this past year, author of educated, jerome with killing the jeep state and jonah goldberg offered suicide the west all appeared on booktv's afterwards program. and all were among the most watched book events of 2018. >> good afternoon everyone. thank you so much for joining us here my name is alishia. [applause] [laughter] i am the community and organizational development coordinator at metro art national office a of arts and culture and i am privilege to facility facilitate the program as well as restorative justice

and arts programs. there at metro art and i am the light thrilled to be in conversation with these authors this afternoon. yes, and so we're going to do brief introductions going here down the line. we have ta faye. >> hello. i'll be superbrief. my name it ta -- a black southern writer from jackson, mississippi. wrote a novel called long division ethic division how to those in america, and have a memoir coming out tuesday called heavy thank you all for coming. [applause] >> hi i'm ray paris from carson, california. and i was a professor at michigan state and i just went to seattle now a profess at the

university of washington, and this is my first book. [applause] my name is rochelle riley i'm the media. i've been a -- a journalist my whole life. i was a tar heel study journal i feel at the university of north carolina at chapel hill work at six including washington post in dallas morning news and louisville, kentucky i'm not a columnist for the detroit free press, and i have decided that after all of these years of journalism i now want to write books. so i'm not a prolific author i'm a prolific writer you know when you write three columns week for years and years and years you get used to deadlines writing nonfiction and this is nonfiction i'm working on my

first novel but it is very different when you get something that has your name on the front, and you get to hold it, and i've been crying since february. but i was so honored to be asked to present at this festival one of the best i've ever seen i love libraries because it means books matter and reading matters so there's so many people in this room to hear us talk about our book so thank you very much. so first as we get into the conversation i'm going to ask each of our authors to offer us a brief reading from their work. and if we could start with -- ray that would be great. also before i read i would to acknowledge that book fest like all of our businesses institutions and our lives exist

on lands and gathered on the land and i'm or very it grayful to be here. so i'm going to read from essay that starts the book and jump over few sections because of time. summer 2010, i take a sew redrive across the country tempe, arizona to new orleans, on my way to one of the whitest states in the union to meet my husband working for the first time at what i'll referring to as the whitest bowl of english plan to stop at plantations and other sites at terror and resistance stop before vermont will be auburn, new york and i'm in middle of a leadership and it might inform a future collection of stories possibly set in new orleans and other parts of the south. or maybe some essays i'm interested in ways that we preserve the past we but not limited to settler state referred to as the united states. i'm interested in ma we build

moments too and fictions about not to distant yesterday how these shape and form our present i'm not quite sure what i'm doing i'm guilty of roman to south and great black women might let black girl for black homes about a place they've never actually lived for any substantiate at a of time and have constructed mostly from other people shaky loving dreams joy filled lives and hard felt terror but i do. especially new orleans, when my parent left new orleans in the late 50s and moved to southern california, first to l.a. and then just outside of l.a. about a half hour south of downtown, to our redline black neighborhood where most if not all of the family were from somewhere south, louisiana, mississippi, alabama. they, of course, brought stories with them, of course, they talked about more or less more than i remember. but as say again and again it is

silence that sticks with me. always at the edges and jurpgd beneath their story about what it meant for my parent to come of age under segregation to be poor first ones in their family to attend and graduate from college what it meant to leave their family always something i couldn't quite reach in the stories as my parent did or didn't tell and stories they might have told when i wasn't in the right space. when i didn't know how to listen. i drive 12 hour, the first day -- so i can get through texas past the peak where they reenact a western civil war battles every year on the land. past beard patrol through the river and apache always on native land but not always thinking about this. i hate driving through texas. i hated it driving through texas before they murdered and before white supremacist terrorist shawn barry warren and dragged to his death. texas never ends. you drive and drive and you're still in texas and everywhere

they reminding you of how you're not supposed to mess with whatever lie texas claims to be. i drive hours that day first to señora, texas to be in louisiana the next. so i end up going to plantation and then i ended up -- seeing my brother who is recently moved there and jumping to morning i leave new orleans. morning i leave, i hear them before i see them. i'm packing car when rattle are and shaking tambourine and chanting and singing come from around corner a group of peel all black dressed in white women in head wrap and men in white pants shirts and some shirtless one is masked. the group moves down governor nicoles street man with a mask rattle out in front weaving. i stand by open trunk of my car. the masked man side winds his way to me rattling in the air our friend once told me how her father who was also from new orleans who died before i met her used to wash her don't let

anybody shake anything at you in new orleans and he shacks feathers in front of my face over my heart down the front of my body. i know without completely understanding it is not my friend's father warned her of but a blessing so i let him i need it. the night before, my brother and i drank wine and talked about our family the stories we know, and stories we can't tell fully. a difficult conversation that left me exhausted. i told him stories of violence. it was his first time hearing me tell these stories. he listened. i closed my eyes now while man shaked rattle i try not to cry and still tired from night before and from being in a city where i always feel like i'm time traveling. the man finishes his blessing, and dance rs move to the tiew. unknown slave where they sing and dance prayers of honor and rains i watch for a bit from

where i stansd and go inside and tell my brother. my brother walks me to car and tells me to be safe and text him so he knows i'm o.c. he said you're going to be okay a question and remindinger this is the brother who got me writing because i was bothering him when i was younger when he was trying to write playing his record gave me a note bock and told me to listen to the music stevie wonder write down how it made me feel and i cry my way out over you know what it means across the bridge until i hit mississippi. [applause] thank you. is this working now thank you for sharing that. i grew up in north carolina.

there were 10,000 people there when i grew up there 10,000 people there now. and to segregated town black folks lived on east side and white on east side of town i remember being eight years old and my grandfather who raised me with my grandmother, being the best golfer in town and not allowed to play on public golf cows to me meant slavery because i didn't know what slavery was and, of course, once i learned that playing on golf course not that big a deal so i knew at some point i wanted to talk about how slavery didn't really end. it just changed addresses and moved from plantations to courtroom and boardrooms and newsroom and classrooms and that we had never dealt with it in this country not in 400 years. but written the do it. because i was a journalism major who wanted to tell the news and post water gate everything was news, and became a journalist of the things that we thought were real. but underneath surface realist

thing about america we were still dealing with. three years ago this columnist i'm a columnist for the pittsburgh paper wrote a column that said black people need to get over slavery it wasn't that bad and better off than had we had black people -- stayed in africa and that let me know two things about jack kelly one that he had never been to africa and didn't know any black people. but we have a columnist code because of the first amendment which i hold dear that's -- you can write anything you want even if it is wrong. soy couldn't write a column saying jack kelly is an idiot so what i it doesed to do was write an essay why slavery and -- best teaches others pain of it and -- damage of it still persist. and then i decided well why should i be one person railing against the machine so i decided to get a call together and went to my friend a pulitzer prize winning columnist for miami harold i said i'm writing a book

about how slavery persists, and he was in the middle of writing his book he put it town and he said i'll write something i called nicole hannah jones from "new york times" i said i'm working on a book this is what it was about and in the middle and past deadline put hers down and wrote my forward a great granddaughter say she was working on her book and she said i'll write something i asked one who had had done that performance with harriet tubman and she would write something she said i'm not a writer but i'll try so i got 23 voices and thing that was most telling to me i didn't say anything except this is the theme and they all sent in 23 essays not one of the essays was same of any of the other ones which is how many there are to this. so i'll read you literally a paragraph from -- nicole's brilliant forward to this book, the burden, and then i'll tell you what a the burden is. we choose to forget that slavery wases a national scourge that

northern states also allow slavery that the entire nation profited from it. congress after passing the 13th amendment realized it that it was not enough to outlaw the institution of slavery. so it passed civil rights law it is in the 1860s to eliminate the badges of slavery. a hundred years in ruling against a white community that prohibited black residents from moving in, the supreme court ruled that the 13th amendment had closed congress with power to pass all laws necessary and proper for abolishing beamings and incidents of slavery in the united states. and that it empowered congress to eradicate last incidents of a society half slaved 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 ennever rid of ourselves with badgeses not in 1860s not in the 1960s, not now. we were with remain a nation full and part social securities

original sin remains to think which we the people the sin was visited upon, can never be forgiven. our very presence here reminds this great nation of all that we are not. so that was nicole hannah jones. so i got all of these essays and i got her forward and i thought well lord what am a i going to say? [laughter] it is i will not shut up about about slavery this is to have a conversation about this because we refuse to talk about it and refuse to get to know each other and hate persist and worse with now than it has ever been except when it was legal and it can be if we're not careful. short piece from the essay the burden. scene is sered into my memory red paroled from prison works as a bag boy at a local grocer he raises hiss hand to catch manager attention break boss?

the supervisor called him over you don't need to ask me every time you need to take a piss just go. he goes to the men's room as he stands over the urinal his words in voice yoaf hang in the the air. 40 years i've been asking permission to piss i can't scwez a drop. that is what prison did to a grown man in fictional film the shaw shank redemption and enslaved did to a people there are thousands of examples in written history detail a physical but what america must pay more attention to is emotional briewlingsty that boils down to a single post slavery word, that has been as much a part of our living history as our flag. permission -- permission to speak, permission to vote, permission to work and jobs that allow us to use talent drink from community water fountain permission to dine at public lunch counter to sit anywhere on public buss that tax dollars pay for and permission

with children education equal to white peer and emancipation proclamation lied about and to run for president of the united states of america and seeking permission hiding our lights under bushels accepting less than we dweive because we're trained to believe we don't deserve more it is toil to the that burden down. [applause] thank you for that. rochelle -- and i want to talk for a second about permission. because i was lucky enough to read ray's book about a year ago. maybe a year and a half. at the time i needed permission to write and to the foes of my history, and things i didn't

want to talk about, and ray gave me that permission so thank you. so what i want to do is read a imagine and a half of this book heavy in a memoir written to you and directly addressed to my mother. so she is the you in this -- page and a half. >> the next day, april 29th, 1992, the night at a rodney king verdict you held me in lap and cold not stop rock for two hours white man pulled from a truck beat up by black and brown man at a l.a. interaction. i hope you see what they aren't showing and write essay about what white folk they're blaming us. the last thing i cared about was what white folks felt. i only been alive for 17 years an a i was already tired of paying for white folks feelings with a generic smile and manufactured excellence to not

give one about or stole froms us -- it didn't matter if it was white police, white teachers qhiet students, or white ran doll, yipght want to teach white folk not to steal, i didn't want teach them to treat us respectfully but fairly white folk and a knock them out even more than knocking out 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 wanted money, safety, the education, healthy choices, second chance hads they stole, that we would ever get what we were owed i knew we have to take it all back without getting caught because no creation on earth was as all world as white folk at punishes black whole for black individual they were geniuses at new ways for masses of black folk with less to suffer more. our superpower i was told since i was a child was perseverance

ability to survive no matter how much they took from us. i never unked how survivorring when white folk made sure so many of us did not survive and those of us who did practice bending so much that breaking often seemed inevitable. that night, when you finally started snoring i crept into kitchen opened garage got in your oldsmobile put it in neutral pushed it into the address i didn't go far just down the road down to grocery store i waited in a parking lot for bread truck to pull up and driver went into the store i got out snatch loves of wheat, white hamburger bun and cinnamon rolls and took back off to my car. i sped away from the grocery store and drove to the parking lot. over overlooking the reservoir, i hate cinnamon roll and white bread that night until i got shivers and threw up next morning i served you buttered wheat toast for breakfast in bed you hugged my neck and told me

thank you that we would win our fight. you never asked me where the bread came from. [applause] wow. so -- let me get my thoughts together and get my life together here. the thread that i'm finding in each of your books is the promissory nature of hope and it's what you guys are all performing here and requiring of -- of blackness right -- of the blackness that is always stalked and broken.

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

i wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. >> that's a lot. yeah. thank you. [laughter] it might be boring because i have to talk about art and importance of art industry and making black lives you know a lot of my friend have actually been on the ground working with black lives matter movement, and i think that we sometimes those of us love ourselves and trying to love ourselves we think about idea of like black lives mattering that we don't think about black lives construct ared and black lives being construct sod one of the things i was trying to do with my book is -- is create an art object that honored the brokenness and the attempt at mending but there is

no deliverance in my book it is for my mother. my mother and i are working on loving each other and black and white supremacy but i think everything that i read the american memoir in general i think encouraging a kind of like resolution. and i just did not want to create a piece of art that gave in to that sort of resolution and that was one way to honor a kind of blackness a particular time of deep southern blackness so the brokenness that i think you do hear oning through everything that we to, is a kind of art, and i think, i think tending to that brokenness is art artistry but that is not mengding is what i'm interested in doing, though, i think 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 to most intimate relationship in my life that is to my mother and then because i know people always want black boys to end saying i love you mom i do love my momma but last seasons is please momma don't be mad at me because i did things publicly that she would not want me to do in front of white folk that's what i love. [applause] if we could all hold our applause until the end to make sure we have a full hour of to a full discussion. thank you. thanks for that. there's so much -- i think i'll pick up on the brokenness. and trying to create art and so the second part of the title of the book is the forgetting memory so it's thinking about tony morris concept of you go to places and what happened in places is still happening so she warns her her daughter denver

you can't go home because if you to there it will waiting for you so i was actually working on -- pros before i did this and then my father passed we and dementia for a while and he was thinking about what happens to memories. but when he passed, whatever i was working on faded away and i started writing poetry and a pro pieces and only way i could talk about historical violence, intergenerational trauma was to create a book that was fragmented. and that hopefully in the fragmentation will, there is a kind of wholeness in it. but again i don't think anything gets resolved in this book. it is more going deeper into the freeing mennation and other piece of it is what remember, what we remember and what happens to our guys and thinking what maps to work of black women

in particular how our work is raised or claimed by other people so book itself become archive of these historical events of family stories. and -- and -- becomes way to remember are things that family and history tried to forget. but i think that collection is just a collection of shards. i don't think it comes together in its brokenness. >> that was a lot of question -- but i'm going to try to deal with part that has to do with death and history. the reason are america remains broken is because it refuses to deal with with what would be great as dead and that's 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 with black people were not allowed to be taught to read and --

i talked about growing up in the south my parents divorce, so we were in new york. my father got in new york and my mother in north carolina i thought world ended until i realized that north carolina was much greater for writing. but in new york there was this -- battle intellectual battle against racism and in north carolina, in everywhere in deep south a way of life but what we've done in country is a great disservice to ourselves and generation after generation because we literally are fighting against this tide of making sure that the history is killed making sure that the history is dead and bur areried let's not talk about slavery all of any jewish friend have invisible tattoos that say never forget but we're told to always forget in the country to be more in the mainstream. to be a part of the human race and not the black race i write a column as i mention to you every single week there's a guy who writes who says why do you write so much about black people?

and i tell him every single time and i don't know why it takes every single time well first of all, i'm black. [laughter] but second, why does it bother you? what is it about my writing about my people and my history and culture that makes you so uncomfortable that you feel it needs to be disappeared i won't let it disappear. so one of the greatest disservices is with education. i want one america one history and instead we with 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 now we're here no we started here came here and have risen and they don't know that art. but also little white children of all races knew that they wouldn't feel some greater sense from the time they're three years old. so, i think that the biggest death is one that we don't want to deal with that's the death of white supremacy keep our country from being as great as it can be if we want to make great again we need to stop pretending that

racism is not real. >> make america great in the first place right -- the great america that could be greater. [laughter] right. >> the this is a perfect segue to my next question. last week i participated in intoir racism training, and one of the trainers said that -- primary mark the white is of forgetting right -- and what you said -- rochelle about you were reporting on things that we thought were real. it was very striking and this way that three of you gather stories towards really shift that in bodies and not through

just reading. but a literal, you know, gathering of i would love for each of you to talk about whether or not you felt that shift. or if that's what you were trying to do. man let's start with rochelle -- >> where did you go to school? [laughter] >> a couple of places. e yeah. yeah questions are are very deep so i'm trying to figure out best way to answer it in a way that makes sense for me. i never shifted. my goal from the time i was eight years old has been to sell stories. and what i realized early on in my career is that stories i wanted to tell were different from the ones that everybody

else i worked for wanted to tell. and i had no 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 are are you a black journalist or a journalist who is black? and i remember my dear friend gwinn talking about how ridiculous the question wases and it still persist where people want to have two parallel tracks of stories in america. when there's one story that you keep plucking things out of and trying to hide and trying to, you know, whether it's the folks in texas who try to keep things out of textbooks or call us migrant workers who came to help build america and they forgot to pay us which is insulting. to you know, leaving out entire bits of precolonialism to make children believe that nothing started before white people discovered places that already existed. so i think for me that biggest -- actually there was a shift

biggest shift for me was that i will not be silenced about it anymore i have reached my point to write whatever i want and i literally do. i wrote this book while continuing to do my job i'm working on second bock now while continuing to do my job and my job -- in my life is to write whatever the hell i say i'm going 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 minding those stories and minding people to help them do the same thing that's gravy. >> i'm not sure what the question is but i'm going to talk about something. [laughter] >> i think it's about shifting -- okay. [laughter] i think, i mean, the shift for me wases i think the stories in

here some of them were stories i've been sitting with for a very long time the naming that there are stories of violence in my family was the very big thing. and thinking about those stories that naming of that violence within the context of this historical violence was also something understanding that two can't be separate understand that we can't talk about the history of this country without talking about sexual violence. without talking about sexual violence of indigenous and black women and so -- that was a huge thing and so -- i actually don't go into much detail about those stories of violence but then specific naming of that was a huge thing and being able toll say i'm naming this here but -- but you get to know had but you don't get to know this, and so i'm echoing i went to great panel this morning by sandra and sandra lambert right? she has a new memoir out but

sandra and i were many a workshop today with great advice about where to start essay but she was talking about this morning what we reveal in memoir and what we don't so that notion of i'm going name this but i won't name this was a huge thing, and -- and dealing with that memory but even that was a lot for my mother. and so -- the conversations that we had since the bock has been published has been really important and really difficult. in terms of talking about what do we do with stories of violence and how do we name it, and what's the the kind of healing that can happen within the con text of all of this? >> i'll be brief. so -- i think the question of shift is an important question, and i can talk about it forever. because when i went to college

to play football in jackson, mississippi, and you know, i remember going to my first classes dressed and coming into classes with brief case, i never asked any questions in class because i was within of the few black people i didn't want white people in class to think that i or we were studious in asking questions right like i didn't want it be a student had means i needed to be dumb i didn't think i could be dumb or afford to be dumb and i started to write for newspaper and write columns. ultimately critiquing institutionism racism and at the same time started rereading baldwin and morrison and lord at some point and i the go kicked out of school for shit i was writing, so that actually did cause a shift. but -- the shift for me was like i remember literally sitting in my dorm room saying joe i'm trying to write to white people beg them to be their best selfs when

him not right anything about sexual violence, i'm not writing anything about what i want to lie about as a human being. but i'm calling myself a writer. so even though i can pat myself on the back for jousting with white supremacy, i remember when i was 19 or 20 i got kicked out of school i was like -- they tonight listen to fanny -- they didn't listen to baldwin. who was the the illest to do it at that time. why am i wasting my time trying to do when i need to be writing about the cracks and holes and the -- the gaps. and myself, and a 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 over the first question, in a perfect story that shift would be like oh i realized what happened and everything since about liberation and contesting violence but again like a lot of this shift is market driven so i would come here and tell

everybody i wrote a black book called american him worry editor is white agent is white publishing industry who which publisher and everybody involved is white so that doesn't mean i can't work with lower frequency that ellison talks about. but like the shift is there. but often i think the market necessitates a shift backwards. and so when i think about shifts i can say yes i made some shifts but grandmother needs new teat so i had to shift back. mom that need mortgage paid so i had to shift back and i'm here talking to y'all a particular way i would if there weren't white and i'm interested in how that shift how our existence always necessitates particular kinds of shifts i do think there's arts i rei but a shift that sometimes we don't want to talk about. >> sure. >> thank you for that.

last thing i'll ask about is lying about witness being witness to lies and being witness to the truth. i think the first two lines of your book you say is -- i did not want to write you i wanted to write a lie, and there is for me the shift is about being a witness to truth. and testifying about it. if you could talk about 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 the invitation to come here first of all i was

thrilled. love nashville love book festivals this is one of the best things i've ever seen but then i saw title that said reverberation memoir personal freedom, and i thought, you know, i wanted to write a memoir since i was eight and thought that i could, and there was nothing really to write about when i was eight. and i didn't see this that way except i realized that in writing the essay that i wrote and choosing essays that i did it really is a memoir of things that are important to me. so what i would tell you that i learned more than anything is: when you're talking about lies. america is a glorious lie. it has been a lie since 1776 actually since before that. when may need thomas jefferson talk about clause about everyone being equal and abolishing slavery but you can't slavery he was thrilled about that to get rid are of sally but that was a whole other story. [laughter] but -- i really want to at some point do that piece about america

being the glorious lie but it is evident in everything it is evident every time somebody literally is -- reported to the police for breathing black. it is evident when you have kids in school i remember when my daughter was in the grade and her teacher told her it was okay she got a 90 instead of a 100 because minorities are taking care of in this country. and i became a room parent the next day. to make sure that she never said anything like that to another kid ever. and then we changed schools. we don't deal with the obvious in this country. we don't deal with what we live with all of the time. racism doesn't reverberate it permeates. it envelopes, it moves over us like chocolate on ice cream sundae except ice cream is bad and we eat it anyway. i'm beginning to sound like i'm high. i'm not.

now -- [laughter] but it is so overwhelming and so overpowering that the fact that one of my best friend is white is a miracle to me. because i never look at her and see all of that glorious life. i never look at my friends i don't have an agent a i don't -- i was so honored that wayne state university press pleasured my book a small university press they said they love it and if i had written a word and they want my next one but i would love to -- have a sense that someone is reading anything that we've written and everything you said is so -- i want to just reach over to grab your book right now. [laughter] i'm hoping that what had people hear these things and we write these things that they're actually thinking about the great lie because if we don't fix that we go in cycles over and over of the same thing.

yeah. i mean i don't know how we can write anything without thinking about that lie the lie of this krpght but also again welcome thinking about how this lie perg relationships and the way it is easier to tell story about some lies than it is others. and so -- i think you asked what we wanted people to take away from the book -- i think, i don't know. but it's possible to tell these stories lots of different ways that we can't tell -- this story about, about liberation and justice without also talking about indigty poverty. and i think also this book is -- a story about again personal violence and historical violence and writing and becoming a black woman writer and how it is possible to do that in a country

the that is continue to tell lies that's based on lies and so i hope that that piece doesn't get left out too that it is about how are black women able to do this tell these stories within the context of this violent nation? .... . >> so i realize i had invested heavily in that lie talking about slavery is the initial sin and then i am a professor

i don't know if that's the original sin but that means i had invested heavily which means if i go forth as an artist i needed that particular truth to god but it's important also to admit when we fail think of the work i have done in this book not just the people i have left out but those lives that have been propagated at the expense of the truth. that i didn't get it wrong but i invested in the lies. i have no other thoughts other than to say reading people who are smarter or better writers better human than me helps me get closer but i still have to do shipped over and over. that's the hardest part of being human.

>> we have a microphone over here. we did get started late so i will steal a few minutes. >> during this process what was the most surprising thing you discovered along this journey of writing your books?

. >> initially i was writing this book. [laughter] i is a big kid i was really sick people who knew me when i was skinny did not know when i was big again losing 150 pounds. and i wrote the book that i sold talk about violence i was talking about something that we both knew happened but with an eye cut off she said it wasn't true. you are just lying.

she said you're going to put this in the book? of course, i'm lying. the artistry of the lie was some good. so one of the things that i learned particularly my family there is something to be gained as an artist that may not mean anything else for anybody else in this room but with my family we all know the truth for performance it gave me the freedom to write back in a way that was mostly true with partial lies but my grandmother had to tell me exactly why she was lying in order to do that. [laughter] . >> your question was about

discovering? . >> i'm an excellent journalist nobody has ever told me. i would write something else and write something else i can write a column in ten minutes but i never finished any of these that i thought what's wrong with you? and you guys have helped me so much today to realize that the whole idea that i as a black woman even though i'm doing these things in journalism and this book is not the book it has paved the way for what i am writing this book came out of anger so it was almost easy. the book that it taught me to write that autobiographical

novel. but i started ten years ago as a short story at the university of michigan. there is all this stuff and it but i didn't feel free to do it. not until i had my name on a book so now i can become an author and finish that book. >> one of the surprising things what i learned one was the story of a young and slave girl who may have been 14 but was executed. but in 1834 she poisoned the sons of her so-called owner and when they suspected her it

was from arsenic that she stole from the doctor's office and when they suspected her they sent the boys stomach to be tested. so it says the records on her but they interrogated her and she readily confessed. so but apparently in the confession she said remember the fire that happened one year ago and i started that. the year before that added infant who died at seven months old i killed her also. so learning stories like that of the power of the black girls and what they can do but also reading about her and believing of course, she did

but were not even sure that's true because when you're protecting somebody there's all different kinds of things but when you're not sure of the narrative that that released me from any particular form or just using the form that mattered. >> something i don't understand after giving more thought is why 400 or 500 years have white people thought they were better than black people? . >> i think it was a necessity to be superior you can't be

superior without an inferior. . >> they know that they are not better. >> i don't know why america got started. >> that is now a quotation. [laughter] . >> you're asking hard questions now. we have got to go home. [laughter] . >> i am very much ashamed how america was started for the people that came here from europe already biased against black people, how do they care to go to africa to bring people over here? i guess african people were

enslaving some of their own already in africa but certainly it makes me ashamed that america got started with people of that attitude and as you have pointed out is still prevalent. >> slavery was not knew that was a world story that here is the question to ask how the colonials could not enslave the indigenous people? song was so glad you said what you did about the original sin. there was a whole attempt to do that different way there was no enslavement so they get somebody to do the work like south carolina because of the people who taught them to plant their rice but we don't ever talk about that slavery was not just north america but

the idea somebody said that's not a bad idea let's do that here wasn't even original. we need some workers and people to do the job where can we get some quick. >> over the instruction of race and to investigate in the 14 hundreds and that global phenomenon of technologies that are emerging and in europe a fight for land and conquering of other lands. theology. philosophy and all of that that made it necessary to

enslave her capitalism. >> it isn't just working people but making money. if we are going to be serious about learning race and racism we need to reinvestigate that. >> it's just weird when you have no idea but that's weird that that question would be posed to that panel you might know folks who may know that answer better than we do. but it takes courage for the person to get up there but but thank you for your generosity and your love but that's a weird thing i want to ask you. [laughter] i want you to tell me how did that happen?

. >> so to wrap up the panel. >> also that it did try to enslave the indigenous but it didn't work. >> and i would encourage all of us to look up 1493 to think about how it was a religious decree to enslave and rob other beings. and so to bring us back togethe together. >> apparently those of genesis had the same racist attitude. >> that is for another panel. [laughter]

but i appreciate your comment. so again i do want to talk about the idea of truth and lies and what each of you have said in your own way is the discovery of the truth that is somewhere between what happens and what we imagine because we have been dealing with the lies that have been told about us. and those that are left out in order for white supremacy to be so prevalent in people of color and to tell the truth is a mixture of what happened and

what we have learned so if we could close on that theme and talk about your book i'm sure everybody will want to buy the book and ask the authors your own questions. >> i am not good enough yet to get there. i wish i did that i had to write the first two books to write this one but among other things it is a spectacular failure. but thankfully because of reading of other books that i could do better with my own. so i'm trying to get to that space. >> it's a really great book. [laughter]

. >> there is an artistry to failure. [laughter] somebody will find their truth through you. >> yes. what i'm trying to say is i was born in jackson mississippi to a 19 -year-old woman and then to create an art object the freedom that my mother or grandmother don't have. so that is a kind of freedom for me. . >> i have read his book. he is not a failure. but i know what you are saying. again to name a particular thing in this book helped me and the next book talking about with his writing not just this book is permission

to talk about things in a very detailed way that i don't do in the book so i know the next book will be about the naming of the stories that doesn't happen in this book. >> i didn't know my mother's real name until i was 24 years old i use to force my grandfather to talk about early life so the whole idea of truth and lies as a country we will never be all that we can be until we deal with that and one of the greatest lies that it's only white people who did it to other people we have done a lot of it to ourselves for what we accept and what we allow. when i tell people i have federal judge that her friends

but one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century was brown versus board of education case because we sat next to people to try and make us equal and we desegregated the country on the back of young children so now they are just as segregated as they were in 6410 years later. i'm glad that you ended on that and remind us that this is so important slavery has always been about economics racism now is about economics it's all about money if you ever want to change we have to stop living lies to believe things are better than they are the best thing we can do is what wish for a racial society - - a better closer society. thank you.

[applause] . >> thank you for joining us. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] . >> good afternoon. here at the cato institute thank you for being here and also to the conference staff here who has done such a terrific job organizing our events keeping us on track also to those of you watching online and c-span.