a country where people steal elections and whether such corruption and how choices are forms that we all have comparative advantages we have to make. i intend to go after corrupt republican as they have with thad cochran. i'm not interested in being a part of a political tribe. i krishan these are such that you shall know the truth and i shall set you free, but i'm not interested -- i believe it is a close over parties and other people. i think registering to vote in being a part of the republican machine in my wallet is fun for a lot of people and i understand people get rewards for it and it's important, my value added, like i don't even leave the house to get food. i am working all the time 6:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. my wife has to literally pull me away to go on a date. my attitude is this is the cause of my life. i'm happy to work as long as necessary and i don't want to

sully the kind of aggressive go after the truth message that i am bringing by being a part of any campaign. that might change. if certain people were to run for president, i would certainly consider getting involved with their campaign. i might even do research for their super pac. that might be interesting. i've been involved in politics. i've help a lot of people lose very successfully. i do agree the importance of voting is an extremely important. but i would also say your right as a citizen and company of so many more rights than the ballot box. you have the right of the first amendment expression, the right to petition your government. all of these different rights in a suit of voting component as a small piece of it. if i'm successful, which i believe i will be, i will have slipped a senate seat at age 25. how wild is that?

so why not. so i take your point is a serious point. my wife tries to commit mail the time. i am worried about my safety and i have reason to be worried about my safety. seven hoping to get more people involved so i can sit back and collect a check like matt drudge [laughter] are trained to give you an honest answer is they can. it's a fair point. lots of people suffer for elections in thank you for having me. [applause] >> that wraps up our coverage of the 2014 equal form collegians leadership summit. >> h. are your books vice president, malaika adero discusses african american literature ranging from the attempts to share in a culture power in the industry to the credit is in my african-american

and how blacks are portrayed in black literature. this is about half an hour. [applause] >> so you see, we are well steep in history and that is very important. but also at the harlem book fair, we project again what is possible given that which we have been given, what is it that we are charged to do? what is our responsibility. at the harlem book fair, our conversation is where books make culture. yes there is books, but what does that memoir look like in conversation? what does that vote on hip-hop culture look like? what did that book on fashion look like on a runway outside with the other exhibitors at the book fair. >> we not only want to talk about books. we know where we live is in

feeling irix variants. we live, we survive because we know who we are. we know our core. this is the conversation that happened at the harlem book fair. i call it an outdoor book party. so thank you so much for coming. i had the honor and privilege to introduce to a dear friend, a colleague, a professional, someone who has your intellect than in tuition and sheer willpower has worked her made her mark through publishing. her name is malaika adero. she is the vice president of the year editor of the tree of books and she is a renaissance woman. she is a dancer. she is an artist and in her current -- and her current effort she has a new mac, homeplace magazine.com. so you know, she knows to play

in the space of words. she's going to talk to us today about the state of black publishing. not an easy conversation to have. you know, we are both challenged and those presented with the opportunity of digital publishing and beneath all of that is telling the race door is still bringing it to market. what is in all of that. malaika will tell us. malaika, please. [applause] >> thank you, dear. good morning, good morning, good morning. it's great to see everybody here. the harlem book fair is one of my favorite book events. one because it's in the neighborhood i live in, so it is easy for me to get here.

the other, as you heard from dr. mohammed, as you heard from max rodriquez is the setting here. dr. mohammed talk about arturo schomburg who laid the foundation here as a black bibliophile for this collection to rise, for this center, this depository that is so important not just for us in this immunity, but in the world to be built. dr. mohammed's leadership in the family of the schomburg are carrying the beacon for the legacy that arturo schomburg, james baldwin, a recent literary giant who he named who recently passed on. may angelo, also very baraka, jayne cortez. there have been too many who have passed on recently. but they left us a legacy and

they left us in charge and they left us a body of work in the lesson and traction for us to pay attention to that now. and carry on. i was flattered by max's invitation to make this talk, you know, he calls me up is so casually, i'd like for you to talk about the state of black literature and 15 minutes. unlike what? first of all, this day, the one state, what are we talking about black literature? i am an editor, of course languages support to me. first of all, i asked him for a couple days to think about it. i was cycling to talk about this thing we call black literature, this thing we call publishing, particularly a this time when it so complicated, so many issues, so many breakthroughs. there is so much extort mary

were. there's so many problems. so what exactly will i be talking about? well, i will be talking about lack people, meaning people of african descent here writing in publishing primarily in america and did not reach the rest of the world. he and i are in the same page to think turned to global ien. it is how most of the people i think around and that is how we need to be thinking more in a systematic fashion in order to reach more people in touch more people ended the entire culture and heal the world really. so i can't commit associate angles they. it's more like the world of

storytelling because that is what it is about. i want to try to do a few things in this introductory talk. at goodness there will be morris people speak it not to me who can continue the conversation. but i want to talk a bit about the condition in which tori tyler's work. i want to raise questions and issues concerning readers and reading and general. i would like to point out some important things to know about how books and reading products are now published and distributed and how you can learn more and keep up with what is too often they hidden treasures right in our midst. and now, no work available to us that we often don't know anything about. max asked me to speak from my

goodness a person does work in the world of literature and publishing for decades. i will forgive him for reminding me of how old i am and this business. for the last dozen years i have signed up authors and added it and managed to projects for a trio book says simon & schuster. that is my wage earning job. i also work in community, producing programs that bring stray teller suwanee at this and readers. i write and publish independent of my corporate ties. i've done this all of my working life. i have done this because i love it. and now, i love hearing stories and telling stories not only in book form. i love them and lyrics and rhythm and melody and act it out on stage and danced and painted and told on the front porch around us to, television film.

everybody does. this is the most profoundly and uniquely human thing that we do is tell stories, hear stories. it is how we define ours else. it's how we process it makes sense of life. i just decided to do it make a living doing it. i had many will help me along the way in figuring out how to make a living on it. it was my family who caught that started. it was my family who taught at the many ways of reading and writing are important and fundamental in our lives. my great grandmother told me stories to settle me down it take before bad. she told me stories of strange characters called tarver beat and great habit. i thought she made these else.

i didn't hear about folklore and harrison so many later. my great-grandmother was born in the late 1800s and passed away in the seven days. she told me real-life stories and she told me other made up tories. she told me how her community and her family and how she lived in survived. i heard stories about places in east the earlier in the 20th century called cotton town and around town. i know more about slaughtering a hog and i need to know because my great-grandmother. my uncle joe read aloud to me the lines of shakes either for my high school homework assignment. he was an actor. made no money on it, but he was also an adjunct teacher at knoxville college and worked as an x-ray technician for his day job.

it was he who introduced me to the work of james baldwin and do as james baldwin who impressed on my mind heartland in your commie place a decade later i would migrate to. writing and reading were valued in my family and in my community. books are valuable and necessary a home. not just the bible, but encyclopedias, histories and biographies and chat and not. my family near the important than the sum are standing to world around us, to see the world even if we never left our home in knoxville, v. books make that possible. to truly understand black america and what is at the core of her literary tradition and our culture, you have to know when we met her that we were denied the right to read and write for so long.

that was the way enslavement was pores, two d- that tool. we figured that out quick and does the best -- and many of us rather risk our lives, our physical lives to learn how to read because we knew that it would save our lives could be the key to freedom. i am very gratitude -- grateful dead fired by the phenomenon we saw last year with 12 years of slave and how that book published in 1841 just for you. and came back to us in the form of the film and renewed people's attention to the beautiful written work. 1841 we were publishing. we've got a before and henry

hyde once sent him. so we've had many reasons to celebrate. i am reminded of a famous quote of toni morrison that close him seem like the genius of black people is what we do with language. i believe that no matter whether we are manipulating language and telling stories for play or for serious business. we demonstrate time and time again that we can spend language into our. thanks arnelle hurston and how she described sessions on front porches of homes and shops in her town at eatonville. think of the stories you hear again in the streets of new york and the suburbs and playgrounds in your dining room table. think of new york city's 20th and 21st century wordsmith, who poetically told us stories out of bronx and harlem in this metaphorical fit refers dream

state. among our greatest hope is that our writers and are most enlightened and inspired people have read that deliberately and often. with reading ,-com,-com ma now been so much at our fingertips even with advances in technology and computers and all, we still don't have the access to great work, particularly contemporary works that we should. that is because this black world of literature existed in a larger ecosystem. you know, it existed at ecosystem, a mainstream education of publishing as big business. the market place, the retail market. we are represented there, but we are not well served there. we don't show up in the matrix has some people with say the way

we should. and we've got to do that. we've got to do some in about that. even with expert researchers knowing and concluding that we do in fact read. there was a pew research study in the media and not too long ago that stated -- were concluded that the most likely person in america to be reading a book at any given time is a black female. but you wouldn't necessarily get that from how publishers choose to use their promotion dollars in publicity resources. we do read. i have a good job. you know, i worked in publishing since the 80s. i'm lucky, i work hard, and make a living. but the side effects of that

haven't always been good. it can be stressful. a culture of the workplace is often clashed with the culture that defined me personally. my experiences like every other professional and corporate america. too often the best that i have to offer intellectually and creatively grows unpacked even in the places that i work with think they want to get everything out of me, but some times they don't even know what it is that i have two bring to the table. it is the same thing with you as readers. so to that degree, we've got to push for more diverse the period we have got to push for more diversity in the ranks of people working in publishing, working in media. we have got to encourage our schools to teach the skills that

we need to learn how to better read, how to better think, how to express ourselves. i learned some of the skills of publishing working with independent presses in the 70s. i worked at a place called the institute of the black world in atlanta, georgia. i was first a work study student and then a full-time employee. it was there i learned the fundamental skills of production and editing. i even was taught to run and offset printing press. i managed to direct mail campaigns. then in 1980 i attended the non-girl class at howard university boat publishing institute. sadly that program on the last bit about a half a dozen years. if there were other college and university at venice traitors and historically black colleges

was named to this broadcast, i encourage you and even plead to you too can better that the skills of publishing, media need to be solidly incorporated in all of our schools. one of the best things that happened with hbcus and the time that i was in school and undergrad school in the 70s were the founding of the japan radio stations. you know, we have a whole generation of people who found careers in media as a consequence then we served the community and it was a way for students and the community to interact. we need to revive that. we need to extend that to publishing. harvard university press i understand is not active anymore. you know, we need to bring not back in every school that we control needs to have a prius.

i think it is fundamental. we can do -- we can learn how to publish. we can develop independent businesses. we can be entrepreneurial more than ever. technology does allow that these days, desktop publishing, self publishing. distribution is a problem, but we need to come up with their own systems of distribution. our own systems reaching our own people. online shopping is convenient and efficient when you know what you want, but it is no wake to find out what is new out there and you cannot depend on an algorithm to tell you what you should be interested in. you have to inform the algorithm, created for yourselves. our great booksellers have been leaders, cultural leaders in our communities. our stores have been more than stores. they've been cultural centers for us. when a move that cooperated

liberation bookstore down the road on atlantic avenue has passed on, but she is remembered for bringing character to this community and providing a service that was educational and spiritual and sustain this community. the madonna books doors in knox,, the story grew up in nra had one of my first jobs. they are gone, that they need to be remembered and they need to be remembered as models for what we can make happen now in the 21st century. did somalia need to book soaring up into is still in business. he-man stories in business still operating online and doing special events. but his tory johnson, founder of african-american literary book club can tell you, we have lost most of the bookstores we had

even just six years ago. in this vacuum, nothing has replaced that. we have to do better than not. fantastic work is being written in publishing to this going on notice. it is not only the work of self published p. will better going unnoticed, babies and published by big companies like my. publishing people have to stop thinking that diversity and achieving diversity is like aerospace science, you know? we have gone to mars, okay? there are ways in which we can effectively include and bring everybody, marginal communities included to the center of the

business that we do. they need to form a line is with black organizations, other black professionals to hear us, to respect us. black literature lives, black writers and authors as i've said before in other people have said here arguing extort airy work. i am going to name some of the name semi will only be scratching the surface, but i have to name some of these names just in case you are thinking of who you should buy and consider next time. bernice mcfadden, colson, emily wrote itself, the turbo valve, tina mcelroy ,-com,-com ma martha southgate, veronica cham errs, elizabeth nuñez, elizabeth aleksei and her. these are people who won the highest literary prizes. these are people who have bestsellers. perl clegg, jeffrey bernard allen has a new wonderful novel

out. steven barnes, juno diaz, ran aground a, jasmine griffith. their debut novelist. julian royce not too long ago to aipac room the blessings of technology, thousands of other people saw that event online. media corps for, ties the last week, jessica care moore. i am excited for the role that film has played in bringing books back to our attention. i mentioned before 12 years a slave, but there's also the butler based on an article written by bill hagood. tom davis, one of my colleagues at her new 37 inc. pubis