Hasan Minhaj is the next big brown king of comedy

Thoughts after seeing comedian Hasan Minhaj’s #HomecomingKingShow in San Francisco

Indian-American comedian Hasan Minhaj on stage in San Francisco, on August 26, 2016. (Photo by Vignesh Ramachandran)

I started to write this post on the Caltrain back to Palo Alto because I couldn’t wait to jot down my thoughts about comedian Hasan Minhaj’s stand-up show Friday night in San Francisco’s beautiful Herbst Theater.

Friday’s show, which was sold out in SF (for good reason!), was raw, captivating and downright hilarious.

Minhaj, who after stints of Pizza Hut commercials was eventually hired by Jon Stewart in 2014 and continues to be a “Daily Show” correspondent (same shoes that Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Ed Helms, Olivia Munn and John Oliver were once in) for Trevor Noah, is on his #HomecomingKingShow tour across the country.

This is Hasan Minhaj’s breakthrough moment.

I first saw Minhaj, 30, earlier this year on YouTube, when he used comedy to blast Congress over inaction on gun control in America, as speaker during the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner in June. I was super impressed with his fine balance of humor and bold political commentary — his words about this topic more powerful than the countless print op-eds and TV pundit panels we all inevitably become numb to.

With Minhaj, what you see is what you get. He comes across as genuine, balancing the use of current events/culture and brown dad jokes with raw anecdotes from his childhood, weaving together a show that the diverse San Francisco crowd seemed to really enjoy.

There were purely funny moments.

But he got real deep, too.

Minhaj talked about both overt and subliminal racism he faced growing up, especially post-9/11 as an Indian-American Muslim guy. He recounted bigots who called his parents’ house in high school, threatening to kill them and breaking the family Camry’s windows on the driveway. I expected a comedy show but didn’t also expect he would use a powerful stage presence and comedic wit to get real about life and both the immigrant and second-generation experience in America.

Indian-American comedian Hasan Minhaj is on his #HomecomingKingShow tour across the United States. (Photo by Vignesh Ramachandran)

As an Indian kid who grew up watching mainstream white comedians like Jim Carrey and Steve Carell from my vantage point in a quiet American suburb, I weirdly related at a different level with an American comedian for the first time — now at the age of 27. (OK, maybe fellow Tamilian Aziz Ansari too.) After college at UC Davis, Minhaj defied cultural norms about career paths to follow his passion and become a comedian. I, oblivious at the time to what some Indian aunties and uncles would think (and some say), was determined to pursue journalism. He was called Saddam Hussein in schooI and a girl once told him his skin looked like poop. My then-embarrassing mint chutney sandwich was labeled as moldy cheese in school, and I was once sneered at by a tall eighth grader just months after 9/11: “Are you like Osama bin Laden’s cousin and sh*t?!” I remember how I initially laughed that moment off with my friends but how those words stung in the hours that followed. But Minhaj brought the real world onstage: our brown woes are nothing compared to what racism and abuse our black counterparts faced and continue to face across America.

It’s so powerful to hear an Indian-American guy with similar life experiences get real with humor on stage, in an accessible and entertaining comedy show.

I also haven’t genuinely laughed that much in years.

I can’t wait to see how Minhaj uses his media and entertainment platform next.

Kudos, Hasan Minhaj: Clearly, this is just your beginning of something big.