Aida Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican and Dominican comedian, actress and writer. In 2019, she had her own half-hour special on Netflix’s hit comedy series “They Ready,” executive produced by Tiffany Haddish and Wanda Sykes. In November 2021, she released her first hour-long special “Fighting words” premiered on Max and in October 2023, Rodriguez released his memoir “Legitimate child.”
During Mental Health Awareness Month, we asked Latine comedians how the comedy we admire has helped them overcome trauma and face life’s most important challenges . Read the sections here.
I’ve always seen comedy as a coping mechanism for people from lower or moderate economic backgrounds facing very difficult circumstances. In the words of Kevin Hart: “Laugh at my pain.” My upbringing was no different. I wasn’t really into comedy much when I was younger because I was a very shy and timid kid. But humor was always around me and I learned the power of laughter at a very young age.
My grandmother is a very funny woman. She has an amazing ability to present heavy topics like poverty and even death in humorous ways. At first I thought it was insensitive, but I quickly realized that it was just a coping mechanism and a way to make things easier to digest because life is hard enough as it is. Growing up I saw it all. There is poverty. There was violence. There are drugs, infidelity and misogyny. For some people, laughter is the only tool they have to get through it all.
In school, I really started to find my comedic voice. Comedy became my way of surviving bullies and mean people. It became my armor and protection from the kids who were clearly dealing with things at home but needed to make others laugh to feel better about themselves. Instead of being confrontational or unstable, I was just being humorous.
My grandmother and mother greatly influenced my sense of humor and sense of humor. They are inherently funny women. My mother is a very argumentative woman. She would blend in with other women in the building or in the neighborhood and always win because she knew how to silence everyone with her words – and sometimes, the truth of what she said. funny. My grandmother was always witty about it. It’s funny when I hear people say that women aren’t funny, or sometimes I hear Latin men say that they don’t really like female comedians, and then you hear them tell their side of the story. . They always talk about how funny their grandmother or mother is. Latinos truly are the comedians in the family. Many of us have a natural sense of humor – it’s in our blood.
I started watching stand-up comedy when I was a kid. My uncle often listens to Richard Pryor. That was my first introduction to stand-up comedy. I love Johnny Carson and I love “I Love Lucy.” I used to watch El Chavo and La Chilindrina with my grandmother. In Miami, they had a show called “Qué Pasa USA.” It’s a show about a Cuban family and the grandmother on the show is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. I began to appreciate humor and feel the relief it brought at a fairly young age. But it wasn’t until later that I realized I wanted to do this job for a living.
Comedy comes after acting. I was a model for many years and moved to LA in 2000 to become an actress. I started doing stand-up in 2008. I went to brunch to celebrate a friend’s birthday and she asked us to grill her. I confronted her, and a friend there said, “Oh, you should stand up. You’re naturally funny.” He gave me the address and information into an open mic, which I did and never stopped.
When I started performing at open mics, I began to see how healing comedy was – not only for the audience, but for me as well. I don’t really start with observational humor. I went straight to the wound. My first jokes were about my modeling career and my becoming anorexic. I have addressed the difficult things I have experienced in my life and it has helped me heal from those experiences while also making those who can relate feel seen.
My work became interesting when I started documenting my childhood. People will approach me after my workout and say, “Oh my God. Thank you. I’ve never seen a version of myself or a reflection of myself.” My childhood began to influence my material so much that it became like therapy for me. I began to release and heal the trauma I had experienced growing up, which ultimately inspired me to write my memoir, “legitimate child“It made me realize how important our stories are and that we shouldn’t take them for granted because white America is telling us they don’t matter. That’s what empowered me.” I.
Making jokes about my family, my neighborhood, and the difficult things I went through growing up has allowed others to see themselves in my stories. In terms of my own healing, that relatability is part of it. It’s me seeing that I’m not alone and that there are other people who also grew up without a father in their lives. That was the first time I started to feel proud of where I came from and it helped me deal with some of the issues I was dealing with. Even when joking about my mother, many people still come up to me and tell me that their mothers are like that too. In many ways, it also healed my relationship with my mother because performing and helping people heal through my words also contributed to my own healing.
As a Latina, we are raised with the mentality that you don’t share in the family business. So even though I was hesitant at first, they approved every joke I ever told about the family before it made it to the stage. I always make sure they feel comfortable with it. I’m especially careful when it comes to my mother and daughter because sexism and misogyny, especially in our community, are rampant and real, and people love to demonize women. female. So I’m always very cautious about presenting them in a way where it will grow on its own and people will say nonsense.
Joking about the things I went through growing up also helps me see the beauty in my growth. It wasn’t completely dark and it wasn’t too bad either. When I started doing comedy, I often heard people say things like, “All these black and Latino comedians talk about is their lives in prison, food stamps, and being broke.” You’ll hear it from white comics that our comedy isn’t “raised.” But I never allowed them to push me into a corner where I felt I had to imitate them to be of value like many did. When I started my career, I definitely saw that there was a lot of pressure placed on comedians of color to not perpetuate stereotypes, but the truth is that some of our own were left out. Some of our relatives have behaved a certain way, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s not just for people of color – there are white people like that too.
Comedy brings us all together. There’s a connective tissue there, especially in a community with so much diversity. Through humor, we can find each other and find sympathy. People love when George Lopez talks about his grandmother because it’s something many of us have in common. Comedy also acts as a universal language. Even if we’re not from the same culture, people still laugh because it’s connective tissue. Comedy connects people of all backgrounds and walks of life through laughter.
– As told to Johanna Ferreira
Johanna Ferreira is the content director of POPSUGAR Juntos. With over 10 years of experience, Johanna focuses on how intersectional identities are a central part of Latinx culture. Previously, she spent nearly three years as deputy editor at HipLatina and freelanced for multiple outlets including Refinery29, O Magazine, Allure, InStyle and Well+Good. She has also moderated and spoken on numerous panels on Latine identity.
