'40s, and 'other 5s. so the wealth gap is attributable to this residential segregation. >> author julie lythcot-hais, speaks about growing up in biracial america. >> hello, welcome to book people. we're so glad you're here tonight. just a couple of reminders. all the books are downstairs, andually is -- and julie is doing a signing at the very end. so buy your book jounce stairs and then come up and she can do the signing for you. please tomorrow silence your

cell phoenix, and -- cell phones, tonight we have something special going on, c-span is recording. so, when we do the q & a if you'll just raise your hand, we'll bring over a microphone for you. and so we can just get it nice and loudly recorded for the show. so, i'd like to crow dues 0 toe you julie lythcott-haim, about how to raise an adult, has ba from stanford, a msa in writing from california college of the hearts. tonight she is their read from her new book, "real american." please become -- please welcome julie. [applause] >> hi, everyone, wow, it's so cool to be here at book people.

so cool to be near austin, texas. i bring you greet little from the san francisco bay area, we think of you often and always. anney, thank you for introducing me and have you at this marvelous story. it's good to see friends, former students and fellow authors, jessica, so lovely to see the people i know and recognize. my former students. but also strangers, because when strangers come out to see you, that feels pretty awesome. so those who have no idea who i am, thank you for coming. while i have the microphone on this book tour, which is with a book on race, and finding my voice, i've decided that whenever possible, which has turned out to be always, i'm going to step aside for a few minutes and make an opportunity -- give an opportunity to a younger writer.

so, i want to introduce taylor williams. taylor is a 16-year-old junior at round rock high school and taylor is a writer. taylor has come of poems she is going to share with us. when i put out the call it's asking a young writer to respond to the prompt of being the other in america, which is kind of broadly what my book is about. so, taylor williams, come and share your work with us. thank you. [applause] >> hi. okay. so, this my first poem that i wrote and it's called "pretty" and i wrote it to basically break down the word by pretty "and show it for what it really is. my dear, don't let them call you pretty. people used to keep you down. to keep you contained. to keep you hopeless. because i know just how dangerous you are. you see, it's a spiderweb word.

it clings to phrases like, you're pretty for, you're pretty for a black girl, a white girl, a short girl, fat girl, skinny girl, tall girl, a girl we short hair, long hear, a girl with crooked smile, girl with brown eyes. hand from phraseses like you were pretty before. you're pretty before you cut your hair and you were pretty before you started wearing those clothes. it attaches to phrases like you're pretty because. you're pretty because you have long, blonde hair. it grips to phrase like you're pretty before. you could be pretty if it weren't for that scar and you could be pretty if you were hit bay car. take the edge off of this word, i ask, break it down, so we can all see p-p-p-re, like a

prejudged notion is a simple misconception or abnormality. so if you, little butterfly, hey been trapped in a wed of unannable prettiy, suspend around a silky strain of white lies and ambiguity, felt the spider sendom trying to bleach you're rings. if you felt the sting of a prejudiced notion, drowning you in a web but feels more like an ocean i ask you to start a commotion. i'm not a victim of this word, you see, because i have never been and never will be pretty. some will be at a loss, pretty is the only word they can see. their sensors are not wired to feel and for that they have my pity. over the words they cannot begin to hear. so they decide to call me pretty. thank you. [applause]

this is my second poem, and i call it "bang." bang, you may not have heard it due to the white supremacy -- white cotton swabs you have plugged in your ear, and you mate not have felt the scorching hot bullet as is pierced its way through a body and you may not have smelt the stench of a dead body and didn't hear about the it none beau is was more important to success the speed of the air, not the air -- and you may not hear burt on the national news channel because it because more orbit 0 to discuss a sky crepe bill to heavens rather than another black man or woman being brought down to the ground do not beseech this

matter. as if we are funnel enough to believe that every single bullet that was hit bay black man or loaded not with prejudice but justice, dumb enough to believe a bullet accidently fired. as if mothers and fathers of black sons and daughters don't have to tell their children to bite their tongue so the don't bite the lull about, because the silence of one black voice in the face of humanity is better than the silence of a memorial service. because if you do not choose to acknowledge that an entire race is being killed because of the color of their skin, then you do not stand in the way of those who are trying to protect their kin. and this is not just a bullet thing. little brown boys and little brown girls look to mirror to be seen because they in the only time they see themselves on the big screen is when they're hyped up in the ghetto and we want to

be val -- valedictorians and ceo. we strive to thrive, not just survive. we wont doctor by our names, not dead on arrival. there's a body on the ground with a bullet to the head and i wonder how many more with heave to be bled. hush, bang, hush is not seen nor heard and that's why i use these words, and you can see it, especially in the youth today, there's a fight in their eyes and it burns with the pain of the lies that have been fed to them, like a prize, because they've had the most unfurniture demise of being born with the gift that is wise. what will you do? every bang starts with a spark. will you be the spark that ignites is us all or will you be the hush that lets us fall. so consider yourself educated. more than your history class will ever allow.

thank you. [applause] >> thank you, taylor, my goodness. give taylor another round of applause. [applause] >> can you imagine the joy i had going around the country, getting to meet young people like taylor? you just knocked it out of the part. i if a a gift, a signed cop -- copy of my book and an honorarium to show my respect for you as an artist and a writer and i believe in you. thank you. >> thank you. >> okay so you guys, i wrote this book -- i'm 49. going to be 50 this month. and i tend to tell people these days i came to live out loud and i finally can. it took me this long to enhasn't a self is could locate and love in america, and upon arrival, at self love, i began to write it

down. i wrote this book. most books have -- all books probably certainly works of fiction, many nonfiction books, have an arc, those who study writing, teach writing know we're supposed to grab the reader, hold on to them, bring them on a journey with suspense or conflict, and reach them to this point, and then there's a climax and we resolve it. my book has more of a pit. okay? if that standard arc of a book is like a letter a, this book has a letter v. the nine parts of it are, it begins like this and american childhood, becoming the other, desperate to belong, self-loathing, emerging, declaring, black lives matter, onward. tonight i'm just going to read from across the book andive you glimpses where i am in those

sections and then we'll take questions at the end. so this is a reading from real american. it begins like this. in a leadup to the 2008 presidential election, person so sewn na stepped to forefront, that of the real american. these real americans found a voice in their candidates, glue number, became a mob who raised slogans, signs, fists, and arms, who longed to make america great. normal. regular. white. again. these newly embold end rural americans issue angry orders to the rest of us. if you don't like it go back to where you came from. there is no back to where i came from. you stole my homeland from me. me from my homeland. i mean. i don't even know where it is.

literally. i came from silvi. i am neonatal yesterday, unpaid, unrepentant damages of one've america's founding crimes. i come from people who endured the goods of slavery, reconstruction and jim crow, who ban to find a place recently amid strides toward affecting a more perfect union of liberty and justice for all. i am silvi's great, great, great, great granddaughter. silvi was a slave who worked on a plantation in a late 1700s in charleston, south carolina. the harbor town how to which close to one in two american slaves entered america over the centuries. silvi bore three children by her master, joshua eden. by which i mean he raped her. there is no consent in slavery. i come from people who survived

what america did to them. ain't i a real american? when the amorphous mop harrumphs about the needs and rights of rural americans they don't picture me. people like me. but as anyone more a product of america than those formed by america in angry war with it in the forming dodges speak over liberty and justice for all, plagued me for much of my young adult life. i'm so american. it hurts. this is the section, an american childhood. just trying to give you a glimpse of what my early childhood was like. a year later we moved to reston, virginia. a planned community located just out of washington, dc, boasting a sort of utopian commitment to racial and socioeconomic diversity. president jimmy carter appointed daddy to be his assistant

surgeon general with responsibility for running the health services administration in the department of health, oiled indication and welfare. it was 1977. on a school field trip to our nation's capitol with my fifth grade classmate is felt a swell of admiration for america and a surge of pride to be american as astared up at the gleaming white washington monument, heard my voice echo is a walked around lincoln and his chair, trace mid fingers over the blondes -- bronze blacks. we were caught the jumble of people in their gray trench coats trying to hurry down sidewalks to and from jobs. i stepped to the side so they could pass. important people worked in this city. i knew my daddy was one of them. back at home in reston i had black friends, indian friends and jewish friends as well as white friends. there was even another black family on my street for the very first time in my life. with a daughter named amanda. amanda was a few years younger

than me but we could both sense immigrant was very important to our parents that we become friends, and we did become friends, genuinely, telling each other our secrets, playing board games, and sequestersterring ourselves behind locked doors to review the girly magazines our foughts thought the kept hidden. i felt a mix of wonder and awe as we pawed throw pages pages of creamy skin. i was a student government representative, sold girl scout cookies and tied a thick yellow ribbon to the tree at our curb in honor of me american hostages in iran. i adored daddy. he was 50 when is was born and my childhood coincided with the heyday of himself career, which began against all odds amid the racial hatred of the segregated jim crow south, oklahoma. i was his last child of five. the product of his second marriage to my mother, and i

knew from the way his eyes twinkled whenever he looked at me that he loved me no matter what. he gave in the a variety of necknames. old sport, knucklehead, which sounds crude to my grown ears but then spoken in the butter of his baritone, it felt like melted love. he never had to call for me twice. i came running every single time. when i was little and skinned my knee, heed pull me up on his tall lap, kiss me and ask with all serious new how i was going to become miss america with that scar. i didn't know then that no black woman had yet been crowned miss america and no black woman would be crowned miss america until 1983. instead i heard that i was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful girl heed ever seen. we all calmed him daddy, even my mother. he was for mittable, commanding, gruff, loving, and funny.

i hung on to his every word, whether it was baby, bring me my cigarettes, or a well-placed retort to the news recite mid anchorman on tv. daddy was the protagonist. the lead, daddy was the sun. beauty pageants were my thing. i wanted to be president. by the end off my junior year in high school, when we were back in wisconsin, was elected vice-president of my floors the third greer a row and the fall of my senior year the student council elected me profit the governing body in an all-white high school. i was selected for bad jerry girls state. a program for kid interested in policy and politics held the summer after high school graduationed and was elected senator there i went on to be one of four president odd move class at stanford university and one of four elect class leader offed my graduating class at harvard law school. i was on track to live the american dream through hard

work, big dreams and a bit of luck to become whomever i wanted. mine was a very american childhood, and with a buttress of money and influence that came from my father's professional success, it was also a childhood of material comfort that set me up for a privileged life. the section is now becoming the other. daddy never liked the fourth of july. i atoward the parade, songs, flags-neighborhood barbecues, explosion of firecrackers and the smart looks on everyone faces they reeled three forwarding that our country was better and by extension we the people were better than the rest of the world. my mother was the one to inform me hoff daddy's pound about the fourth and the did so in a whispered sideways glass kind of with a with some explanation understood it had something to do with daddy's past, his

experiences, his blackness. her silent why bespoke pain to pain follow discuss. i never asked. i think think i was black in the ways he was. thought america was beyond all that. i was wrong. looking back over the years of even my earliest childhood, the clues were everywhere. back in new york, a community i lived in when i was two through seven, aid begun to sense that something might be wrong with people with dark skin. i lacked the language to describe it and the intellect to analyze it but i felt the chill of it in my bones, the red hot heat of its surging up the back of my neck when i was out and about with daddy. daddiy was 6'2" and lean, night, tiledly coiled afro, and skin that wag dark and cinkley like the top layer of brownies.

he would take me with him on an errand in town and every now and then to an event in manhattan. hold his hand walking down the local street or a bustling city sidewalk issue noticed that some strangers stared at him with eyes that steamed like caldron,s every they could brand him if he dared to look them in the eye. i'd look up at my daddy for reassurance, immediate withing my small brown eyes to know what was going on, but he gripped my hand tighter, kept his eyes focused straight ahead, pursed his lips and kept walking. when i walked down the statement streets with my white mother, nobody steamed at her that way. the glances she got as a white woman holding a tiny hand of a small brown child were four more subtle. it track lot longer for me to discern and label those looks as pity and disdain. by choosing to mary my father,

she'd crossed the line. by choosing to have me. in fifth grade, at lake elementary cool? virginia, one of in white fends not gulled into theft gifted and talented group. she was smart but no smart are than i was, i knew, and now she was getting to do cool projects and puzzles but not me. wasn't home and mentioned it to my mom who came to me with my teacher, a days later. polanski was not persuaded. so my mom escalated to the principal, this time insisting i be tested. they brought in someone from the district to give my an uq test, mailed the results to our house. mom thought i wasn't watching when she opened the envelope, read the results, and squirreled the letter away in a drawer. i was put in gifted group soon after, and shortly after that mr. polanski announced to our entire class, apparently tickets to be gift is for your parent to meet with the principal.

but in the privacy of an afternoon home alone, i i'd peeked the letter. the raw score was 99th 99th percentile. as my teacher stood smug at the front of the classroom, the first time in my young life i uttered a very see silent, fuck you. i'm now in high school in wisconsin, my all-white school, 1200 kids and me. i spent a lot of time at my best friend diana's house and she at mine. one day during sophomore year when i'd gone over to her house to hang out, i found her in the basement rec room matching a movie. gone with the wind. she looked up at me and said hello and the turned her gaze back to the television screen and sighed like southernbell. wouldn't it heat been great to live become then? no. why not?

because i would have been a slave. oh, but i mean if you weren't black. but i am black. >> i dope think of you as black. i think of you as normal. i was on an exchange trip to france with a different school. i stayed behind after the language lesson one die ask the professor a question and found myself walk back to youth hostile alone. i came upon a small park where a little white girl warts kicking the gravel out of sher shoes. as i neared, she looked up at in and spoke. why are you black? decade later i would read the work of an author who had a humiliating encounter with a

little white french girl, but on that day as a a-year-old walking through paris way as lone with just my rudimentary french and my fragile sense of self. why are you black and she demaintained. because i am lucky. , i told her. i didn't believe it. but i wanted to. i hoped my words would send this little stranger home with some big questions, maybe they'd even fucker up a little bit. i didn't mild. as far as i was concerned she was every white person who ever questioned myright to exist to be a regular person going through my day without delaying scrutiny of fascination of others i didn't want to give this girl a lesson in an to the log i. wanted to shine. i wanted to shine so fucking much that this little white girl would tike me me, ache like me. realize thread are other people here. that bring their kits to book store to hear the f-word.

they're escaping the world series and they did not want to hear the f-word. it is now senior year. i am the president of the student council at my all-white high school. the cosby show debuted with the shore's father a doctor like daddy and the middle daughter looking kind of like me, there's final a texasal family on the tv screen that resembledded mine. ways glued to it every thursday evening, reading for guidance how to be someone like me. i turned 17 are the re-election of ronald reagan mitchell best friend made me a huge locker sign filled with words from tiger squeeze other teen magazines. she woke up early to get to school on time to tape it to my locker before my arrival. we did this kind of thing for each other.

her birth was early in november and i festooned her locker two weeks before. entered the school and headed left to my locker which is in bank reserved for seniors near the administration offices, conveniently close to everything. even above the din of student voices and slamming lockers could hear my heels clicking on the floor. i could see the birthday locker sign, 50 locker inside front of me with five she'd white paper, taped one to the next to the next in a kind of -- sort of vertical column with shimmering silver around been on the top and side, spiral ought into the hall. felt a summer of anticipation of the attention i would get that day. a friend shouted, happy birthday, as i made my way down the hall and i moved toed and smiled and shouted, thanks 'when got to my locker tied and admired the creativity. readle from tom. top bottom the language and impri she has cut out and greed on there for me. opened the locker, put my back

peak inside, outfield the books needed, and then i turned and smiled at someone else saying, happy birthday, clanged the locker door shot and twisted the combination lock few times. strode down the main corridor toward my first class. feeling like i owned the place. some unknown minuted later someone took a thick black marker and wrote nigger story on three places on my dirthday locker sign. even spelled incorrectly knew what it meant. spotted i in the late morning and my mouth went dry. i found a black macer and crossed out each iteration of the word, at day's end i took the sign home, and in privacy of my bedroom i pulled by american sear scrap book from the bookshelf and opened it to the first blank page limit pasted my birth day locker sign, accordion style so it could be completely unfolded to resemble what looked

like on my locker. before closing the scrapbook, i took a pair of scissors and like a surgeon excising tumors removed the three iterations of the shameful word, then threw them in the trash. i closed the scrap book and returned to the shelf containing the roared history of my childhood. over the christmas holiday i type my college applications on a brand new apple ii computer my parents bought. in march 1985 the first internet domain name, was registered. in april i accepted an off over admission to stanford university. a classmate applied to stanford but had not gotten in. we were in pre:includes together. one day in april, right after the bell rang, signaling the end of class, harris' father walked in, sat down at an empty desk next to mine and began talking

to me in a playful tone. ... >> but i had stolen his spot at stanford with my blackness. i told no one about the locker sign, and i'd go on to tell no one for decades, not my participants, not the school -- not my parents, not the school, not my boyfriend, not my best friend. for more than 20 years, though, the truth of that day hunkered down in me and metastasized. i was the nigger of my town.

and now the section, "desperate to belong." i'm now in college at stanford, and i have gotten a 2.0 first quarter, a b, a c and a d and it's the evidence that someone like me, black and female from the middle of nowhere wisconsin, doesn't actually have what it takes to be at stanford. i'm in a civil rights class with 200 students in the spring. later that spring professor jim steir asks a very tough question, which was not unusual. what is unusual is i know exactly what he is getting at, and i ache the respond. but to date, i'd never raised my hand in a class at stanford and still don't dare to do so. besides, this is obviously a complicated question. no one else is raising their hand. my fear of being wrong, of being black and wrong, silences me even though i know i have a good idea here. scanning the huge room for potential volunteers, steir

glances at me. something in my face must be showing him my brain is working overtime. he nods once at me and raises his eyebrow, signaling i should speak up. well, i begin clearing my throat and playing with my hair, and then i keep on talking. professor steir, never one to downplay a dramatic moment, folds his arms across his chest, leans back on one heel and starts nodding his head vigorously as i talk. so i keep going. my classmates watching the clear evidence in steir's behavior that i am saying good stuff begin scribbling down what i am saying. i am teaching my classmates. i am speaking from a place grounded in knowledge and bolstered by a tiny bit of confidence steir is giving me. with a voice pushing through the brambles out into the clearing, this is the starting line of my efforts to be better than whites expect a black person can be, a

race i'll run and try to win for the next 20 years. we're still in the self-loathing section. [laughter] oh, no, we're moving to the self-loathing section. is that where we just were? okay, we're now in self-loathing. i'm now an administrator at stanford university. i'm a dean at stanford university. having practiced law for a while, now i'm a university dean. on august 29th, 2005, katrina makes landfall, and the levees do not hold as the army knew they would not, and the water sweeps life out from under the living. in new orleans' ninth ward, black people wave signs, help us. the people plead with their bodies and their signs, sure as

the helicopters fly over that their government is coming for them, will help them. instead the government flies by. over 30,000 residents stream into the louisiana superdome, a building whose roof would leak, whose air-conditioning and refrigeration would fail where, without enough food, water, restrooms or restroom supplies, these residents would live for five days. as the superdome grows more dank with a stench that is a mixture of rotting food, urine and feces, the government relocates people to the astrodome over 350 miles away from their homes in houston. the astrodome and the organizational wherewithal of houston's local government saved the day and saved lives. some evacuees will stay for weeks, some for months. the former first lady of the united states, barbara bush, takes a tour of the astrodome on september 5, 2005, when it is brand new in its role as savior. she chortles.

so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them. most of us black folks are democrats. we believe as democrats that our government is an organization that will be there for us even when our fellow citizens who see us as the other seek to shut us out, can kick us out, shut us down. but in late 2005 we -- those who live on the gulf coast, who have loved ones there, who have no connection to the area but watch on television learning that our government has had no plans for us. them niggers should be grateful, she might as well have said. here, have a hot dog. we gave you a damn hot dog, dog. be grateful. pledge your allegiance. stand for it. stand. this is in a section emerging. i'm still a dean at stanford and

a consultant, you know, a professional coach has been brought in to work with my boss and his team, about six of us. when she first starts working with us, her name's mary ellen, she's a white buddhist akito master. when she first starts working with us, i think it's my job to tell her what's wrong with everyone else. literally. [laughter] after about nine months of working with the -- i'm associate vice provost for undergraduate education and dean of freshmen at stanford university. after about nine months of working with the vice provost and his direct reports, mary ellen has conducted a 360 review on each of us, and she's ready to tell me how i'm regarded by my colleagues. by now, i trust her enough to be able to listen to the feedback. too emotional, too aggressive. might as well give me a list of stereotypes of women and black people and black women and tell me not to do any of those things, i tell her. she lets me continue. yes, i have a tendency to blurt

things out when i get really moved or frustrated, but my emotion is warranted. is it getting you what you want, she asks. when i practiced law, my passion and anger could be channeled into useful argument, but in academia it seemed to just push people away, and then i'm the one who has to apologize. i want to know why i'm this way, i plead. that could take 20 years of therapy, mary ellen says chuckling. how about we focus on when you're this way so you can start to notice the emotion coming and decide what, if anything, you want to do about it. what, if anything, i want to do about it. mary ellen isn't siding with stereotype, she's telling me that my power lies in being in charge of my voice. with mary ellen's help, i begin taking notice of my behavior. when i feel a strong emotion coming, instead of acting on it, i try to pay anticipation to what i'm feeling and where i feel it in my body and what triggered the feeling, and i write it all down. over a few months of this

self-attention to self, of mindfulness, i began to be able to sense emotion coming. i can then pause, ask myself what is going on, tell myself i'm okay while the conversation around me keeps going. i begin to see that the trigger is the feeling of being overlook ld, do you wanted or dismissed. i begin to see that my fear that i will be judged as not good enough makes me desperate to prove constantly that they are wrong. i begin to see that i can't control anyone else's opinion or behavior, to see that the only thing i can be in control of if i work hard at it is myself. with mary ellen's guidance, i begin to see that i can love and accept myself regardless of what others may or may not be thinking of me. i can choose whether the speak or not, to be silent or not, to go off on someone or not rather than let those impulses simply happen to me. as her coaching begins to impact me, i feel renewed. with the help of a white buddhist akito master, i begin

to emerge into a healthy black self. a day comes when i summon the guts to tell mary ellen one of my most painful secrets, that as a child i hated being black and was afraid of black people. this gut-spilling, fear-sharing loosens up knots of shame in my psyche, loosens the muscles not just in my mind, but in my soul. speaking this awful truth out loud through tears kneads the pain out of me. the relief feels astonishingly good. i wake up the next day no longer feeling the vise grip that racism had on my psyche, making me loathe myself and my people, that asks me to prove i was good enough despite being black. i look in the mirror and allow myself to see not what whites may see or what they might want

not to see, not conforming to what they admire, to see my actual self, to see the color of my face and body, brown paper bag -- sorry, paper bag brown in fall and spring, high yellow in winter, milk chocolate in summer, and accept that some in america see me as the other and being fine with that. to see my skin and hair and hear my, quote, white speech and decide that it is not up to some committee on blackness to anoint me as black. it took me 40 years to stop twisting and turning this way and that in response to how i feared and hoped people of both races would see me. i drive to work that day having shed the loathing of my black self, and by exing tension, of -- extension, all black people from my eyes which had prevented me from really seeing other black people. i look into the eyes of one and then another and another black person, and i feel my heart swell with feelings like compassion, admiration, love, even desire. as if discovering their

existence, their magnificence for the first time. it might as well have been the first time. like climbing i out of a deep depression, i hadn't known i was this afflicted until i wasn't. white americans, you are infatuated with the statue of liberty whose tablet contains words of welcome for all who did, in fact, welcome you and your ancestors, and you are simultaneously infatuated with carving lines and borders between two does and does not belong here with yourselves on one side of the line and the other half of america on the other. you think your whiteness makes you better than the rest of us. you make us your scapegoat, your excuse for your violent rage. it's not all of us. stop saying it's all of us, you say. my white breath rep. you want to be treated as an individual instead of a stereotype. and i will get out of bed anyway and go out into the streets of america and do my work and find

true love, raise children who know how to work hard and be kind to others. and speak. this is in the section "declaring." we, the people, cannot continue to abide the stories of police and civilians on witness stands telling us that in just seeing our black bodies they were terrified. you have to be terrified for a justifiable reason. god gave us this black and brown skin. the skin god gave us is not a reason for you to be justifiably terrified. we are terrified of you. we continue to try to forgive, to live. my son, i look at the faces of trayvon, freddie, little tamir who was all of 12, and i see

you, my son, my precious son, my beautiful black boy so smart and bookish and inquisitive and philosophical. i see you grow taller, grow muscles, grow a man's face, and i weep for the future self who will leave this home and discover that in pockets of this great country you are loathed, feared and worse, my son, you did not ask to be born. i chose you. i asked you to be mine. i gave you a skin of brown, and you are exquisite beyond measure. this is a black lives matter section. almost done. you, hiding there behind your draperies across the street, it was you acting like zimmerman who called the cops about a disturbance in your neighborhood, you who said there were multiple juveniles who did not live in the area or, quote, have permission to be there which you know because you guard the white experience, and you know who belongs at the pool and

who does not. it was you who saw a black man get into a nice -- getting into a nice car and decided he was stealing it and called the police who trailed him and pounced five at a time on this 25-year-old black body, this former student of mine, this man now getting a ph.d. in engineering at northwestern driving his own damn car. it is you who call your dogs, who bring their dogs to bring us down, to keep america white, to buff us out of your existence. you want to stand your ground. it means arm the whites. you think if given a choice any of us would have asked to be born black in america? you think we want to be the object of your evident fear as you pass us on streets and crowd away from us on elevators? in the wake of the zimmerman verdict, questlove described himself as a 6-2, 300-pound black man and pleaded, i mean, what can i do? i have to be somewhere on earth,

correct? correct. sometimes i wonder where is god in all of this. but maybe god did give us a choice. maybe he gathered a group of souls and asked for volunteers. now who wants to go down there and inhabit a black or brown body? maybe he said that. maybe he said who wants to take that on? who wants to live a life in america where you may be treated like the scum of the earth? who will walk among white people and be their opportunity to learn compassion? and the bravest souls looked around at each other and raised their hands. thank you. [applause] thank you, thank you. all right. thank you very much, you guys, i appreciate it. [applause] i'm going to take your questions, comments. what i want -- i should have said it up front. we call this a prose poetry

memoir. there are places where the prose expands or contracts to pit the intention i have -- to fit the intention i have, the picture i'm trying to paint with the words. if you buy the book, you might think, did she intend that? there's all this white space on some page, a big white margin and places where the rules of syntax are ignoredded. and if you wonder did she intend this, yes, she intended every piece of it. [laughter] let me take -- can i grab some water? okay, thank you so much. appreciate it, chris. yes. >> [inaudible] >> oh, sorry. because we're being taped -- yeah. we're going to give you a microphone. >> should i stand? [laughter] i might be out of the camera range if i do. julie, so that instantly made me think of vonnegut with the spaces and the one-sentence chapters. who are your writing influences? >> oh, thank you for that. well, one of the first things i'll say is i didn't have a black mother, but i found a

literary black mother in the point lucille clifton, an african-american woman. i read her collection, "good woman," around about 2005, 2007, and i found in her words a mirror to myself and my soul and my life. she writes about blackness and womanhood and femaleness, and i thought to myself if lucille clifton is possible and these words are possible, maybe i am possible. i've also been drawn very recently to the work of claudia rankine whose prose poetry "citizen" was influential as form. i love langston hughes' poetry, i love toni morrison's fiction. she's got a new book out, actually, "the origin of others," which is a nonfiction account of otherness in america. lots and lots and lots of people. but lucille clifton is the one that i try to pay homage to

every step i get. >> it's kind of a two-part question. and by the way, awesome. >> thank you. >> did the v that you talked about follow a chronological path? and then, number two, do you see another v occurring as you continue your life along this journey? >> i'm hoping that the journey's going to go like this. [laughter] no more vs. yes, it's definitely a chronological path. except for section one, it begins like this, which is sort of a summary, more of a rhetorical summary before i plunge into the account of my life from young childhood on. yeah. i'll say this, let me just say one more thing in terms of whether the life will have another v. who knows, right? i said i'm 49, i came to live out loud and feel like i finally can. i'm no longer trying to be what other people don't fear, loathe or disregard. i've decided i can just be myself regardless. and that has brought me

tremendous peace and joy. and so there the will, no doubt, be challenges over this life, but i think the challenges around race and otherness in america are challenges i've well examined, and i'm really clear now on that and me. and so if another v comes, perhaps it won't be about race. >> do you think that these problems that are being faced by black youth make, give you guys a background that makes you guys stronger and better people in some way? >> what a lovely question. better people, no. we're not better people. i'd like to say we're not black supremacists. [laughter] when we -- no, i know that's not what you meant, right? but it forms that larger thing of, you know, black lives matter. and what we're trying to say is can't black lives matter too? we give the talk to our kids.

you saw, maybe you heard the emotion in my voice as i addressed my son who's an 18-year-old. and the challenges to teach our sons and daughters to be smart, safe out there so they'll come home to us. the challenge is to do that while simultaneously helping them grow in self-esteem, the feel good about themselves. how do you tell someone that terrible things might happen to them out in the world simply because of the color of their skin which in some people's minds is associated with bad, criminal, thug, etc. how do you teach that and simultaneously teach them to love themselves? we all should love ourselves. it's hard to to love anybody else and find love if you can't love yourself, so there's this dual task of teaching both of those things. i think there is strength, obviously, there's strength that comes from struggle and from suffering. many, many, many people across every possible identity can experience suffering. i think about refugees to this country who are stronger, vastly

stronger than so many of us will ever be because of what they've had to go through simply to survive. there is something about surviving that can make a person a lot stronger. of course, surviving great trauma can also do the op silt. opposite. and really break a person. so in the aggregate, who knows. but i am, i am grateful to be black. i am grateful to have learned what i have about my people and our time here in this country. and i have a pride in that that i try to pass on to my own kids. i mentioned -- and i think that pride helps us, gives us a rudder or a core of strength when the winds of rhetoric and worse will seek to knock us over. i mentioned sylvie, my slave ancestor, my great, great

grandmother. i dedicate the book to sylvie. she made me a real american. she was not even considered a human when she lived in charleston. but, of course, she was. and she made me a real american. so the pride that i have in that i think does strengthen me. it's a beautiful questioning thank you. we've got one over here, and then we have someone over here. you might have to come closer to be seen by the microphone person. angela, one of your colleagues over here next. >> julie, i basically just have to thank you. i was at stanford with you, i was an american studies major, ashley mclean. >> hi, ashley. >> we were at oxford together. >> oh, wow. >> what i want to say -- this is my mom. i'm from dallas, i'm from a very part of dallas, and i was an american studies major at stanford, and what i remember is just the joy of discovering so many other people based on what we were reading.

at the time i kind of said i majored in black women writers of the south because it was a huge discovery of human experience for me. but at that time i remember you just being a joyful student, so it makes me sad to think you were sad at that time because you were just a wonderful person to be around. and i'm a parent, we're parents now, and we have a son who's applying to stanford, and i want him to go there so he can meet people like you, but because of your book, how to raise an adult, he's applying to a lot of cheap schools too. [laughter] and i feel calm and balanced, i feel like i'm a better person because there are a lot of places to get a good experience besides that wonderful place. i have a book club, i'll make them read it. i'm happy that you're sharing this experience with us now, because to be as incredibly successful as you have been in your entire career, you're exposing your truth, the fact that it's been a struggle and, you know, we need these kinds of stories moving forward for our struggle as a country. >> thank you, ashley.

it's nice the see you. and i want to say this, you've given me an opportunity to acknowledge my privilege. i got light skin, that's a privilege in this country. i've been educated, that's a privilege. i'm upper middle class, that's a privilege. and i got tons of privilege. what this book is about is what it has also been like to be african-american and biracial in this body in this time. and the things we call microaggression, some people sort of wave them off, get over it, it's not a big deal, stop being a victim, all of that. i think this book is a compilation of some of the micro-aggressions i've experienced was i'm try -- because i'm trying to help people see they can contort and distort a soul and a spirit over time. that, you know, we may emerge stronger, but we often first at least suffer from this tremendous self-loathing. i label part of the book self-loathing. regardless of trappings of success, regardless of what my

resumé said, i loathed myself as many, many black people do and many people of color and many queer people and anyone who's made to feel like the other in a country that's so obsessed with who belongs and who momentum. this otherring despite these tremendous opportunities i've been given is, i think, eye-opening for people who don't know. they think to have come to stanford is to have made it and, this far, your life is this and that. it brings me to colin kaepernick. 49er, i live in the bay area. you know, people say he should just shut up, he should stand up and play, he's a millionaire. and i think his point is, first of all, his point is, of course, about police brutality toward black americans. and i think his point is that, you know, each when i am highly accomplished and highly successful, i am not immune from any of this, you know? when you walk down the street and somebody decides to harm you on the basis of your skin, they

don't know you have a white mother or that you went to stanford or you have this much money in the bank. racism is a hatred that applies to skip color. it's -- to skin color. it's really no, you know, you're rising in class stature doesn't make you immune from it at all. in fact, you move into circles where people will say the most awful things. i detail somebody coming to a party in palo alto, california, the heart of silicon valley, my neighborhood. a white woman comes to the party in black face. and, you know, so there's that. yes. >> hi. >> hi. >> thanks -- >> i saw you walk over with your book people lanyard on, like, he's supposed to be doing something else, but now he's listening to my talk. this is great. >> hopefully, i don't get into trouble. >> you kind of look like my son, too, so, hi. >> that's part of what i wanted to say. thank you so much for your words, but more than that, even

though you're describing your life in really intimate detail, it's my life and my mother and father's lives, you know? it's very deeply felt. i guess my question is you're someone who's done a lot of work and has accomplished a lot, and especially the work of coming out of that sense of, like, self-loathing and of, like, obviously existing as a black person in america is kind of a struggle against whiteness, but it's also a struggle against blackness. and now that you have kind of, you know, come out of that struggle against, that struggle of self-loathing, what -- how do you set challenges for yourself and how do you look forward so that your life is not just predicated upon some sort of strug internally or -- struggle internally or externally, but more like a series of gold. >> there's a lot in that question, thank you.

[laughter] i am interested in humans. i'm interested in all of us getting a chance to make our way. i'm a lawyer turned university dean turned writer. my first book, "how to raise an adult," is about the harm of helicopter parenting. i'm sure that doesn't happen here in austin at all. [laughter] i wrote that book because i care -- someone's getting a finger pointed at her. yeah, okay. [laughter] we got that all on tv. i wrote that book because i care about the young people who are overparented and what that does to rob them of agency. and i've written this book because racism and otherring robs a human of agency. so that's what i care about. when you ask me what's your passion, you know, my passion in life is helping humans on their path and find agency so that they can march forward regardless. so i guess my goals are around continuing to try to be useful in the lives of other humans, to apply the lessons i've learned so that maybe someone else's

path can be slightly easier by the sharing of the lesson that i've learned. i will say this, that i alluded to it in one section the sort of -- once i finally came to terms with the self-loathing, i thought i was the only person who felt that way. i was so ashamed to have been ashamed of my black ancestry. and when i finally spoke it out loud, and it did, it just felt like everything in me began to flow and loosen. and i came to stanford the next day where i worked, and i say in the book it was, you know, i'm seeing black people and smiling, and they're smiling back. it was like every black perp on the stanford campus got a memo saying smile at julie today. [laughter] which is, of course, not what happened. i was able to love this self, and so, therefore, i could look at my black brothers and sisters and love them. and then to discover that so many of us, as i began to open about this, to discover that so many of us at times struggle

with these feelings that this is, this is the poisonous drip of racism onto our souls and spirits, that it actually makes us loathe ourselves. to be able to share that feeling and acknowledge it was strengthening. and i have found this tremendous embrace within blackness even as a light-skinned person with this kind of hair and this kind of speech. you know, when i was younger, i didn't think that wasblack. and biracial made more sense to me. i -- of course, the black community has grown much more aware in acknowledging and accepting of the differences among us in the years that i've been alive. and so my work continues to be around not just humans and helping humans on their path, but i'm deeply, deeply interested in the black experience and in our stories being told. for example, there's a museum being built in charlton is. --

charleston. i've retraced sylvie's step. my brother did a lot of genealogical work, and i've walked those steps. and they're building a museum on the harbor that's going to cant lever out over the water. like it or not, this was ellis island for more than one in two african slaves and their descendants. like ellis island, they were not coming here voluntarily, but this is the first land they trod upon, and they're building a museum which i think is fabulous. and i'm interested in things like that and in just more of our story and our truth being told, becoming really part of the american narrative. the american narrative has been dominated by white voices for, you know, over 200 years -- over 300 years, and and i'm interested in everyone's story being told. and i hope to help others tell their story. yeah. >> hi. my name's antonio, thanks for

coming. like you, i'm a stanford -- i have stanford and harvard degrees. i also went to west point for undergrad. and i run a private school here, and i really appreciate your first book. that's how i found out about you. >> okay. >> but my other passion is police brutality, and i got into that -- >> you mean anti-police brutality? >> yes. [laughter] anti-police, anti-prison, anti-police brutality. >> yeah. >> and, you know, i got into that not on purpose. i had a run-in with a cop and had a really bad experience, and that sort of opened my eyes to a lot of the issues that, you know, black lives matter has been pushing, other people have been pushing for generations, quite frankly. >> yeah. >> but the thing that happened after i had my run-in with the police is i found that my west point classmates turned against me publicly, some of them publicly. and my stanford classmates, by

and large, went quiet. they distanced themselves from me. and, you know, and through this experience as much as i love stanford and as much as i, you know, i'm still wearing the stanford shirt, jacket, but i have come to be quite disappointed in institutions, you know? is higher education institutions many particular. in particular. and given your position as also former dean at stanford, i love stanford, it also has the hoover institute, right? and in a lot of ways i see that our universities are not really centers for pushing society forward, they are protectors in a lot of ways of the status quo, and i have extreme disappointment that people with so much privilege are ones who

are least willing to speak out sometimes. and so this isn't really an easy question for you. i just want to get your thoughts on that, and feel free to expound upon that in any way that you would like, because i would appreciate that. >> well, thanks for sharing, antonio? >> yeah. >> thanks for sharing your experience with this crowd. i'm sorry you went through that, the end count we are the police -- encounter with the police and then the rejection of communities that mattered to you and that still matter to you. i think fundamentally each one of us has to be right with ourself and to march in the direction that we know to be the right one for us regardless of what others think. but it is nice not to be lonely. it is important, also, to be in community with people who will love and respect us for who we are. we're all seeking that. sometimes it's our family, sometimes it is not our family. sometimes it is our chosen

family, it's a community that, where we simply know we can feel safe and heard, believed, supported. so i'm sorry that west point or certain people at west point and stanford have not been that for you. and i hope you will continue to express yourself and that you will find community with people who can hear you and can believe you and support you. i left stanford five years ago to go try to write a book on helicopter parenting, the harm of helicopter parenting. and i've been gone for five years, and i was very senior, had an important role and cherished that role, loved the work. the zimmerman verdict came out in 2013, and i remember experiencing such rage. for many of us, particularly those of us who are upper middle class and we kind of think we've passed with our status, you know? we think we've sort of arrived at a place we can offer our children a safer childhood,

trayvon martin's murder just shattered that illusion. and i went out, you know, we all expected the verdict to be different and went out on facebook and began to pour my rage out on facebook, and i remember one of my former students wrote, said, dean julie -- that's what my students called me -- dean julie, thank you for saying that. you know you're speaking for a lot of us. and i said, thanks, it's just julie now. do you think i could have said any of this as dean julie? and what i was saying was, you know, there are tremendous limitations when we work for big institutions where we're not there to speak our minds, we're there to be representative of the place. and so i have found tremendous freedom in detaching from institutions. now, that ability is, in and of itself, a privilege, the walk away. and i recognize that. i think our universities are really struggling right now, you know? i think about what georgetown is doing around acknowledging that it had to sell close to 200

slaves to keep afloat financially, and they've acknowledged that, and they're trying to make reparations to the descendants of those slaves. it's nice to see that happening. it's nice to see places and spaces coming to terms with the role they've played either directly or indirectly benefiting from the institution of slavery which is, of course, the early engine of capitalism which was so successful because the workers weren't being paid. you know, of course money was made, right? humans were enslaved. so i watch institutions starting to come to grips with that a little bit more than before. i watch universities struggle also with what is free speech, what does it mean today to contend with difficult issues around which there are many opinions? i'm a lawyer, i believe in the first amendment and the importance of countering speech you hate with more speech rather than shutting speech down. i watch universities twisting and turning, not knowing what to

do with this concept, you know, of -- i believe in safe spaces and trigger warnings because i like the notion that we might give a heads up to somebody that some really nasty is shit is about to be said, you know, so that you can equip yourself, strengthen that rudder and say, okay, i'm steeled, i'm ready for it safe spaces where you can go on a campus and not be suggested to, like your dorm, you know, hateful speech. but i also believe that the university campus, its classrooms and labs and public spaces are the only spaces we can count on for the free exchange of ideas. you know, that's -- we have to count on our universities to continue to support that. so i'm all over the place in responding to your question, but i think -- i guess what i'm getting at is institutions have a lot to contend with these days, and i think we're struggling as we are as a nation with all of this. and universities are -- they're not corporations, but they're big nonprofits, and they have

self-interests and donors and all of that. and their self-interests often don't align with the needs or rights or beliefs of any single student. yes, one more. okay. >> hi. >> hi. >> hi, i'm so -- actually, my husband went to school with you. >> i thought i recognized you. >> [inaudible] >> luke, hi. >> megan maxwell's cousin. >> oh, wow. megan and i were in calculus together. yes, i got a c. [laughter] i think she did better than me, uh-huh. she has lots of cousins. she's like, i got cousins in austin. hi, luke. >> i'm really curious because i'm married to him, so we have a multi-ethnic child together, and i also grew up multi-ethnic. my father's caucasian. and i'm curious to know, like, how -- i think because my experience with having an asian

mom and a white dad as a child, it kind of, it didn't affect me until, like, hindsight is 20/20 how race kind of affected your childhood. but as an adult, i have a different experience with having a white parent, right? and so i'm wondering what your experience was with a white mom versus a white dad and how that influenced i guess your experience with race and if that was made different than, i don't know, like i guess since i grew up with both an asian mom and a white dad, i feel like i can relate to some of the things that my asian friends with two asian parents went through in america versus -- and it was a little bit different for me because i had a white dad. so it's kind of like i experienced a little bit of the white privilege, but it was

different because it was a male white privilege that i was brought up with. >> yes. >> so i was really curious about that. >> yeah. so this book is a journey from many, you know, around a lot of topics including my relationship with my white mother who i adore, whose act of loving my father and marrying him was truly transgressive in the '60s when they fell in love and chose to be married. their marriage was illegal in 17 states. they got married in west africa, but in 17 states it was illegal here before loving v. virginia. i was born in virginia. it's been quite a struggle, and i ultimately come to terms with my mother. my father's been gone for 22 years. he died in 1995. so i couldn't say any of this to him then because i didn't inhabit a consciousness around any of this until the last, you

know, decade, last five or six years really. so i'm now in this rageful place toward my mother about the choices both of them made to raise me in white towns. you know, my father, if you caught it, was assistant surgeon general of the united states under jimmy carter, you know? he had reached a position of prominence, and they chose to raise me in places where they had the bigger house and the lawn. and i never knew how to say to daddy, who said to me white boys will be your friends, but they'll never date you. he told me that in high school. and i couldn't find the wherewithal to say to this magnificent man, hen why'd you choose -- then why'd you choose to move me here? don't i deserve to be loved? what are you sayingsome so my mother has borne the brunt of this. unfortunately or fortunately, that's the way it is. i struggled struggled with my -t a white jewish husband, and i've got these two kids. my son resembles me more, and my daughter resembles me more, and

i am trying to raise my kids in the 21st century in the era of black lives with a real connection to their ancestry, all of it, you know? their black ancestry and their eastern european, jewish ancestry and their white coal miner ancestry from yorkshire, england, which is where my mother is from. i'm trying to help my children have a more rich, multidimensional experience with ethnicity and race and self in place. that was never offered to me as a child. it was, i was sort of -- i had the task of trying to figure out what i was in towns where i was just different from everybody. i think if you get this and read this, you will find yourselfed nodding vigorously -- yourself nodding vigorously in places. in the beginning, i wanted to generalize my experiences so people could relate, and my editor was like, no, no, you have to be very specific many your storytelling because it's that specificity that will help

people relate. so one of my joys in writing this book is that, you know, not only are black and biracial folk saying, yep, you know, i had that experience or what have you, but other people of color and queer people and, as i've said many times, anyone who's been made to feel like the other, you know? i think can find some resonance in this book. i don't know what it's been like to be you or what it's like now, but i think i'm excited that our, that we as a community of mixed people are a more critical mass than ever and that our stories are increasingly part of the american narrative. yes. >> [inaudible] i hope you write a book that talks about the beauty and love and joy of raising children finish. [inaudible] >> so i think -- >> [inaudible] >> i think this -- you let me

know. get this book. you let me know if i've made some headway toward that goal. [laughter] let me end with this. i appreciate that you're here and that you've made the time this evening. often times people say what can we do, and, you know, when i speak at a bookstore, i'm speaking to the choir, right? you all are -- nobody dragged you hear, there's something in you that wanted to be here. and we talk about allyship, and i want to talk about allyship. that is, how to be an ally of somebody else, someone who's lacking in agency or who's hurting. allyship, to me, is radical compassion. okay? we all have the capacity for compassion and love, and i think allyship is taking that love and doing something with it. it is saying when a child says this happened at school, this was said, they did this to my locker, you know, whatever, it's listening to the that kid. not just loving the heck out of that kid, but listening to him or her, asking questions and not

the questions that go, like, are you sure it happened that way? don't you want to give them the benefit of the doubt? did it really happen? you know, listen and believe this child who doesn't have a voice in america, who's told that their experiences either didn't happen or don't matter very much. be someone who can actually say i'm listening to you, and i believe you. and then with whatever privilege you have based on whatever identities you inhabit, use that privilege to flank -- sometimes it's just the privilege of age, you know? age and stage. we're a little bit older, we have, you know, a bit more influence. sometimes it's race privilege, sometimes it's class, sometimes it's, you know, whatever. use that privilege to flank that person so that when they go out into the world saying, you know, this is my reality, this is happening, you're there to say i believe him, i believe her, you know? and it is not right. and i am going to stand up for this person. you know, that, to me, is radical compassion. we all deserve it, every human deserves that radical come pax.

-- compassion. and i think we all have it in our capacity to be that person in the lives of others, all right? i think we're done. [applause] thank you. [applause] thank you. the if you would like to get a book, they are downstairs. and we would love that. bookpeople would love that, i would love that, and i'd be happy to sign it for you if you do get one. and the holidays are coming up so, you know, you might get one for friends, people who love reading about race. all right, thank you. >> thank you, everybody. books are all downstairs, and then we'll start the line right about here -- [inaudible] [inaudible conversations]