ambassador samantha power on life and career, julie davis and michael sheer on the trump administration's immigration policy and former undersecretary of state richard on the impact on disinformation just to name a few, for a complete schedule check your program guide or visit booktv.org. now we kick off our first day of live coverage from the texas state capital with a discussion on immigration. [inaudible conversations]

>> hi, good morning. good morning. welcome to the 24th annual texas book festival, i will start off with just a few housekeeping items, if you could all silence your phones at this time, that would be great, please feel free to share your experience on social media using the festival #attexasbookfest. #texasbookfest, keep in mind questions that you may want to ask towards the end, you may have a good time to ask them, at the end to have conversation the authors will find books at the book tent which i believe is right there, the books are on sale by book people, your independent bookstore, the largest bookstore, largest indy bookstore in texas, the portion of the book helps funds programs that brings authors to students

to low-income schools in texas and find grants for libraries in texas, thank you, in this panel we will be going beyond headlines to discuss the real experience of immigrants living in america, we have two imminent authors that will share with us their journeys. most recently this land is our land, npr correspondent based in silicon valley, author of memoir, here we are, american dreams, american nightmares,i will let you all read detailed bios on the website. so welcome to austin, arthi and sebeku. >> thank you, howdy. can you start telling us more about yourself?

>> well, i was born and i moved with my family to queens in new york and as part of queens called jackson heights which is houston, houston as we say here. [laughter] >> in terms of the -- it might be, the zip code in which i moved to, 11372, the most language spoken of any zip code in the country and so it gave me this incredible experience of diversity and then i went to nyu and the university of iowa, workshop, i'm a licensed fiction writer but i write about cities, i've written the book about

bombay. i've been writing a book about 10 years and i interrupted that book to write this land is our land in response to present emergency, it's a book able foam migration and worldwide emergency in terms of mass migration and the backlash to it. >> hi, everyone, my name is arthi and if you've heard my voice before, chances are i think of myself this way, if you heard me before, you might think of me as the indian it lady on npr. [laughter] >> i am delivering news on facebook and google, talking about artificial intelligence, disinformation campaigns, the disruption of democracy, very important topics, but there's always the disconnect between how people know you, whether it's a public or even your

friends versus what's actually inside of you. and my back story and what really defines my sense of myself and identity and my doing is i always think of myself as an immigrant daughter who was undocumented as a child whose father was in jail and who fought for more than a decade to keep her family together in this country. and what i decided to do in my memoir and here we are american dreams, american night fairs is to just reflect on the journey that has a new american such as myself who is able to be a mouthpiece to a whole country in some way about some thing, unpack a story about what it took for my family to make america home. it wasn't a given, it's something that we fought very hard for and along the way like

any fight when you're fighting hard and you have questions, you have regrets, you wonder frankly was it worth it and so i'm exploring that in the memoir and we know each other from new york city, we are both from queens, i grew up a couple stops over on the 7 train and groans and to me what it's hilarious and instructive about where we grew up is that immigrants have the incredible stamina and bravery and drive across the atlantic and the pacific and sonoran desert, and so -- [laughter] >> that's actually why we are in queens, it's because we got tired, that's why queens is such a phenomenal window into the dna of america, we grow up in the

place that explains why america is great, if you understand our journey, you understand the country. >> as i read your memoir i unpacked my immigrant journey as an immigrant daughter myself and one of the characters that really stood out for me is your mother, you see her essentially after the partition in abusive relationship with your grandmother and coming to the united states with 3 children, becoming community organizer and talking back and forth and can you tell us about the amazing women, does she ever feel like she belongs? >> that's a great synopsis of my mom. you know, part of what i needed to do in my memoir to understand myself and sort of my voice and identity was understanding my parents more deeply and when i was writing the book i had

resentment and i ended up fighting pretty much all of my 20's to keep my dad and country against deportation case that we can talk about later and by the time i was 30i never knew i was going to fight this hard or this long, i kind of felt that i had put my life on hold, that my credit store was awful, i was really worried about the future and so when i was doing this memoir, resentment and i went to my mom and i said, mom, you and dad, my father have since passed, you and dad always said we came here for a better like in the uk and we had a crappy life. i grew up, listen, i love queens, i love the neighborhood. i literally woke up multiple

times, we fought incredible by hard to stay in the country, my father's life was pretty much destroyed in the process of staying in this country and we all lived like when you have one family member hurting and under attack whether it's by legal issues or health issues, everyone suffers, so what do you mean a better life, why would you have risks crossing the ocean with 3 kids and having no plans and that's when mom told me that my paternal grandmother, her mother-in-law was -- she didn't use the word abusive, abusive was not a word in circulation back then but she was abusive. my family lived in what's called the joint family m immigrants will know the setup, you're living with your inlaws, the brothers of your husband and what not and my mom's situation, i didn't know this before we were very close was that my grandmother like if she didn't like something my mom made she would throw the plate of food at

her. my mom had to ask permission to open the refrigerator or go outside, my grandmother would not allow my participants to sleep in the same place so my dad was required to sleep in his mother's room and my mother was required to sleep on the lip -- living room floor and then something horrific happened that i actually -- i did not put specifically what happened in a memoir but my mother who is the most resilient human being that i know attempt today take her life and she did not -- she swallowed pills, she woke up again, i was born 9 months, i was the accident that happened after the attempted suicide and my grandmother or my parents brought me home from the hospital, my grandmother would not hold me because i was a girl and she wanted a boy. and so coming to america story is that, it's basically my parents decide today -- decided

to leave a broken home because it was easier to cross the ocean than live ago cross the street and so when you ask my mom in places, america was the first place she ever feels like she belonged because america was the place where she got to be something more than just a wife and mother, where she got to explore her inner identity, her leadership, my mom and dad each spoke 6 languages, they are not formerly educated but force today live around the world in stateless people, my mom likes to problem-solve everyone's problem, if you met her, in america, new york city, queens was the place where she got to grow, to be what was inside of her and so to me what mom always reminds me is, my mom, american

dreams, american nightmares, yes, there's this memoir, the journey through the deportation system that my family went through that i could count that my mother would always remind me, your life here is so much better than it would have been in any back home place. >> you mentioned the sacrifice that your mother had to make, on her way to get a degree, also the other women that you referenced about leaving children back home to come over here, does anything come to mind about a journey and sacrifice that represents a story of migration and what you gained? >> so the administration wants to eliminate the family reunification category under which my family to this country, my father, my mother didn't have

h1b visa and as i learned in my 30's, my mother didn't even have a college degree. my mother started college in bombay, and one day i was with my parents driving over the george washington bridge and she told me about a car accident that she was in bombay when she was in college so she had gotten married in her third year of college and by final year, she was in a taxi and the taxi stopped at gas station and my mother was under -- by the

window. the taxi pulls out of the gas station and if drunk drivers comes in and my mother was luckily unhurt. my mother had in college exams, the final exams are the toughest part. if this was my sister i would tell her not the take the final exams. so my mother told me, 30 some years later that she never finished her college degree.

she can go back to bombay to finish. the book is dedicated to my mother and to my father. and i wrote about in time magazine and when my mom read the time magazine excerpt, you put me in time magazine, i don't want the world to know i don't have a college degree. [laughter] >> so i tell the story because it's really important for people to see that immigrants some of the strongest family values around, most of the migrants that i met documents or not are here because they are sending money back to their families back home.

i went to a place called friendship park on the u.s.-méxico border and i spent 2 weeks there, so park is one place along the entire southern border, one place where if you don't have papers you can meet your family on the other side and there's a fence there, it's a thick iron fence, started during the nixon administration where there's a place where you were undocumented you could sit down with your family on the other side, you could have a picnic and both have to go to different sides of the border and not a very thick fence and so it's the one place where the border patrol will let you go on weekends for 10 minutes at a time and greet your family. so i stayed there for two weeks and emotionally heartbreaking, i saw a mexican mat who hadn't met his mother for 17 years go up to the fence and his mom comes up

on the other side, the thick fence with very small holes and he puts up his face and his mom puts up her face and he says i miss you, momma, she says i love you. he says i love you, she says have you been eating right? [laughter] >> i saw mothers and children, husbands and wives, best friends and in the end of it the only kind of touch that's possible, he puts up his pinky finger and mom puts up her pinky finger and the holes on the fence are only big enough to attach pinkies all along the fence, if you've ever had an issue with someone in your family, you had a break with someone in your family, brother, parent, go to friendship park and see what happens when there's a state, government that comes between

you and your family and the hunger of people to talk to their families, to hear their breathing, to touch, immigrants are all about family values. >> thank you. thank you. [applause] >> immigrant families and the strength of the families is within the walls and when you go out, you're very much in a different world and both of you had to experience, you at the age of 14, you growing up in queens experienced a very different world inside your home and then going out into the american world looking back now what would you tell your 15-year-old self. >> life is long and you will not -- it's funny. what i'm doing in here we are is i'm tracing a kind of -- i'm

putting together a puzzle, my motivation for writing the book was to understand how is it that my father, the man who i didn't really like when i was growing up, he was old world and worked 7 days a week. i only ever heard from him to say that shirt is too short and too tight and he was so word about the size of my mouth, he would never imagine that that would become an asset in the country as profession. i didn't like that, he was a stranger and sometimes antagonistic and how is it that that man became my very best friend in life. that's really what i'm tracing in this memoir, it happens in the context of the case that destroyed his life, it's not a

pure right story, it's kind of like the one silver lining, well, in the process of fighting i got to know my father, i got to see him clearly, my father gave me a working definition of love, okay. you're asking what i would tell my 15-year-old self, what is love and how do you live it? it is what we exist for as human beings and the experience with my father, when he first got into legal troubles, okay, he was arrested when i was 16 year's old, okay, he was running a shop, we had green cards, some of were naturalized citizens, we thought we were on the strait path of the american dream, my father was running wholesale electronic store, little district in manhattan and one day we got a call that he's been arrested and according to new york state he has sold watches

and calculators to cali drug cartel of colombia and my family story is basically store front for trafficking rink. the prosecutor need today get some thought prosecution, they drive my family to court and offered my father and little brother 8 month sentence to put the matter behind them. so basically my dad took a plea and he thought he was going to do 8 months for selling watches an calculators to the wrong guys and then he was going to go back to work, put the matter behind him and what instead happened deportation came as second surprised punishment, we had no idea at the time of pleading that because of the plea even though we had green cards, my dad and uncle had green cards and others were naturalized citizens, it didn't matter and he was going to be put in automatic deportation. when my dad was first arrested, i remember this as a wild

because my childhood goals to become a prosecutor, career ambition, i was completely ashamed of him and i grew up and something that many children feel about their parents, you're not supposed to say out loud that you're ashamed of your parents but many of us, i had a sense that i'm trying to make it big in america, i had a scholarship to fancy school. i write about that, when dad got arrested i was like how can you be doing this to me? and as the case dragged on and i saw that things were not working, wait, apparently a drug trafficking front, 8-month sentence and put it behind him, wait, we are doing the time and he was made to pay so much more than -- than was proportional and eventually my shame

shattered and i felt both indignation at how the justice system was working, a desire to protect him, my father and sense that he's a 3 dimensional person who, yeah, he complained about my skirts, but he's also a workaholic who has basically lived his life trying to support and build a family, he had a pretty simple ambition in life, it was to have and support a family, he was not a complicated person. and in the process of fighting for my father, you know, what happens is that you have choices in life and moments of crisis, do you turn toward from somebody or turn away from them? when someone needs you, there's a choice that you make and i basically around the age of 19 when things were really falling

apart, i decide today turn toward my father, i decided that i was going to stay in new york city and fight my family's fight to keep family together to not know it would be a 10-year-long fight but in the process i got to understand the man who i found oppressive and judgmental and controlling, well, why was he so patriotic and paternalistic, he grew up in the world where he had zero stability but tradition, he grew up in a world force today move around place to place, where did he get his sense of any stability, it was from tradition. and so he held onto it because there was nothing else to hold onto. so i feel that to 15-year-old arthi i would say whatever you feel you're suffering he or she too are suffering and when you can open your eyes to the reason that is people are who they are

without feeling threatened by it, open your eyes to see it, you will find ways to appreciate the strength of someone who you don't -- like, there's just that, there's a power to seeing clearly and sometimes we don't want to see clearly. >> 15-year-old me was miserable. [laughter] >> i was planted in this all boys catholic, fresh off the boat from bombay and on my second day of the school, this kid with red hair and freckles comes up to my lunch table and says lincoln should have never let him off the plantation but what does that have to do with me. [laughter] >> so i was one of the first minorities in the school.

teacher who called me -- every day i long today get back to bombay, i left my friends behind. i just missed bombay with every being. and by my senior year it got better because there were other minorities, started coming in and we had a lunchtime excluded. [laughter] >> in the beginning of my senior year -- [inaudible] >> didn't really know the difference. [laughter] >> this was during the iranian hostage crisis in 1980 and we are walking down the hallways

and the other iotola, hey, we ain't iranians, we are indians and he said gandhis. [laughter] r i was impressed by him starting to acknowledge. [laughter] >> gandhi didn't -- [laughter] we had a cuban who claimed that his father -- school only out gay student. he was hanging with math teach

teacher. we had mysterious oriental. korean friend whose mother would pack the noodles in her lunchbox . we sprayed all stories on cans, you know, you heard about martial arts shit. like you heard about them black belts. he's got a belt that's so advanced you're not even suppose to know it's color. [laughter] >> people would leave us alone because, you know, oriental. [laughter] >> engineering school at colombia, couldn't hurt a fly. he in the classes before lunch i

would write to lunch table and excluded because everyone wanted to be and run like hell as soon as school ended and humor was a way of defending and if you ask any great comedian, why are you funny, they say because they had miserable childhood. we would go to jackson heights which i say incredible by diverse, i was in a building full of indian and pakistanis and they were dominican and haitians, there were muslims. these are people who have been killing each other before they got on the plane. [laughter] >> and here we were living next door to each other and, you know, sharing our strange food when the only thing that brought

the building together was sunday mornings, there's a program on spanish-language station which basically played bollywood songs. all sang along to bollywood songs, i realized that everyone loved it, so the one thing that united us. .. ..

never been safer or richer and never more diverse. to 3 new yorkers are immigrants or their children. a jackson heights jewish center. and and in places like jackson heights. [applause] >> >> it is really instructive for all of us. where we grew up literally you are mentioning the different nationalities.

we moved to flushing. and they all live in the same building and during the partition of india and pakistan were murdering each other. babies were roasted during that partition. it was horrifically violent. these groups were at war with each other. they were sharing milk, sugar and flour. and killing the roaches. and and it is a highly absorbent culture, a place where you come and differences are diffuse.

this is the truth of this country. everything is relative, it is not utopia, utopia doesn't exist. having perspective about what happens, people can and do coexist. i want to emphasize that is who we are. >> you went to the us-mexico border and you said it gives you hope. why? >> i want to be careful how i explains this. my book launched october 1st. before officially launching in new york city you could say we unofficially launched in brownsville, texas. i wanted to go to the border because i haven't been there in a long time. when i was reflecting on my family's story i looked at the images in my newsfeed, i saw women and children who reminded

me of my mother and me. they are not alien newcomers but just a version of me and my family. i wanted to go and witness. part of what i saw was terrifying. the tend encampments at the bank of the rio grande, women and children who should be allowed to apply for asylum, are now being forced to camp out on the banks of the river with no water, fresh water, no sanitation, it smells horrific and they are trying to file their claims for asylum and they are describing instances of being gang raped or seeing their own children attacked and or murdered. they are describing these in open air, that is terrifying. what gives me hope is what is

keeping these families alive? how are their stories getting from the banks of the rio grande into court, a volunteer force of americans? you have lawyers who are not paid to do this work who are crossing the bridge every day from brownsville and they have trolleys and are going back and forth saying we are going to do this and this is the right thing. how are families who are migrants eating? you have another volunteer force, all american with trolleys bringing food and water and diapers multiple times a day. while the law may be broken and the law is broken, our culture is good. where is the standard moral crisis? we basically need leadership in this country that can have the

laws reflect our culture. it's not that complicated. it just takes courage. [applause] >> my hope is in our culture. >> we have 5 minutes and we will open the floor to q and a so i want to ask one question. your grandfather said i'm here because you are there. can you tell us more about this? is immigration as reparation enough? >> my book begins with my grandfather who was born in india and moved to colonial kenya and worked and retired in london and sitting in a park in london in the 1990s.

and my grandfather said why are you here? why don't you go back to your country? my grandfather who was a businessman said because we are the creditors. you came to my country, took my gold and diamonds, prevented my industry from developing so we have come to collect. [applause] >> we are here because you were there my grandfather pointed out. it seems to explain a lot of global migration. the whole debate around global migration is from the point of view of the rich countries. should we let immigrants, how many should we let in? should they be skilled or unskilled? why are these people moving in the first place?

why would a hunter and mother take her little baby against incredible odds to come to this country? why would an african man across deserts and the mediterranean with little children to get to europe? it is because the rich countries have stolen the future of the poor countries from colonialism, law, inequality and climate change. when the british got to india at the beginning of the 18th century injury's share of gdp was a quarter of all gdp. by the time the british left, 200 years later, india shared gdp. during the colonial period european share went from 20%-60%. europe -- the colonies -- the

same thing with war. we went into iraq and launched an illegal and unnecessary war, 6000 iraqis lost their life. if there was any natural justice the bush ranch would be filled with syrian and iraqi refugees, you break it, you own it. [applause] >> take climate change. we americans are 4% of the world population but we put one third of the world's excess carbon in the atmosphere, europeans another quarter and as a result, countries like india, many countries in africa, people are literally roasting to death, a heat wave in india, when people move they

are moving to homes -- people who caused these problems in the first place are not moving because they hate their homes or the languages but the story is immigration the end is a good news story because when immigrants move the countries they move to their economies do better, the immigrants themselves do better. it is a case of life or death for political refugees and remittances, the money they send back in $5 into dollar increments are the best and most targeted way of helping, remittances last year accounted for four times the foreign aid in the world. in the end, mass migration, something we have been doing for all our history and immigration is a good thing. it will be the defining phenomenon of the 21st century as climate change kicks in and we shouldn't be afraid of it.

the immigrants coming to the shores is a rescue fleet. >> thank you. we are going to open up the floor for questions so if anyone has a question please stand up and come around. go ahead. >> i wasn't going to ask a question but your stories inspired of fox, 1975 going to college from vietnam coming over and all the guys in the dorm were saying those filthy dirty people coming on the boats are just going to ruin our country and 44 years later one of those boat people happens to be my cardiologist.

is it the hardship and deprivation, they had to flee the country. and is that your analysis generally. and and they go to harvard. and you stay for where you are supporting somebody who is going to arrive. i love that that is your cardiologist at story but that's something you're dealing with immigration as well as other issues. is the american dream still alive? do people get to live it. the nature of the american

dream is the ability to leap into places you did not know existed and your family, your parents could never have entered and that dream for longtime americans, that dream is closing again because you have leadership that lacks moral vision. it is a great story, it's not all our stories that it has to do with whether the country allows the dream anymore. >> immigrants are 14% of the population and we started a quarter of all new illnesses and earned over a third of american nobel prizes. one of four us tech companies were founded by immigrants, 71%

of silicon valley are immigrants and of the 25 biggest public tech companies, 60% were founded by immigrants. we have got to be careful not to think that immigrants are a master race. this woman amy who wrote the tiger books and i saw an article in time magazine, she claims eight model minorities, indians and chinese, my answer was if indians are so great, what explains india? [laughter] >> in this book people make the mistake of thinking we should let in more indians than chinese, mexicans and hondurans. if india had a land border with

the united states we would be singing a different tune. it is a matter of selection that the people who can afford a ticket will have the know-how to apply for a visa can get here but it is true the people who made this arduous journey whether from india to the us or honduras, mozambique to spain. and they have this drive and we should be welcoming them. the great thing about america, it imports what it needs and is a country made of other countries. >> thank you. one more question. does anyone else have a question?

>> there was a spectacle in houston about two months ago i watched on he span -- c-span. there was a stadium with 40,000 indians and i hope i can frame this question. our president has his politics and awareness of nationalities. the head of medicaid services and the surname of my son in law. the question, he started by saying when this person to my left, the world stops and listens and i thought wow. is there any macro strategy or

missed that or away that those embrace immigration, as fuel for the country that you think could be important? we are talking about personal stories. >> please speak into the mic. >> we are talking impactful stories that make a difference. is there a way those who embrace immigration and want to thrive that we are not doing so we could be doing? it is hard to frame this question but watching them operate he did have some real impacts that day. >> the romance we saw, it is funny because i saw the event

here as look at that. america is a country where foreign heads of state can come. tens of thousands can gather around the person and feel connection to their homeland and still feel american and be here. that event proves the point that we are a nation of immigrants. i think the answer to what is to be done is quite simple. there are a lot of myths that get to run around right now. what is the most common thing you hear from anti-immigrant standpoint, why won't they stand online? there is no line to stand on. the line does not exist for people. i think that is simply creating a line, creating a system where

families reunite and people emphasize in their own story, one that fascinates me is about a third of the us can trace their roots to ellis island. how long did of silent immigrants weight online? for the vast majority, 3 to 5 hours to come into america and make this home. if we know our past and what actually made america, fantastic culture that it is and if we create policy that turns the myth into fact we will be fine. >> i just came back from a trip to india where i gave a speech about what is happening to india and i've never been so concerned about the future of india. modi just got reelected, but

the indian government is doing to bangladesh what the american government is doing to mexicans and hondurans. the government started a national registry of citizenship under which 4 million might be stripped of their citizenship and the government is proposing to institute a system of gulagss across the country basically to detain muslims. india has 200 million muslims, the second largest muslim country and they voted with their feet to stay in india. there is no indian members, indian muslim members of isis or al qaeda, no active she hottie movements except a few fringe groups.