i praise you for putting that book out. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. we are going to move to the signing tent. follow us up the street. get your book and get them signed.pple tv on twitter, instagram and facebook. in our final program of the day for the seven festival of books in nashville, a discussion on race in america. >> good afternoon, everyone. thank you so much for joining us here. my name is alicia. [applause] i am the community and organizational development or nader at metro arts national office of arts and culture. i am privileged as the justice

and arts program. i am delighted and thrilled to be conversation with these prolific authors this afternoon. yes, we are going to do brief introductions going down the line. >> hello? i will be super brief. i'm a black seven writer from jackson, mississippi. i wrote" vision. i remember coming out today, called heavy. thank you all for coming. [applause] >> i am from carson, california.

i was a professor at michigan state. i just want to seattle and now i am at the university of washington. this is my first book. [applause] >> my name is rochelle. [inaudible] my name is rochelle. i've been a journalist my whole life. i was a journalism at the university of north carolina chapel hill. worked at newspapers including the washington post. now a columnist for the detroit free press. i have decided that after all these years of journalism, i am now want to write books. i'm not a prolific author, i'm a political writer. when you write three columns a

week for years and years and years. you get used to deadlines and writing nonfiction. this is nonfiction i'm working on my first novel. i can tell you it is very different when you get something that has her name on the front. you get to hold it and i've been crying since february. [laughter] i was so honored to be asked to present at this festival. one of the best i've ever seen. i love my brace care. it was my first are. it means books still matter. reading still modest. i'm glad so many people here in his room to talk about our books. thank you very much. [applause] >> before we get into this conversation, i'm going to ask each of our authors to offer us brief reading from millwork. if we could start with ray, that

would be great. >> i want to acknowledge the book best, all of our businesses, institutions in our lives, we are gathered, i'm grateful to be here. going to be from the beginning. i will jump over because of time. some of 2010, i take a drive across the country. tempe, arizona, new orleans, on my way to one of the widest straight in the united states. he is working for the first time. i will eventually refer to the widest school of english. my plan, another sites of terror, as well as resistance. my last stop for before, i will visit. tubman's resting place. this drive is part of my research. i'm thinking it might inform future collection of stories, possibly set in new orleans and other parts of the south. or maybe some essays. i'm interested in the ways in

the past, me, mostly, the nationstate was commonly referred to as the united states. i'm interested in what we build monuments to, addictions we tell about that are not so distance yesterday. i'm not quite sure what i am doing. i'm guilty of romanticizing the south to a certain extent. as much as any first-generation, great migration black woman, my black girl desire for back home and back home, romanticize a place that never actually lived for any significant amount of time. ..: : :

i drive 12 hours the first day, so i can get through texas, past the peculiarly reenact one of the most western -- across the lands of the gila rink all on native land but not always thinking conscious by about this. i hate driving through texas. i hated driving through texas before they murdered sandra bland and before white supremacists seanberry and ongoing conditioning james james

berry those death. texas never ends, you drive and drive and you're still in texas and everywhere they remind you of how you're not supposed to mels with whatever lie texas claims to be. i drive so many hours the first day to sonora, texas, so i can be in louisiana the next. so i end up going to a plantation and then i ended up seeing my brother who is recently moved there and so i'm jumping at the morning i leave new orleans. the morning i leave i hear them before i see them. i'm packing the car win rattles and bells, shack beating drums, whistles and chanting and singing come from around the corner, group of people, in white, one of the men shaking a rattle is masked. the group moves down governor nichols street. the man with the mask and rat out in front, waving. i stand by the open trunk of my car. the masked man side wines to me, rattling in theaire, a friend once told me how her father, who was also from new orleans, but

who died just before i met her, used to warn hersh don't let nobody ever shake anything at you in new orleans. themarked man moved the front of me back anding for and shakes the rattle with faithed over my head in front of my face, over my shoulder, over my heart, down the front of my body. know without completely understanding it's not the hex any present's father warned her if but a blessing so i let him. if need it. the night before, my brother and i drank wine and talked about our families, the stories we no and the stories we can't tell fully am difficult conversation that left me exhausted i. told him stories of violence. it was his first time hearing my tell these stories. he listened. i closed my eyes now while the man shakes the rattle. try not to cry. still tired from the night before and being in a city where i always feel like i'm time traveling. the man finishes his blessing and the dancers move to the tomb

of the unknown slave where through sing and dance prayers of or some remembrance. i watch for a bit from where i stand and then go inside and tell my brother. my brother walk pleases to the car and tell mets to be safe to text him from the road so he knows i'm okay. you're going to be okay, he says, it's a question and a reminder, this is the brother who got in the writing, who because i was berting him when i was younger when we was trying to write while praying record gave me a notebook and told me to listen the music, stevie wonder write dow how it made me feel. i tornado the video wkoz and cry my name out over do you know what it means until i cross the bridge and hit mississippi. [applause] >> is this working now? oh, good.

very powerful. su for sharing that. i grew up in north carolina, there were 10 people there when i grew up, 10,000 people there now. and so segregated town. black folks lived on the east side of town and the white folks lived on the west side of town if remember being eight years old and my grandfather, who raised my, with my premier, going the best golfer in town and not being allowed to play on the public golf course, which to me meant slavery because i didn't know what it was and once i learned, not playing on a golf course, not that big a deal. so i knew at some point i wanted to talk about how slavery didn't really end, just changed addresses and moved from plantations to courtrooms and boardrooms and newsrooms and classrooms and that we have never belt with it in this country, no not 400 years. but i didn't do it because i was a journalism major who wanted to tell the news and post watergate, everything was news and i became a journalist of the

things that we thought were real. but underneath the surface the realest thing about america we weren't dealing with. so three years ago this columnist wrote a column that said black people need to get over slavery. one that squad they were better off than had we had black people stayed in africa. and that let me know two things but the columnist, jack kelly. one he had never been to africa and he didn't know any black people. but we have a columnist coat which is you can write thing youon wrote a, even if its wrong so i can't write a column saying jack kelly is an idiot. so i decided decided to write ay why about slavery and stress vestiges of it and the pain of it and the damage still persists and then i decided why shy be one person still railing against the machine, so i decided to get a chorus of voicing to hitch first call to the friend, len naar potts, pulitzer prize

winning columnist and i said, i'm writing this book about how slavery persists, and he was in the middle of writing his book and put it down and said i'll write something. then i called my friend nikole hannah jones and said i'm working on this book and that's what it's about and the was in the middle and almost past deadline on her book and said i'll write your forward. then i call aliyah bundled, great -- of walker and shes walking on a book and put it down and then i sad ayesha tines , and she said i'm not a writer but i will try. so i got 23 voices and the thing that was most telling to me was i didn't say anything except this is the theme. and they all sent in 23 essays and not one of the essays ways the same as any of the other ones which is how many tentacles there for this. so i'm just he going to read you a paragraph from nikole's brilliant forward to this book and then i'll tell you what the

burden is. >> we choose to get that slavery was a national scourges that northern states allowed slavery, the entire nation profit getted from immigrant. congress after passing the 1st 1st amendment realized itself was not enough to outlaw the institution of slavery, and so i passedsive rights laws in the 1860s to eliminate the badges of slavery. 100 years later in ruling against a white community that prohibited black residents from moving in, the supreme court ruled that the 13th amendment had closed clothed congress with power to pass all laws necessary and proper for abolishing at incident offered slavery in the united states and empowered congress to eradicate the last vestages vestages and instance incidents of a society half slave and half free. the badge of slavery wasn't our skin. it was the conditions created to demean, degrade, exploit, and control those with our skin. we have never rid ourselves over the badges, noter in the 18th 18th 60s, the 1960s, not

now. we remain a nation of full citizens and part citizens. and our original sin remains the thing for for which way the people the sin was visits upon can never by african. our very presence here reminds the great nation of all that we are not. that was nikole hannah jones etch got all of these essays and her forward and thought, lord, what am i going to do say? in the introduction, the very first sentence says i will not shut up about slavery and i won't. this is my 60th appearance because the country to have the conversation about this because we refuse to get to know each other and because of that haste persists and is worse now than it has been except when it was legal and it could be legal again if we're not careful. but anyway, so the short piece from my else say, the burden. the scenees series into any enemy ricker red, just rolled from shawshank prison is a bag boy as a local grosser he quickly passion the sack for a customer then raises his hand to

catch the manager's attention. restroom break, boss? his white supervisor called him over you don't need to ask me every you need to take a piss. just go understand? red nod quickly, goes to men's room and as he stained over the urinal his words in voiceover, hang in the air, 40 years i've been asking permission to piss. can't squeeze a drop without say sew. that's what prison did a grown man in a fictional film, the shaw sank redemption. that is who is being a slave todays a people. the are thousands of examples that's detail at the the physical brutality of slavery but what america must pay pore attention is to the emotional bry tallity that pound down a to single word that has been as much a part of our living history as our flank permission. permission to speak. permission to vote. permission to work in jobs that allow to us use our talented. permission to drink from community water fountains. permission to dine at public lunch counters. permission to sit anywhere on

public buses that or tax dollar pay for. permission to provide our children with educations equal to those of their white peers. perking mission to enbrace the freedom the emancipation proclamation lied about. permission to run for the presidency of the united states of america. we african-americans in the united states have spent a century and a half seeking permission, hiding our lights under bushels-accepting less than we deserve because we have been trained to believe we don't deserve more. it is time to put that burden down. [applause] >> thank you for that, row -- re show. way don't talk but permission because is was lucky never to reed rae's book about a year ago, maybe a year and a half. and at the time i need he

permission to write into the folds of my familial history, and thing is didn't want to talk about, and rae gave me that permission, so, thank you. so, what i'm going to do is read a page and a half from the book called "heavy, an american enemy more" written to you and directly address decided my mother. so she is the you in this page and a half. >> the next day, april 29, 1992, the night of the rhodes any king verdicting you held me in your lap and would not stop rocking for two hours. we watched l.a. burn as cameras showed a white man pulled from a truck getting beat up by black and brown men at an l.a. intersection. i hope you see what they aren't show you said. want you to write a essay what white identification feel. i know they're blaming us. i looked at you like your bread wasn't done because the last thing i cared about was what white folk knelt. i've only been alive 17 years and was already tired of paying for white folks feeling with a

generic smile and manufactured excellence they could not give one fuck about. never heard of white founding getting caught and paying for anything they did to us or stole from us. didn't matter if it was might police, white teachers, white students or white randoms, i didn't want to teach white folk not to steal, i didn't want to teach white folk to treat us respectly. i wandded to fairly fight white folk and knock them out and i wanted to never, ever lose to them again. i knew there was no way to not lose unless we took back every bit of what had been stolen from us. i want end all of the money this, safety, the education, the hasn'ty choices, second chance, they stole. if we were to feathers what we were otherwise knew we had to take it back without getting caught because no creation on world was -- at punishing the black for the supposed transgressions of the black individual. they were absolute geniuses at inventing new ways for masses of black folk with less to suffer

more. our super power, i was told, since i was a child what perseverance, the able to survive no matter how much they took from us. i never understood how surviving was our collective super power when hike folk make sure that many of us did noted survive. and those of white house did survive practiced bending so much that breaking often seemed inevitable. that night, when you finally started snoring, i crept into the kitchen, opened the garage, got in your old mole biehl, put it in neutral, picked it out into the driveway. i didn't go far just mile down the road to the grocery store. if waited parking lot for the bread truck to pull up when the driver went in the store i got out of the cash snatched as many have over of loaves of breed bred as i could and can took off to my car. sped away from the grocery store and drove to parking lot overlooking the ross burning reservation, i it's until i get shivers and threw up. the next morning i started to do

some buttered wheat text in bed you hugged my neck and they would thank you and we wine our fight. you never asked me where the bread came from. [applause] >> wow. so, let me get my thoughts together. get my life together here. the thread i am finding in each of your books is the promissoriy nature of hope. it's what you guys are all performing here, and requiring of blackness. right? of the -- and blackness that is always stocked and stolen and

broken and the performance is remembering that which has been broken, right? i would love for each of you guys to talk about -- there's this great line in kiese's book here, when you say, i learned how to assemble memory and imagination when i almost wanted to die. right? and it seems the three of you guys are doing that in your own way of the space between living and dying, and even beyond death. right? rae, you talk about visiting places but in a sense you are making these blowns and long dead go live. when we talk but slavery, we are

resurrecting the dead in a sense and so i wonder if each of you could talk about that a little bit. >> that's a lot. thank you. so to talk about that, it might get boring because i hey to talk about art and art industry and making black lives, and a lot of my friends have actually been on the ground, working with the "black lives matter" movement, and i think that we sometimes, those who love ourselves and trying to love ourselves we think so much about the idea of black lives smarterring we don't give in the idea of black lives being constructed and one thing i was trying to do with my book is create an art object that actually honored the brokenness

and the attempt at mending but there is no deliverance in my book eye. writing my book to my muir. my mother and i are working on loving each other. one hinderance to our loving each other is the antiblackness and white supremacy. i just did not want to create a piece of art that gave in to that sort of resolution. and do that i felt like that was the one way to honor a particular kind of blackness, particular kind of deeply southern blackness and so the brokenness that i think you do hear running through everything that we do is a kind of art and i think tending to that brokenness is art industry but i don't think that purport that brokenness is memberses is what i'm interested -- is mended but the market wants us to do that for deliverance sake and everything else. >> exoneration. >> and progress. so, i can just say that i try to

create -- in order to create an art object with integrity i had to write it, too it's the most intimate relationship in my life and that's my mother, and then because i know people always want black boys to end saying i love you, mom think last sentence is n my book is, please, mama, don't be mad at me because i know i did thing in the book she wouldn't want flow do in front of white folks but that is what our love has to entail. [applause] >> we could all hold our applause again so we can make sure we have a full hour to have a full discussion. thank you. >> thanks for that, kiese. there's so much. i think i'll pick up on the brokenness and try to create art, and so the second part of book if the forgetting tree of reremember so thinking bit

concept of going to misses because what is happening is still happening. and so the -- i was actually working on prose before i did this and my father passed and he had dementia for a while and had already started to think about what happens to memories but when he passed, whatever i was working on fadessed away and i started writing quote triso they're immigrations, poetry, there's prose pieces, and the only way i can talk about the historical violence, the enter generational trauma was to create a book that was fragmented, and that hopefully in the fragmentation there is a kind of wholeness in it. but again issue don't think anything gets resolved in this book. it's more going deeper into the fragmentation and the other piece is thinking about what remember -- we remember and what happens to our guys and what

happens to the work of black women in particular, how our work often gets claimed by other people and so the book itself becomes an archive of these historical events of family stories, and becomes a way to remember things that my family has tried to forget, that history has tried to forget. but i think the collection is a collection of shardses and i don't think it -- it coming to in its brokenness. >> that was a lot of question. but i'm going to try to deal with the part hat has to do with death and history. the reason america remains broken is because it's refuses to deal with what would be its greatest death and that is the death of white supremacy. this is a nation that is based on white supremacy. it is no different now in the efforts to make sure that black children don't learn than when black people were not allowed to

be taught to read, and i talked about growing up in the south. my parents divorced so we were in new york. my father got new york, my mother good at north carolina. thought the world ended nil realized that north carolina was much greeter for writing. but in new york, there was this battle, intellectual battle against racism and in north carolina it's everywhere in the deep south, way of life. but what we had done in this country is a great disservice to ourselves and to generation after generation because we literally are fighting against this tide of making sure that the history is killed, make sure that the history is dead and buried. let's not talk about slavery, let's not talk but what happened in country. all of my jewish friend hey invisible tattoos that's say never forget but we are taught to try to always forget. to be more in the mainstream to be a part of the human race note black race. i write a column and every single week there's a guy who

writes me and says why do you write so much bit black people? and i tell hem, every single time, first of all, i'm black. but second, why does it bother you? what is it about my writing about my people and my history and my culture that makes you so uncomfortable that you feel it needs to be disappeared? i am not going to let it disappear. so one of the greatest difference services is witched of indication. i want one america, one history, instead we teach this history that is incomplete so that black children grow up not knowing how great they are, drake was wrong we didn't start at the bottom and now we're here, we started here, calm here, and have risen and they don't know that arc but also if little white children or children of all races knew that thy wouldn't feel some greater sense of superiority from the time they're here to years old. so i think that the biggest death this one we don't want to deal with and that's the death of white supremacy which keeps or country from being is a

gravities as it can he. with want to make america great against we need to stop freewaying that racism is not real. >> make america great in the first miss. >> the great americas that could be greater. >> a perfect segway to my next question. last week a're pace ited antiracism training and one of the trainers said that primary mark of white supremacy is an forgetting. and what you said rochelle about you were reporting on things that we thought were real, very striking and this -- the way that the three of you gather stories together, really shifts that epit -- such that we're

able to really feel it in our bodies not just through reading but a literal gathering of of the enemy roy of that. would love for each of you to talk about whether or not you felt that shift, if that's what you were trying to do. yeah. >> maybe let's start with rochelle. >> where did you go to school? >> a couple places. >> the questions are very deep so i'm trying to figure out the best way to answer it in a way that makes sense for me. i never shifted. my goal from the time is was eight years old has been to tell stories. and what i realized early on in

my career is that the story is wanted to tell were different from the ones that everybody else i worked for wanted to tell. and i had to problem fighting to do that. so, my gathering of information -- i'm not a black journalist. i remember when jesse jackson ran for president and we were forced to answer the question, raw black journalist or a journalist who is can block and my friend talked how redick his the -- ridiculous the question requests and it still exists. people want to have two parallel stores in america when there's one story you keep plucking thoughts of and trying to hide whether it's he cabal of folk thursday texas who try to keep things of of textbooks or call migrant worker who came to help bed mist eers and and leaving out by bites of colonialism to make sure people people didn't

know that white people discovered places that already existed. there was a shift. this biggest shifts was that's will not be silenced about it anymore. i i've now reached a point in my career as a comeumist where i can right whatever i want and i do. i'm work ago then second book while training to do my job and my job any life is to writes whatever the hell i say i want to write. that's the best freedom in the world and i still do it for a white newspaper, but there is a shift that still needs to happen that a lot of people have not had the courage to do. and anything i can do while mining the stories and finen people to help them do the same thing, that's gravy. >> i'm not sure what the question is, but i'm going to taught about something. i think it's about shifting. >> okay.

>> i think -- the shift for me was -- the stories in here, some are stories have been sitting on for a very long time and the naming that there are stories of violence any family was a very big thing, and thinking about those stories that naming of that violence within the context of this historical violence was something understanding the two can't be separate, understanding that we can't talk about the history of this country without talking about sexual violence. without talking about sexual violence of indigenous women and black women and so that was a huge thing. and so -- i actually don't go into much detail about the stories of violence but the specific names of that wag a huge thing and being able to say i i'm naming this here but you get to know this but you don't get to know this, and so -- i went to a great panel this

morning but sandra -- sandra lambert has new moment moyer out and the gave me a greats a rice where to start but chicago but all.what re reel in memoirs and don't and that notion of i'm going to flame this but not going to name this was a huge thing, and dealing with that ricer but even that was a lot for my mother, and so the conversations we have had since the book has been published have been really important and difficult in terms of talking about what do we do with these to stories of violence and how do we name it and wheat the kind of healing that can happen within the context of all of this. >> um, i'll be brief. so, i think the question of shifting is an important question, and i could talk about it forever because when i was in

college, i went initially to school to play basketball and football, just scholarship in jackson, mississippi, and i remember going to my first classes dressed in a suit, coming into class with briefcases. i never asked any questions in class because i was one over the few black people. didn't want the white people in class to think that i or we, god efficient bit, were studious and asking questions. right? i didn't want to be a student, which mean is needed to be dumb. didn't thick could be dumb. i didn't thick could afford to be dumb. then it extradded to write for the newspaper and all of these columns and critiqueing institutional rate simple and i started re-reading baldwin and more morrison and lord and at some opinion -- then i got kicked out of school for some of the shit i was writing and caused a shift. the shift for me was like i remember sitting in my dorm

room, i'm fucking trying to write to white people, begging them to be their best selves when i'm not writing anything but sexual violence, not writing neglect but what i want to lie about as a human beings, but i'm calling myself a writer. so even though i can pat myself on the back for joisting with white supremacy, i remember when is was 19 or 20 i was like, they didn't listen to fannie lieu hamer. didn't listen to baldwin. why the fick am i wasting million type when i nice writes about the cracks and holes and gaps in myself. so when i got kicked out of school, for trying to get white people to be better there was a shift but what i think, again, about -- try the first question -- in a perfect story that shift would be like, i realized what happened and then everything that i've done one all been but liberation and contesting violence but a lot of

this shit is market driven. so i would come here and tell everybody i wrote a black ass book called -- my editor is white, my agents is wide this, publishing industry which are white, he everybody involved is white so that doesn't mean i can't work with i thursday those lower frequencies but like the shift is there but oni think the market necessitates a shift backwards, and so when i think about shift, i can say, yes, i made some shifts, but my mama needs some new teeth so i had to shift back. mama ma need mortgage paid so i had to shift back. i'm here talking to y'all a particular aif there wasn't why folk i might be talking differently i'm interested in how to shift -- how our existence always next tates particular kind shifts and i think there's art industry to that shift but there's a consequence to that shift. sometime wiz don't want to talk

about. >> thank you for that. the last thing i'll ask is about lies, about witness, being witness to lies, and being witness to the truth. i think the first two lines of your book, kiese, is i did not want to write you. i want told write a lie. and there is for me the shift is about being a witness to truth and testifying about it. and so if each of you could talk around that theme and also what you want people to know about your memoir. as you are being -- as you are testifying about the truth. >> i'll go. okay.

so, when i got this invitation to come here issue was thrilled. love nashville, love book city ofs festivals and then i saw the tile re verb racings of racism, memoir of personal freedom and i thought, i've wanted to write a enemy more since i was and it's thought i could and there was nothing to write about when i was eight. and i didn't see this that way except i realized that in writing the is say i wrote and no choosing essays it's a memoir of things that are important to me. so whale would tell you that i learned more than anything is when you talk about lies, america is a glorious lie. it has been a lie since 1776. actually since before that when they made thomas jefferson take out the claws clause about everything being equal. you can't say everybody is equal and can't have slavery and he was thrilled because he would have 0 get rid of sal are and

that's a whole other story. i want to at some point do that piece about america being the glorious lie, except i realize i don't have to because it is evident in everything. it is evident every time somebody literally is reported to the police for breathing while black. it is evident when you have kids in school. i when my daughter was in the fourth grade and her teacher told her it was okay she got a 90 instead of 100 on to test because minoritieses are taken care of in this country and i payment a room parent the next day to make sure she never said anything like that other another kid ever. and then he changed schools. we don't deal with the obvious in this country. we don't deal with what we live with all the time. racism doesn't reverberate. it permeates. it envelopes. it molds over us like chocolate on as ice cream sundae except is a cream is bad and we try to eat

it anyway. i am beginning to sound like i'm high. i'm not. but it is so overwhelming and so overpowering that the fact that one motor vehicle best friends is white is a miracle to me because i never look at her and see all of that glorious lie. i never look at my friends -- i don't have an agent. i i was so honored that wayne state university press published my book. they're a small university press. they said we love it. we'll tate, before i'd written a word and they want my next one. i'd love to have a sense that someone is reading anything that we have written and everything you said is so -- i want to just reach over and grab your book right now. i'm hoping that when people hear these things and we write these things, that they're actually think about the greatest lie because if we don't ever fix that, all we do is just go in these cycles over and over of the same thing.

>> i don't know how we can write anything without thinking about that lie, the lie of the country, but also again thinking about how this lie permeates relationships and the ways its easier to tell storied about some lies than others. i think you asked what we wanted people to take away from the book. i think -- i don't know. it's possible to tell these stories, lots of different ways, we can't tell the story about black liberation and justice without also talk us about indigenous sovereignty, and i think also -- this book is story about permanent violence and historical violence and also about writing, and becoming a black woman writer and how it's

possible to do that in a country that is continues to tell lies that's based on lies, and so i hope that piece doesn't get left out, too. that it's about how do you -- how are black women able to tell these stories within the context of this violent nation. >> i mean i actually don't have anything more to say, anything important to say other than what has been said except, like, when i read -- rae, when you sent me your book to read, i think part of being a write are is also admitting when we have invested in the lie. so i realized i had invested heavily in the lie that the left often says about slavery being our -- what is original sin? which then you discuss talked about indigenous sovereignty. am a professor if teach kids and

i don't know. i i ever said the original sin is slavery but i never said the original sin was indigenous sovereignty which mean its i had. i vested into lie which meant if was going to good forward to an aare artist i needed that truth to guide me and also important to admit when we feel but a i think about the work if a done in this book and not just the people i've left out but the lies i still propagated at the expense of the truth and next time he can get it wright. what do be do for the -- i did get it wrong and not just get it wrong but invested in lies in the text. so i don't have any closing thoughts to say on that reading people who are smarter, better writers, better being human than me, helps mid get closers to not lying as a human being are but even then you still have to go shit over and over again for it to be worthwhile and that's the

hardest part but being a human. >> identities like to open its up to our audience. if you have any questions, we have a myke over here. we did be started late so i'll steal time for the next. >> yes, ma'am,. >> there's a mic actually. >> i have a loud voice. can you hear me. >> it's been recorded. >> stand up, nikole. >> testing, okay. during this process, what was the most, like, surprising thing that you discovered along this journey of writing your books?

>> so, initial i was writing this book, going to be a weight loss book. shame, people laughing and shity. you. that's interesting. so i was a big kid and then i lost like 1 other pounds -- 150s and then is was really sick and skippy and blah blah people who knew he when i was skippy never knew me when i was big and i was going to lose 150 pounds while talking to my family about food and sexual violence. and talking to my mam and my grandma and my auntie and that's the book i sold and i wrote that book and one of the last interviews with my grandma, i was talking to her but a something we both knew happened and we talked about extensively but when i put the thing on, she said is wasn't true and then i -- i said, grand mama, you just lying. and she was like, you going to

put this in a book, like, of course i'm lying. you're going to put is in to book but the art industry of the lie whereas so -- the artistry of the lie was good so one thing learned in this was that, like, even when we do invest heavily in lies, particularly my family, i think there's something to be gained as an artist in how the words are put together and that might not be mean anything for anybody necessary the this room but the way my family, which is all black women, attempts to evade what we all know is the truth for performance, it is like knowing that and saying that just gave me freedom to write back to them in a way that was mostly true budget partially lie. had to listen to my grand mama tell in the why she was lying in order to get there. [laughter] >> i think your question was about discovering something

about our -- >> yes. >> i'm an excellent journalist. i was a fraud an as an thundershower other. i've written eight books that nobody has ever seen i. would keep writing things and then write something else and write something else, which for me minute i never finished anything. i finish three columns and can write a column ten minutes if it has to be in at 5:00 but i didn't finish any of these things and i thought was wrong with you that you don't want to do that? and both of you have helped me so much today to crystallize that and it's this whole idea that i as a black woman, can have my say, this other way. and this book is not the book but this book has paved the way nor book i'm writing. this book came out offing a be and out of being -- out of anger and could have been a column. the book it has helped me to write is the novel, sort of an

out autobiographical novel and i started ten years ago as authority story at the university of michigan and there's always this stuff, all this stuff that has to be in it but i didn't feel free to do it until i saw my name on a book and so now that's what i discovered, that i now can become an author and finish that book. >> one of the surprising things was the stories that i learned while i was writing it, one story was the story of a young enslaved girl who was -- might have been 14, but she was executed. she may have been the youngest person in maryland to be executed but she in 1834 poisoned her -- the sons of her so-called owner who were five and seven years old, and when they suspected her, she poisoned

them with arsenic that she stole from the doctor's offers, and when they suspected her, they sent one of the boys stomachs to be tested and then it came back positive for arsenic and they were like, jude da. >> juda we want to talk to huh. i records are limit but any newspaper report it says they interrogated her and she readily confessed which can mean a whole bunch of different things and so apparent my in the confession, she said, remember the fire that happened a year ago? i started that. tried to burn the plantation down and then tells them in the year before that, they had an infant daughter whoa was seven months old who died. she was like issue killed her, too and this is 1834. so learning stories like that, think about the power of black girls and what they can do, but also i'd been reading about her and believing, well, course she

did it but they're not sure it's true. she could have been protecting somebody. all things so learning the stories where the narrative is not certain, was surprising and it real he released me from him in particular form for the book. just choosing the form that mattered and that was a huge thing for me. >> okay. >> something that i don't understand which i suspect y'all have given a lot more thought to than i have, is why for 400 or 500 years, have white people thought that they were better than black people? >> out of necessity. if you want to be a colonial stronghold and be superior, you

can't be superior without an inferior so if you create one you have one and you keep having one. so they're not better but a they have to believe the lie so they can do things. >> right. i don't understand why america got started -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> that was perfect. >> you're asking hard questions now. we got to go home. >> yes, i'm -- very much ashamed that america was started -- i don't understand where the english people who came over here from europe already biased against black people? how could they dare to go to africa and bring people over here, although i guess african people were enslaving some of

their own already in africa, but certainly makes me ashamed that america got started by people with that attitude and that it's as you've pointed out, is still prevalent. >> slavery wasn't new. it was a world scourge but here's the question. how is it that these colonialists could not enslave the indigenous people? there's the question. we don't go back far enough. i'm so glad you said what you said but the original sin. focus on that. there was a whole attempt to do this a different way, and there was no enslavement0. the people who were here first so if they're going to get somebody to do the work, when people talk about the rice of south carolina and uncle ben it's because the people who taught them to plan the rice were from ghana.

but slavery was not something that was just a north american people. most of the slaves came tam from africa that it got off the boast south of here but the idea somebody says, wait a minute, that's not a bad idea. let's do that here. wasn't even an original sin for english settlers. we need some workers, we need some people to do this work we don't want to do where can we get some? >> i think for us to think about racism in the construction of race, we need to investigate the papables that happened in the 1400s and the global phenomenon of technologies of torture that were emerging, capitalism, the emergence of nation states in europe, the fight for land over there and therefore conquering of other land, and the theology, philosophy, and all of that made it necessary to enslave people for the purpose of capitalism.

so it's not just about liking people or thinking you're better than other people. this is about making money, and if we are going to be serious about learning about race racism we need to reinvestigate that history and -- >> also need to call things weird. which is like, i feel you and i shouldn't be talking but it's just weird when i have no idea how old you are, brother, but i thank you for asking that question but it's weird that question would be posed to this panel when i believe you might know folks who might know that answer a little b.e.t. are than we do. not trying too do that thing where we front people for asking questions because its takes courage to get up there but it's -- thank you for your generals rossty and your love -- generosity and your love but it's a weird thing that happens. i want to ask you. i want to know. tell me how that shit happen.

>> to wrap up this panel, thank you so much for your questions and -- >> ick just add, they did try to enslave indigenous folks but there was genocide. >> that's the thing. didn't work. >> but it's important to remember that. >> and i think i would encourage to look up the papable 1493 and it ..ss than human, and so -- yeah, anyway, so,, to bring us back together -- >> apparently the writer of the book of genesis had the same racist attitude. >> i think that's for another panel maybe.

i appreciate your comment. to wrap us all up, i do want to again talk -- think but those idea of truth and lies and what i think each of you have said inure own way is a sort of discovery of the truth that is somewhere between what is -- what happened and what we imagine. right? because as we have been dealing with the lies that have been told about us, about the things that are conveniently left out in order for white supremacy to be so prevalent that in order for people of color to die in a sense, to tell the truth is a mixture of what happened and

what we imagined. so, if we could close on that theme and talk about how your book does this and i'm sure everybody will want to go out and buy the books and ask the authors your own questions as they're signing your book. if we could go on down the line here. >> so, i have to say, i wish my book did that. i'm not good enough yet to get there. so, i had to write the first two books to writing this one but i think this book is among other things a sort of spectacular failure, but thankfully, because of the readings of other book is can accept it is a spectacular failure and hopefully i'll do better with me next one so i'm -- >> rate a really great book, though.

>> but that is -- an artistry to failure. >> absolutely. >> somebody will find their truth through yours. >> no question. >> whether -- >> i hope so. but i think that what i'm trying to say is i was born in jackson, mississippi to a 19-year-old black woman and being able to sit in front of a room of people and create an art object i know is partially ail fewer is a freedom my mama and grand marcha don't have. that's freedom. >> i read his kiese's book and it's not a failure. i know what you're saying. i think, again, being able to name a particular thing in this book is what was possible for me, and i think the next book -- i mean, kiese talked but permission, one of the things get from reading his writing, not just this book but other

writing he has done is permission to talk about things in a very detailed way i don't do in this book and i know the next book will be about another kind of naming of stories that doesn't happen in this book. >> i didn't know my grandma's real name until i was 24 years old. i used to force my grandfather to sit on the porch our growing up house to talk but early life and he would only go back as far as the slave name ballum. the whole idea but truth and lies we live as a country, as people, we are never going to be all that we can be until we deal with that, and i think one of the greatests lies is that it's only white people who did it to other people. we have done a lot of it to ourselves by what we accept, by what we allow, when i tell people dish have judge friends,

who can not stand when i say this but one of the greatest tragedies of the 2nd century was the brown versus board of education indication because what we did was fight to sit in a room next to people we thought by sitting next to them would make is equal and he tried to desegregates gait the country only he obacks of young black people and it failed. so i'm glad united states you endedded than and this is so important. when i talk but superior and inferior, slavery has always been about economics. racism now is about economics. it's all about money. follow the money. know the money. if we ever want to change, we have to stop living lies and believing that things are better than they are. the worst thing we can do as a country is to wish for or try to get to a post racial society. first that's a student madeup word and second i will never geoff if my culture to make

someone else comfortable. thank you. [applause] >> thank you all for joining us. [inaudible conversations]