Bozoma Saint John | Always the Outsider

Bozoma Saint John | Always the Outsider

From The Person Who Believed In Me with David Begnaud by Do Good Crew

August 31, 2026 · 1h 3m · Episode 28

About this episode

Bozoma Saint John shares her journey of self-discovery and the influential figures in her life.

Bozoma Saint John was 12 when her family landed in Colorado Springs, where her classmates already had a picture of Africa: the child on the UNICEF magnet, flies and a distended belly, worth a penny a day. Her father held two PhDs. Her mother was a fashion designer. Nobody in that house took an American name. Bozoma was strong in math and science and Latin and was going to be a doctor — decided at 12, though she says she couldn't tell you where her parents' plan ended and her own wanting began. Then an eleventh-grade English teacher named Martha Wood assigned a creative writing exercise: describe yourself somewhere else, in the third person. Bozoma wrote it, and Mrs. Wood held the pages up and read them aloud — in a room of native speakers, some of whom had mocked her accent. The room went quiet. It was the first time anyone suggested she could be something other than what had been planned. She starts crying about it thirty seconds into this conversation. Two more people did that for her later. Spike Lee, whose phones she was answering at 23 when she gave him notes on the Bamboozled script — bad notes, she says now — and he slammed his door, and came out to say: you made some good…

People in this episode

Host: David Begnaud

Guest: Bozoma Saint John

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Apple, Uber

Books & works: Bamboozled

Places: Colorado Springs

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