country. here's a look at some that are coming up. next weekend, tune in for our live coverage of the textbook festival in austin, featuring author discussions on education, journalism, the middle class, the #metoo movement and more. the national book awards will be presented on november 14th in new york city. and we will wrap up our fall book festival season with live author talks and call-in segments from the miami book fair. for more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals and to watch our previous festival coverage, click the book fairs tab on our website, booktv.org. >> thank you, and good evening. i'm dr. stephen rowan, senior

pastor of bethany baptist church. it's my last year as board chair of the foundation and while of course i will still be involved, it's an honor to represent the board and the foundation on this very special night. we welcome you. the anisfield-wolf book awards were established in 1935 to honor literature that celebrates diversity and confronts racism. edith anisfield-wolf, a person far ahead of her time, endowed this prize to bring necessary topics and voices to our collective attention. over the years, the anisfield-wolf canon has become a living, breathing community of thinkers, writers and artists that spans continents, generations and intellectual traditions, 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 inter-urban art

installations show how these essential works of literature capture our attention, attention to language, attention to thought, attention to the lives and perspectives of those with whom we share community. just as we have experienced before, our four winners all speak powerfully from the heart and in turn, reach into our hearts as well. we are here to pay attention, to be present and to give something of ourselves in that effort. congratulations to each of our winners. thank you for sharing your work with us and for joining us tonight. tonight, in keeping with tradition, we will first welcome a young poet to the stage, eloise peckham. she's 10 years old. she's a fifth grader and part of the cleveland metropolitan school district. please join me, ron richard, the board of the cleveland foundation and the staff, in welcoming her as she reads her poem, "a blessing for cleveland."

>> a blessing for cleveland. may the river be called crooked. may its heavy current cleanse your sorrow. may you walk the streets and hear a steady rhythm. may you taste victory washing over you like it was meant for you. in our city, there are cavaliers. hear our battle cry, not of war but of joy. may your feet sink into the sand on the banks of a lake that's clear. maybe the people that are silenced rise like danndandelid.

[ applause ] >> excellent. we thank you. excellent. excellent. finally, once again on behalf of the cleveland foundation, the board and the staff, we want to welcome special guests who have joined us tonight. jordan won the 2005 anisfield-wolf book award for non-fiction -- let's give him a hand. [ applause ] anisfield-wolf juror and professor of psychology at harvard university, dr. stephen pinkam. let's welcome dr. pinkam.

anisfield-wolf juror and poet, our friend, rita dove. once again, we welcome rita dove. and of course, last but never least, our esteemed chair of anisfield-wolf and emcee for tonight, dr. henry louis gates, jr. affectionately known to many of us as skip, dr. gates is the founding director of the center for african and american research at harvard university, and he again is chair of the anisfield-wolf awards jury. we are blessed to have him as our host this evening and as i said to him backstage, 27 years to do anything is a long time and he's done such a great job over the years. we are so thankful to him for his service to anisfield-wolf. so with these book awards, he's done a fantastic job emceeing year after year, traveling back

and forth from the east coast, so i would ask you to please, let's give a warm round of applause and warm welcome to our dear friend, skip gates. dr. henry louis gates. >> thank you so much. give it up for the reverend, ladies and gentlemen. i asked if he was going to do a prayer. he said no, not tonight. becau because, you know, i said we're on a timetable. i would have loved to hear a prayer. he's really a great preacher. how about eloise? give it up for eloise, that poem. future anisfield-wolf book award winner. so i'm henry louis gates jr. and i have the enormous pleasure of

serving as the chair of the jury of the anisfield-wolf book awards along with my colleagues, rita dove, joyce carol oates and stephen pinkam. rita and stephen are with us tonight so please give it up for the jury and especially for rita and for stephen. [ applause ] i love this presentation ceremony and i have looked forward to hosting it each year since it was conceived so many years ago by former cleveland foundation president steve venture and the administrator of the program at that time, mary louise hahn. please give it up for them. now, it's a special pleasure to be in cleveland this evening, where a week ago at this very hour, the browns, the cleveland

browns winning their first game since the obama administration. i mean, we all miss barack, but. now, i used to be a fabulous fan of the browns, no joke, when jim brown was the man. when jim brown dominated the gridiron. i hope that that tradition will be returning to the team soon. let's give it up for the browns. now, i understand that the budweiser company donated free beer to mark last week's victory. you know, most of you don't know this, but i got a free beer once. back during the obama administration. it was cold, too.

here's to cleveland, a city i have come to love because of this ceremony and here's to long overdue victories. give it up for yourselves. give it up for cleveland, please. now, i want to thank our host, ron richard and the cleveland foundation. give it up for ron's brilliant, compassionate, committed leadership and for the good work of one of the truly great city foundations in the united states which makes this award and tonight possible. the guiding force of the evening, the person who made sure every detail is in place, the person who does so much to bring us all together, is our friend sharon long. it is she who creates this setting for our celebration of

edith anisfield-wolf's vision of literature in the service of life, and for edith's incredible foresight in 1935, ladies and gentlemen, when she established this prize, in making a space for reading and understanding diversity's place in our shared civic life. so please join me, give it up for karen long and please welcome this year's anisfield-wolf book award winner. ladies and gentlemen, karen long. [ applause ] and now to the fun part. the boston review has named shane mccrae one of the hardest working poets in america, a distinction borne out by his extraordinarily large literary

output in just a few years. since his appearance in the best american poetry anthology in 2010, he's published five collections of poetry with the sixth set to debut in november of this year. however, mccrae's prodigious output is the culmination of years of writing, beginning with his early 1990s teenaged entrancement with the poetry of sylvia plath. since that time, his devotion to poetry has remained a constant throughout his most unusual career, from a high school dropout to an mfa to a jd from the harvard law school, and finally, a prolific poet and columbia university professor. isn't that an amazing resume, ladies and gentlemen?

the author continues a powerful and nuanced examination of race and racism that sparked all of his earlier work. as the "new york times" observed, mccrae's language remains as stark as a terrible history it contains, a history that is not over yet. for its brilliant meditation on captivity, freedom and the limitations of language, "in the language of my captor" is this year's recipient of the anisfield-wolf book award for poetry. beyond everything else, "in the language of my captor" unfolds the power relationships inherent in different experiences of captivity, power and submission are exercised and felt linguistically, ideologically, physically and sexually, in four discrete yet interconnected

sections, the poet roams over a landscape in which the interior lives of figures drawn from history, imagination and the poet's own life are spoken in words at once broken and achingly articulate. the volume, ladies and gentlemen, is divided into four sections, all connected by voices that are meditative and self-reflective. mccrae told the online journal that talking about history is a reliable means of achieving a non-confessional approach to identity politics. the first section draws upon the imagined life of benga, a congolesan pygmy who was purchased after a pygmy massacre from african slave traders by a south carolina explorer,

anthropologist and missionary, and then featured as an exhibit in 1906. if you can imagine this, in the monkey house of the bronx zoo. by giving this black exhibit a poetic voice, mccrae overturned the captor's definition of humanity with devastating lines. i say whether you are here to see me or see the monkeys, you're here to see yourself. if the narrator is constrained within his second language by the expectations of his keeper, and he tells us i must speak and act carefully to maintain his privacy, because the keeper will not trust me to understand, even what he has taught me.

ultimately, the captive's most potent resistance is silence, as he refuses to answer the keeper's curiosity about his african home. i cannot talk about the place i came from. i do not want it to exist the way i knew it in the language of my capture. the second section, purgatory, a memoir, demonstrates how mccrae 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 animd mal nourishing environment, this section features stunning prose with jim

[ inaudible ]. there are two personae in section two, both reared by father figures who show outward signs of both love and hate. jim is nurtured by a situation while at the same time imprisoned by it. when the davis family clothed him in the attire of their dead son joe, he described the clothing as both loving and constricting. it was daddy jeff who kept me fed and wearing those nice clothes until they fit as right as bandages. the orphan jim needs davis's love and seeks out ways to understand his subjugation as affection, as when davis fears capture by the union army. he talks to me about things he don't talk, he says, to nobody.

that's how i know he loves me, because he don't mind what he shows me. similarly, the prose memoirs despite its painful physical and sexual violence presents love as a central need of this more contemporary mixed race child. the narrator is is so bereft of affection he confesses when i was a child, i was willing, even eager, to let anybody do anything they wanted to me. but in this harsh world, the young man wanders through an abandoned village an active metaphor for a minimemoir entit purgatory. its bleak, intermediate space that must be endured before the soul may eventually enter heaven. in the third section of this remarkable collection, mccrae presents an invented historical figure, reminiscent frankly of

step and fetch it. this imagined persona is an early black film star whose career has been based on performing black stereotypes. banjo's very name has been imposed on him by a white boy who asks is your name banjo? i say no, sir, my name is bill. and he says banjo suits you better. banjo, yes. despite the boy's age and insignificance in the world of film, the boy is white and that gives him power over the black man. this renaming becomes permanent. banjo exhibits a survivor's pragmatic philosophy, when he explains his compliance. this ain't no kind of story where the nigger says no. banjo's devastating summation of

his relationship to power is white folks stay clean because how they own you is they own your options. you can be free or you can live. however, banjo's compliance comes with a cost. and his rage is expressed in a poem in which he rails at the appropriation of his life. no black man tells the story of himself. the link between his life and those of the unnamed minimemoir is drawn from his fear of white surveillance. who's watching me and what are they going to think they see? his frustration explodes. i waste my mind trying to read white folks' minds. keenly aware of his dominated position, banjo yes also speaks

to the inescapability of language and reading. ultimately, power and knowledge are articulated and apprehended as weaponized words. the fourth section of the volume speaks in many voices, and they all come together to form the unmistakable voice of contemporary black america, when in the penultimate poem, banjo yes says all of a sudden, i can't breathe. we are reminded of the landscape's pain in captivity in which we still reside, but out of which we continue to struggle to break free. this is not an easy collection to sit with, but it tells stories, ladies and gentlemen, that need to be told, for its hauntingly beautiful

contemplation of american racial history across a century and a ha half. shane mccrae is the recipient of the 2018 anisfield-wolf book award for poetry. [ applause ] ♪ ♪ >> wow, i really can't see any of you. all right. well, first off, i want to thank dr. christine blasey ford for testifying today. [ applause ]

so i have been told that folks read excerpts from the work at the beginning so let me start out with two short poems. the first from "in the language of my captor" and the second from my forthcoming book "the gilded auction block." here's the first one. still, what i picture as the face of god it's a white man's face. before it disappears, on the sand, his long white beard, before it disappears, the face of the man and the ways i ask her does she see it, ask her does, the old man in the waves, as the waves crest she see it does, she see the old man, his white, his face crumbling face, it looks as old as he's as old as the ocean looks. and for a moment almost looks, his face like it's all the way

him, as never such old skin looks my daughter age 4. she thinks that he might be real. she shouts hello and after that, no answer. answer's no. here's the second one. everything i know about blackness, i learned from donald trump. and it has an epigraph from donald trump which reads frederick douglas is an example of somebody who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, i notice. [ applause ] america, i was driving when i heard you had died. i swerved into a ditch and wept. and the dream i dreamed unconscious in the ditch.

america, i dreamed you climbed from the ditch, you must believe your body is an anybody and stood beside the ditch for eight years, thinking, except you didn't stand, you away laid down on your pale belly and tried to claw your way back to the ditch. you right away begin to wail and weep and gnash your teeth. my tears met yours in the ditch, america. they carry me downstream. a slave on the run from you, an egyptian queen, and even in my dreams, i'm in your dreams. [ applause ] thank you. from this moment forward, i want to say thank you. a whole lifetime worth of thank yous to henry louis gates jr., not only for his beautiful introduction which i must somehow learn to both treasure

because he spoke it and disbelieved because it can't be true. i thank him not only for his introduction, but also for choosing, along with the other members of the jury, my book for the anisfield-wolf book award. but i think equally endlessly, rita dove and joyce carol oates and stephen pinkam for the same reason. i can't imagine even one person reading any of my books, let alone five people. and not just any five people, but five people who have each of them independently of this award meant a world to me for the worlds they have made and made clearer. accepting this award, i profit from work that began with them, because i would not be who i am and would not have written "in the language of my captor" without the work they've done, nor could i have made, nor could i make without the support of melissa mccrae who married me nine years ago and whom i love

as brightly as one loves at the beginning of love but more than one can love at the beginning of love. i thank her now and every day. without my children, sylvia, nicklas and eden, i could not live to make and i live to thank them. i thank everyone at the cleveland foundation, especially karen long, for supporting and facilitating the anisfield-wolf book awards and for making these few days in cleveland wonderful. and finally, i thank karen's husband joe for lending me this time. 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 an mfa program. this isn't an especially unusual thing for a first year student to say, though they don't commonly say it after the very first meeting of their very

first graduate level workshop. i thought the class had gone so well. i asked them why they were worried they might not belong and it turns out it wasn't because they thought their poems weren't where their poems needed to be. rather, they said they were worried that their comments on other students' poems would be insufficient at this stage in their life as a critical thinker about poetry, they could only say what they didn't like. the student thought they weren't ready for graduate school because they did not yet know how to praise. i have had students who have studied most of their lives to be ready for graduate school, though i can't imagine they would have had that goal in mind when they started out. but i have never had a student as well prepared as this student, who did not know how to say why they liked what they liked. can you imagine it? they thought they wouldn't be a good workshopper because they didn't know how to tell their peers how good their work was. tonight, n. scott momaday and

kevin young and myself and jezmyn ward, will hear very kind things about books they've written. i just heard them. what i heard again and again was really just one word, welcome. i have been allowed a place here and given time to tell you all what you already know and what i hope you already feel. we are, each of us, the lives of each other. we are, each of us, the happiness of each other, even in unhappy times. we are, as my worried student understood, each of us only good for each other when we are at our best. tonight, with my betters, i have been welcomed according to the small good i have made and to the community you are even now sustaining between yourselves and n. scott momaday and jezmyn ward and kevin young and myself, the community is sustained by reading and caring about books. and i find i cannot sufficiently praise you. but even when my writing seems

sad, even when my writing seems angry, even when my writing seems despairing, i do not despair, because i write to praise you. thank you. [ applause ] >> shane mccrae. that was beautiful. but your most beautiful poem was when you thanked your wife. wasn't that beautiful? that was great. jezmyn ward, "sing unburied sing." as a young girl growing up in a rural area of the gulf coast of mississippi, jezmyn ward was haunted by the presence of mississippi state penitentiary, which was also known infamously as parchment farm. she told npr's "fresh air" i

remember being 7, 8 years old and having nightmares about my uncles and my father being arrested and sent to parchment prison. as the "guardian" points out in its review of "sing unburied sing" the division between civilian life and incars rated is porous. the family struggles with entrenched racism, drug addiction and poverty, yet the family endures, supported by the land and by their spiritual inheritance. miss ward explained in an interview with powell's books, she study ied voodoo in a way t incorporate the spiritual world as an important aspect of her character's legacy, allowing them, i quote, not to transcend their reality, but to access a different understanding of their

reality. succor is also found in the natural world and her beautifully masterful rendering of southern landscapes has inspired critics to name her as the worthy heir to william faulkner, toni morrison and zora nielsen. a remarkable pedigree. at "washington post" notes, ward is one of the most powerfully poetic writers in this country. for this brilliant, lyric and compassionate novel about a family possessed by the past while fighting for a future, jezmyn ward is the recipient of the anisfield-wolf book award for fiction. three voices unburied sing" but it's the 13-year-old biracial child that is at the heart of the novel. the first chapter opens on jo jo's birthday with his asse

assessment that quote, i like to think i know what death is. i like to think it's something i could look at straight. its opening is both a powerful and simultaneously disconcerting beginning for a coming of age story. as he helps pop, his beloved grandfather, slaughter a goat for his birthday dinner, jo jo takes pride in his ability to watch the killing without flinching. he is as clear-sighted in how he understands his family dynamic. he lives with his black grandparents. ma'am is in the painful end stage of cancer. his white father michael is in prison for cooking meth. his mother is largely absent, often getting high with a fellow waitress. pop alone provides stability and it falls to jo jo to care for his sister, the toddler, kaya, a

responsibility that he performs with maternal tenderness. beyond visual and emotional acuity, jo jo has inherited his grandmother's spiritual gifts. he's able to divine the sound and movement of animals, and he can see ghosts. debois says he's the sort of seventh son, born with a veil and gifted with second sight in this american world. in this novel, jo jo grows into his psychic inheritance as he confronts quite dangerous situations, just one among many breathtaking examples, his mother insists on taking her children to pick up michael from parchment, despite her intention to make a drug deal on the road. the family is pulled over by the police. jo jo experiences a terrifying and sadly familiar episode as he

reaches for his grandfather's protection charm in his pocket, jo jo is thrown to the ground by the policeman, handcuffed with a gun to his head, but eventually released. further menace on the road home comes from richie, the ghost of a teenager who died at parchment decades ago, at the same time that pop as a young man had been in prison there. richie, filled with stories of misery and pain, attaches himself to jo jo as a medium for an audience with pop, who had been his only friend during the misery and pain of parchment. richie's narrative expands the novel's reach into the past. as "the washington post" notes, richie quote, is the agonized spirit of a boy who was in prison when southern jails were essentially a system of legalized slavery. as ward further explained,

parchment was basically a big plantation in the 1930s and the 1940s, and the prisoners were rented out to regional industrial barons to be slaves. richie recounts with juvenile pride his success and minor thievery to feed his family but his crime, not surprisingly for anyone who knows anything about the south during this period, is punished with brutality by the authorities rather than viewed with compassion. richie is sentenced to work the fields of parchment, where he endures beatings and rape. caught up in another inmate's escape attempt, richie is haunted with thoughts. at the end of the novel, pop finally confesses to jo jo that it was he who sliced richie's throat to save him from the slow torture of being lynched by a white mob.

like lady macbeth, pop can't erase the horror of this act, telling jo jo i wash my hands every day, jo jo, but that damn blood ain't never coming out. ward manages to convey this cascade of horrors bluntly and precisely, and even with what i can read, only as a respectful delicacy. violent death runs as a theme throughout the novel, and the chapters narrated by leoni reveal the violent death visited upon her brother and pop's son. when she was in her early teens, michael's cousin murdered her brother in a fit of jealousy. but the murder officially declared a hunting accident, the ghost is denied justice and an inspector visits his sister in her drugged state. in a different type of supernatural moment than those that jo jo experiences.

traumatized by her brother's death, leoni turns to michael, finding a drug-like relief and solace in him as the sole white person to apologize to her about gibbons' death. leoni describes the beginning of her obsession with michael and i quote, he saw me, saw past skin, the color of unmilked coffee. i have black lips the color of plums and saw, saw the walking wound i was, and came to be my bone. she focuses solely on michael, even neglecting and sometimes abusing the children they have together to feed her addiction to him. the reader may well find it challenging to muster compassion for such a mother, yet as the

"new york times" asserts, quote, such feats of empathy feel genuinely inevitable when altered by a writer of such lyric imagination as ward. "sing unburied sing" allows the dead to speak their pain in many voices, through many bodies and experiences, and conjures an emotional and physical landscape that is in equal parts earthly and spiritual. ladies and gentlemen, for her brilliant unveiling of the forgotten among us, past and present, jezmyn ward is the recipient of the 2018 anisfield-wolf book award for fiction. [ applause ]

>> good evening. i wrote my speech, i hand-wrote it so you'll have to excuse me, because my handwriting is pretty terrible. if i mess up, i apologize in advance. so when i first committed to writing, i loved literature but i was not very good at creating it. i was in my early 20s and i was a beginner. and my work showed it. my characters were flat, my

prose tortured and my sense of plot was nonexistent. i didn't know much at all, just that i loved reading, that i loved how words could lift me up out of my life. ... to tell stories after writing my debut novel. i thought i perhaps did not possess a talent. it would be better for me to return to school. it would've for me and my family financial stability. as i wrestled with at full.

i couldn't write anything of value. i asked myself why was i cursed with this passion of something. i thought it best for me to set aside this unrequited love. and i tried but then i took my nephew on walks he wanted me to show him in the world. i listened as my grandmother told me stories hiding in car trunks. out of white neighborhoods in the 1940s. i realized that the impetus to create was not coming only from me.

the story in the memories. a will told story. i looked at photos of my dead brother and sought my mother i looked at my sisters in my mother and my father in my grandmother after years of hard work and writing i realized that in testifying for those i knew that they

became characters and understanding and if in an affinity to recruit. to know i told difficult stories in your esteem i told them all. i have done what all good writers do. i've opened a door to a space where they meet and find themselves in each other. those same readers leave the space with the shared experience and seen the in seeing the world and those in and new. so thank you to the cleveland foundation everything associated with the book awards.

they honored the efforts. finally, i would like to read to you from the end of the scene. i would like for us to find the way. for the moment i'm going to read about it. a scene where jojo meets richie. because jojo is out for a walk on his own. and so many richie says. the voice is molasses slow. so many of us hitting the wrong keys. wondering against the song. he lies down and looks up at me from his bed. from the root beneath it. it's a hard pillow. a stuck using the snake did you know richie says i shake my head.

so many crime lost. now you understand he says he closes his eyes let's go a bullfrog's cloak. he is quiet asleep. rippling like water. and then i see it. he ascends of the trees the trees like the white snake. from the trunk to the branches. again in recline. they are full with ghost. two or three all the way up to the top some of the men and babies.

none of them revealed the debt. i see it in their eyes. the great black eyes. the perch like birds. but look as people they speak with their eyes. he raped me and suffocated me until i died. while i looked into my baby's plane in the yard. they dragged me out to the bard couched me and beat me. they put me out of the water. i couldn't breathe. eyes blink. they rank --dash wink before the forest line. the sun making rags and breaches their eyes closed and then open as one. looking down on me and then up at the sky.

the rush, yes. i stand until there is no sun. i stand until the moon rises in the mouth close. i stand until the forces of black knuckles multitude. until i find a hollow stick. away from the dead to find pop holding caleb. the ghost in the dark. we were worried about you, you didn't come back, let's go. i say. knowing and in that tree of ghost is there. and makes the skin on my back burn. seeking tentative between the bones to bite.

please kayla said. and they let it slide down. and then she toddles past me sitting on the dark ground. have back to see. the front of her shoulders and pop. and the way she looks up like she is measuring the trees. but something about the way she stands and takes all of the pieces of everybody. caleb go home. they sway with open mouth again. like she's trying to soothe it. they don't arrive. a song of mismatch. nothing i can understand. only the melody which is low. it cuts the whispering.

and they seem louder. when we are frightened of the world. they smile the something like relief. i lift her up. i follow him as he looks for the raccoon. they lead us back to the house. they go over the shoulder. like i am the baby and she is the big brother. like she remembers the sound of the water. now she sings at home they say. thank you.

[applause]. post facts and fakeness. anyone who is familiar with the concise musical. of kevin young's 11 volumes of earth. the name alone by the name alone. this new volume announces its encyclopedia to her ranging over 447 pages delving into the world of the fake.

when they write that and a captivating voice and many of the hoaxes he discloses are quite entertaining he never lets the reader ignore the danger of lives. the rich history cannot affect be more urgent and a time in which fact and empiricism are threatened by charger --dash mike choose your own reality impulses. this is in addition to examining the confusion of living in the era of choosing this. more importantly it exposes the ugly truth that racial anxiety is at the heart of most american hoaxes. the scholarly approach without lively voice makes this book in the words of the new york times in enthralling essential history of the hoax.

for the groundbreaking volume kevin young in 200018 recipient of the book award for nonfiction. in an examination of the connection between race and hoaxes young begins by discussing and the notorious pt barnum. he may be presented as a nurse made of george washington. the clearing that he was 156 years old. barnum who probably purchased her. made fortune. even after her death the body was a medic at -- -- a matter of public exhibit. as young explained americans continued fascination with the body of the other stems from the efforts to establish racial superiority.

they made the 19th century the age of imposter. an era that perfected the mix of shame and superiority he writes. they conflated evolution and exploration. these mini many exhibits of human beings held in captivity what they provide an allegory for slavery as well as support for the field of a race science. as the washington post points out they contain a trove of fresh in persuasive insights. they move into the late 20th interim. an over overabundance of fake

memoirs. at the center. among the many autobiographies written. there is a gay girl in damascus. a white man from georgia. and a three three-part memoir between the year 2000 by a white man. posing as a native american. the real author. they base the stories on the writing of the actual native american sermon elector. other examples of balance. and they insist. the cross cultural labels. in the literature of ethnic usurpation. the writer relies on

stereotypes thus distancing the reader from reality. they search. 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 emotions but not our facts. ". as they were nearing completion of this the rachel story broke out. they describe the dismay when as he puts it he raised up the nappy head. and he realized when he sought that he have to take time to write about her also. it's deeply personal meditation on this story. they link the long tradition explaining those that are

black face. they reduce it to skin in order to be white. the anger is not so much at the attempts to look black as he writes, those surprised by how a white lady darkening her skin have not been out of the house in a while. rather it is reclaimed that she felt black. it's a very troubling too young. he reflects being black is not a feeling i don't always feel colored. nor is it simply a state of mind. the linking of the cultural appropriation. of the mother emmanuel massacre illustrates the difference between pretending to be black and being black. they cut through the hoax to

expose the reality of the black experience including his own experiences of anti- black races. while the engagement with the president as limiter -- is limited they don't judge the final chapter entitled the age of euphemism. they replace the truth and facts. with factoids in an age in which donald trump replaces pt barnum as the greatest showman. our age of euphemism differs from barnum's age of imposter it merely masks it. it misunderstands and miss speaks. going so far as despite its own face. it signals more troubling mindset one in which the truth

is not so much absent or contested as it doesn't matter. belief we might say trumps reality. the attempt at providing some hope for the future is a speculation that truth is not an absolute or relative term. but is skilled a muscle like memory that has weakened for my neglect. if so the concept of truth could be strengthened if we are willing collectively to make the effort. ladies and gentlemen for his thought for poking study of the lives we are told in the lives we tell ourselves. kevin young is the recipient.

[applause]. thank you so much. thank you so much skip and karen in the cleveland foundation. thank you to the judges for this really important honor for me. and thank you to that fellow winners tonight. i'm really honored to be alongside of you is really an honor. some of my favorite writers. i first heard of the award from langston hughes not personally mind you but he won

in nonfiction in 1954. i was thinking a lot about my connections to hughes. and when he and that way for me is not the lot. i spent time here in cleveland. i like to think that his spirit connects us. his ashes repose in the schomburg center where imd director and harlem. for me this is really a full circle night and i think it is fitting that the award itself is a circle. i really want to thank many people who helped us come about and took six years to

write. i thought no one would want to care about that. suddenly it was relevant. i really want to thank kate who made this all possible. a good friend who is here. in his the book is dedicated to. the indignity of being identified only by initials he knew some of the fakers in the book. we fix that also. i'm just going to read a couple portions of this book. something from that beginning and the beginning and something from the end. this is the start of the whole book. from the age of imposter quote, what the american public always wants is a

tragedy with a happy ending. if he was instinctively right when he told us to his fellow novelists than the hook of the modern hoax has been to separate the tragedy from the american happy ending. recently the hoax at least after the 19th century that they have just seen turned pretense every tragedy is far worse than it really is. if only to make the scripted ending no matter how apocalyptic it may be on the happier. and once the hoax meant to honor now it embraces horror once it stopped to praise today the hoax mostly traffics and pains. this raises the essential question. is there something especially american about to the hoax

where the 18th century was the height in britain the 19th century starred the united states so much so that someone at the time called at it the age of imposter. the 19th century america thought to establish after the fact. they were attempts to clean the ancestry. in the age of reason gave way to romanticism. they capitalize on those very things. the united states during the 19h century with its rich memory and cherish traditions.

this led to a host of hoaxes. there is indeed a powerful persistent notion that the american character is a is filled not just with tall tales in sideshows but also with conmen and fake indians. with masks and money. so pt barnum is who sort of starts the book off as professor gates mentioned. and he very much was someone who was invested in this notion just by showing who he claimed was mentioned that was a hundred 61 years old. he was connecting it to the glorious history. we think he also removed her teeth to make her look older. he took her back to new york. and have her dissected essentially in the medical

theater. and this idea that alive or dead he owned her. kind of floats throughout the hoax. why do we deceive each other. and i came to write about why we believe. why do we believe these things. many cases where we believe especially now the worst about each other. our fears. i thought i would end with talking about that. as they mentioned they pretended to be change her hair. this is from a chapter called lacquer than now.

i was born a poor black child. the beginnings of steve martin's the jerk still makes me laugh. with its trip twist on once upon a time. the distance between what we know of the white comedian martin is relative success and is obviously a false declaration. not only that tragic biology. in both the worst are in the better. the character transformation is overcoming after all he is clearly right now. not to mention his current lot in which he is smudged apparently destitute. has a black face. it certainly part of the effect. a familiar one in other words. two black people used to watching white people only claim blackness is a poor me stance. now why does this jerk remind me of rachel.

i thought i have nearly finished this book. but as soon as i sent a draft to my publisher. she raised up her nappy head. i can't decide if they had been merely pretending to be black. it's a natural extension of what i've been saying all along. it turns out i now know. it rears its rear also. when it first broke. i identified some of my favorite twitter titles. with the memoir. their eyes were watching oprah.

imitation of imitation of life. a victim of all. black-ish like me. now things done got serious. one of the best things about being being black. it's not a volunteer position. you can just wish on a docs -- dark star and become black. it's not paid either. it's more like a long internship with a chance of enhancement. did they really fool the black folks around her. i have a strange feeling. that many simply humored her. you have to do this with white people. from time to time.

i can hear richard laughing. teaching the class about blackness doesn't mean that you are black. or a set of stock behaviors. they can tell you every five men on the session. it doesn't mean you can always hear it. they can often hear it and does it mean when anyone else hears it that she gets to be black. so when the killer name withheld walked into the mother emmanuel church. one week after the story broke i'm not surprised that black worshipers there welcome tim. it was a part of the african-american christian tradition.

it began over 200 years ago. when they prevented blacks mostly freeman from praying the size. how long did they sit there waiting in a prayer circle deciding to deny the evidence of humanity before him. nothing could have convinced him not to kill blacks who he believed prayed on white people. especially women. he may not had known any women besides his family. .. ..

flags flew at half staff except the confederate flag on south carolina's state house grounds. it took a black woman, brittany newsome, to climb up and take that down. they gave the authority to a black man to raise the flag back up. like sally hemmings, he might not have minded but he certainly couldn't have refused. sinking feeling, black-faced person always occupies a bigger public stage than a black one. i came out black as a teenager. before then, i was simply a boy. after i was sometimes still. 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 as leopold sangdor put it, i took a black shower and shaved a black shave, i walked a black walk, i wrote some black lines, i coughed black and sneezed black and ate black, too. this last at least is literal. grapes, blackberries, the ripest plums. thank you. [ applause ] >> kevin young. thank you, kevin. n. scott momaday. when asked if he agreed that the novel "house made of dawn" led to the breakthrough of native

american literature in american letters, n. scott momaday honestly replied, you can argue that. i don't think that there can be any argument about the fact that the author that we honor here tonight is the dean of the native american literary renaissance. momaday is the author of 16 books of poems, autobiography, essays, fiction, plays and folklore. his ground-breaking pulitzer prize for "house made of dawn" in 1968 marked the re-emergence of native american voices in narratives and fiction. in addition, momaday is a talented water colorist, a founder of the buffalo trust to preserve native american culture, an esteemed professor and a member of a dance society.

in all facets of his life, momaday celebrates the sacred in nature and the strength and beauty of traditional life. for his invaluable contributions, he is this year's anisfield-wolf book award lifetime achievement recipient. ladies and gentlemen, give it up for m. scott momaday. [ applause ] momaday grew up surrounded by story tellers and he credits among the chief influences on his writing the native american oral tradition, especially the legends imparted to him by his father. his mother was a writer and he was surrounded by a wide range of literature as a child.

influencing his desire to follow in her footsteps. his father was a painter, and both parents taught in indian schools. momaday's parents provided a rich heritage of artistic production and this, in conjunction with the cultures that he experienced growing up on navajo, apache and pueblo reservations, shaped momaday's writings. in "house made of dawn" he describes a traditional world that persists despite success of efforts to destroy its foundations and i quote. their invaders were a long time in conquering them and now, after four centuries of christianity, they still pray to the old deities of earth and sky. they have skooassumed the names gestures of their enemies that have helped on to their own secret souls, and in this, there

is resistance and an overcoming long outwaiting. in an interview with the santa fe reporter he describes the hes essence of all tribal life as having quote, blood that existed on this continent for 30,000 years. [ applause [ applause ] within this span of time, american literature arose in momaday's assertion to the "new york times" quote, not with the purists of new england but with an anonymous man or woman in sizing an image on a canyon wall in utah 2,000 years ago. within the historical scope of american literature, momaday is insistent that he is first and foremost a poet. he declares quote, poetry is the

queen of literature. i would rather be a poet, he says, than anything else. among his influences, he cites emily dickinson as the greatest american poet, naming wallace stephens as probably second. concerning his own creative process, momaday has said you have to put all of yourself into writing. therefore, you can only do it for a certain period of time. four hours or so is about as much as i can put into writing any given day. as he draws the rhythm and repetition of the oral tradition to create verse structure, momaday's great topic is the spirit and the grandeur of the american west. about the landscape of the west, he has said quote, there exists part of the country a very large part of it which really has to be seen to be believed, but best of all, he concludes, it has to

be imagined. reflecting on his own imagination, he writes in the poem "notebook" as a child, i remarked the world in scrawls of wonder and so do i now, in the envy of age. a further explanation of a poet's creative urge is found in his stunning poem, "winter arcs." a poet stands among smoking stones and cold waterfalls, and thinks of nothing and yet, the faint impulse to tell of creation comes upon him. the story is too large for a couplet or even a quatre. done with wonder, he beholds rainbows and the random fishes that rise and freeze, iridescent

on the air. in these lines, we see the struggle of the inspired poet to use language to forge his own creations, overwhelmed by a beauty that eludes speech. the writer's passion is tempered but not overcome. for ushering us into a world of spirit and imagination in which tradition, while under assault, endures, for infusing language with the sacred and for sharing his native american heritage with all readers, n. scott momaday is this year's recipient of the anisfield-wolf book award's lifetime achievement. i'm sorry. give it up for scott momaday.

[ applause ] scott momaday, ladies and gentlemen.

>> thank you so much. you know, from there to here is a longer and more arduous journey than you might think. i want to congratulate the other recipients of this prestigious award. i want to thank skip and karen and the members of the cleveland foundation, and the offices of the anisfield-wolf award. i am a poet, among other things. i have written in various forms, as skip mentioned. i'm a storyteller as well. tonight, i want to tell you a story or two, and perhaps recite a poem. in 2008, i was on a train going

from moscow to vladivastock across the breadth of siberia, across nine time zones. one night i was awakened by the stopping of the train. i looked out my compartment window and saw that we had come to a small station. there were yellow lights in the mist and i could see figures moving about within the doorways, in and out of doorways. we had entered mongolia. and then a young man came to my compartme compartment. he was straight and tall and good-looking and very black, shiny eyes. he was very polite and i gave him the papers of entry that i had filled 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, 30,000 years ago. i had returned to a place of origin. you know, i went to stanford as a graduate student on a creative writing fellowship in poetry. i didn't know much about poetry when i went there. i thought i did, but i didn't really know the differences and i learned a lot at stanford. as i wrote a book, in my first year there, which was my first really successful poem, it was awarded the american academy of poetry award, it was called "the bear" and i am a bear.

i am named for a place in wyoming which is a sacred place to my people, and it tells the story of seven sisters who were born into the sky and they became the stars of the big dipper. and they were chased by a bear, a boy who turned into a bear, and i am the reincarnation of that boy. i, too, turn into a bear on occasion. i don't mean to frighten you. if that should happen tonight, bear with me. i apologize for that. anyway, here is "the bear." what ruse of vision this wall of leaves, rending incision into countless surfaces would cull

and color his somnolence, whose old age has outworn valor, all but the fact of courage. seeing, he does not come, move, but seems forever there, dimensionless, dark, in the windless moon's hot glare. more scarred than others, these years since the trap maimed him, pain slants his withers, drawing up the crooked limb. then he is gone, whole, without urgency, from sight as buzzards control interceptively their flight. [ applause ]

that's a syllabic poem, a poem in which the meter is determined purely by the number of syllables to the line, in this case five, seven, five, seven. it was an experimental kind of poetry for me when i went to stanford. i had been preceded there by a poet i admired very much, a british poet, whose name is tom gunn. tom gunn began to experiment with syllabic poetry and i followed in his footsteps. i took up the experiment and have had some success with it and a great deal of gratification. i also write lesser poems. i write -- i once moved to tucson, arizona. i had never before been in the desert, the real desert. there i was on the fringe of the

desert. and i found out that when people go to tucson to live, they buy a house with two kinds of air conditioning, and a swimming pool and so i did that, too. i started swimming as a kind of exerci exercise. i discovered that swimming laps is one of the most boring professio professions. it's more boring than jogging. because at least with jogging, the scene changes. but as you're swimming and you're looking down at the bottom of the pool going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, it's maddening. and i started to overcome or tried to overcome this boredom by composing epitaphs as i swam. and i have collected a number of

these, and i will share a couple with you, but i want you to realize that these were composed without benefit of pencil and paper, and while i was completely wet. here is one called "this is a two-lapper." it's called "on chastity." here lies a lady sweet and chaste. here comes the matter, chaste makes waste. [ applause ] i was invited to attend a conference in phoenix one day and i went there, and i didn't know what to expect.

they were coming from all over the world, these potters, and they wore little pottery name tags which i thought was rather kitschy. when i got back to my home in tucson, i jumped in the pool and i composed this four-lapper. here lies the potter tim o'day, who has himself become his clay. and left his memory be forgot, recycle him into a pot. [ applause ] i'll tell you one more story. i wrote a book called "the way to the mountain" and it is a collection of folk tales to which i have added commentary.

one of the tales is about a talking dog and in our oral tradition, one of the ways in which you indicate something far back in time is to say this happened long ago when dogs could talk. it's a wonderful idea, isn't it? but the story has a man was thrown away, we're not quite sure what that meant, but it couldn't be good, and he found himself alone on the prairie and he had a bow and some arrows and he expended his arrows hunting food, and finally he ran out of arrows and was pretty much at the mercy of the elements. whereupon, a dog comes up to him and says oh, i wouldn't want to be in your moccasins, there's

danger all around. you are completely surrounded by enemies. the man said well, tell me something i don't know. the dog says you know, i could save you. and the man says well, for heaven's sake, if you can save me, please do. and the dog says wait a minute, wait a minute. you know how dogs are. wait a minute, wait a minute, i have puppies. they're small. they're cold. they're hungry. if you will take care of my puppies, i will save you. and of course, the man agreed, the bargain was struck, and the story ends, the dog led the man round and round and they came to safe safety. one day, i was living in san francisco and i was invited to

speak to a group of sixth graders at the hebrew academy of san francisco, and i accepted, but you know, then i had second thoughts. i wasn't used to speaking to children of that age group, and so i wasn't sure what i would tell them, and i thought of that story. but what sixth grader can resist a story of a man who is saved by a talking dog? and so i launched into the story and i said this happened a long time ago, when dogs could talk. the little girl in the front row looked at me and she said, those were the days.

[ applause ] so i want to greet you warmly to thank you whole-heartedly and very sincerely to wish you well. [ applause ] >> all right. >> my heaven. good evening. i'm karen long. edith has one final announcement for you tonight. the new winner of the anisfield-wolf memorial prize, a yearly gift for a nonprofit doing exceptional work, this year it goes to the may dugan

center. a settlement house style institution on the near west side that connects residents with food, clothing, jobs, many services. may dugan herself took in destitute people, right on to her cleveland front porch. she was a contemporary of edith anisfield-wolf and i like to think their paths may have crossed. and now, thank you, skip. thank you, ron. and thank you, edith. you built the scaffolding we have enjoyed tonight. please come up, shane mccrae, who makes captivity speak so we can hear every syllable. and join him, please, jezmyn ward, who conjures up the dead and brings the past into the present. and kevin young, who shows us the truth of our lives.

please join them and scott momaday, a storyteller who can render public spaces sacred with meaning. steve, joyce, your beautiful minds led us to these books. come up. come up. [ applause ] you are all anisfield-wolf bookends now. i'm grateful to our partners, venerable and brand new and growing. the list is growing. video is streaming from tonight with interviews with our authors. please visit anisfield-wolf.org. remember, you can tune in to professor momaday's city club talk at 12:30 tomorrow. and you can join kevin young

friday for bunk and a beer. cleveland book week stretches into saturday with the great lakes black authors expo at the cleveland public library, and saturday afternoon at 2:00 with the author and illustrator of the marvelous picture book "crown" in the stoke wings of the cleveland public library. our first family event. now, dear audience, please join the winners onstage, where they will be signing their books alongside skip gates, stephen pinker and rita dove, to make your passage easier this year, refreshments await you around the corner in the ohio theater lobby. now is your moment to enter the conversation. thank you for joining us.

[ applause ] here are some of the current bestselling non-fiction books according to the conservative book club. topping the list is "ship of fools." tucker carlson's thoughts on elitism in america. followed by david limbaugh's "jesus has risen." after that, fox news host jeanine pirro defends president trump against his detractors in "liars, leakers and liberals." next, jordan peterson's "12 rules for life" and former rep congressman jason chaffetz explores federal bureaucracy. our look at some of the bestselling books according to the conservative book club continues with tim tebow's self-help book "this is the day." "the russia hoax," fox news legal analyst greg jarrett's argument against the validity of the russian interference investigation. after that, "killing patton" by

bill o'reilly, a recount of the events surrounding general patton's death. followed by "the coddling of the american mind," jonathan haigt's thoughts on trends that have led to a weakening of diverse viewpoints on college campuses. wrapping up our look at some of the books from the conservative book club's non-fiction bestseller list is ann coulter's "resistance is futile." her observation on the resistance to the trump presidency. some of these authors have or will be appearing on book tv. after the programs have aired, you can watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> my book is not just about donald trump, the man i know. it's not just about the media and hollywood hypocrites. i could go on and on. we will open it up to questions in a few minutes. but the book makes it clear what happened. there is a deep state. i don't know if any of you ever watched "the view."

well, i think it's when whoopi goldberg said what is the deep state and who's in charge, and that's i think when the wheels fell off the wagon. the first segment was pretty good but the second was not so good. but it's fine. ... my father a veteran of world war ii he was on the first ship he died very young of

have and neck cancer. my grandfather was in world war ii also. we believe in america we believe no one is above the law even watches and other programs online. the city to her explores the american story. to see how they go about their research. i think when you write about history you to realize that human memory is fallible.