coming to an end, but many people here think she's aiming for a higher office using her image as the defender of democracy to run for president in 2024. jamie has done little in person campaigning, in part because she has reportedly received a stream of death threats, and is surrounded by heavy security. an ugly fact of us politics in one of america's most beautiful places, rob reynolds, al jazeera, jackson, wyoming. in the united states, the academy of motion, picture arts and sciences has apologized to a native american actress who was booed on stage during the oscars. in 1973, sasha little feather appeared at the request of marlon brando to decline his best actor award for the godfather. they wanted to raise awareness of the abuse suffered by native americans in the film industry. ah,

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ah ah. safe going home and then international anti corpse excellence award boat. now for your hero.

ah, i am from the okay to day on the street. we are going to be joined by the award winning jamaican writer, mol, on james. you can be part of our conversation as well via you chief. we're going to be talking about the doc scholar trilogy, his book, and writing fantasy literature with africans in it. ah merlin, james, welcome back to the same is when a little while i get to see welcome. ah, thanks for having me. it's great to be back. i can see a couple of your books in the background, your se sick. so now i am i on shot mullin that still publishes will see your work unsafe act. now it's, it's, it's not for me, did i not get cheat by now?

i don't know if is a situation where they don't get themselves. i think so, you know, i was looking at some funny enough of that, some of the mix reviews that came out last week in the u. k. and one thing it's really interesting is there is still a resistance to non white writing that does, that doesn't right to the white gears. yeah. it's, i'm writing in english, but i'm not playing by the queen's rules or we're doing what we do. i mean, it's bad enough that we're using this language, but you know, we're subverting it where you thing barrels, redoing things that are, we're not supposed to do. we do things like knots, distinguishing machine a pass stance, and present tensile a verb, you know, well of speakers do it to make on partner speakers, do it. nigerian pigeon speakers do it. who doesn't do it? are stodgy, british lit establishment. so there is still, there is still,

i can have her resistance for literature that doesn't go out of its way to meet a certain kind of reader on the are terms. i'm gonna take us back an audience back to august the 2015. and that was when you a long listed for the math book, a prize and somehow miraculously, equally to physically come into ascii and washington d. c. they end of that show. this is when i asked d, you writing what right now? i am writing, what am i doing? i am writing. i'm trying to write a novel that plays on african myths and mythologies in. so i'm actually going. speaking of comics, i'm going total geek kind of fancy i did as a chart reclining. i got posted as the eye of a whole room for looters film. i mean, you should do it to an extent with these novel where i can of create a spirit. assume a feel of me then allow key cold. so we have a title yet. no,

it does not. oh okay, but i am working on like an asthma. i don't know much. it's so much here and who is a young and fresh and fat back then 7 years later they mile and 7 years later, no results. no one book to 2 books. so this geek this geeking out that you did as has gone front. let's talk about how you go about creating this different kind of african world. that is fantasy full of people that well, the 1st thing, well, it's very easy to simply just grab facts that's, that's not hard. it's, it's, well, it used to be harder because most of the, you know, lot of the, the history and so on that was written about the continent was written by europeans and right now those really only serve no purpose that serve really as comic relief . because was books are so ridiculous, but there's a lot of work in

a prison day in contemporary history and, and anthropological work. and, you know, gathering of records and gathering of those were it's some songs and words of the greer's all of that. the information is there, that's not enough ad to change how i read it. lisa it's, it's as a change how i came across it in from his as a change. my idea that ah, history tolbert grill is of a lower standard than a history. tolbert historian. they're both historians so it wasn't just developed, delving into tons of research and i did as you know, that video stores. huh. but it was also changing how i read that research changing how i looked at all of that changing how and you know, i perceive information and so on. and so that also was a major part off the, the research process. learning how to read differently. one of the ways that you

ground yourself in the well to create a spy using maps drawing madness. so you study to draw maps, i think is the maps in the book is actually your design work. everything you then send it off to a designer. i want to show a couple of these matters and help us understand how they then ground a well that you're writing about it. his maps. yeah. well actually they are my design and illustrating work. and you know, back in another life i was a designer and an illustrator. i used to do graphic design. i used to even work on sean paul's album covers. i was a lifetime ago. excuse me. i'm brack. annette humbling pregnant hitler. but the problem, the poker's is and then that guy. yeah. when the publish it was back when i was a designer, i didn't. so am that nightmare. yeah. you know, the thing about fantasy is that it's very easy when you're writing and imagine

world to feel like a tourist in your own book. and a way to get around that is to create a world that you're already living in. and the griffin able maps is that much to do this interesting thing did define you, and then it confine you and the confine is actually good. because you feel as if you're bouncing against a real world. i can't just have a character go from north the south in a week anymore because a map says it takes 4 months after the length of the story and you know, it's, it's, so it gives me the sense that i'm writing about an actual place. so i drew some maps that i started writing and the maps inspired to writing, but then sooner, lou, after that the writing starts to inspire to maps. and there's this ongoing thing going, you know, that, that continues, but yeah, it was, it was off on talk about kicking out. that was

a lot of fun to do. although i had to re teach myself photoshop and all these things which i haven't had in years, he did a good job congratulation. he ranked the bird and designed the maps. all right, so i want you to meet profess out juan j morales. he has a question for you on hearing. what strikes me most about marlon james's work is, is how every chapter surprises us in it delivers these unexpected situations. it gives voice to overlook people. the characters are beautiful. they're tragic. and the monsters are just super scary. nightmare fodder and in the settings are partially built with, with all that brick faced storytelling. and it gives countless writers and readers all these new doors to open that remind us that genre, writing is literary. there's a larger cultural experience to be offered by fantasy sy fi and horror. i'm wondering,

can you tell us more about your process using african languages in the dark start trilogy, while inviting a western audience to read and experienced these languages? so naturally. oh, that's a great, great question. our, it's almost add to it. what he was saying about genre that and you know, john or a division serves nobody. and the problem with, with john or it can define a word. but it can also have people start ranking forms of researcher, which goes against everything goes against human nature. fantasy ultimately is myth making an hour mit sir important. and we can talk about this later. well, how this came about because i felt i was mister man, mythological history, but now i am completely not answering the question. so i'm going to answer the question. i need to answer the question. yeah, yes it's, it's, so i won't, it's done it at. i mean, i don't a claim that i, i know well of because i'm just starting. but the cool thing about learning a language is you learn the rules 1st. yeah. and falling to rule,

when i say it's her fault, learn the rules of languages which i was going in the court in depth in the book. but i know i wanted to use as a beast in which to then you english, i learned things i called where to place a verb if, when i get that technical um, you know, when i grew up in jamaica, there are a lot of aspects of jamaica pathway that we're taught is simply inferior english. i always thought to fight at, i don't say went, nobody went in jamaica and miss him did go, or he soon go, or he can go or he won't go. hell, we even say he going go. and i've always thought of that as what i was told. it's broken english. it's yeah. except it's not at all. it's one of the, it's another fantastic example of something that even a slave trade couldn't kill the way in which we come to the middle and end of

a sentence. the way that for us action is always active. and when i talk about slavery and i talk about atrocities done to us, i frequently alma, the only one, we frequently sneak in the present tense and doesn't necessarily mean we're living in trauma so much as temporality is a different thing for us. yeah, yes. person future is a different it's, it's, it is actually different than is when i come across a lot of criticism is always that, that they didn't find a way to get into that as well. and writing blackly what it can i do my and so it's a different way and i think that's what i drew from you. more than did you, did you just put up a memory of me spending my entire child had telling my dad, you have to say turn off the light dad. not off the light. he's like, show him off the light. elaine tie, it was always off the night, and now i can, i like this conversation to help me really preaches the richness of language. it

doesn't have to know that reaches talking, but they also turn off into a verb late america. we, we turn done into a verb move. yeah, i don't know. yeah. all right, so the latest installment of the doubt style trinity is moon, which spider king in a sentence. tell us what it's about. and then read asa paragraph because a great jamaican writer once said that best fletcher can be read aloud under hoots at my window. i knew which i guess mood which spider k a y can i say, while the villains of the 1st? what gets to tell her story, and man is it different? ah, you know, if you've read black lippard read all of you may have had some attachment to some of the characters you probably are going to regret that. i'm. so i want to read a sec very quick section of bo in and in this section sagal on becomes aware

of her impact in the world. ah, which if you're a fan of, if you're if read leopard, read well, you probably knew with no she did this. she didn't know either until such. she was told. so this is her more women come into the room as it get lighter and still more women. or perhaps i was seeing them all for the 1st time. you don't remember me, one of them say she were a band are on the eyes that her husband take away from her after you write the wrong done to me, the woman teach me how to see with my fingers, my ears and men. no. as she say, as she paint clay on my skin with grace, you don't know me for then i was no woman so yet another. i call each of those women my sisters. since then, you remember us? the girls kidnapped to not caravan headed to mar a banjo. there was taken a so to see, to sell us off as wife and concubines. we was 7 and 8. that night you swooped down

on the roof, was the night i know the gods didn't forget us. every woman in the room touched by the moon, which stepped forward the woman's, say, an ever woman in the room, look at me and approach the bed and surround it. they're packed the room right up to the doorway and still more was outside waiting to squeeze themselves in a girl worm through them to touch me and say they couldn't move my mother so to send me moon, which still slang through the trees, say another no plan to woman, oh dear, righting wrongs. plenty in north and south seeing moon, which she is me. thank you right on. that's beautiful. the wealth. thank you. creating the fee now, which is the create the card as a sexy and they, they are sensual sexing beans. and something really jumped out at me is that they all, i want to say quick height as they are gender fluid. and there is

a whole back story about why and how and humor around that. and it's just a very natural evolution. now if people only know africa from 2022 than they are going to think that, then you op subverting what laney african countries now feel about gender fluidity. right? but what you're doing is we claim inc and africa from before colonial times. tell us more. absolutely, yeah, absolutely. and i didn't said oh, it's certainly not with black liberal to write anything queer. i don't think i surrender a something queer, a positive. i was just following the research. and it was a research that led to all of that. you know, i remember on, you know, on facebook, look, the novel is lola, somewhat as a novice dollars shine. i'm pronouncing her name wrong. i'm pretty sure am i'm,

you know, if i'm or if, if nigeria, you know, if africa would ever be ready for queerness and queer rights and so on. and she said, africa was born ready until a bunch of tv preachers told them that they weren't. and that's what i've come to realize, you know, from what i've heard from my friends who are writers, everybody knew the to aunts don't know the st. and if want to know that they weren't aunts and they weren't sisters, everybody knew. and that while the great things that have that we have absorb another thing that survived colonialism that survived, slavery is the ability for black communities to absorb the other. so sit it up, he is the tone quare, but he oh ok where, you know he's, he's kind of miss up in the head but he's our mess up in the head. he is that we've, we've always done that. it's a very is one that one of the very unique aspects about african nissen blackness.

and we're come from is our ability to widen community. and i didn't realize that until, you know, i did the research that there always made space. there are, there are bands of soldiers and warriors in, in, in an audio. ancient african societies will ever want you to her again. because das, how will you gain a repetition that your virgin brad will be protected, traveling with us? because who's going to try anything? we don't go for that. it's, it's, it's, it's, it's been there her and beat, everybody knew, you know, we're protecting virgin cargo. you called those guys. ah, and there's always been any and you've read and more. it's the 5 read is the more i found it added, i honest to didn't go to the research looking for validation as certain, think out the didn't think i was gonna find it in the past and that's where i found it. i have some questions for you from our audience. he'll watching right now and let me start with wavy tay. i hope you get

a movie or show deal. i would love to see his books come to night. lou, tell us about movies. tell us about show dale's what's going on. send a tweet to michael the jordan is actually there working there. you know. so michael, michael, michael's company bought their rights for years ago. of course everything was everything covered added 2 years to including this. yeah. so we're moving, we're moving, we're trying to move full speed ahead and we're trying to reagan or momentum, but you know, where we're already working on a script. we have some very talented people already attached to developing. the 1st of, of, you know, the 3, but yeah, it's still, it's still in production. it's still, you know, full speed ahead of time. lines are deadlines yet, but i'm, we're getting her. all right, this, this other question, friends, furniture. we got lots, what i'm to, i'm going to share this on because this is from the new c rincon alba. i am

teaching a brief history of 7 kings at n y. you want to balance previous books for a caribbean music class and i was wondering if marlin has any tips and how to engage novels in a classroom setting who, how to india. i asked me for lit teacher tips. yes. how you are creative, right? a teacher. so what i do, i think one of the things i do with novel sometimes is i tried to also link them would source material on that. if we're going to talk about bob marley that maybe we should listen to some bob marley, or maybe we should also spend some time and talking about lyrics or the poetics of but you know, of reggae music and i, and also, you know, i love using film when i'm teaching literature that if everybody should watch rockers harder, they come yes and rockers, and so on that that what you want to do is, is i said, if you don't want to read

a book, you want to smell it, you want to test it. you wanna, you want the sun, do you want the sun to burn down on your back? nice new fan i you want? yeah. yeah. you know, you just want all that sensory detail on the more sensory detail you can bring into that classroom. i think that's going to be a great class. thank you. i don't forget that there's not, there's not an endorsement of bringing weed to class. i just want to say that he said like, he may have done it. i will, i would have been fired. i think my sally for rel is a medical psychotherapist and a writer, and she has a question for you all. and he, she is has a family child to be 18 in the caribbean diaspora. i find that week that you are doing with revisiting and remembering mythologies and history before this crowns here, slavery. so powerful and important mostly because as a therapist,

i knew that when we cannot remember who we really are and what really lies behind the things that we do, we end up compels to repeat them. and so my question for you is, do you have hope? what hope do you have for a while to impact your book and beyond? of course, as many people are possible buying cookies and reading and what impact to you a lysine right. have i think i've 2 answers to that. one is i hope it encourages more people to write books like these toni morrison says she wrote, you know, the books she wanted to read. and i don't think, i think one reason why it took me this long to write these books is because i never thought that these books could have been possible, even if i were to write them. and i, that's one thing. i do hope that i'm more and more people more and more writers.

right. you know, rick recognized that the mythologies just lurking right behind them are rich for, you know, for their own, you know, for their own literature. and in terms of, you know, i read ers, i, you know, i just, i hope that on the, the, the media that we have that we can empower us whether it's even twitter or social media or so on that we use more because one things i've realized and you're going to realize it if you're writing a caribbean novel and african novela native american novel, that primarily speaks in a voice that you know was in your head is that. 6 the audience you will find an audience is always been there and waiting and ready to hear you. that doesn't the necessarily, the establishment is it doesn't mean necessarily the publishing industry on the stands you are so on. so the, the, the, you know,

being in touch with those readers. yes. do that, read it, air may. and all that becomes really, really important. because when i, you know, when i, when i come across, read ers, there is such a, there feels a sense of familiarity with the work. this is such a says of connection that i sometimes surprised me because sometimes i go through all the sort of gatekeepers on to get to them and, and, and, and it makes me think sometimes that maybe i'm not writing to write things or so on . and i can imagine that you're young writers out there who really do wonder if anybody wants to hear their voice and answers. yes they do. i watch the lecture that you did a few years ago and it was a token like to so it's a very prestigious lecture to do. and you talk about fantasy literature, you talk about your work and, and, and i'm not to other fantasy nature at the time. there is, there was a moment that just cracked me out because i have,

this is sort of ju heritage where i, i studied english leticia but i'm african. so i have this like, how do i get my african cannon and understand english teacher at the same time? i is a mishmash. and you mentioned the hopi, i'm just going to show you the picture here. and i feel like i feel like what we know currently as fantasy fiction and literature triggered you into writing the dark style trilogy. because there is not a single black brown person of color on that poster it. so now when your books are made into me, these young people, wherever they are around the world that can have a very different vision, a fantasy wells. yeah, because i think there is still this idea that fantasies ultimately are medieval historical novel with merlin in it. or you know, with with witches and goblins and dragons. ah, it is

a mythological history and i love, i love merlin as much as anybody. ringback else i am here for king arthur. i'm here for the green knight and, and i love my joggers and gardeners, i meg rooms fairytales, us all well and good. there is something to be said though for constantly reading literature where nobody like you is in it. right, yeah, and it, it creates a sort of december bodied relationship to work that out and joined all on on my laptop at noon which spied a king by marlon james, currently available. you've heard the writer, you hearings coming from the book is available right now. thank you to you, you chief as, as you said, tamala, we are so inspired that makes the 2 of us phoenix time. thanks. mullin. ah was the count on to the feel. whoo cup. 2022 approaches. every countenance is

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