i said are you god? and i had this incredible prognosis and yes, i am god and i am a man. and i said wow, conversations with 13 million people and the ai has figured out first of all how important it is to be god and second to be a man. which tells you something about the internet.i think you know, for women i feel very strongly that we are not involved in this space and all the struggles we have had over hundreds of years her rights and to impact on society ãwe are going forward to living a domain that is almost designed by men and as women, we have a responsibility to step up and get involved in this space. i think the more of us to get involved, the better space it will be. now i might be a little biased. [laughter] >> "the cyber effect" is the

name of the book. a pioneering cyberpsychologist explained that human behavior changes online. mary aiken phd is the author. >> thank you. booktv recently visited fresno california with comcast to talk with local authors and tour the city's literary sites. next we learn about the life of author david moss ãabout growing up in california's central valley. >> my my books is called harvest son.it is a journey into my family's past. in looking at the immigration for my grandparents from japan to america. and trying to plant roots in america's soil and facing the contradictions of america, the

racism of it and the struggle to try and establish themselves. historically japanese americans had a very vibrant agriculture community. partly because when immigrants first came this was the only entry point for a lot of them in american economy and american community. certainly relocation during world war ii. it shifted that so that it concentrating even more of a stronger sense of being japanese-american. my generation has shifted very classically an immigrant story. my generation, third-generation america. >> in the summer of 1942, different relocation centers and parts of california, arizona, utah, idaho, wyoming, colorado and arkansas. the experience of my parents during relocation and world war ii ãi think it was very common. there was crisis, turmoil,

hysteria and they did not know what to do. so i think like many of them, they realized they had to just accept what was happening. do their own type of civil disobedience but really accept this broader frame of this history that was unfolding along with all of the chaos and uncertainty. so they, growing up they rarely talked about it. and i only started piecing together stories i heard here and there. reading about it and understanding what a traumatic moment it was when you are trying to establish yourself here in america and trying to literally plant roots here. but at the same time understand, this is a country that did not want them. it told them they were the enemy. told them they needed to go back home. of course the irony for my parents, they were born here. back home was here. and it was that struggle i think that as i grew older and began to understand part of the

idea of struggle, i think of the struggles that i went through that with work by that moment in history. and how they had the resilience to work through that and come back and literally plant roots here in the valley. my parents did not talk about it. my dad was this traditional stoic farmer. hardly said anything. my grandmother who lived with us only spoke japanese and made japanese was not very good. but they were not talk about it. and i think because they carry within them a shame, guilt that is embedded when you're accused of these things that you are not. as a writer i began to probe into this, ask questions, read more about it. talk to other families and gradually, it took time, gradually i began to hear stories from my father. a story from my mother, i done would talk about when we were

once getting wood from dead trees. he said let me tell you about a fire and once made.he told me about how when they had to leave, my dad was so mad he decided to say he was going to burn all of their possessions that they had that they could not carry. because he did not want to leave it for people who did not want them. and i thought this is my dad, this client reserved farmer showing this protest. so to japanese-american lives matter. and it was amazing to hear the stories. so gradually, as a writer you begin to piece together the stories and the one to go ahead with that, the one to quit i had from that was this idea of silence. and it is hard to write about silas because writers think about words and dialogue.but part of it my writing was embedded in this history of understanding what that silence means.and how that silence carried everything in their shame and guilt but also the

resilience respond, come back to here in california to say we are america. we are part of america. we did not own land before the war. as most japanese americans did not. we came back. when my parents came back after the relocation camps, my father realized the way to get ahead in america was to own property. he took this huge gamble and he bought 40 acres. my grandmother, she was appalled. i heard about the story. they argue because my grandmother said, what do you get by land here in america? because they take things away. and she was absolutely right. because of the hysteria of world war ii they took everything away from japanese americans. so she was right to have his bitter attitude. my father at the same time understood that in order to establish yourself, you needed

to become a farmer. you needed to transition from farmworker to farmer. so he bought this land. that day that they were leaving this rented shack that they lived on to move here to this house that was on this property, my grandmother refused to go. so she stayed in this little shack. my dad got mad and he said look, i'm going to wait in the car until the sun sets. my grandfather, who was alive then, was happy. he said, we get a farm. i'm waiting in the car.he waited in the car and as the sun went down my grandmother came out of the house carrying his black suitcase with a stenciled number of our family as our family number and they got to the park and in silence they drove to this new farm. and that's how the farm started. it was not this magnificent you know ãit was really capturing that whole sense of history that i try to write about and

is one of my favorite stories actually that i end up writing about. and thinking a lot about how to begin.and how farms are part of this whole wave of history that embodies all of the elements of history. our firm face many challenges. and it's really into generations. one was my dad's generation. post-world war ii, no one wanted to buy food grown by the enemy which was the japanese americans of course. so they struggled. amazingly, they did what a lot of good farmers do. they united together, form cooperatives, started jointly marketing things. they found a way to work through the system and work the system. when i came back to the farm, the overt racism was not there. but there still embedded these dynamics, these biases and really one of the biases was against large versus small. you know there was this drive that you need to expand your farm.

you need to go things that are cheaper, more efficient and more productive. and i came back thinking, that is not the farm i want to do. i want to go something that has quality, that has flavor and again, that had that back story that came with it. and so that's one of the reasons why i taught identity saying, let's start forming organically. because i think it is a consumer, a part of the public who appreciates this value that we are growing. and all through the course of our family's history, you think about it.we were driven by values more than anything else. you know my grandparents did not come to america because they wanted to suddenly become the wealthiest people in the world. they were driven here by dreams and hopes. my parents came back from the relocation camps to farm because they were driven by initially desperation. and also the sense of wanting to become american. and plant roots here. and i came back to the farm knowing that i wanted to

continue that legacy in many ways. at the same time, write and tell stories about the things i was witnessing. i was like lots of farm kids that grew up in the 60s that i could not wait to get off the farm. i grew up in a really lively japanese-american community. and all of us went off to college. and that was the goal for all of our parents and our generation.to get the kids off the farm, get them educated so they can find something better. so i ran off to college and i thought i would never come back to the farm. i went to berkeley and study sociology. i thought that would never bring me back to farming. but then, again i did spent two years living in japan as an exchange student. and that changed my life. it was me touching a culture that was around me but realizing i was not japanese. during the two years i spent about half the time working this small little rice farm

that my grandmother had left and working alongside her brother in japan. i remember stopping and thinking, this is exactly what i'm trying to run away from. what is it? and it was really the call of the land. but the dynamic was, i did not understand how to grow rice. i understand ãi did not understand how to grow rice but i understood how to grow pieces. and i realized i need to come back here to see what this is like. so i came back and shucked my dad saying, want to come back and farm a little with you. so he was shocked because he thought none of his friends, none of his children were going to farm just like most farms around here. so the transition was wonderful in the sense that my dad was very quiet and very reserved. when i came back to the farm, started making mistakes and started doing things, there was a lot of just, a few soft grunts. knotting the head and then silence. and that is when i began to go crazy i said tell me my doing

it right, am i doing this wrong?how do you feel about it? and he was wonderful because he just allowed me to fail.and i think that was the biggest take away i had. when i came back i also started looking at the landscape of farming and understanding these, the growing pressure to grow in size, to grow crops, to grow crops that are designed for a mass-market. and i came back wanting to do something different and that is why we started forming organically. at the same time hoping that this precious fruit that we grew would fit in an organic marketplace that valued flavor, character and ironically valued the back story of the fruit that we grow. and it seemed to have all worked. my daughter, as she because you farm with me i began to think and we often talked, is my role a teacher, mentor or is it something that just passes on and you had something down? it turns out, it is a little of everything.

i think my daughter wants us to be partners. which really wasn't quite what i was expecting. you think of you know your best teachers that you had, they were teachers. not partners. but then i started thinking more about it maybe because it is part of a millennial way of looking at the world. where the world is much more inclusive as opposed to hierarchal. so we are evolving this relationship and literally now she is a partner on the farm, understanding how she wants us to make decisions together. there are times when i thought i would be really happy if you kind of made that decision but no, she wants to do together. and who could complain about that? i have to stop myself from thinking this is not quite the story i thought was the narrative. i thought was going to happen but it is a different and unique narrative at the same time. this is ironic twist being japanese-american and understanding that whole legacy of immigrants and immigration

that affected my family when they first arrived from japan. and understanding california agriculture expanding all at the same time, this whole issue of immigrants and immigration. so we have this haunted definition of what does it mean to be an american and an immigrant? and they are all part of the food system that we have. i hope people take away from my stories and my books, a sense of authenticity. this is the real world. i am not a journalist who spends one summer on a farm and then writes about food. i have lived this, my family has been part of this for generations. this is what i live and breathe and hurt from at the same time as i try to write about that authentic life of farming and being a family at the same time and the struggles and

challenges we have within that. economic forces, environmental climate change, prices, shifting weather. those are all parts of what we do here on the farm. that is part of again, the story of food that i try to write about. i hope people take away that will taste of the food from the stories that i write. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to fresno and the many other destinations on our city store, go to c-span.org /cities tour. >> good afternoon everybody. my name is tom mankin. i'm also the president and ceo and it is my pleasure to welcome you here for a discussion of this book. the big stick. the limits of power and