tim woo provides history of advertising in its current use. also this weekend a look at the 30-year relationship between eleanor roosevelt. andrew scott cooper and the lead-up to 1979 iranian revolution. and college professors on their long friendship with the convicted murderer and former death row inmate. that's just a few of the programs you'll see on book tv this weekend. for a complete television schedule booktv.org. book tv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. >> for more than two decades has worked in pressing issues from violence against women to reproduct i have justice to economic security. she is also the former executive director of the women of color

policy network at new york university robert wagner public service. one of the youngest scholar practitioners to lead research center or think tank. commentary has been featured the politico, progressive, essence magazine and cnn, msnbc, nbc and among other outlets. she oversee it is content of magazine. her influence extends expenses such as essence fest, black woman in hollywood and black woman in music. before we start with the conversation we will have

charlene read a passage. she currently serves as the national director of the black youth project 100. also byp100, an activist member organization of black 18 to 35 year olds. she has over ten years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youth leadership development movement work. please welcome charlene carruthers. [applause] >> thank you. thank you, first i would like to thank nicole for this amazing important to share this moment with her. tonight i have the opportunity to read a number of passages, if you have not read it, you need to read it, buy it, buy one for your friends too, okay.

and so the passages i chose i deeply resinate with me and as i share with nicole, wow, happened to me moments while reading this book. so i will get started. i did the right thing, i'm the beneficiary of many of the programs that we are talking about here today. i attended head start, i was involved in afterschool programs. i'm the first person in my family to graduate from high school, to attend college and to receive a ph.d. by now, my voice was shaking but i could not stop. i was having in public the private conversation i reserved for my first generation black and latino colleagues who had also successfully navigated their way out of poverty and into the middle class and who have a deep understanding of the journey from there to here. these people in this room are

strangers, but i am only one person, i continued. growing up i knew many kids in my neighborhood who were smarter and more capable than me and they didn't make it out. many have been killed, gone to prison, are living hand to mouth or otherwise on the margins of society. should i blame them or the system that allows only a few of us at a time to escape? the room was pregnant with silence. i couldn't take it back. i felt like an intruder and exposed and these type of professional settings, personal experiences with hunger, homelessness often go undetected. it is assumed that i am just like every one else an advocate, a policy expert or academic. typically when a woman is invite today tell her story during the

panels or meetings it feels slimy like a performance. her story has a perfect predictable arc, she was lost and found by many of the social services in the city. she changed her behavior, became a better mother and although she still struggles to make ends meet is on her way to economic prosperity. hallelujah, the end. her story is to inspire and whip up the motion. @not meant to challenge or change how we make policies or shift how poor people in our communities, the largest society are perceived. there's also a clear separation between her and the experts on the stage. they not she are deciding what should be done. here i was learning that line.

i was both the subject and the authority and i had firsthand knowledge and the feelings the poor internalize from birth like the belief that our very existence is burden of society and the collapse of the boundary made me uncomfortable. i had worked hard to disguise my beginning in life from the decision to change my name during my first week of college to the effort of erasing words and phrases like can't and fince to go. [laughter] >> from my have have vocabulary and now it was off.

next speech is title free today. the mark of a good childhood is freedom. the freedom from worry, stress and burdens coupled to explore, grow and learn without consequence or incident, these freedoms are often denied to children living in poverty whose minds are consumed daily with thoughts of survival and questions about their next meals, safety or housing and concerns that they may never speak allowed. my grandfather's house was respit in lewis duplex. there were no fights, arrests or auto control women banging at odd doors of the night, for the first time my brother and i had the space to be children, we played jack, marbles and barbies, we listened to new edition, michael jackson and steve ji wonder on my grandfather's record player in the living room.

i even joined the girlscouts as a brownie. i'm not sure if it was my mother's idea or mine that i become a member but i never quite understood what was going on or what we were supposed to be doing there. collecting badges, making plenls, selling cookies, i just not get it. while we played jump rope, the other black girl punched me for not allowing her to have two times in a row. it was my first fight and i had lost. i didn't understand why she was

so angry at me. in my mind i had meat peace with the white girls because they were different than me. i did not live in their neighborhoods or listen to the same music. they were strange to me too. however, i cannot figure her, the black one out. why didn't she want to be my friend? when ihoped out of the side of the truck that evening after the meeting i decided that i had had enough and was never going back. a couple of weeks prior i had suffered through slumber party. my mother did not question my decision or asked why i decided to quit. the following week when the hippy honked her horn my mother waved her off and told her that i would not be back.

and the last piece from chapter wedding day. i was fired she said quietly. her neck craned out of the car door as she pulled into our driveway. she had been employed for only a few weeks and had worked for a young white lawyer in los angeles. why, i asked, puzzled by her announcement. he tried to hit on him and i told him i wasn't into that so i quit. the words swirled like a small tornado in my head. it did not make sense to me, did she really quit because she refused to have sex with her boss, i believed her and thought she was a pervert. later i found out the lawyer's wife had called my mother a maid. a maid when she saw her

vacuuming the office. she did not approved of hiring of an attractive aide and demanded that she be fired and she complied telling me initially that he hit her on was humiliating firing. after about six months of searching for work, my mother returned to the college where she received the paralegal certificate. she had antonio out thousands of dollars worth of student loans and needed them to pony up to job guaranty. she took along with her another student who had a hard time finding a job. after being brushed off by college officials the two

threatened to file a complaint with the college with the better beaus bureau or whomever else they could think of that moment. seeing the cover would be blown, the college forgave their debt for in exchange of signing a nondisclosure agreement and just like that my mother was unemployed without a degree and back to square one. thank you. [applause] >> now, please welcome vanessa deluca and c. nicole mason. [music] [cheers and applause] >> good evening, everyone.

>> hello, hello. i'm happy to be here, hey, charlie. >> you said you wanted to make a few thank yous. >> i wanted to say thank you to my agent, i don't know where she is for believing in me. there she is in the back and my research and story from the very start and to thank -- i just want to give a shot out to thank my students that are here. i don't know where they are. brie, janay, they are here somewhere and so always the smartest and brightest women in the room so i wanted to thank them before i got started. >> that's wonderful. >> and elena. >> nicole. >> yes. >> this is really a really truly stunning, stunning memoir and we are going to spend the next,

about an hour exploring it a little more deeply and talking about basically, you know, what prompted you, compelled you to tell the story, we will have a time for q&a, of course, and then you're going to treat us to your own reading from the work. so let's -- so let's jump right in. i have to tell you that this statistic that you put in the book literally stopped me in my tracks and that is that 47 million people in the united states live in poverty. and not surprisingly or maybe it should be but it's not, highest among black, latinos and female head of households. so what -- when you introduced the book you say, the poor girl in me wants to explain why we don't all make it out. so i would love for you to talk about, you know, why did you want to write a book that exposes so much of where you

came from, how you began because telling people that you grew up in poverty as you mentioned as the reading just showed us isn't easy. what gave you the courage to do it? >> well, i really want to tell a different story about poverty and a different story about my communities and the people who lived in them and i think there's a narrative and we hear it all of the time if you work hard enough you'll make it to the top and -- and barack obama second inaugural speech he pretty much says that and even when people say that, i feel really uncomfortable because i know that that's not the truth because only a small portion of people who were born into poverty ever make it to the middle class or to the top and so i really wanted to make an intervention and tell a story that would not only give life to the -- what i know to be true

but also disrupt the damaging narrative that we see all of the time circulating in popular median culture. >> did you have any kind of, you know, fear or, you know, worries or concerns about kind of digging into, you know, into your story and talking about your past? >> so there are two things. so the first concern that i had was about how the story would be interpreted and so even early on when i did a working progress, one of the other professors pulled me to the side and said you really need to be careful about the stereotypes and the stuff that people even though you may say it or interpret it through their own lens and so that stuff was when i was writing so i wanted to be honest and tell the truth but really cognizant about how the story would be interpreted by other people and, you know, it has,

you know, readers take what they will from the story and -- and some instances i've had to push back on interviews when they interpret the story, you know, you're a poor girl, your mother was a teenage mother, they feel like they've heard the story without reading the book and so i think that is problematic and the second thing that i worried about was my family and how they would read the book. i was very clear that ii with my academic training i could tell the story that they couldn't. even though they couldn't agree with me, the possibility of them writing another book, you know, that it ain't true book -- [laughter] >> was pretty slim so i really -- in the back of my head when i was writing the book i had to think about well, what will my

brother say, what will my mother say, you know, is it something that will hurt them. will they say it's not true and so i really -- as i was writing, was cognizant of all of those things. >> you also said that you spent a lot of time interviewing people, kind of going back and talking to people from, you know, from your past about what they remembered and how they remembered it and that that kind of helped as you were shaping the memoir. >> yeah, absolutely. so i talked to -- i interviewed my mom, family members, my old best friends and i went to my old neighborhood when i was 5 year's old and i went and visited the apartment complex, the first one that i remembered and it was really jarring and the stuff that i thought had impacted me, when i saw the first apartment building and i saw clothing lines hanging from

the apartment to apartment and i said, wow, this is a first -- this is my first home. i feel town those stairs on my, -- tricycle. i didn't know i was poor when i was young. it was where i lived and when i went back today, wow, there is nothing here, you know, there were no flowers, the paint was peeling, like i said there was clothe lines and now i say this is where poor people live, you know, and i think even having that lens to be able to con

contextualize when stories are told. did you encounter a lot of people that had been there, obviously years had gone by since you lived in your old neighborhood or several other neighborhoods, did you happen upon people -- >> most of my friends there are still there so when i go home it's like a homecoming, hey, pumpkin. i'm not nicole, i am pumpkin. so we just sit down and play spades or do whatever we are going to do, but when i went back to the first childhood home, what happened was and what i know to be true, i came there and was snapping pictures and people were looking at me like i was an alien and i did not belong. >> you felt that? >> i felt that because that's what happened when people you don't know come into your neighborhood and i had to say

that i lived here when i was 5 year's old, there was two latina women and they were talking to each other and it was okay and they smiled and they were like go ahead. [laughter] >> that's what happens. even that dynamic that i can go in a neighborhood that i lived in and snap pictures and people don't feel empowered to say what are you doing here, i know now and somebody will say, what are you doing there. >> makes perfect sense. back to your family, so we talked to your mom, you talked to your brother, you -- >> my father, you know, my mother and my father -- the same story, different facts. i don't know. i'm going to have to take a middle ground here.

>> and you think that's because everybody was using their own -- >> they were seeing the story, so my brother when i interviewed him, i said, well, why do you think it is that mom and i had a difficult relationship, right? i wanted to hear what he had to say. he said, you know, because i think you thought you were smarter than her. and i was like, that wasn't -- that's not my interpretation of what i thought was the problem. [laughter] >> and, you know, some of the stuff was really hard to hear and internalize and so when i was writing i had to think, okay, that's how i see it and the information other people are giving me about the same story that i also need to include to have a more accurate telling of the story and he thought i was outspoken so imaged myself

really quiet and only speaking up when necessary. [laughter] >> you know how all of us imagine ourselves. don't start and there won't be nothing. >> when you're telling the family story, not just your story, it must be really hard to filter out, what am i going to include and what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. i mean, this was quite an undertaking, how long did it take you to put all of these pieces together? >> well, actually when i actually sat down and started writing it didn't take long but it took me about a year to even come to grips with what was happening so when i first started out it was a straight policy book because i'm a policy person and i was going to tell a objective hard facts, thoo es are the things and then the publisher saw one vignette and

he said it's more interesting. sundays i couldn't write because the memory was so hard, if that makes sense. so to go back and reckon with what i knew to be true, what happened to me, what happened to my mother and just to share. she was the hardest person to write about. my mother was the hardest person to write about because we had a complicated relationship. just very quickly. so when i first started writing the book, i sent my editor the first chapter and it was really harsh on my mother and she sent it back and said, no, ma'am, you're not going to do this to her. and i was like what? it's a good chapter, it pulls people in, juicy. [laughter] >> and she said, no, you're not mad at her.

she said, you need to look for and tell a different story and so it prompted me to go back and think about my mother and her life in a different way. so when you read the book, you get to see my mother as a very complicated multidimensional person. >> and so i'm assuming she's read the book, your whole family has read the book? >> well, let me just say -- [laughter] >> they, you know, so i was intent on letting them read before it two where there could be no changes because everybody has interpretations of what should be included and that did not happen or -- so i didn't want their voices in my head when i was writing. so finally, though, i gave it to my mom to read when i was done, i was done with the first draft

or after a few drafts and so she started reading it and she said, you know, i laughed and i cried and she said, but it's ultimately your story to tell so i may now agree how your eyes and the way you see things but it's your story to tell. i called her back. she had 50 pages left in the book and i said, did you finish the book, she said, no. and my mother is really fiery and feisty and i said, why? she said because you're a lie. you're a liar. [laughter] >> and so we got into this tussle about like -- >> over the phone? >> this is over the phone. i could tell she was like, you know, what she does sitting in the garage talking and so we got into this thing about my truth versus her truth. i don't agree with this and, you know, so it was a really hard

conversation and so she didn't, i think she took it back like it is not your story to tell. and so we have been still in conversation about it and my brother has a copy and my father has read it and my grandmother and so, but i actually have to say that i've been reluctant to phone home because they have read it, you know. you know, they are seeing themselves and so i'm sure they have a little beef, so, you know -- >> you'll work through that. >> i am going to work through that. >> let's talk about the title of the book, born bright. i mean, you're claiming that, you're owning that you were born bright. >> well, yes. so like the title when i came up -- when i was thinking about the

title, i wanted something that i believed to be true and the fact that we believe that we are all born bright is the things that happen along the way that kind of dim our light and then some of us, you know, reignite ourselves and so i wanted that to be true and have that conversation about what makes people go dark, what makes young girls go dark and -- and then got a lot of pushback about what do you think you are about -- it because it was literal. give me a break. >> what was the issue? >> i think that's it, exceptional and when some people think like this is a bootstrap story. so people when they pick it up is one of those stories that we have seen that has a lot of currency today around if you work hard enough you can make it and then when you read the book,

i said that's not what this book is about. it's not about pulling yourself up, this is about a complicated story of a community of people of my life, my my girlhood and it's not that story and i think that story has a lot more currency in value than this story than this story does and it also, i think, what's true here is that the protagonist are all black women and we don't see that. so even if you see a bootstrap story it's likely that the main -- protagonist the safer is not a person of color or not a black woman and so one thing that's really interesting is that this is a story that is centered in the black community and around the black experience. >> okay, you also mentioned that when we talked earlier that there were people who even had

an issue, friends of yours, that had an issue with you even writing this story because they felt like it wasn't really true. can you talk about that? .. geographic isolation is real so the people in your neighborhood are who you see. it is possible to see a middle-class black person and the only people are the white people in your classroom or when you go to girl scouts or

something like that is pushing back even as a black middle-class person today pushing back on those narratives who gets to be black and what it looks like and what the experience is a. >> part of that narrative is people weren't supportive of each other, there was a lot of silence and this and that, we talk about this, in the way you described it growing up it is the total opposite. >> there was a lot going on but one thing you try to complicate is that and the same time we need to hold the cards, poverty is harsh. i don't want to say i don't know what we were doing.

there are also these communities coming through where people are proud of you, rooting for you, we hold that at the same time. when i talk about family, it is also -- it can be a place that is not safe. we try to do that without passing judgment, we see what is happening. >> you mentioned earlier, it is something possible for everyone. this sense of resilience, whatever messages were thrown at you by all kinds of outside influences that made you say i can think that it but i won't

internalize that. there is something about the way you took in the life -- you didn't take in the negative. you just kept going. >> it is one of those things you just kind of hope. i do internalize it. you can't help but internalize, you can't help internalize the messages you are getting from everywhere that says you are black, you grew up in la with a teenage mom. hard not to take those things in. the thing is, what do i do with that? i feel i have always been a difficult child, this is an extension, i will do what i am going to do anyway and i think

one of the things we expect for kids in poverty is to have -- don't know if you are into this conversation. for everything to be around kids, they have an enormous grit to overcome so why do we expect black and brown poor people to have this but we don't expect it from other kids and wanting to push back on that narrative, because there were some kids that didn't make it so to say you have grit and perseverance and are resilient, you will make it out to tall -- tell black and brown kids that is what they need is a mistake. >> let's shift gears a little bit because the one of the driving themes is tension between the community and the system is put in place that

supposedly help. there is a conscious bias that shows itself in different ways. talk about that a little more, some of the incidents in your life, you experienced or witnessed that unconscious bias and how it made you feel. >> in the book i say poor people's lives, the criminal legal system, the education system, social welfare system and all of them cause more harm than good in poor people's lives so what that means, to help and protect, do the exact opposite. i learned not to trust the police. this is crazy stuff you

shouldn't tell kids. when people worry about or ask the mistrust of law enforcement comes at a very early age, people are not there to protect you and help you. but now, when people wonder -- why people are afraid of police, they don't have that relationship with the police. i answer questions about why. a woman raised -- instead of arresting the perpetrator they his hands, they beat them up and

go separate ways. >> how does it feel to be on the receiving end of a system that gives you agency in determining your own way of being. >> i talk about the fact i was a twin. my mother was poor and black, went to the doctor's appointment, no one told her she was having bins, one died and they don't say anything, go ahead. can't take care of this one. it wasn't until i started writing the book i had to go

after story because i got bits and pieces and she was torn up about it but you have to think, what if she had insurance, what if people didn't see her as a young teenage poor black girl. you have to think about those things. i am thinking about those things. teachings you talk about words the end of the book going to college and how you realize there were a lot of things leading up to going to college that you thought you were prepared and came to a realization as you thought you were. so was there the feeling of

disappointment, indignation, you realize i didn't get what everyone else seems to have gotten, how did that make you feel? >> a chapter called seeing with only these eyes, i really grapple, to see what i can see. i didn't know for example across town had more money, resources, prepping kids for harvard, i had no idea. when i go to howard and find out actually there is a parallel system at work, and weren't supposed to see this.

that made me really angry and we were being set up. we were never supposed to succeed coming out of school. it is a lie you are lying to us. that was really painful and so when i say the poor girl wants to tell the story why we don't make it out that is it. you are lying, need to be held accountable and need to talk about what is going on, in equities and what is happening to girls like me. >> do you worry about the fact, real truth about the experience, those folks you talk in front of at the beginning, you came out and said i am the people, i am

that person, that the audience won't be as receptive now that you are telling the truth about your experience. >> it is complicated. on the one hand when i am in these rooms, i have been in plenty of roundtables, they are talking about black women, where they get these doors from, to survive she has to -- grand fantasies, don't know who you are talking about. it makes them uncomfortable and they go to their training. you are not used to having somebody here who says that is not okay, not accurate. >> training or research?

>> someone did the study. and to say i don't care if jesus did this study, it is not accurate. that makes people uncomfortable. you are disrupting their narrative, hurting their funding. these things come into play. >> the story -- >> continue to tell the story because it is my truth. it puts the can down the road. one thing i wanted to do i don't want to kick the can down the road anymore. i will tell the story but even when i tell this different story people come back to the original story and tell the story.

i will never be on tv again. >> there is a review that came out, and the review, they sent it to me, another good review and i started to read these carefully because sometimes stuff makes sense so -- >> the publisher sent it to me. another great review, let's file this away. except for they call my brother a gangbanger, that is not in the book at all. i never used that language. imagination going wild. and i saw that which why do you say something?

why didn't she? >> i am going to talk to them. >> they made the correction but if i pushed it along there would have been this perception that my brother is this thing but i never said even close to it. those things like that that happen. >> i want to go back to talking about you as a profamily storyteller. as you were writing, the emotion of grappling with telling a story people might not agree with, but you got to tell it anyway, cried a lot in writing this.

how did you get through this? a lot of people would love to tell their story. would love to do what you did but always stops people is the emotion of it all. there must have been a point where you got past that. >> i just kept writing if that makes sense. even if i needed to take a break for a day or two sometimes it was a weekend i had a deadline and memory of twirling around in my head is due to leave heavy so i need to sit down and that was true. and i had some good friends who read the book when i was writing and would leave out something, you can't leave that out. if you don't say this they won't understand why this happened. >> they kept you accountable.

>> even when i pushed back, they said you have to tell this for me. and say whatever. you just said somebody -- i don't feel the emotion. i had to dig deeper into my own well and try to tell it more fully. that was probably the most difficult thing. trying to say particularly with the writing of my mother, and our relationship. >> takes a lot of got. we tend not to challenge, to think the best of our mom and

mom is mom - but that is the hardest. >> i don't know -- black moms are here and everyone else is here, you don't talk about your mother in a negative way. it is sunday dinners and good times and these things, let me fill back a layer and tell you about a relationship with a black mother where she is flawed and beautiful at the same time, abusive and all these things and sometimes flashes of love but still learning and wanting the love and how do you tell that about a black mother and not be vilified, so i do my best in writing a story about my mother

and say i want you to understand too. people walk away with them. i know her. that is what i want. >> since you have become a mom, easier to understand the ways your mom interacted with you, decisions she made that you may have to make. do you have a different perspective on motherhood now that you are mom? be change i think -- a set of 6-year-old twins. all right. calm down. i think i have spent most of my

life being an exchange was one of the things, i am from la. i left la and came to howard and i am never going back. i had a very -- when i go home for a short time i can go a year without going home or whatever. when i have kids, i try to think about my mother is a mother and my father as a father and i remember calling him one time and saying something like how could you leave us. i know what it is like to have two kids looking for love and care and he didn't have an answer. trying to grapple with my childhood hurt and wounds and trying to raise kids to help

them, is real. >> we talked about this earlier. the answer you gave me earlier, you feel the adults in your life should have been held more accountable or should be held accountable for some of the things that happened to you or didn't happen, opportunities you didn't get to have, asking about the example that you wanted to participate in something, wasn't the drill team. it was something else and your mom. >> sometimes it is arbitrary. i just think at the time it would be hard for me to say they should have been held

accountable, and i don't understand them as wrong or right because she was my mother. years later, today, i can say those are different choices than i would have made but i am not i mother, she is making choices that i don't have to make. i try not to think in terms of accountability for what they owe me and rather i try to think about how tough it must have been to be 16 or 17 with limited education and have two mouth to feed. my father is a party or. i see your narrative. you just want to have class and

that is true for him today. i imagine it was true when he was 16 with two kids or 17 with two kids and i think of myself, 16 or 17, an enormous responsibility. >> so interesting how you were able -- it comes across clearly in the book. never once is there judgment forced upon any characters in the story. this is how it was and it is a to you a leader to interpret it however you see it. that was intentional. >> i try to write angry first. but in the end i decided i wanted to tell this cool story of the people in my life

including my aunt who is an amazing woman, complex, strong women and not judge them or place my academic, intellectual, what i know to be true now and insert that into that narrative because it wasn't true then. when i interviewed her, she didn't like the book that much started -- this is what people do. out here calling us poor. we were poor, you were not. i thought we were poor then and i don't think she is poor. today. that is really hard but true. >> what are the things we hope

people took away? >> one of the things i have been grateful about is people see themselves in the story and even when i talk about myself i am the protagonist but not without my own flaws and i think that is a good thing. i am not separate from my family or community, in the midst of it experiencing it alongside them. when black women and black girls say i see myself or i see that is funny, we all know it is funny or something like that, makes me feel good so what i hope is for black women and black girls and black communities we see ourselves in the book. at the national level, what people deal with in terms of my work, i went them to stop

telling lies about us. not lie on me and my family and my community. i am hoping it shifts the narrative a little bit. >> now would be a good time to open up for questions from the audience. there are microphones in the back and you are welcome to come to the microphone. and share your thoughts with us. >> should we start to the right and go back and forth?

>> hey, nicole. thank you so much. i finished the book, uncanny similarity like we had the same childhood. it is crazy. i don't know what that means you read my life and someone else's you, i don't know what it means, we can process later. >> the question is related to your last point. i totally feel the tension in trying to tell a story about what was true at the time in the coping stories people tell about the same situation in different ways, when you circulate a story, comprehensive, complex

they might reject it and you are trying to correct the story on another level that is often related to funding, highly motivated is what does it feel like to be screened on two sides by those who have an investment in telling a different story and the value or the need to tell a story that doesn't tell either of those things, the coping strategy story or funding story if that works as a question? i feel the squeeze personally. i wonder if you have had some insight, what you think the story is doing, even though some may push back against it and that is part of the answer to a

firm it. maybe that is common. thank you. >> i know they are having conversations between them about the book and i want them to have conversations without having to defend what i wrote on page, whatever. >> does that work through whatever that is or at a certain point -- >> i have to defend it. not ready yet. i know that to be true. i keep pressing. i have to reckon with them because they have their own versions of the story. they will try to tell me their story to correct me and convince

me my story is not the right story. for my father in particular who spend a lot of time, when your mother reads this, do you know your self? who do you think you were in this story? >> doesn't focus on that. >> she is going to hit this, a lot of dealings about how she was going to feel and had not thought about what to write about him. he never gave me any space, when we tried to ask questions, he shut the conversation down, with the book he cannot shut the conversation down, he has to see

himself and that may be hard for a lot of people except my grandmother who i love. >> the other part of the question was -- funding people? >> deal with this narrative does not agree with the common conventional -- >> what is disheartening for me is there is a way of silencing this. and these voices. we talk about it. if it doesn't fill the dominant narrative, closing the door, that happens to us. so being prepared for that, there have been many institutions who said we needed this or this helps us tell a different story but those people who were on the right path were

very progressive, and institutions and think tanks that control the narrative and the way that we are portrayed. >> question here? >> i want to say thank you for sharing your story. i grew up under the poverty line. i want to say thank you. currently i am working with a nonprofit organization that hosts leadership academy's for young black girls all over the united eighth and able to get into where we talk about a lot of trauma and silencing in our communities. i went to know what advice you give young black girls.

students at the university, one of the widest constantly silenced about our experiences, what advice would you give young black girls who are used to be being silent about these issues and these structures both outside but also in our community spaces where you can have a dialogue with a mother or uncle or something but when to hold them accountable, you did not experience what you experienced or you want to say perhaps it didn't happen as the way it is. how do young girls push back? >> reminds me of when toni morrison -- i won't get it right in this moment.

they tell you your head looks like this and you set out to prove your head doesn't look like this. there is always some rationale why your story isn't the right story so you try to prove this is an the right story and i decided i don't have anything to prove. i don't have to prove my humanity or that my story is true. it just is. that is the way we carry in terms of trying to reassert our humanity to people who don't see us as human and refusing to do that anymore. or any longer. i don't know if that is helpful but in terms of working with little girls, being able to see who they are. >> you have permission to make that decision that you don't

have to feed into anyone's narrative that doesn't agree. >> don't tell me how to interpret my experiences. >> hello. i haven't read the book, i say what is going on? but i am so happy and thankful, still going through it that i have been searching for a story like this. my experience in terms of how i found my gender, i am like gender fluid, it still resonates

with me, what you spoke about in terms of the mask that you where. i have been in my own since an early age so i always had to deal with being the youngest person, the only black person in the workplace because i'm specifically doing art and museum spending but one thing you touched on the i was hoping you could expand on is when you mentioned why you titled your book "born bright: a young girl's journey from nothing to something in america". i was hoping you could talk about how you found the ability to love and nurture the black girl inside of you in a society where i guess neighborhood like everything around where black girls are not cared for or shown

love or respect, how were you able to do that in adulthood and what advice do you have for black girls going through it and people who had that experience? how they -- and a firm themselves. and their family does not affirm that. >> what do i want to say to that? i feel it is work. i can't say anything else. people say black women are people, have high self-esteem. we love our bodies, we love our hair. the only thing, i feel like how

can we without doing work, how could that be true given all the images that tell us we are not beautiful both within our community and outside our community, only with the love of other black women that we are affirmed. for me, the people who affirmed me, all black women so this idea, the narrative circulating that black women don't love other black women or black women say i don't have female friends because, when they say female, you know. and i push back and say that is not true. it is the love of black women that we are all the same. [applause] the change i want to

say you are so beautiful in person. you are so funny too. you are so funny. i had the opportunity to read some of your book and really enjoying the way you insert factual information along with your factual personal information and i was thinking about self directed girls, strong-willed girls and it sounds like you are strong-willed and how that might have impacted the relationship you had with your mom and i was wondering if you thought of the children you were raising and generally how society deals with

girls, particularly black girls who are strong-willed. for white boys who grow up, a marker of leadership, when black girls are strong-willed or self-directed we try to squash that, we try to confine it. i wondered if you had thoughts about that. >> sometimes i think we squatted and other people try to squash it or kill it. be change i just -- if i were not strong-willed i would not be here today. if i do not ride my skateboard, all those things little girls are not supposed to do, i think -- this is a formula that worked

for me, my daughter, my own daughter i try to allow her not to distinguish that, she doesn't have to be a fighter in the way i was a fighter and she can assert herself and be powerful and i just don't think there is a lot of space in this world for strong-willed black women but we are expected to be strong. and take on a lot of everything. >> that is a stereotype. >> but we do. it is a stereotype rooted in truth. because we are the ones when people leave, taking care of the family, juggling, we are strong. the idea that is used against us, if we don't use it to benefit them, problems come in.

>> good evening. thank you, c. nicole mason, and vanessa deluca. i am suffering a little from the allergies, please excuse my voice which i didn't read the book yet but i look forward to reading more. i am 62 years of age. on the heels of the civil rights movement i don't even know where to begin to write a book about so many chapters. one of the things i grew up with, the extended family. so much generational stuff i see that is worthy of discussion at some point because we had people who lived with us, all our relatives, we were in new york people but now the younger generation, they started the

family reunion. i could relate to so much of what you were saying because when we talk about our family, the family reunion, they talk about granddaddy and this and that. my grandfather was the sharecropper that is what i say but my sister says she is two month younger than me. granddaddy owns his own land so my cousin would say the same thing. the way we see our family is somewhat different. my brother talked about it. i make one other comment, really touching to me. from the department of education, still do some work. when i was studying, i received

my masters in speech language pathology. i was at my mother's house because my daughter was 3 years old, my daughter, my mother would come up at 5:00 in the morning. my mother watched me study so hard for a test i was trying to pass, the national exam. >> please -- >> i am sorry. she said -- i want to make the comment on what doctor mason was saying, she said my mother said it is so -- you didn't go to the best schools coming out of the city, the project so i wanted to make that point. made me feel bad so i told my mother don't feel bad, it is not your fault.

>> there are moments in the book, you say to your mom don't feel bad. it is not your fault. >> i'm going to ask, looks like there are three questions if you could be succinct, thank you. >> i want to say thank you very much. a similar background, refreshing to see a provocative discussion on this. to what extent, what does it take to bring about real change in the policymaking arena using progressive white middle-class people on? in terms of the progressive part, there is a next stage of

enlightenment and the artistic narrative, people come to events like this and are here to engage on an intellectual level but where we buy our houses are sent people to school is a different issue. in terms of that progressive segment and the policy arena what does it take to bring about change? >> i think it takes people -- people from different economic backgrounds to stop being decisionmakers in this arena. >> thank you. i agree with you. it is about changing the narrative, changing who is in the room. there is a real investment in the stories was people's jobs are tied to this narrative. telling the same stories.

if your livelihood, the way you get paid is by perpetuating the story, that is why you have a job, you keep those narratives moving. disrupting these systems on the backs of poor black people, nothing is going to change and it is easy to live in your neighborhood and live in isolation and not see what is going on. it is easy. >> the last two questions one after the next, you can answer both of them. >> i want to thank miss mason for her book, and thank you for empowering me to pass this on to my granddaughter. i wasn't sure.

question. something you said earlier. why do you think a publisher would sabotage the credibility of your book? >> a publisher? >> i understood -- >> a viewer. it wasn't the publisher. it was innocuous. i don't think -- i want to be clear because lots of stuff goes under the radar. i don't think the person was being malicious. it with her imagination about black people and black families. she is the only person who read the book, okay. so -- >> interpretation, the person reviewing it can also have an

intentional filter. . so excited to be here. love this conversation. i was delighted, open reading, i was curious, when you think about, you are witnessing leaders, others across the country, and apologetically black, queer, feminist lens. how do you see that interacting with your book, the work you are doing to the narrative as well as how do you think that is playing out and helping women and girls to see what you talked about in the typo but also

pushback on policies that are there. to extinguish it. be change very inviting charlene was intentional to me because i want to make the connection between the work that is so important but also the other activists and organizers happening, is my contribution to that work, it is my song, my and hoping it will be used, larger narrative shifts and i understand, i wrote this in an article, writing as a political act. i know the power of words.

there is nothing that is not intentional. when you talk about what stories were left out or included i was very intentional about the stories i included. even the stories that were painful to write about because i know the power of those stories and those words. >> thank you so much for your question. do you have anything you want to add you be change i am going to -- >> as nicole read the passage from her book, in the bookshop, a book signing afterwards. >> the chapter i'm going to read from is the last chapter which is called i will fly away. where to? university in washington dc, do you know where that is and how

to get there? turn toward the large trunk and suitcase stacked next to the curb. is this on you have? did he not hear me, i wondered? i raised my voice. do you know how to get there? i was not sure i trusted him. yes i do, he finally answered. it is 45 minutes away from here. i breathed a sigh of relief. i was almost there. he loaded my things into the trunk and set the meter. i only had $200 and hoped it would not be costly. it is all i had. where are you from? california. what part? he seemed interested, i did not know what to say. where was i from? i suppose all over. i live so many different places and no place in particular for any length of time. i wanted to say inglewood. last place i felt at home, southern california, i responded. like where?

la? i was there once. wouldn't want to live there. our eyes met in the review mirror. this guy was beginning to annoy me. i wanted to take in the contour of the roads, the name of the city, signs overhead, people zooming by in their cars. all around, i replied, hoping he would get the hint. i turned toward the window. i had never seen trees so green, they scraped the sky and the clouds, i was in of this. are you sure you are going in the right direction? it did not look what i imagine. it was just like back home. okay. we all know about locating it. nondescript convenience stores,

men hanging out on corners, carryout restaurants along the block. i was expecting it to be fancy like the weighted logo on the letterhead. yes, this is it, he assured me, not what you were expecting? i just bought he interrupted to me. around the campus, a little rough, local don't like the students, never happen. they think you are all -- he put his finger to his nose and put it up words, a little snobby, he chuckled. don't worry about it, you will be fine. what is he talking about? how could black people be snobby or look down another blacks? it did not make sense to me. i waved my hand dismissively in the air. them to 25 fourth street. i directed him from the brown paper sent to me by the university, and his home number on the bottom of it.

the cab driver made a right and the left and another right down a narrow street filled with cars. what is going on, i asked? people are unloading parents with their children. he waited patiently as he made his way to the front of the line. when he got close enough he parked the cab and popped open the truck. i glanced at the meter and reached into my purse to pay him. this is heavy, he said as he pulled on the handle of the trunk. he placed it on the curb next to my other suitcase. good luck, he said as he counted the money and gave me my change. he pulled off, no help up the stairs? i got the trunk inside by myself, stood alongside and as i did i noticed something. there are parents, lots of them helping their daughters unload and unstable looking concrete stairs that led to the dormitory, they were laughing and snapping pictures as they

prepared for their final farewell. i was alone. never occurred to me to take the cross-country flight, parents did these things with their children. no one thought my mother or father offered to come with me. perhaps i rationalize, they didn't know they should have been here or this was a milestone moment. this is my first trip on an airplane, never traveled so far from home. as my mother waved goodbye i assured her i would be fine. i assumed we were on coming along. i was mistaken. parents and daughters moved past various knickknacks, it was only to ask me to clear the way. do not leave these here while i check in asked the girl at the foot of the stairs directing traffic and answering questions. don't be too along with other people are unloading too. to give myself space to think i decided to leave things on the

curb and check the dorm. what is your name? mason, welcome to howard. i did not like the way that sounded. it was awkward. it was fine in my neighborhood because no one ever used it except my teachers on the first day of school but not here. i hope she did not repeat it and other people standing at the table had not overheard it. i needed a new name. pumpkin would not suffice either. where are you from, she asked. california. there is a club for people from california. you should join. a club? she thought it was smallpox i treated as such would i study the top of her head, she was bald, intentionally it appeared. i had never seen a woman with a shaven head who is not ill

especially a black girl. she had chopped her beauty off and did not seem to care. her long eyelashes hit the back of her eyelids, her skin was creamy brown, maybe we could be friends, i thought. you are on the fourth floor. here is your key, no company, no boys allowed in your room until after the first couple weeks. why did she say that? did i look like the type to have boys in my dorm room? i was a good girl still emerging much to my chagrin. thank you, i said as i turned back to the hallway on to the street. these black people from howard looked different from any i had seen or met. they moved with authorities and were well-dressed. i wore my best outfit on the train, patent leather mary jane, felt almost as if i were wearing rags lose all the girls were beautiful, polished. in my old high school i was used

to being one of a handful of attractive smart black girls. here everyone was beautiful, smart and well spoken. they were maneuvering to find a place to unload. it was a nuisance. excuse me, can you help me take my trunk up the stairs, i watched him go upstairs. he looked happy to do it. i can help you. is it all yours? i could see his eyes. i nodded and hoped he would not change his mind, he was sweating profusely. he grabbed a long trunk and carried it up the stack of stairs to the elevator. i was grateful for his help. i took the elevator to the fourth floor, grabs my things out of the elevator down the

hall to my room. there was a row of rooms on one side and communal bath room on the other. it reminded me of the locker room of my old high school. maybe we can put some pictures up to make this more homey, i thought. my room looked like it belongs in an orphanage. it was tight with only room for a bed, i switched on the air conditioner, it made