picture of the country and how it's been made bette better in t playing three women. >> host: i ca can't think of a better place to stop. i hope folks will go out it is a great read. >> guest: thank you very much. >> host: my pleasure.

[applause] thank you and good evening. i'm doctor stephen rowan and it is my lustrous board chair of the foundation and while of course i will still be involved, it is an honor to represent the board and the foundation on this very special night and we welcome you. the book awards were established in 1935 to honor literature that celebrates diversity and confronts racism. anisfield-wolf a person far ahead of her time and out of this placout ofthis place to bry

topics and points to the collective attention. over the years, the anisfield-wolf canon has become a living, breathing community of thinkers, writers and artists that span the continent, generations and intellectual -- and and as the video you just watched demonstrates, anisfield-wolf award-winning literature is moving off the pages and into our community in new and exciting ways. the installations show how these works of literature can capture our attention, attention to language and thought, attention to the lives and perspectives of those with whom we share a community. just as we have experienced before, the forerunners all speak powerfully from the heart and in turn reach into our hearts as well. we are here to be present and give something of ourselves in that effort. congratulations to each of the winners and thank you for sharing your work with us in for joining us tonight. tonight in keeping with

tradition we will first welcome a young poet to the stage, believes a tenth grader at campus international school, part of the cleveland which are public and school district. please join me, ron richard the board of the cleveland foundation and the staff in welcoming her as she read her poem, a blessing for cleveland. [applause] may be called crooked and may it cleanse your sorrow. may you walk the streets and hear a steady rhythm. like it was meant for you.

here a battle cry nod of war but of joy. feel accepted for who you want to become. may it do send on the light and meet the people spark like dandelions on the sidewalk. [applause] [applause] [cheering] excellence, and we thank you. finally on behalf of the cleveland foundation, the board and the staff we want to welcome some special guests who joined

us tonight. an active native who won the 2005 book award for nonfiction let's give them a hand. [applause] anisfield-wolf professor of psychology at harvard university, doctor steven pinker. [applause] poet in darfur and we welcome you. [applause] and of course last but never least our esteemed chair doctor henry lewis junior. [applause] affectionately known to many of us as skip is the director for

african-american research at harvard university and again is the chair. we are blessed to have him as the host this evening and as i said backstage, 27 years to do anything is a long time, but he has done such a great job over the years we are thankful to him for the service. with these book awards he's been a fantastic job year after year traveling back and forth from the east coast, so i would ask you to please give a warm round of applause to our friend doctor henry louis gates. [applause] thank you so much. give it up for the reverend, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] i asked if he was going to do a

prayer and he said no, not tonight. i said we are on a timetable. [laughter] he is a great feature and how about a eloise for that poem. [applause] future anisfield-wolf book award winner. so i have got enormous pleasure of serving as chair of the book awards along with my colleagues steven pinker and simon and as the reverend said, rita and stephen aren't with us tonight so please give it up for the jury and especially for rita. [applause] i love the presentation ceremony and i've looked forward to posting it each year since the

first conceived so many years ago by the cleveland foundation president and the administrator of the program at the time. please give it up for steve. [applause] now it is a special pleasure to be in cleveland this evening where a week ago at this very hour. [applause] the cleveland browns are winning their first game since the obama administration. i used to be a fabulous fan of the browns. when jim brown dominated the gridiron i hoped that tradition would be returning to team soon. [applause]

i understand the budweiser company donated free beer. most of you don't know this but i got a free beer once. [laughter] [applause] back during the obama administration. it was cold, too. here is the city that i have come to love because of the ceremony and the long-overdue victory. if it up for yourselves. [applause] now i want to thank our hosts, ron richards and the cleveland foundation. give it up for the brilliant, compassionate, committed leadership in for the goo and fk of one of the truly great city

foundations in the united states. [applause] the guiding force of the evening the person that makes sure every detail is in place, the person who does so much to bring us together is our friend, karen longed. she creates the setting for our celebration for the anisfield-wolf edition of literature in the service of life and for the incredible foresight. back in 1935, ladies and gentlemen, which established the prize and making space for reading and understanding bigger cities place in our shared civic life. please, join me in getting it up for caring long and please welcome this year's anisfield-wolf book award winners. ladies and gentlemen, caring --

karen long. [applause] and now for the fun part. the boston review has named shane mccrae one of the hardest working poets in america a distinction or not it is extraordinarily large literary output in just a few years since the anthology published poetry with the auction block set to take view in november of this year. however, his output is a culmination of years of writing beginning with the early 1990s teenage entrenchment with the poetry of sylvia planned and since that time, the devotion to

poetry has remained a constant throughout its most unusual career from a high school dropout to the harvard law school and finally, a prolific poet at columbia university. isn't that an amazing resume, ladies and gentlemen? the author continues to powerful nuanced examinations of race and racism that's marked as in earlieanearlier working as "thek times" observes, the language remains a stark history that it contains a history that is not over yet, for its brilliant meditation of captivity, freedom, and the limitation of language and the language of my

captor of this year's recipient of the anisfield-wolf book award for poetry. poetry. beyond everything else, in the language of my captor unfolds the relationship inherent in the experiences of captivity power and submission are exercised and felt linguistically, ideologically, and in four for discrete yet interconnected sections the poet roams over a landscape in which the figures are drawn from history and imagination into the poet's life are spoken and once broken and are achingly articulate. it's divided into four sections with races that are meditated and self reflective. shane mccrae told the online journal rumpus that's talking about history is a reliable

means of achieving a non- confessional approach to the identity politics. first the section draws upon the imagined life of okavango who was purchased after a pygmy massacre from african slave traders by south carolina anthropologist in missionary and then featured as an exhibit in 1906 in the monkey house at the bronx zoo. by giving this exhibit a poetic voice, he overturned the captors definition of humanity with devastating lines. whether you are here to see me or the monkeys, you are here to see yourself.

he tells us i must be enacted carefully to maintain the privacy because the keeper will not trust me to understand even what he has taught me a. even the most potent resistance is silence if he refuses to answer the curiosity about his african home. i cannot talk about a place i came from. i do not want it to exist the way i knew it in the language of my captor. the second section entitled purgatory, a memoir, the son and father of son demonstrates how he pushes the limits of poetry without sacrificing any poetic

force. a personal narrative of self-loathing, abuse and the growth of the spirit even in the stark and now a nourishing environment this section features the narrative interrupted or is it held together by holmes revealing the life of the mixed race taken on by none other than jefferson davis recruit to as daddy jeff. here are two personas in section two both reared by father figures who show outward signs of both love and hate. nurtured by the situation at the same time imprisoned by when the davis family clothed him she described it as loving and constricting.

it was daddy jeff who kept me fed and wearing those nice clothes until they fit his bandages. he needs davis is love and seeks out ways to understand his subjugation and affection when he was captured by the union army he talks to me about things you don't talk, he said, to nobody. that's how i know he loves me because he doesn't mind. similarly, the memoir despite its people violence presents love as a central need of this more contemporary mixed race child and the narrative is so section she says when i was a child i was willing and eager to let anybody do anything they wanted. within this harsh world they

wander through and abandoned village and it its bleak intermediate space must be endured before the soulmate enters heaven. in the third section of this remarkable collection, he presents a historical figure one reminiscent. this imagined persona is an early black film star whose career has embraced on performing the black stereotypes and his very name has been imposed on him. despite the age and significance

in the world of film, that gives him power over the older black man. this renaming becomes permanent. he exhibits the pragmatic philosophy when he explains his compliance. this ain't no kind of story where he says no. the devastating summation of the relationship to power its white folks stay clean because hubby oon usa on their options. you can be free or you can live. however, the compliance comes with a cost which he rails at the appropriation of his life.

the link between his wife and those of the unnamed memoir is revealed by the white surveillance. who's watching me and what are they going to think they see. ac. the frustration of clothes. keenly aware of his dominated possession, he also speaks to the ms capability of the language and reading and ultimately, power and knowledge are articulated in the 300 weaponize words. it's the same in many places and they all come together to form the unmistakable voice of the contemporary black america. when in the ultimate form he says all of a sudden i can't

breathe. we are reminded of the landscape and captivity in which we still reside that out of which we struggle to break free. this is not an easy collection to assist with the told the stories of ladies and gentlemen that need to be told for the beautiful kind of place of american racial history across a century and a half he is the recipient of the 2018 anisfield-wolf book award for poetry. [applause]

all right. first off, i want to thank doctor ford for testifying today. [applause] i've been told folks read excerpts from the beginning so let me start with two short film. first the gilded auction block. still when i picture the face of god is a white man's face. before it disappears on the sand

with a long white beard, the face of the man in the day i ask does she see it the old man in the way as they caressed she sees the old man whose wife and his face is crumbling as it looks as old as he is as old as the ocean looks in for a moment it is never such old skin looks my daughter age for. she thinks he might be real andy and shouts hello and answers no. here's the second one. everything i know about blackness i learned from donald trump. [laughter] frederick douglass is an example of somebody who's done an

amazing job and is being recognized more and more. [laughter] [applause] america i was driving when i heard you die they swerved into a ditch and left into the dream i dreamed unconscious in the ditch. america i dream you must believe your body and anybody and stood beside. you try to claw your way back into the ditch and begin to wail and weep and match your teeth and my tears beat yours in the ditch, america. they carry me down the stream. a slave on the run and egyptian queen even in my dream.

i want to say thank you a whole lifetime worth of thank you's to carry louis gates junior not only for his beautiful introduction which i must somehosomehow learned to treasue because he spoke it in this belief because it can't be true. i think them not only for his introductions but also for choosing along with the other members of the jury my books for the anisfield-wolf book award. but i think endlessly steven pinker and simon for the same reasons. i can't imagine even one person reading any of my book books let alone find people. [laughter] not just any five people, but

five people who have each of them independently and the world for me for the world they've made clear. i profit from work that began with them because i wouldn't be who i am a devoted to bridging the language my captor felt the word they've done more could i have made without the support of melissa who married me nine years ago and i loved more than one can love. i think for now and every day. without my children silvia, nicholas and even, i couldn't live to make and i thank them. i think everyone at the cleveland foundation especially for supporting and facilitating the anisfield-wolf book award and for making these few days wonderful. finally, i think karen long's

husband for lending me this time. [applause] after class a few weeks ago, a student of mine a first year graduate student told me they were worried they might not belong in that program. this is an especially unusual thing for a student to say though they don't commonly say it after the first meeting of their first graduate-level workshop. i thought the class had gone so well and i asked why they were worried they might not belong. they said they were worried the comments of others would be insufficient to this stage of their life is a critical thinker of poetry, they could only say e what they didn't like. the students thought they were not ready for grad school because they did not yet know how to praise.

i've had students who studied most of their lives to be ready for graduate school. i can't imagine they would have this goal in mind when they started out. but i've never had a student as well prepared as this student who didn't know how to say why they liked what they liked. could you imagine they thought this because they did no not tel peers hope that their work was. indeed, i jus had just heard ofm but what i heard again and again is one word. welcome. given the time you already know and i hope what you already feel. we are each only good for each

other when we are at our best. tonight, i've been welcomed according to the small good but i've made into the community you are sustaining between yourselves a and myself to communities sustained by reading and caring about books and i find i cannot sufficiently praise you but even when my writing seems sad or angry even when a writing seems despairing i do not despair because they write to praise you. [applause] >> shane mccrae. that was beautiful but the most

beautiful is when you thanked your wife. [applause] >> jesmyn ward. as a young girl growing up in the rural area of the gulf coast mississippi, jesmyn ward was haunted by the presence of the mississippi state penitentiary which was also known infamously as parchment farm. as she told npr's fresh air, i remember being seven, 8-years-old and having nightmares about my uncles and fathers being arrested and sent to prison. as the guardian points out in its review, the division between ththe cursor go into civilian le is porous in this world. along with the incarceration of the family struggles with entrenched racism, drug addiction and poverty yet the family and doris.

supported by the lan their landd their spiritual inheritance is explained in an interview she studied in order to incorporate the spiritual world as an important aspect of her character's legacy allowing them and i quote not to transcend their reality but to access a different understanding of the reality. they also found in the natural world in the rendering of the southern landscapes has inspired critics to name her as the worthy air to william faulkner, toni morrison a remarkable pedigree. as the "washington post" notes it's one of the more powerfully poetic writers in the country and about a family possessed by

the past way of fighting for a future, jesmyn ward is the recipient of the anisfield-wolf book award for fiction. the three voices. the power emergency against the testimony of cho cho the 13-year-old biracial child that is the heart of the novel. the first chapter opens on the jo jo's birthday with the assertion i like to think i know what death is and that it's something i could look at. its opening iit's opening is bol and simultaneously this concerning beginning for a coming-of-age story. as he helped his beloved grandfather slaughter a goat for his birthday dinner, she takes pride in his ability to watch without flinching. he is clear-sighted and how he

understands the dynamic and he lives with his black grandparents in the painful end stage of cancer and his white father is imprisoned fo in prisg meth and his mother who is largely absent is often getting high with a fellow waitress. the stability fosters him to care for his sister, a toddler, responsibility that he performs. beyond the visual and emotional, jo jo hajoe joe has inherited hs mother's spiritual and is able to divide the sounds and movements of animals into the declared the negro is a sort of southern son born with a veiled into gifted with this american world. in this novel as he confronts

the quite dangerous situations just one among the many breathtaking examples, his mother insists on despite the intention to make a drug deal on the road and the family gets pulled over by the police and jo jo experience is a terrifying and sadly familiar episode. as he reaches for the protection charm in his pocket, joe joe is thrown to the ground by the policemen, handcuffed the gun to his head but eventually the least. further comes from richie pagosa teenager who died as parchment decades ago at the same time pop as a young man had been imprisoned there. ritchie filled with stories of misery and pain attached himself to joe joe as a medium for an audience with pop food and his

only friend in the misery and pain and parchment. he expanded the novel's reach into the past and as the "washington post" notes, h he's the agonized spirit of a boy who was imprisoned when they were the system of legalized slavery. as he further explains, it is a big plantation in the 1930s and 40s and the prisoners were rented out to be slaves. he recounts with juvenile pride success to feed his family but his crime, not surprisingly for anyone who knows anything about the south during this period is punished with the brutality rather than viewed with compassion.

he works the fields where he endures beatings caught up in another escape attempt committees hunted with dogs. and at the end of the novel, they convince cho cho that it was he that sliced ritchie's throat to save him from the torture of being linked like lady macbeth, he came to witness the act and tells joe joe i wash my hands every day that the blood is never coming out. they managed to condé a cascade of horrors blogs we precisely with what i can read only as a respectful delicacy.

the hunting accident with the state in a different kind of supernatural moment then those joe joe experiences. traumatized by her brother's death, he turns to michael finding a drug like relief in solace within a. she describes the beginning of her obsession and i quote he saw me a, i is black, but the color of thumb and solve the walking

wounded and came to be. he focuses solely on michael sometimes neglecting the children to feed the addiction to him. they may find it challenging to muster compassion yet as "the new york times" asserts such empathy to feel genuinely inevitable. they allow them to speak in many voices to the bodies and experiences to the emotional landscape that is equal parts.

for the brilliant unveiling of the forgotten among us past and present, jesmyn ward is the recipient of the 2018 anisfield-wolf book award. [applause] ♪ ♪ i wrote my speech, like i hand wrote it so you'll have to

excuse me because my handwriting is pretty terrible. [laughter] so if i mess up, i apologize in advance. when i first committed to writing i loved literature that i wasn't good at creating it. i was in the early 20s. my early 20s. i was a beginner at my work showed it. i didn't know much at all just a loved reading and how they could lift me up out of my life into another experience and how it could slip the boundaries of my life and enable me to become someone else. but i kept trying. something called me to the page again and again to tell stories. after writing my debut novel and

meeting with disdain i thought perhaps i didn't possess the talent so it would be better for me to return to school in the healthcare field. to study a subject that would afford me and my family financial stability. i could not. something me to the page. i grew frustrated and i grew angry that i loved literature so much that i couldn't write anything of value. i asked myself why was i cursed with a passion for something even with practice i wasn't good at it. i thought it best for me to set aside by tried. i took my nephew on walks under the stars and he presented to be wanted me to show him the world. i listened as my grandmother

told me stories about hiding in car trunks to get safely out of neighborhoods in the 1940s. and then my mother told me how the windows to her house exploded during hurricane camille in 1969 and i realized the impetus to create wasn't coming only from me. it was coming from everyone around me as well. all the people in my families and communities who told me stories and in doing so taught me how important it was a incoming grid to understand the stories are memory and history and possibility and aspiration. they can teach you who you are and who you might be. then i looked at photographs of my dead brother and my mother's cheekbones rising like stones in the river and i knew i couldn't stop trying to do right.

i knew i would testify for him to. my aunts and uncles in the community and i knew i would testify for all of those like this after years of hard work of writing i realized testifying for those i knew my work found its way to those unlike the people i wrote about. i found in that exchange they became characters and the affinity took root. it is my honor to receive the anisfield-wolf book award for fiction to know that i've told the difficult stories and i've told them well and i've done with all good writers do. i've opened up the torch of the space readers and characters meet and find themselves in each other and the same leave the

space feeling racked by experience and sharing the world and those in it. so, thank you to the cleveland foundation and every one who facilitated the anisfield-wolf book award especially henry louis gates junior, joyce carol oates, steven pinker, simon, ron richard and karen long for honoring my efforts. i would like to read to you i would like for us to find a way to this space. for the moment i'm going to read about the scene where joe joe meets ritchie, the ghost because he was out for a walk. there's so many of us hitting

the wrong keys to. he sounds tired of eli stone and looks up at me from his bed a hard pillow stuck. you've seen this date. did you know, i shake my head. me neither. so many lost. now coming to understand, he says. he closes his eyes. now you understand why fans now you feel death. she's quiet asleep but he moves into the icf.

they are again in a the client to retrieve all the way up to the top. there are women and men and boys and girls. some of them crouched on looking at me black and brown. none of them reveal that i see it in their eyes. they speak with their eyes. he raped me and suffocated until i died, eight times while i listened in the middle of the night they hung me and found i could read and dragged me off to thout tothe barn and couched myt and he said i was an abomination and they suffered and said let

her go and the under the water and i couldn't breathe. my eyes blink t for the ghosts catch the color and reflect the red t-shirt and hoodies drive close and open looking down on me and then their mouths gaping. i stand until there is no sun, i stand until the moon rises. i stand until the forces of the multitude. i stand until i band and find a hollow state returned to the house with the air in front of me away from the dead to find him shining bright as the ghost in the dark we were worried, he

says. he didn't come back. down, she says. no, please, she says. let's go. knowing they are there makes the skin on my next turn seeking tenderness between them i know he is there watching. please, he says, and he lets it slide down. then she goes past me steady onn the dark ground. she faces a tree, her shoulders pop into the way she looks a bit like she's measuring the tree. something about the way she stands and takes the pieces of everybody and holds them together go home, she says.

they sway with open mouth again. he raised his one arm in the air but they still don't rise. they stay sticky begins to sing a song only the melody that is low cut their whispering at the same time and they open their mouths wide so they look like they are crying that they can't. she waves her hand in the air and there is no movement. they leaned forward nodding smile at something like remembrance. i follow him.

like i am the baby and she is the big brother and like the sound of all the water and now she sings it. home, they say. [applause] "bunk: the rise phonies, post facts and fake news. [laughter] anyone familiar with the conciss ice musicland constructed poetry

of earth might be startled by the sprawling expanse of titles of the book that we celebrate here tonight. but its name alone, by its name alone bunk it announces a tour ranging over 447 pages delving into the world. with the captivating voice in many of the hoaxes that he discloses are quite entertaini entertaining, but he never lets the reader ignore the danger of lies as the atlantic points out that history could not in fact be more urgent in the time in which the fact and empiricism are threatened by choose your own reality impulses. in addition to examining the confusion of living in the era

of truth, more importantly it exposes the ugly truth that racial anxiety is at the heart of most american hoaxes. the young scholarly approach on completion with his lively voice asked this book in the words of the new zor"the new york times"d enthralling essential history of the hoax. for his groundbreaking volume, he's a 2018 recipient of the anisfield-wolf book for nonfiction. in the examination of the connection between race and hoaxes come he begins by discussing the notorious exploitation of an elderly black woman whom he presented as a nursemaid of george washington. declaring that it was 161-years-old, bar none probably purchased her made a fortune from this wildly popular hoax.

even after her death, the body was a matter of public exhibit but she does get into a corner for examination. as young explains, america's continued fascination with the body of the other stems from the efforts to establish racial superiority. others including the mermaid, the hoax and cannibal king made the 19th century the age of imposter in the era is projected that mix of shame in superiority that constitutes the humbug. he insists on the complete of evolution into exploration confining the curiosities as explained these exhibits of human beings held in captivity provided what he calls an algorithm for slavery as well as a support for the burgeoning field of race science.

as the "washington post" points out, bunk contains the process of insight and is valuable to the critic for the 21st century impostors and in recent years they've produce produced an overabundance of the memoirs in this volume it exposes the racial in friday' anxieties at e center of the narrative and the biography of people pretending not to be white offered in 2011 by a white man from georgia. [laughter] and the three-part memoir published between the year 2000 and 2004 by a white man posing as a native american. they embarrassed the real author and fake native american-based

stories on the writings of the actual native american sherman. other examples that he made rejects the autobiography is to some degree fictional and such imaginative cross-cultural connections should be labeled fiction. in the literature of the ethnic usurp other writer necessarily relies on stereotypes bus distancing a reader from reality. he asserted that quote in defending the truth against the hoax, we are in fact defending the imaginary, preserving the possibility that make believe can make claims on our emotion, but not our facts. as he was nearing completion of the book having sent a draft to his publisher, the story broke

out. in exasperation when he describes they raise up their head and realized they had to take time to write about her and in the deeply personal meditation on this story, he links the tradition explaining those who wear blackface reduce in order to be white. it's not so much at the attempt to look black, as he writes, those of times by a white lady darkening her skin and curling her hair haven't been out of the house in a while. rather, it is the claim that she felt black that is so very troubling.

he reflects it is not a feeling. i don't always field colored coming year is a state of mind. linking to the absurdity of the cultural appropriation to the tragedy of the mother emmanuelle massacre starkly illustrates the difference between pretending to be black or being black. she cuts through the hoax. they don't just jump the presidency in the final chapter entitled the age of the infamous on. the shrewd penis replaces truth and facts with factoids in the age in which donald trump replaces pt barnum as the greatest showman. [laughter]

as he calls it the age of euphemism differs from the age of imposter in that while imposter nearly maxed euphemism misunderstands and misspeaks. going so far as to fight its own faith. ..

book award for nonfiction. [applause] speed three. >> thank you so much. and also to the anisfield-wolf

awards this is an honor for me and also to the other winners tonight i am honored to be alongside and also n. scott momaday that are among my favorite writers. i first heard about anisfield-wolf awards when he won nonfiction 1954. and thinking a lot about my connections with writing a different genre but also to spend time here in cleveland.

so i'd like to think that the spirit can access. so also now in the schomburg center i'm now the director in harlem. so for me it is a full circle might and i think it is fitting the award itself is the circle. i really want to thank many people who helped this book come about and it took six years to write. nobody cares about fakery and i also want to thank richard and my good friend who is here into the book is dedicated to and to suffer the indignity

and something from the beginning and from the start of the whole book from the age of imposter what the american public always wants is the happy ending. but then to tell this to the fellow novelist that in the modern hoax to suffer a tragedy but then at least after the 19th century that wharton and howl to turn every tragedy far worse than it really is.

the matter how apocalyptic it may be. now embraces horror. so today so now i'm skipping ahead. is there something especially american? where the 18th century with the hoaxes in the 19th century starring the united states that some of the time call at the age of imposter that is one key way 19th century america established after the fact with that attempted to claim ancestry and british culture.

the age of reason gave way to romanticism with mystery and beauty for those who capitalize on those very things and in contrast born in the 18th century as an adult the united states during the 19h century lack of a childhood of those memories and cherished traditions this led to a host of hoaxes with that notion of the american character has shown not just of tall tales but also the conmen and the pretend blacks in those imposter profits with masks and many. so pt barnum is who starts the book off as professor gates mentioned and very much was invested in the notion just by

showing who he claimed 161 years old was connecting us to this history but when he died we think he bought her and owned her as a slave and also removed her teeth to make her look older. back in new york she was on the road and had her dissection is essentially in the medical theater and charged admission alive or dead. so why do we deceive each other? might be believed. especially now the worst about each other? our fears?

so i will end talking about rachel dole is all with my whole speech. [laughter] but she pretended by her skin and was head of the naacp chapter that is for chapter called blacker than now. is never easy for me born up for a black child the beginning of steve martin's the jerk. [laughter] makes me laugh with a twist of once upon a time but the distance between what we know with success obviously a false declaration not only the showbiz biography but the corny black one the worse the

better it also suggest the character transformation after all he is clearly white now not to mention where he smudged it is in blackface but certainly that part has an effect and another words to black people used to watching white people so why does this jerk remind me of t3? [laughter] and with filibusters and imposters and then as rachel dolezal raised up her phone now i have time to write about her to? i can decide if those were pretending to be black for the naacp is a natural extension of what i have said all along or distraction from the larger

point those were faced with the paradox the way the hoax rears its head and now it turns out so when rachel dolezal thought it was a joke on black twitter then i saw my favorite twitter titles. their eyes were watching oprah. [laughter] that was mine. the imitation of the incantation of life. blackish like me. me to. curious. one of the best things about being black is that is not a volunteer position you just can't wish on a dark star and become black. it's more like a long internship with a chance of advancement.

[laughter] did she really fool those black folks around her? have a feeling she didn't but you have to do this with white people sometimes. [laughter] [applause] i can hear you laughing. [laughter] that doesn't mean you are not black but there are fax to memorize or stock behaviors but that can tell you it doesn't mean that you can always hear it while black folks can often hear the beat

but not just when anybody else can hear is when you get to be black. so when walking into the mother and manual the church after the story broke one week later that is an integral part of the christian tradition especially so when it's episcopal the gun over 200 years ago in the methodist church for those who are praying beside it pulling them up off their knees during prayer. hello name redacted sitting there in a prayer circle to deny the evidence nothing it appears could calve convinced him not to kill blacks but to pray on white people especially women any of them

besides his family. being black is not a feeling you don't feel colored or it isn't a state of mind. blackness but the story went back to being ridiculous and those who somehow saw her in the south carolina statehouse it took a black woman to climb up to take that down. [applause] they gave the assignment to a black man to raise it black outline - - to raise a backup he may not have minded but he could not have refused. that sinking feeling that

blackface person always occupies a bigger public stage than the black one. i came out black as a teenager before that i was a boy. [laughter] of course, you can see why anyone would want to be black being black is fun. don't tell nobody. this morning i woke from a deep negro sleep. [laughter] and then took a black shower and shaved a black shave and i walked to the black walk. i coughed black and sneeze black and eight black to. this is literal blackberries and black grapes thank you. [laughter] [applause]

. >> kevin young thank you kevin. n. scott momaday when asked about the breakthrough of native american literature n. scott momaday replied you could argue that. i don't think there can be any argument about the fact the man that we honor tonight is the being of the native american literary minutes on 16 books of poems and autobiography essay fiction and folklore is groundbreaking

pulitzer prize from 1968 marked the reemergence of native american voices in fiction and in addition he is a talented watercolor of buffalo trust to preserve native american culture and an esteemed professor and member of the kia web board dance society and all facets of his life n. scott momaday celebrates the sacred nature of unconditional life so for those invaluable contributions this year's anisfield-wolf book award lifetime achievement recipient. give it up for n. scott momaday. [applause] 's b3. [applause] [applause]

. >> growing up surrounded by storytelling with the native american oral tradition especially the kiowa legend his brother was a writer and surrounded by a wide range of literature as a child influencing his desire to follow in her footsteps. 's father was a painter and both parents taught in indian schools to provide a rich heritage of artistic production and this in conjunction with the culture that he experienced growing up on the pueblo reservation but to shape his writings. he describes a traditional world despite successive

efforts to destroy the foundations and i quote now after four centuries of christianity they still pray to the old deities in the sky. and those gestures of those enemies that hold onto their own secret souls. and in this there is resistance and the overcoming and in an interview with the santa fe reporter the essence of all tribal life is having blood that existed on this continent for 30000 years. [applause] but then within the span of time american literature arose

not that the puritans of new england that with an anonymous man or woman with an image on the canyon wall in utah 2000 years ago. and a historical scope of literature n. scott momaday has insisted first and foremost, a poet and declares poetry is the queen of literature i rather be a poet than anything else citing dickinson as the greatest american poet naming wallace stevens is probably second. through his own creative process he has said that all of yourself into the writing you can only do it for certain period of time four hours is about as much as i can put into writing in any given day

to draw the rhythm and the repetition of the structure of the tradition his spirit and grandeur of the american west the landscape of the west he has said publicly that this part of the country a very large part that really has to be seen to be believed. but best of all concludes it has to be imagined. reflecting on his own imagination he writes in the poland notebook as a child i look at the world and sprawls of wonder and so do i now in the envy of age. the poets creative urge is found in the stunning :-colon a poet stands among those smoking stand stones and cold waterfalls and thinks of nothing but yet the impulse

that comes upon him. the story is too large for a quatrain some will wonder if he beholds rainbows or those fishes that rise in the trees iridescent on the air. in these lines we see the struggle to use language to forge his own creation overwhelmed by a beauty that elude speech, the writer's passion is tempered but not overcome. to usher us into a world of spirit and imagination while under assault, endures for infusing language with the sacred sharing his native

american heritage with all readers n. scott momaday 61 - - this years recipient of anisfield-wolf book award lifetime achievement. [applause] [applause]

[applause] [applause] n. scott momaday. [cheers and applause] . >> thank you so much but from there to here is a more arduous journey than you may think. [laughter] i want to congratulate the other recipients on this prestigious award and also the members of the committee and the officers of the anisfield-wolf award.

i am a poet among other things and i am a storyteller as well and tonight i want to tell you a story and in 2008 i was on a train going to moscow across siberia with nine time zones. one night i was awakened by the train and when i looked out my compartment window i saw we had come to a small station with yellow lights in the mist and i could see figures moving about in and out of doorways. we had entered mongolia.

and then a young man came to my compartment. a soldier straight and tall and good looking he was very polite so the papers of entry i put out in advance and as i was looking at him i had a strange feeling. and i thought i know this man. and i have been here before. 30000 years ago. into greater origin they went to stanford graduate school

with a creative writing fellowship in poetry i didn't know much about poetry when i went there i learned a lot at stanford but my first year there the first successful poem awarded the american academy of poetry award i am named for a place in wyoming that is a sacred place to make people and it tells the story of seven sisters that became the stars of the big dipper and were chased by a bear or a boy who turned into a bear and i am the reincarnation but i do change on occasion.

[laughter] that should happen tonight bear with me. [laughter] [applause] i apologize for that anyway here is the bear. the scoffing it into countless surfaces would call and color whose old age has outworn valor all for the fact of courage. but in the windless moons. in the hot layer more scarred than others these years

drawing up on the crooked limb. then he is gone whole without urgency from site as the buzzards control their flight imperceptibly. [applause] . >> that is a syllabic poem it is determined solely by the number of syllables and that was experimental poetry when i went to stanford proceeded by a poet that i admired very much his name was tom gunn and he began to experiment with syllabic poetry i followed in his footsteps i took of the

experiment and have had some success with that gratification. but i also write and once moved to tucson arizona there i was on the fringe of the sonoran desert. people go to tucson to live they buy a house with two kinds of air conditioning and a swimming pool so i did that to and i started to swim as exercise but then i discovered swimming laps is one of the most boring professions. [laughter]

because that is jogging in the scene changes but you look at the bottom of the pool back and forth back and forth it is maddening. and then to overcome by composing the epitaph as i swam. [laughter] and i counted a number of these and i will share a couple with you but i want you to realize these were composed without benefit of pencil and paper while i was completing laps. [laughter] here is one called this is a two lap or. [laughter] here lies a lady suite and chased and chased makes waste.

[laughter] [applause] and i was invited to attend a conference in phoenix one day i went there and did not know what to expect they were little pottery nametags when i got back to my home in tucson and went to the pool and i composed this one. [laughter] here is the potter he has become his clay recycle him

into a pot. [laughter] . >> i will tell you one more story. and with a couple of book tales adding commentary one is about a dog and looking as far back in time this happened long ago when dogs could talk. it's a wonderful idea but the man was thrown away and we don't know what that meant but

he found himself alone on the prairie. and finally he was at the mercy of the elements. but then a dog comes up to him and says i wouldn't want to be in your moccasins to be completely surrounded tell me something i don't know. the dog said i could save you in the man says if you can then please do. but you know, how dogs are. [laughter] i have puppies.

they are cold and hungry. if you take care of my puppies i will save you. and then the story ends they came around and round and then came to safety but one day i was in san francisco invited to speak at the hebrew academy but i didn't have second thoughts. i wasn't used to speaking to children of that age group. . . . .

looked up at me and said those were the days. [applause] i want to greet you wholeheartedly and wish you well. [applause] [applause]

good evening. i am karen long. [applause] one point oh announcement for you tonight. the new winner of the anisfield-wolf memorial prize, a yearly gift for the nonprofit doing exceptional work, this year it goes to be made mayduken center that connects residents with food, clothing, jobs and many services. she herself invested in people right on her cleveland front porch. she was a contemporary of anisfield-wolf and i would like to thank you wrong and -- ron

and even edith. please come up so we can hear every syllable. join him, please, jesmyn ward who conjures up the love of dead and brings the past and present and kevin who shows us the truth of our life. please, join them and scott, a storyteller who can render public spaces sacred with meaning. george and steve pinker, your beautiful mind is led us to these books. come on. [applause] i'm grateful to our partners.

the list is growing. we are hosting video tonight with videos of each of the authors on the website. for updates and news please visit anisfield-wolf.org. you can turn in for the talk of 12:30 tomorrow and join kevin young on friday for bunk and a beer. cleveland stretches into saturday with an expo at the public library is saturday afternoon at 2:00 with a v. author and illustrator of the marvelous picture book with the cleveland public library. the first family of end. now, audience, please join the winners on stage where they will be signing their books alongside

skip gates, steven pinker and rita. this year, refreshments await you on the corner in the theater lobby. now come it is your moment to enter the conversation. thank you for joining us. [applause] ♪