, and healing. She speaks with unusual grace about the tension between outer success and inner struggle, and about the long process of claiming your own voice after years of hiding behind the mask of performance.