By Mark Kennedy
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Hasan Minhaj, a correspondent with Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” is coming to a home near you with his one-man show “Homecoming King.”
The comedian will kick off a 19-city North America tour this summer, starting Aug. 19 in Portland, Oregon. He’ll then hit stages in Seattle, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Iowa City, New Orleans, Boston and Toronto, among others.
It’s a show about a first-generation Indian-American navigating between those two worlds but never completely at ease in either. He made his debut in the show last year at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City.
Minhaj explores growing up in Northern California with bullies, discovering a sister he knew nothing about and taking long walks home from school because he was shunned from carpools. The young Minhaj eagerly embraced everything about America — from Capri Sun to “Ghostbuster” toy proton packs and BMX bikes — but America didn’t always embrace him back.
On “The Daily Show ,” Minhaj has mocked everything from the pope to robot journalists and made the transition of hosts from Jon Stewart to Trevor Noah. His speech at this year’s Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner about gun control has been seen by millions.
Minhaj cites as his biggest influences the writer Junot Diaz and the storytelling of hip-hop. His comedic idols are Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and former boss Stewart.
The one-man show came into focus after his marriage that crossed cultural and religious divides — he is a Muslim Indian-American and his wife is a Hindu. He spent so long fighting to be with his love that when it finally happened, he began to look back.
“To me, it represented this huge mental and emotional shift in my life,” he told The Associated Press last year. “There was a lot of growing up and now I feel like there’s a lot of, ‘OK, what are we fighting for and where are we going?’”
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