them, you can take actions that they might ask you to take. that doesn't happen to be the case when we talk about states going to war. >> host: richard seymour, how well do your books do in the u.s., and have you done a book tour there? >> guest: i have done a book tour. my books don't sell in the u.s.. "unhitched," is the first to get attention in the american press at all. thus far, mixed. the "washington post" review, obviously, was i don't think the reviewer liked it, denver post more positive, but that's the first time i've had any coverage in the american press. the only book tour i've done in america was for "american insurgents," and i did a tour of the sort of the east coast going from dc to philadelphia, boston, and new york, but it was a case of presenting the book to left wing activists.

i'm going to america in april. i'll be doing a book tour, again, up the east coast, talking to as many audiences, and large an audience as i can attract. i expect them to be bigger this time because of the interest in hitchens is fairly broad, and so i'm looking forward to it. >> host: finally, richard seymour, you mentioned that you had been a member of the socialist workers party, but recently resigned from that. why? >> guest: the leadership of the party handled app allegation, a serious sexual allegation in a way that i thought was indpefsble, and a number of us tried to reverse that and to reform the party in ways that, in ways that would mean that this such a mistake couldn't happen again.

at a certain point, we found we were unable to do so or decided we were unable to do so so about 70 # or so of us left. i would expect that others will leave at a later date. all i can say is that the reasons why people have been in the party and the rbs why so many remain believing they can reclaim it are probably some of the same reasons why past generations of intellectuals k like hitchens, for example, that have. members of the party, not because they believed every single, you know, agreed with every single appointment of orthodoxy, but because the party was his historically open. orthodoxy was not a huge issue. i fear that may not be the case

in the future. i hope i'm wrong. i wish i was able to stay in it and reform the party all the best. i wish them well. they are some of the most committed and talented people that i've ever known, but for me, the party is over. >> host: people want to contact you, the website? >> guest: they can get in touch via the website, internationalsocialism, and we will find a new website and new forum, but they can get in touch by that means. we have to talk to them. >> host: this is booktv in london talking with author richard seymour. glnches for more information on these and other interviews from london, visit booktv.org and watch booktv every sunday at 6 p.m. over the next several weeks for more.

now on booktv, effectively, author of "the vagina monologue" talking about her body in the language of the world talking about women's rights issue in the democratic republic of congo and dealing with cancer. this is about an hour. [applause] >> hi issue everyone. [cheers and applause] thank you, thank you, thank you. [applause] thank you so much. so happy to be here, this is a really wonderful space. the energy is so good here m thank you for that wonderful introduction, and i'm having such an incredible tour, and i'm -- i just get more emotional every place i get. i think it's because this book is, as you said, a book that kind of burned through me like a fever, and it's so physical and so of my body, in my body. i just want to say to all the

activists here, i'm sure there's plenty, thank you, thank you, thank you for all the amazing work you do for so many years here. [applause] a real particular thank you to all of the women and men who are working on the front lines every day to stop violence against women and girls. it's the crucial work and most invisible underpaid, under valued work, so thank you, thank you for doing it. i want to start today, and i think i just want to say about this book, you know, somebody said, people ask me when did you start writing it, and it's so -- it's so hard to gauge when you start writing a book. i started writing it k probably, when i was 5 years old. i really do, but i think the actual writing of it began at the end of my cancer treatment, and it was kind of like diagnosis, treatment, the book, and they are all part of the same process. i want to read the introduction because i think it will give you a kind of an overview and

understanding what the book is to set up a lot that happens in the book. the book is done in cat scans, you know, in scans because i under went many, many cat scans, and i was obsessed with them and the metaphor of cat scans, and i did a lot of research on them and raleigh interested in the fact that there are many pictures that get taken, and computer makes them seem like one, and it seems like that was a very interesting way of telling the story. i think so much of the life has been fractured in the pieces and scans that in accumulative way begin to amount to something. this introduction is called "divided." a mother's body against a child's body makes a place. it says, you are here. without this body against your body, there is no place. i enjoy people who miss their mother or miss a place or know

something called home. the absence of a body against my body createdded a gap, a hole, a hunger. this hunger determined my life. i have been exiled from my body. i was ejected at a very young age, and i got lost. i did not have a baby. i have been afraid of trees. i have felt the earth as my enemy. i did not live in the forest. i lived in the concrete city where i could not see the sky or sunset or stars. i moved at the pace of engines, and it was faster than my own breath. i became a stranger to myself and to the rhythms of the earth. i grandized my alien identity, wore black, and felt superior, my body a burden. i thought it had to be main tapedded, little patience for the needs. the absence of a body against my body made attachment abstract, made my own body dislocated and up able to rest or settle. a body pressed against your body is the beginning of next. i grew up not in a hom of apingr

and violence that led to a life of constant movement of leaving and falling. it is why at one point i couldn't stop drinking and fucking, and why i needed to touch people and have people touch me all the time. it had less to do with sex, really, than location. when you press against me or put yourself inside me, hold me down, lift me up, lie on top of me, i feel your weight, i exist. i am here. for years, i have been trying to find my way back to the body and to the earth. i guess you could say it was a preoccupation. although, i have felt pleasure in both the earth and my body, it's been more as a visitor than as an inhabitant. i tried roots to get back, promiscuity, anorexia, performance art, spent time by the green vermont mountains, but always, i felt estrangedded. just as i was ease tranked from my own mother. i was in awe of the beauty, but

could not find my way in. her breasts were not the breasts that fed me. everyone admired my mother in the tight tops, leggings, blond french twist driving to the small french town in the yellow convertible. one desired her, and i gawked and desired the earth and mother and despised my body because it was not her body, my body i had to evacuate when my father violated me. i lived as a machine programmed for striving accomplishments because i did not, could not inhabit my body or the earth or feel or know pain or i most certainly never knew the boundaries enough. i was driven. i called it working hard, being busy, on top of it, making things happen, but, n., i could not stop. stops means separation, loss, tumbling into the suicidal dislocation.

as i had no reference point for my body, i began to ask other women about their bodies, in particular, their vaginas. i sensed they were important. [laughter] this led me to writing "the vagina monologues," and talking obsessively about vaginas, in front of in strangers, as a result of talking about advantages, people told me stories about the bodies, and criss coughed the earth, hungry for the stories of other women who experienced violence and suffering. these women and girls had also become exiled from their bodies, and they, too, were desperate for a way home. i went to over 60 countries, heard about women molested in their beds, flogged, acid burns in the kitchen, left for dead in parking lots, went to alabama, port a prince, and spent time in refugee camps, burned out buildings, backyards, darkrooms where women whispered stories by

flashlight, showing me ankle lashes, melted faces, scars on the body from knives and burning cigarettes, some could no longer walk or have sex, and some were quiet and disappeared, others were driven machines like me. then i went somewhere else. i went outside, what i thought i knew. i went to the congo, and i heard stories that shattered all the other stories, and in 2007, i landed, democratic republic of congo, and i heard stories that got inside my body. i heard about a little girl who couldn't stop peeing on herself because huge men shoveled themselves inside her. i heard about app 80-year-old woman legs broken torn from the sockets when the soldiers pulled them over her head and raped her, thousands of these stories, they saturated my cells and nerves, i stopped sleeping. all the stories bled together, the raping of the rert, the pillaging of minerals, the destruction of vaginas, not

separate. there's been a war raging for 13 years, 8 million people died, and hundreds of thousands of women raped and tortured. it's an economic war fought over minerals that belong to the congo, but they are pill lamingedded by the world. they are a local, foreign militias from all over, and they murder. they rape wives in front of their husbands, force their husbands and sons to rape their daughters and sisters, shame and destroy families, and they take over the villages and the mines. the mines are abundant in congo. the minerals, the tin, the copper, the gold which we use in the iphones, our playstations, and computers. of course, by the time i got there, i witnessed the epidemic of violence towards women around the planet, but the congo and individual horror stories of the women consume me. here i began to see the future mons rows vision of global

disassociation and greed, not only allowed, but encouraged the eradication of the female species in pursuit of minerals in wealth, and i also found something else. inside the stories of unspeakable violence, inside the women of congo was the determination of the light force i never witnessed. there was a grace and gratitude, fierceness and readiness, inside the world of atrocities was a red hot energy. ..

>> delayed by rape, lack of roads, electricity, corrupt building managers, we were scheduled to open in may, but on march 17, 2010, they discovered a huge tumor in my uterus. cancer threw me through the window of my dissociation into the center of my body's crisis. the cob go threw -- condition go threw -- congo threw me deep into the crisis of the world. i faced the disease and what i felt was the beginning of my end. so that's where the book begins, that's the overview of the book, this merging of two worlds. and i think, um, as i was diagnosed, it came out of the blue. i put on my way to haiti, i suddenly was told that there was this tumor inside me, and within four days i was in a radical operation nine hours long where

i lost seven organs and 70 nodes. and on my way to the mayo clinic, i had this vision in my head on the airplane, every time i closed my eyes i kept picturing, like, this ball of yarn inside me. and the yarn was wrapped -- the pall was wrap with the these strings of yarn, and each yarn was a piece of a story i had heard over the years. it was the stories of women, the stories of atrocity, the stories of pain. and when i had the tumor removed, i woke up, and i was obsessed with why my uterus -- and i want to read this because i think, um, i think there's a very direct correlation between the experience of trauma, the listening to trauma, the inhaling of trauma, the absorbing of trauma and the creation of tumors and the creation of sickness even though they may not be directly related, they are indirectly related. what is most pressing now, why

cancer in my uterus, uterus, a hollow, muscular organ in the pelvic cavity of female mammals in which the embryo is nourished and develops before birth. i tried to imagine my uterus accommodating this tumor the way it might have held a baby. i almost once had two of them. was the tumor a way of growing something? was i growing a trauma baby? i remember years ago when i was going through a period when i seemed to be sick all the time. a shrink friend saying to me in that knowing, slightly patronizing way, you traumatize, eve. i had to look it up. sometize, how the body defends itself is too much stress manifesting psychological stress as physical symptoms, much stress manifesting psychological stress as physical symptoms in the stomach or nerves or uterus

or v.a. knew that. i read that -- vagina. it turns out that sometyization is related to hysteria which stems from the greek cog plant of uterus. uterus equals hysteria. they always called me hysteria in my family. extreme-feeling, intense. but what is extreme again? it depends on ten. i mean, what would be the appropriate level of emotional response to someone beating you daily or calling you jackass or stupid or molesting you? what would be the nonhysterical response to living in a world where so many are eating dirt and swimming in sewage systems in port-au-prince to unclog the drains and finding plastic bottles to sell? people blindfolding other people and walking them naked on leashes? what would be the proper way to experience these things?

hysteria, a word to make women feel insane for knowing what they know, a word that has so many implications, hysterical, out of control, insane, can't take her seriously, raving. hysteria is caused by suffering from a huge trauma where there is an underlying conflict. so what was my conflict? loving my mother and father, betraying my mother when my father molested me, wanting my father all to myself even if it hurt my mother, witnessing and hearing the most horrific stories in the world inflicted on women's bodies and being unable to stop it in spite of every effort, wanting to fall in love and being totally unable to trust, hungering for connection and always finding it claustrophobic? what isn't traumatizing? so does removing my uterus mean they have removed by hysteria? i don't feel any less hysterical. [laughter] actually, the tubes and the bags and the needles are making me feel quite upset, and i wonder if there is such a thing as rape cancer.

do i have rape cappser? do -- cancer? do we get it if we've been molested or traumatized? cells get released into the bloodstream at another moment of trauma later on? how many women with vaginal or vain cancer have been raped or beaten or traumatized? is there a way to cure rape trauma? is trauma cancer? is this kind of obsessing, the reason i'm sick? [laughter] so there was that connection. [laughter] between trauma and cancer. and i think after i came out of the surgery, it was a nine-hour operation, a lot had changed. and for the first time in my life i was in my body. i had been ported and pricked and poked, and i had landed in this body. and very soon after that, after i got out of the hospital, i

came back to new york, and i had a seriously bad infection. i had, um, just a world of infection in my gut the size of my gut. so i had to be drained. and this was happening at the exact same time that bp had the horrible spill in the gulf of mexico. and this really strange and bizarre thing started to happen where i was obsessed, of course, with the spill, and i couldn't stop watching it. and i began to become so porous that i couldn't distinguish the oil in the gulf from the oil in my gut. and i want to read you this piece because it was the beginning of my landing in my body which actually landed me in the world. and the scan was called the rupture, the gulf spill. at sloan sloan-kettering, they t to me on the cat scan screen, a huge pool of blackness in the center of me. same day as the gulf oil spill,

now poisoned gulf of mexico somehow inside me. 16 ounces of pus, 2.52 million gallons of oil a day, an intraabdominal ab access. contamination from postsurgery, postexplosion leaking, the spread of infection from the bloodstream to the ocean. leaking there and spilling, purging. same moment, same day. bp exploding, rising up out of me from every orifice, gushing out. nothing can stop it. trying to shut it down but not able, there is no stopping it. other worldly, and i can't get to the bathroom, and i'm puking. my gut still raw from the surgery, and it really hurts. the symptoms may include abdominal pain, chills, diarrhea, oil penetration, destroying the plumage of birds making them less able to float in water, less able to escape when being attacked, preening leads to kidney damage, altered

liver function, ruptured digestive tracks, lack of appetite, dolphins blowing oil through their blow holes, rectal tenderness, abilities leading to hypothermia, vomiting and weakness. so what happened was this journey began which i now call the cancer conversion where coming into my body suddenly broke down the walls of my separateness. and it was an amazing, amazing journey in many ways. i have to say that i think that chemotherapy was the most frightening idea of the whole journey to me. and i felt like i could be cut open for nine hours, i felt like i could go through an infection, but the idea of putting poison into my body was completely terrifying. and i didn't know if i could do it. and out of the blue -- and this happened all through the cancer process -- somebody would show up. and this brilliant therapist named sue who had been my therapist for many years, i had stopped seeing her, showed up in

my loft, and she said i've decided i'm going to sit on your couch once a week, and i'm going to give you a gift. she came, and she sat on my couch, and i was really, really scared, and i said to her i don't think i can do chemotherapy, and i don't think i'm going to do it. i think it's just western, and i think it will destroy me, and i think i'm going to pass. and she said, no, you're going to do chemo. and i said, no. she said, here, eve, i'm going the tell you something. and she said the chemo is not for you. it's for the cancer. for all the past crimes. it's for your father, for the rapist, it's for the perpetrators. you're going to poison them now, ander the never coming -- and they are never coming back. chemo will purge the badness that was never yours, but was projected onto you. i have total faith in your resilience and magical capacities of your body and soul for healing. your job is to welcome the chemo as an empathetic warrior which

is coming in to rescue your innocence by killing off the perpetrator who got inside you. you have many bodies. new ones will be born out of this transformational time of love and care. when you feel nauseous or terrible, just imagine how hard the chemo is fighting on your behalf and on behalf of all women's bodies, restoring wholend, innocence, peace. welcome the chemo as an empathetic warrior. well, i have to tell you, i couldn't wait to get the chemo. [laughter] and i'm not exaggerating. she gave me a frame, and i think everything is about the frame and the way we see things determines our experience so deeply. and my first chemo i sat there for five hours with my port which had now become by superwoman port which was going to burn off the perpetrators. and it was the talisman that was going to lead the poison to the perpetrators. and i would sit there and just picture everything burning away that needed to go. and i went through a very profound process of nights of real sorrow, nights of real

darkness, going back to places, but then i would burn it off, and i would let the chemo burn it off. and i have to tell you, it worked. by the end of chemo, those demons were gone. cancer taught me a lot. it taught me a lot. one of the things it did was it made me stop. and i want to read this section, because i think that the more terrified, i was more terrified, to be honest, of stopping than i was to some degree of the cancer. and one day when i was in the hospital this doctor, i don't even know where he came from, appeared in my room. he was like a little gnome. and he started talking to me. and i was like why is this guy in my room? but four i know why. for some bizarre reason, i am wearing sunglasses in my hospital bed. because of all the drugs, i think a little lipstick and sunglasses and my pink knit cap will make me look better but, in fact, i look insane.

[laughter] i am wearing sunglasses hoping the gnome man cannot see my eyes or hear my thoughts which are spinning out of control at the mere suggestion of being a patient. that is what he has come to tell me that, i need to be a patient. there's something scaring me even more than the cancer. it is the idea of stopping. the idea of being still. of not being able to do or make or travel or speak or organize or write. i don't want to be a fucking patient. then the italian doctor says, it will be a threshold for you, eve. you will learn to have patient for yourself. you will learn to be patient. i want to wrap my iv around his neck and jerk it hard. another part of me is already there. i watch it there, and it knows, truly knows something else. the part of me be likes the gnome, wants to crawl up in his lap and be his patient. this part so tired, in this part

knows he is telling the truth, he is a guide giving me a challenge, a vision saying this is it, eve, your life has to change. it cannot be driven nimby need to prove anything. it cannot be a reaction, a fuck you and i'll show you, that's how you got sick. that's what your sickness is, overtacking the body, the nervous system. always driving off the imagined enemy be, always pushing and driving yourself, pushing and driving and fighting. i'm tired now. i have cancer. my organs are gone. i have tubes coming out of me, my body is sewn up the center. there is no drive, i can't even find the gears. i am a patient. patient. patient. and something relaxes in the center of me for the first time since i heard my father raise his voice. and i sleep. i really sleep.

[applause] so the irony of cancer was that it was this disease of pathologically subdividing cells that began to reunite me with so many things and connect me with so many things. it connected me with my sister who i had not been connected with for a very long time. my father had managed, and i think this happens in many families where there's enormous violence, there had been a huge division between my brother and my sister and i which my father had really brought on. he managed to separate us. and when i came out of the chemotherapy, when i came out of the operation, my sister was standing there, and i thought i had died because i hadn't seen my sister for years. and i hadn't died. she had come to show up. and an amazing thing happened with my sister and i because we

both had never been able to give each other what we wanted. she needed me to listen to her and take her in, and she needed to take care of me because she had witnessed my abuse. so we both got to do for each other what we'd always wanted to do. i got to listen to her because i was too tired the talk, and she got to take care of me. and we healed over the months. and i have to tell you, i fell in love with my sister, and she fell in love with me, and there was this gorgeous healing. there were many other things that happened over those days and nights, and one of those was that i fell in love with trees. i'd always been separated from nature. i think, you know, there's a therapy who once said if you want to understand your relationship to groups, look at your relationship to your mother. but i think if you want to understand your relationship to nature, look at your relationship to mother. i'd always been separated, i was always afraid of nature, i always felt foreign. and at one point in my treatment i got put into this room. when i had my infection, i couldn't move at all. what was in front of me was a tree, and i couldn't do anything but look at that tree. ask can at the beginning i

thought this will be the end of my life, to stare at a tree. [laughter] and then what happened on day two was i fell in love with the tree, and suddenly i saw the tree. i got the tree. tree came into me. i got branches, i got trunks, i got leaves. i got to be the tree. and that was a whole new journey in my life. and i have to say this great irony happened that one of the cancer -- the chemo ingredients that i had to take for uterine cancer was taxil. and when i did research later, it was really amazing because taxil is made from the needles of a yew tree. trees were responsible for saving my life. and i found the mother i had really been looking for. on the days when it was really bad, i focused on the i of joy which was being built -- city of joy which was being built, and i was so happy it was being built. and i knew i had to get on the phone with the director every single day to encourage her, to let her know i wasn't going to die, that i was going to be

there. and i want to say about this book it's not try this at home, it's not one of those you have to get catastrophic cancer in order to come back into your body. [laughter] you really don't. that's why i wrote the book. i think there's ways to come back into yourself that involve all kinds of things that are not about getting sick. and i think one of the things i've learned is that when we're in our bodies, we can't live in the state of ongoing some you lens that we live in. this half-awake, half asleep state that i lived most of my life. you know, we wake up. and being awake is such a beautiful place to be. it turns out it's much less frightening than being asleep. i think we're told if we deny things and push things away we'll be better and safer, but, in fact, everything we deny makes us sicker. i knew i had symptoms of my cancer. i had all kinds of things, i -- but i never let myself pay attention. so the tumor grew. that's what we do with climate change, with poverty, that's what we do with everything. we just live in this half-awake,

half-asleep state. but when i came into my body, i was awake to everything. and i have not gone back to sleep. there are days when it's porous and i just cry the whole day, but it's better than being depressed. it's a cry of being alive. one thing that happened to me is that, um, i was -- i just was surrounded by so much love during my care. i just want to take a moment to celebrate nurses, for example. i can't say enough about nurses. i could spend the rest of my life traveling around the world singing the praises of nurses. they're the most unseen, undervalued people. but the work they do is the work that literally keeps people alive. you know, you can have the best doctors in the world, but if your care afterwards isn't care, if it isn't care, if people aren't looking at you and seeing you in the care, you don't get better. so i just want to take a moment to honor nurses. because they really saved my life.

[applause] and, you know, there was so much love around me. i had my family, i had my friends, i had activists writing me letters. i actually said to tony, who's with me, who was my main caretaker, i said to him one day, if i die, it's going to be so embarrassing to have had this much love and have died. [laughter] but one of the things that happened, and it was really a profound moment, is that i had this day when i suddenly understood what love was. and, um, this is called the burning meditation on love, and i'm just going to read a section of it. before love was something you succeeded or failed at. it was like a corporate activity. you won or you lost, people loved you or they didn't. as with trees, i had missed the point. the men i, in theory, had loved and who had loved me had all disappeared. not one had found his way to my loft during those long, burning

months. i received a two-line e-mail from my first husband of 15 years, a card from a partner of 13 years and no word from another lover of equal door riggs. -- duration. later i heard i was insulted i had not reached out to tell him i had cancer. no blame, just the facts. i had failed at love or the story i bought about love. as i rode my burning body down to the bottom of the world, i passed through the ghosts and the glories of those love affairs, hid use moments and tender ones -- hideous moments and tender ones. no resentments, no longings, and that was most painful, to think that at 56 i had come to this; no lover, no mate, no nurturing memories. despair burned in me. there were days when the leaves of my romantic failings made a bonfire inside me. the story i had been living about love was now clearly over. the landscape was charred. in -- cooking me soft-boiled

eggs at five a.m. to calm my stomach, amy, who i hardly knew, stopping by unexpectedly and demanding to rub my feet. nico coming from italy for an entire month and turning my loft into a summer ash ram, knee coe shaving my head with a pink bic razor. donna spoon feeding me soup. steven coming from canada to take me to lunch and pretending i looked well when we all knew uh-uh looked green. paula photographing me naked with my bags, barb shah making me borsch, boar rah and elizabeth making me laugh. my sister showing up regularly with dvds and toast. it was toast who, with the devotion of king lear, the devotion of kent in king lear who gently kept me engaged in fighting always there, never wavering, never complaining. this daily, subtle, simple

gathering of kindnesses stretched out across the chemo days and months was, in fact, love. love. why hadn't i known this was love? i was always reaching for love, but it turns out love doesn't involve reaching. i was dreaming of the big love, the ultimate love, the love that would sweep me off my feet or break through the hard shell of my lesser self, the love that would bring on my surrender, the love that would inspire me to give everything. as i lay there, it occurred to me that while i had been dreaming of this big love, this ultimate love, i had without realizing it been giving and receiving love for most of my life. as with the trees that were right in front of me, i had been unable to value what sustained me, fed me, gave me pleasure and as with the trees, i was so busy waiting for and imagining and reaching and dreaming and preparing for this huge, big love that i totally missed the

be a soft-boiled eggs and the bolivian can -- [inaudible] so much of life, it seems to me, is in the framing and naming of things. i'd been so busy creating a future love that i never identified the life that i was living as the life of love. because up til then i had never felt entitled enough or free enough or, honestly, brave enough to embrace my own narrative. ironically, i had gone ahead and created the life i secretly must have wanted, but it had to be covert and off the record. chemo was burning away the wrapper, and suddenly i was in my version of life. thus began the ecstasy, the joy, the pure joy of the spiritual poet who finds the secret treasure. [applause] so i have to say after that i

began to get happy. and i think, um, so much about everything is if we're reading somebody else's story, we don't get to be in the life that we've created. i finally was able to get through the last surgeries after chemo which were really hard surgeries, you know? and i went back to the congo, and after i went back after the takedown operation -- when they get rid of your bag and they reverse your colon, and everything gets put back inside you, and let me tell you for those of you who haven't had a bag, it's a humbling experience because your shit is actually on the outside, and you have to deal with it. but when i went back to the congo, i was with the women who i had been with many times before, and many women in the congo when they, um, are raped their insides are eviscerated, and they get something called fistula because so many things

have been shoved inside them, and they have holes inside them, and they get exiled because they smell badly. and when i went back to the congo, it was so bizarre because there were so many things that had happened with me that were in keeping with the women of congo. my tumor, for example, had fistulad. i had a similar operation to what the women had who had been raped. it was if i had just been with them so deeply that things had happened, and when i went back to the congo, i was temporarily incontinent just the way they were. and i was almost in the exact same state. and it was an amazing experience to be at ground zero, to actually know in my body exactly what the women of congo who had been raped so badly were experiencing. and when i got there, i think they were really freaked out by how skinny i was and that i was bald. they didn't know what to do, so, of course, we just started dancing. that's what women do in the congo. and they dance in a way that i have really never known or never, ever really been a part

of. grace, it's a transformation of pain the power which really was the thing that inspired me to imagine one billion rising. because when i watched them dance that day, and i watched them turn that pain into power, and i watched the body finding the resources and the movements to transform suffering in itself, to turn it to joy, i suddenly thought what if the one billion women on the planet who have been raped and beaten all danced on one day? it came to be, and it was amazing. but that day was a very special day. and i'm very happy to say the city of joy did open, and that's the postscript. we just, we just graduated our third class. the girls are miracles. they are revolutionaries. they are leaders. they go back to their communities with training and with healing and with love, and they are the most gorgeous, stunning role models i've ever seen. i want to close, um, i want to close with this last part of the

book. i feel, um, i don't even know how to talk about how lucky i feel and how blessed i feel every day. to the point where sometimes it just feels ridiculous that i got to be alive, then i got to have this life, and i got to meet and i get to meet the people i get to meet everywhere i go in the world. and i feel i'm in my second wind. and one of the good things about being in a second wind is, you know, i'm kind of post deaf now. i feel like i -- postdeath now. that happened, and now we can get on with what we have to do. and i really do feel that. i feel there is much less to be afraid of, and there is lots to do in terms of waking up. we have to wake up. the time is now to wake up. so i want to close with this last section of the book. and i want to do it tonight for all the people here who have been catalysts of other people waking up, and deepest gratitude for that. i have lost my organ, and at times my mind. i know it is a race now between the people who are helping themselves to the earth, to the

loot and the rest of us. either we go all the way now, or there is no more way. who will step off the wheel? who will join the women who have lived in the forests, in the projects, in the loud and cramped cities and who carry sacks of pain on their backs and hungry babies on their breasts? who are not counted, but whose strength and whose work hold up the world? who will stand behind them and trust they have always known the way? the world burns in my veins just like chemo did only a few months ago. i dare you to stop counting and start acting, to stop pleasing and start defying. i dare us to trust what we know. the second wind is beyond data, past pain, it's found in the bloodstream and cells of the women and men who purge the poison of their perpetrators, who walk through the cancer, the nightmares. the second wind is coming from your body, it's in your mouth, it's in the way you move your hips. every vision is necessary now.

every instinct must be awakened. the wind does not turn away, it blows through everything. do not be afraid. there is no more winning and losing. we have already lost. even the so-called winners feel that way. that is why they can't stop self-destructing. of course there is risking, of course it is dangerous. i wish i could tell you there is nothing to lose. lose everything. that is where it begins. each one of you will know in what direction you need to move and who to take with you. you will recognize the others when you arrive, build the circles. listen to the voice inside, and when they come in and say this is the only way, some can profit, we need the oil, the fracking, the coal, she was collateral damage, stay tight in your circles, dance in your circles, sing in the circles,

join arms in the circles, surrender your comfort. we must be willing to go the distance for our mother. we must be willing to leave the kingdom, surrender the treasures of approval and jewels. we are the people of the second wind. we know who we are. we have been undermined, reduced and minimized. we have been endowed with this incredible strength. you know who you are. you have been made to feel less for knowing the way. you know the way. let us call forth the second wind. let us be blown by it. and let us release it in ourselves. let us be taken. wind, wind is transparent as wind, be as possible and relentless and dangerous. be what moves things forward without needing to leave a mark. be part of this collection of molecules that begins somewhere unknown but can't help but keep rising. rising. rising. [applause]

thank you. thank you. [applause] thank you very much. thank you. so we can do questions or responses or feelings or whatever you'd like. in -- does anyone want to start? >> [inaudible] >> what? thank you, thank you, thank you. very much. [applause] yea, a brave person. >> hi. >> many hi. >> thank you. i'm going to say, you're the

shit. [laughter] so two things. one, my mom has uterine cancer, and i'm very emotional, but you totally just let me see my mom for the first time. so, wow. she's awesome. sorry. [inaudible] how did you find yourself in your body change you, your relationship with your mother? >> that's a good question. >> and also we just finished the monologues, and i just want to say so much thank you for those. >> thank you. thank you, oh, thank you. [applause] i love what you said. you know, the fist question about being in my body, how did it change my relationship with my mother, that's the question. you know, a very amazing thing happened during my surgery, during my whole cancer conversion is that my mother died in the middle of it. and i talk about it in the book.

and my mother had had cancer three times, and the last -- third time it came back. and i had a very troubled relationship with my mother in terms of her remoteness and coldnd, and i was the worst part of my cancer in the chemotherapy when my mother, it was clear she wasn't going to live much longer. so i had to get on a plane and fly to florida in a very, very weakened state. and when i got to, when i got there, it was really a very profoundthing for many be reasons. one, because my mother never really could see me at all. that's why i'm so moved that you said you saw your mother, because the first thing i said was i love your hair. i'm not kidding you. [laughter] and she kept saying it. and i, rather than saying i have no hair, i said, thank you. and i kept acting like i had hair. it was so bizarre. [laughter] but -- can i read you the mother section? could i do that? because i haven't read that out

ithini want to -- i need to read that to you, because it will tell you -- i'll say it better there than i'll say it. let me find it. what was it -- i think it's called, yeah, the last time i saw my mother. where is it. hold on, sorry. okay. oh, yeah, here it is. okay. okay. okay. i love your hair was the last time i saw my mother. i feed her chocolate ice cream and can want to believe there was a time she did this for me. i have no memory of her putting food in my mouth. i hate her. here i am having climbed out of my chemomow cocoon to fly south to feed her chocolate ice cream. here i am again taking care of her, hoping that she might one day feel compelled to take care of me. an old shrink used to say you think the you paste arms on her, eventually she will hug you. i am shocked at my rage, shocked

he didn't even pause to say, my god, you came. you flew here in the middle of chemotherapy to be with me? instead in her gradually descending dementia, she talks about how much she loves my hair. she tells all the nurses i will set a fashion with my hair, and it will be the rage in new york. i have never set fashions. most of my life i couldn't even figure out what to wear. she insists i take off my scarf, and i do it because she is so ill. she says, i love it, i love your hair. i want to scream, are you looking at me? me? i am bald. feel it, my head. there's nothing there. there's no hair. i have cancer, mom. i just had half my organs remove, and i'm not 85, i'm 57, and i got on an airplane because my whole, my blood count is very low, i risked my life to fly here for you, you, but i don't say that. no, i never do. i laugh and pull at my nonexistent hair.

then she talks about my niece katherine's long blond hair and stunning face identical to her own. she can't stop talking about my pretty niece, how pretty she is. i am bald and my niece so pretty, just like her. then she catches herself and says, oh, no, you're pretty too. you're all pretty, she says, like drinks on the house. [laughter] and i say i do not look like you. i never have. i am, therefore, not pretty. and this conversation feels so familiar, i crave the chemo antinausea medication. her long, red fingernails look strangely out of place with her hospital gown. they are the only part of the invented her that remains. she is bone and moles moles and catheter tubes and bruises. her long white hair is so fine it gets caught in everything. i think she is dozing when she says out of nowhere, guilt. my sister and i say, what? she says, guilt. i'm guilty i did not love you all more.

i lie. my sister doesn't lie. i say, you have been a loving mother. there is nothing to be guilty about. and i think, what will this guilt do for any of us? will it give me back the years i hurt myself and almost drank myself to death? will it reverse the bruises on my legs and neck, will it undo all the things, will it make me understand why you croak up my drunken, raging father to report things to him, come quick, arthur, she's at it again, she's smoking, i'll show you. she snuck out with the boys, arthur, you must handle this, and he did can. usually with his fists. half awake, a drunken, raging monster that you steered in my direction. guilt, i lie. i ask her if she wants to see my scar. she doesn't. i decide to show her anyway. the nurse who takes care of her pretends to be interested. i show her the scar, in the entire length of my torso. she says mine is so much longer. mine wraps around my whole body.

my mother does not have such a scar. [laughter] it was just the same when she heard i had to have chemotherapy. she told me, i had it. it wasn't that bad. she made it sound pretty easy. then i discovered she had never had chemotherapy. i got cancer, and my mother's cancer came back. then i went to chemo, then my mother decided to die. she will win this round. she is so frail, she looks unbreakable, but she isn't. she has outlived everyone who believed she was breakable and treated her like china. she has survived three types of cancer. she said all the time let me out of here before i'm that old. she is 85 and living without a lung. i rub her very bony chest, and i get her to breathe in and out, in and out. i calm her down. i am really surprised that i'm able to do this. she is a child, i am her mother. i get her to close her eyes, and then she leads her head against mine, and i decide to talk to her through our heads.

i decide to tell her everything. i decide this moment will be the moment i press my head right up against hers, and i tell her how angry i have been, and i say, mom, it's over. i waited my whole life, ask you're not coming -- and you're not coming. i say i wanted to believe your wall would come down and you would remember me and feel for me and worry about me. i say, it didn't happen. i hated you for this, and i've carried this hate my whole life. you did not protect me or teach me that through protecting me i had a right to protect myself. i got sick, i am done blaming you. it happened, it didn't happen, it was, it isn't. i wanted to be able to move on and not search the world for my mother and not crave adoration. i want this to be the moment where i get free, mom. so i free you. we sit there head to head, and i know that somewhere in there she can hear what i'm saying. and i feel my body relax and my aversion and hunger leave me, and she relaxes, and we fall asleep like that. i wake at four a.m. on a cot in

her room, and she is moaning. she's freezing. the air-conditioning so cold and lonely, i take my blankets, and i climb into her bed. i wrap myself around her the way i always dreamed she would wrap herself around me. i enfold the blankets around her shivering bones, and i pull her to me, and i hold her so tight. her moaning stops. then in her sleep she says i was having a terrible nightmare, eve. i dreamed they came to take our hearts. they didn't want mine. they wanted yours the most. they're coming to take our hearts. i want to ask who is "they," but somewhere i know. i hold her even tighter, and i hear my voice deepen, and i say, don't be afraid. they won't get our hearts. i won't let 'em. i promise. the next morning they move my mother to the cardiac unit because her heart has now become the problem. it is where we do not live that

the dying comes. [applause] >> [inaudible] >> can you speak up? very ri. >> i was in a bus crash and broke my back and lost everything. and it took me about six months before someone mentioned, oh, you're starting to experience the gifts of a crash. >> uh-huh. >> and did you ever have a moment when you suddenly realized i'm experiencing a gift i never thought i would get? >> i think that's what the whole book's about, you know? i think, again, like everything's how we frame it, right? you know, one of the first talks i gave after i got out of bed was called the gift of cancer,

and i think -- i'm not ap apologist for cancer. it's hideous. but be i will say that if we frame things in a way where we saw these terrible moments as the way of healing and releasing and cleansing and purging and transforming ourselves, it would be very different how we approach them. and i feel that, for me, cancer was very much like that. it was just like, okay. we get to win, we get to deal with it, you know? and i feel, i feel very grateful for it. be yeah. yes. >> so, firstly, eve is such a perfect name for you. [laughter] >> okay. >> and i am one of those nurses whose -- >> when oh, yea. [applause] in that regard, i actually work

pediatric oncology. but with the insight surges of consciousness that you had and that really being expansion, getting rid of boundaries of the love that -- [inaudible] you're exploding with it, it feels like. how did you find a way to help relate that with people that were in a much more conventional mindset like, say, as another patient, physician, whoever it was? and i just think you're totally awesome. >> thank you. you're awesome. you know, um, it wasn't sloan-kettering. the place that i had my operation that healed me was the mayo clinic, and i can't say enough good things about the mayor clinic. it's the closest we have to socialized medicine in this country, and can it's remarkable. it's an interesting question because, you know, i'd written

this book, so that's how i'm transmitting what happened to me. and i'm just amazing, you know, i've been in maybe five cities now. i'm just amazed at how people understand what i'm talking about. you know? i've been talking to a lot of oncologists and a lot of doctors and a lot of therapists about how we create -- i think we should stop calling it -- [inaudible] and we should start calling it transformational therapy, and we should start creating places where people go that have guides with them every time they get their chemo so they can help really begin to process what's going on inside them. people are not averse to hearing about this. every doctor i've spoken to acknowledges the connection between trauma and disease. and one thing i really want to talk about is how, you know, there are so many women who have been abused, one out of three. and i have no idea how many men, but i can imagine all the time how many. i think there must be many, many, many.

and one of the things that happens when you go and you get sick is that it's almost a reenactment of the abuse. everything is being done to you, right? people sticking things into you, people are opening you up, people are knocking you out. and it's very retriggering in terms of trauma. and i think we need to work with health professionals to teach them how not only to be aware of it, but how to work with that in helping people recover from illness. because it's also integrated. and i feel very excited to be having this discussion, and people seem much more receptive than i thought they would be. yes. >> hi, thank you very much for coming and sharing your story. it's so beautiful i just wanted to ask you what it's like coming from, you know, the great care you received at the mayo clinic and traveling to congo, and how are you able to, you know, bridge the gap in privilege with care you received and the care the women in congo may or may not have?

>> that's a very good question. and i want to tell you a great story about the mayo. you know, i had -- before i got sick, i was working with doctors at the mayo clinic through various circumstances to bring them to the hospital to operate in the congo, and they were going to do operations with him and help him. and we had been building in this whole team of doctors who were coming, and they weren't my doctors. they had just approached me because they knew the work i was doing there. so this very weird thing happened which is that volcano happened, and it was the same week that i got sick. so i called the doctor who was working on it, and she said come tomorrow, and that's how i ended up at the mayo clinic. and i'm really happy to say that they actually went back with me the first time i went back, and they did operate and work with the doctor, and they're now giving his son a full scholarship, he's about the graduate, and he'll go back a full doctor. but one of the things i want to say is that one of the hardest things is to look at places like the congo which doesn't even

have a cat scan machine. i don't think all of eastern congo, maybe there's one cat scan machine in all of congo. and i'm really, world vision, we have cat scans in every country, and we start developing that. in the congo you don't get diagnosed with cancer. nobody talks about it because when you get it, you just die. do i feel privileged? i feel ridiculously privileged. all the time and care that went into supporting this body when people are surviving every day on a banana. and i think one just lives with that duality and contradiction and pull. and i do everything i can to find resources and support the women of congo and the doctor and the hospital, and i raise as much money as i can so he can do what he does. thank you for the question. mass -- [applause] hi. >> hi. i'd like to be a little more eloquent than i'm going to be because my brain and my heart

are spinning a little bit. thank you, my first thank you is when -- [inaudible] monologues in 2004 and directed it at school, you've sort of been a little light in my life that's kind of followed me. lu those years since then -- through those years since then. so i want to thank you for that. >> thank you. >> secondly, i really want to thank you for naming, coming into your body, because i have a daughter who's 19 months old, and i had a really difficult pregnancy, and she's, like, the most amazing thing that exists in the world. and i've had this incredible transformation that i haven't been able to come, it's going very fast, and it's wonderful, great things that are happening. and i haven't been able to put my finger on it, what it is. and it's me finally feeling happy with my body and comfortable with my body. and i'd like to think it's my daughter, but i also know it's a

lot of me which i've never been able to give myself the credit for it. then you saying it tonight has finally given a name to what is going on which is an incredible thing. but now i finally feel like i can understand it. i'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book and really now feeling more complete and more whole because i can name what it is that's happening to me which is a great and wonderful thing. and i'm so happy that it happened for you. >> oh, it's so great that you got into your body through birth and not sickness. yea. [applause] yeah. it's an amazing feeling. it's like coming home, you know? it's wonderful. thank you for sharing that. >> we have time for two more questions, then we'll sign books. >> oh. i feel bad for the people who are standing. okay. yes. >> so i -- first, thank you. and, second, i, i'm really -- i just want to know if you think that it's possible to end rape,

if that's possible. and all about one billion rising. i do all the activities, and i can't help think -- and i know that men are raped too. but i can't help think that as long as men exist, that it's still going to happen. i just can't conceive of a world in which that doesn't happen anymore. >> where well, this is what i want to say to that. i think if we can't conceive things, they usually don't happen, you know? so part of the work i'm doing on a regular basis is conceiving that and seeing it as possible, you know? [applause] and when i came out of my crazy cancer conversion and i announced to my board and all my team that we were going to get a billion people drive, they said did you say a million? i said, no, i said a billion. [laughter] and they said, right. there's 14 of us, and i said, no, we're going to get a billion people to rise. because i saw it. i actually saw it. i saw it, and i -- i never doubted it.

and i learned something really powerful. if you actually see things and you commit yourself to your vision, things happen. and you can't waver, and you can't back off, and when people are saying why would people dance, what does dancing do? if i hear that question one more time, i'm going to go out of my mind. [laughter] a billion people? really, eve? as if i'm a bad person for thinking of it, right? [laughter] as if something's wrong with me that i would dream that -- you know, it's almost like if you dream of violence, something's wrong with you. people get pissed at you. they like their misery, they want the keep it, you know? but one of the things i learned is, you know, on the night before the rising i was in the congo, and i thought to myself, well, this could be a real egg on your face moment, you know, if no one gets up tomorrow morning around the world ask be dances. but i also say to myself, what will be lost? nothing. nothing. and, in fact, 207 countries

rose. i think we had a billion people. i'm looking at the videos, the thousands of videos with women in bhutan with butter lamps on their head, women in somalia with red short skirts and women in the european lobby doing flash mobs. everywhere on this planet. and i really am never going to be talked out of what i see. and it's really about imagining things and believing things and going for it. [applause] >> hello, ms. eve especialliler. i first want to say because of you i started a women's empowerment club. i have this awakening in myself, and i want the spend my entire life empowering women just as you've done. so i just wanted to say that, and what an honor to speak with you right now. so you speak a lot about the self-awakening and how in times

of distress and how we often feel like we've hit rock bottom, we can rise to our happiness, and we can have this self-awakening, and we can change ourself, we can change the world. but i want to know how we can change ourselves and have this self-awakening even when we don't hit rock bottom. when i talk to my friend and my mom is having a bad day or all the other girls or women in the world and they don't necessarily have the same experiences that sometimes are so -- [inaudible] everything like that, how can we make this an everyday thing, an every person thing and just a way of life, a way of escaping something terrible? >> okay, first of all, how old are you? >> i'm 17. >> okay, you're awesome. [applause] i want to be you when i grow up. wow. that's incredible. that just made my day, whoever you are. [laughter]

the best question you could have asked, because the truth of the matter is i don't think we need to make the earth uninhabitable, you know, so everybody dies before we get it. i don't think we have to get catastrophic illness before we wake up. i don't think we have to be raped to care about other women being raped, right? i think it has to do with the process of being aware of your body and your being and finding when you're in it and when you're not in it, when you're alive in yourself and when you're disconnected from yourself. when you're feeling compassion and when you're feeling discompassion, you know? i heard this beautiful man speak the other night, we did this fantastic panel where we talked about rape and masculinity, and there were fantastic men on this possible. and there was a coach named joe urman, and he said he was a transformational coach. and i said, wow, what's that? he said, well, there are transactional coaches and transformational coaches. a transactional coach teaches boys to win at any cost.

anything to win. anything to get to the goal. step over, kill, maim, destroy, just get to the goal, right? i'm a transformational coach, he said. i teach boys how to be human beings and good athletes at the same time. and i have to tell you, it was a turning moment when you go, oh, my god. and ever since then i've seen the world as transforming or transacting. am i doing something to move myself ahead to win, to be better, or am i doing something that's going to transform everyone around me and make the world better around me. and i think one of the things we don't have very much anymore in america is principles. we don't have guiding principles. we don't have things that we live for, things that we get up in the morning and we're connected to. and at city of joy we have ten guiding principles that everybody lives by. and i watch how they become not cages, but freedom. because everybody's united around those principles, so they become the pathway that everybody can walk together.

and i would like to just suggest that if you start living your life to be transforming as opposed to being transacting, you will get back into your body, that they're very connected. you can't be speeding past yourself to win if you're taking care of the people around you in order to transform them. and as you transform other people, you will, indeed, transform yourself. so thank you very much. you're awesome. awesome. thank you. [applause] be -- thank you. thank you all very much. you're an amazing audience. thank you. thank you. [cheers and applause] you rock. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv.

>> on our recent visit to south carolina with the help of our local partner, booktv took a look at columbia's cultural and literary history. columbia hosts more than 15 museums in and it's home to the state's largest university, the university of south carolina. two historically black schools, allen university and benedict college, and columbia college, a liberal arts college for women. >> i'm elizabeth, and i'm the director of the urban department of rare books here at the university of south carolina. welcome to our vault. today we'll be talking about the collection of historical astronomy. we were very fortunate to receive this collection of over 5300 books in 2011. robert ariel was a gentleman born in sumter, south carolina, who came to the university and was an english major. from the time he was a third

grader, he had this interest in astronomy where he continued to buy more and more sophisticated telescopes, you know, 50, 60 years later he has over 5300 books and over 200 telescopes and scientific instruments related the astopmy. this is the book that started it all. robert ariel used. as a third grader in the his school library, and this is the field book of the skies by william tyler alcott. he checked it out so many times, he eventually realized he needed to buy one, and this is incredibly well-used, well-loved, well-thumbed. but by no means is it the earliest book in the collection. the earliest book is a book that we added to the collection just this year, an early 16th century textbook. and it was the major textbook on astronomy for about 125 years. mr. ariel very deliberately

collected star atlases, and the first star atlas is the at last prior to the time of engraving. it was produced, and this one dated 1540 was produced but wood cuts. it's absolutely amazing. it's in a beautiful period binding. we're very fortunate to have that, and that is the first known star atlas. in or dating from be 1603, it's an absolutely stunning atlas in which the engravings include drawings over them showing the symbols that we all know. this is a 17th century star atlas. ..

>> and our copy has this title page which is very rare. we're one of very few libraries in the world to have all of these star

alices. but the strength of the area of the elections is it relates to popular astronomy and observational astronomy robert ariel being a member of the star observers and the active one at that. also including the work of the major observatories the periodical publications and in effect -- reflect his interest of the microscope and as to restore the telescope as part of his work he did the research and published it is part of his major collection witht