certainly certainly in iraq. that, you should understand is going to generate hatred and is going to generate acts of revenge. i don't think we have seen the end of that. with the bombing of the base there, i think that was just a token, here we go, fire off some rockets. i think we're going to see more acts ever been. >> to watch the rest of this program over website but tv.org and search for his book "bunker diplomacy" using the box the top of the page. book tv in prime time starts now. first chambers looks back at her grandmother and mother. who grew up in poverty in kentucky's appellation mountain region. later radio host bob garfield addresses america's political divide. journalist andrea bernstein chronicles trump and kushner families rise to prominence.

find more information on your program guide. now here is kathy chambers from the bookstore in louisville. :

so, whati want to do tonight is i'm going to read some excerpts and talk a little i bit about why i wrote this book and what inspired me to write and give you an overview about how the book came to be into the world

and after that i will have time d for questions so please, anything on your mind i would love to hear from you all for discussion or dialogue and i look forward to hearing your thoughts on the book and anything you have on your mind. the first part i want to read comes from the introduction. one of the poorest counties it is in the appellation a small county about 4500 people one of the highest poverty rates in america. it's hard for me to know which part i should show the rest of the world. it helps people understand the extent of the poverty and i do want them to know how it goes. maybe if they understand it they can help fix it but i also don't want them to think that poverty is all that exists.

this eastern kentucky as hopeless, broken. that's not what i see when i look at this place i love. around the square and continue driving along the way some are scattered with what appears to be junk, old car parts, refrigerators, children's toys, but i know that for some people that seemingly useful stuff serves a purpose people make a living however they can come selling car parts and organizing yard sales. they collect anything of value because they never know what will come in handy. ify nothing else they can sell the junk in a nearby town for $50 a truckload. truckload. iney are always thinking of ways to sell for money. this drives, creativity, effort

in unexpected places. they see him come to humans living in non- come to homes and others view it as a sense of pity trapped in such awful circumstances. i try to look at it with a sense of respect to remember how hard they are working to survive in the overlooked corner of the world they call home. but they feel the truest timmy even if the other views that mark easily fit into the categories of left to create. for me there is hope in the spirit of the people that find creative ways to exist in the community that has been systematically marginalized and those who take care of themselves even when the outside world doesn't take care of them. and people who broke their bodies and tobacco fields and coal mines to make a living and

the only communitinthe only come ever known.y we don't take the time to see if, the hope and the poverty, the spark against the backdrop. i've come to know that while some of the fire that fuels so many. i see it every day, when i'm in the midst of a crisis doing what it takes to keep themselves and their children safe. once i recognized it is all its effect is everywhere the way that shaped people, families, communities, the way that shaped me. of course not everything is exceptional.

then in some other places but the basic themes are the same people care about love, community, family. about a mile outside of town is a narrow gravel road that drops dramatically over the side of the hill plunging steeply into the hollow below. it shares its name with a stream of cut through. a few hundred yards further indictment of bottom of the valley a small flat space enclosed by the rolling hills. on the top of one is a farmhouse looking out onto the field below. it resembles an elderly woman leaping into itself folding around an ever weakening structure. its boards worn and faded

watching and waiting. it feels like home and a the hoe feels like family. there are women's stories here, stories of resilience, love and strength. the community knows them well but there e-echo hasn't reachedd far enough into the outside world. instead, they've ricocheted within the mountains growing more faint with time. i want to talk to stories because they matter, because i'm afraid they will be forgotten, because they have the power to make this community visible. as i stop my vehicle and walked towards the house the memories wash over me like the sunlight on the mountain hills. wand so, this introduction i think says a lot about why i wrote this book and how i see it

being in conversation with other depictions about appalachia that we see being popular both in recent years and presently. around 2016 and became there were a lot of things. the hope and people are coping with the problems. they talk about the problems often i've always known this and i've always been aware of the virtues of appalachia and the way to struggling communities have so much to offer but it wasn't until i began seeing these other portrayals in

movies, films i realized something about the story of this community and the story of my family was noteworthy because when you grow up in this way you don't know that it's some and anyone else would be interested in and all of a sudden they start coming out about people that came from the background and appalachia and went to the halls of the ivy league and somehow that was a journey worth talking about and there were lessons to take away from that. they had very similar plots to my own life story and i realized from the outset that's what my life looks like and what the story of my family looks like, a story of being born in a trailer to two young parents who couldn't afford to run air conditioninconditioning and been to have the opportunity to earn a degree from yale law school. ii thought about those experiences different from what i was reading about him for me, everything i had and every

opportunity i had is because of the community and the people that shaped and formed me, so i talk about this book a lot as a calas acoverta lot as i callit - narrative. but take away is the only reason i was able to do that and the only reason is because of not just my immediate family and community, that the generation that came before me and help those in my family tried to do something a little bit better and build something a little better for the women that came after, so that is at its core but it'swh about is a story abot women into the way that they work to make their community better and their family better and do better for the people that come after them. so just to give you a little bit of context and flavor for the stories that are in it, it starts off with my grandmother.

had a third grade education and she was born into extreme poverty so bad that her blanket used to freeze at night because her house was so cold and they couldn't afford a way to use it. she never got to go to the movies or went out to eat or to a restaurant or even have toys. she lived a life that was hard and she was treated like an adult from the time she was a child and more than anything even though she had the opportunity to get an education and didn't really have the ability to understand what getting an education meant, she wanted her children to be able to do better than she did or have done him to go further than she'd been able to go so she had seven children, six of which was my mom and she pushed my mom from the time she was born to graduate high school and to get an education and because of that and because of my moms sister who encouraged her to get a degree my mom became the first

in her school to graduate high school and went on to graduate college. many of you in the room are familiar and i see a lot of heads nodding which is a wonderful is that allowed her to get a free education which was something her family didn't have the money for her to be able to go to school to pay for tuition and quite frankly to go into debt and that wasn't something people did so she wouldn't have the chance to get a degree. and my mom coming from that background is all th away the vegetation changed her life and made the world smaller and opened doors for her and for her she felt like she had come so far to be able to go to college where she felt like she could learn about ideas and about the world and have her horizon broadened so she raised me to believe there was nothing i wasn't capable of doing because she had come so far she believed i had the ability to do anything

in the world i wanted to and the because my mom instilled in a very early age how important it was to get an education and experience the world and take chances because she had taken chances i was able to go on and earn a scholarship and graduated from harvard and then the book talks about how i believe that you are the person three generations have worked to give opportunities to handle this effort has gone into making you who you are you are under an obligation to pay it forward so i returned and came back and worked with low income women into domestic violence situations trying to provide other families and other women the same opportunities that i'd been provided by my family. so, i another that plays on the theme about my mother going to

college. when i was five my mother graduated from college and i remember getting a new dress for the occasion. occasion. at first i owned that was the fancy it had lace trim and a delegate to sell our friend. my mother brought me a cap and e walked in the procession. i didn't know how true that statement was or how my graduating my mother changed both of our lives and how the value she had come to place on education would carry me far beyond the hills of appalachia and how her ability to understand her family would've set me up for success. the day after the graduation ceremony, the newspaper ran a

pick for the two of us. my mother and me standing side-by-side. i focused forward, graduating to the next days of our lives. and so, the last thing i want to talk about in the buck an book i would love to hear your thoughts and questions and how the conversation around appalachia and ways to move forward and think about the poverty and howk it's different in the community and education and all these things, the last thing i want to talk about is my work and paying it forward because i believe when the community gives you opportunities, it's incumbent to pay th the opportunity is forwad and do so for me that as is a m of starting my career at the legal aid society and working with women in the state of crisis dealing with safety issues to keep themselves safe and protect themselves and their family. and i worked in every county

that touched louisville and over and i call myself a one-woman traveling law firm i had a printer in the back of my car in a laptop and i got very good at figuring out how to get people to print things when they didn't have access to technologies and e-mail and i have a lot of fond memories from life on the road. but in this work, one of the things that was important to me is to find tangible ways to make the system better because my experience working in rural kentucky and eastern kentucky showed me that there were a lot of barriers that exist in places we don't necessarily see them. when i was working in the civil justice system, i sorted the way that there was a little financial barriers that stopped from being able to fully access the support system and keep themselves and family safe. we talk about this in the

criminal law context and so hearing the right you have two an attorney and people seeing you don't have the same right in the civil law context trying to get custody and protective orders they didn't have the right to get an attorney and so, i was representing them for free and sometimes it was certainly helpful but not always enough because they would have to pay for things like having an attorney for your children, commissioner systems sometimes they would have to pay hourly fees on the docket. theree were all of these fees that add up and one of the things i noticed was there was a lot on the books required when men or anyone if they wanted to divorce and abusive partner in jail foriv assaulting them on te wall required the person be appointed, which in itself isn't

a bad thing and people should have representation if they are incarcerated he should have a lawyer to make sure they are represented witthese arerepresed the ball is who have to pay for the attorney and any situation is the person seeking normally the person who had been the victim and was in jail for abusing them and it was that person come of the victim, the survivor that got stuck in a legal battle and i saw time and time again how this made women feel like the system was working for their abuser instead of them and it made them feel victimized by the legal system and has attained to use the system to get the kind of hope and relief that they needed. they saw it as a t place that could protect their interest or have anything to help them and so i decided to work with one of my clients, a woman named jeanette to be able to address the problem, and i believe strongly in the sort of client

driven solutions and people that experienced problems the most to find solutions to them and so i want to read an excerpt from the latter part of the book where i am talking about jeanette and our work together. what jeanette indicted together is start off with me saying can i tell your story, can i use your story as th a way to try to make thean system better, and se had a pretty dramatic story experienced violence and abuse at the hands of her then husba husband. he fired a pistol at her into the bullet ripped through her clothing and her clothes to the state were still in police custody. so, her husband ended up going to jail and jeanette flailed divorce and the attorney was

charged with helping her navigate through the process. and at first it was me asking if i could use her story and the fact whenever she tried to get this divorce she got stuck with a legal bill so he could have a lawyer even delays defending her for free because she couldn't afford an attorney and every time i've asked a survivor can i tell your story to make things better for other people, the person has said yes, absolutely if my story can help someone coming to visit. and the fact has been to have an attorney although she couldn't afford one that is something she wanted to tell the story to make a change. so i wrote an op-ed i and it started to get attention and lawmakers fired a bill and then at that point jeanette said i'm okay telling my story myself. i want to use my face and name and carry the torch because i'm not ashamed or embarrassed or

afraid. i want to make the system better myself, so we had conversations about how she could get involved in to do that and one of the powerful things i've seen is jeanette deciding to testify in front of the general assembly and go on the news media and just sort of tell why it needed change. so as a result of that, a bill passed through the general assembly signed into law by the general. she will tell you it's th it's g she's most proud of and i am so proud to have been able to watch her transform the system that had taken advantage of her so i just want to read it but then ask her excerpt. my experience was a powerful reminder about the importanc off telling women's stories. her voice light tangible changes

in the state law because of her bravery of their women's lives will be better. and each small way an wayne is t that, a win and each is the reminder things can change. they are also a reminder of the people who have been victimized by a spouse or unjust system, and nonetheless powerful. some portray survivors of domestic violence as bleak. some portray them in a position as the same way. i think jeanette story illustrates the opposite. when given the right tools, support and environment, these women are capable of changing the world. and so, with that, i will conclude my reading of the night and i really look forward to hearing all of your questions. again, i want to thank the carmichael's for holding the event and please, buy books and support your local bookstore.

they do amazing work and with that, i will go ahead and open it up to questions. there is a microphone at the end of the i/o and to make sure that we are capturing the audio, they asked that you speak into the microphone if you have a question. [applause] any questions? okay. >> [inaudible] >> wonderful. >> i think one of the books that you are talking about is hillbiliology. >> i wasn't in the poorest country but it wasn't a great place to grow at the time.

how do you pronounce the sausages? >> in my county we pronounce them "vie-enna" sausages. [laughter] >> just to touch on that, one of the books that i think gained a lot of attention and became what the rest of the world knew about appalachia was hillbilliology and it talked about appalachia in a way that is helpful and focuses on the problems and focuses on problems in people and it does not acknowledge the way that the systems and marginalized people were time and how hard people are working in the marginalized communities and how much honor there is in working hard in the community

that's been marginalized over time and so that was really one of the driving forces behind this. it shows the true view of appalachia and the view of politics that focuses on women because my experiences with women take on leadership roles and acknowledge the leadership roles sometimes, but they make a difference in the community and the larger world, and i think that this is a book that i hope is a book that elevates women's voices and tells women's stories. thank you for the question. >> any other questions? i see someone in the back. let me take hers and then i will get yours. >> i was wondering if you could tell us a little bit of output t it was like to write about your

family and those that didn't or did know your family if they were going to read it, and i guess that's all. >> thank you for the question. so, for those of you that might not be able to hear the question commentquestion, it's about thes of writing about a memoir and your family and people that are going to read the book. so, to write a memoir i think it'isa really interesting proced there is a lot to be sad. i think you have to work with an editor that understands you and how your brain works and i understand my editor from ballantine books is here tonight and i hope that the wall posted ground because she's an incredible woman and i'm glad she came down, but one of the things she did a lot of is asking the questions why did you make this decision and why did so and so make the decision to wha,what is under the surface oe way you understand this or

surface and i think it is the way to get at the deeper level of the systemic issues and the real value in the story and so i was lucky that i worked with an amazing editor that helps me to dig into that. i will say about writing a memoir it didn't get clear to me until i was writing about the people in the book and i was faced with the prospect of driving down and saying here is the book. i hope that you like the way that you are per trade. [laughter] which is quite an experience because i don't think that any way people would write about us is different from the way we would think or talk about ourselves. i got advice from someone wrote a memoir athatwas a memoir at tt said you will never regret being overly generous in your portrayal of people coming in at the time that doesn't necessarily make sense. yes it is good advice but what else can you tell me about writing of a memoir and now that

is the best advice and that is what i would absolutely tell people writing a memoir is the very generous in your portrayals of people because the way you write about them on the page lives forever, and you can't take it back to you will never for regret being a little kinder than your inclination was to be. and i think we have a question over here. talking about the process of writing the book, i was lucky this book didn't take hold on to write and part because when you are writing about your story you already know it. you've heard the family tales. i did a lot of interviews with family members coming and i said i've always heard tell that story about grandma getting married at 15, but what else can you tell me? what do you remember her talking about? was interesting to seit was inte way their memories deferred and that is interesting it's not a research book, they are stories

and i acknowledged everyone's memory is different and they account like she had a brown wedding dress, no, it was blue and at the end of the day i think i said a blue but i'm not sure, it might have been brown. [laughter] but it was fun to be able to sit down and talk to relatives about their memories, and my mom was very involved in sitting down and talking with me and sharing her memory and her life story, and i think that in a lot of ways i was lucky to have the enough time to have the conversations because a lot of us don't have the chance to sit down with relatives and tell them how much we admire them and how much we've taken from their stories and we've had that opportunity. >> any other -- i see someone coming. yes. >> congratulations on your book.

>> thank you. >> i wondered, you know, you grew up in the county and went on to yale and harvard etc. and then came back and landed in louisville, which many people in eastern kentucky barely even considered it to be kentucky. so, how -- tell me how did that wind up being, you know, your decision. you could have gone to someplace else there. so, tell us about that. >> i fell in love with louisville when i was a law student and i had the opportunity to come and spend some summers here, and i always tell folks about louisville and what i love is that it's big enough to have everything you need but small enough to actually use it. [laughter] it's true, you can go to a coffee shop or nice restaurant. for me, i have gone and i have lived in cities and there is value. one of the things i'm interested

in is the idea of the rural divide because i think that people have more in common than we have that divides us. but i loved living in cities because i love the unique and interesting things that happen. kentucky was always home and felt like home. i fell in love with louisville and i thought this was a place i could land and make a difference, and so i moved here and started doing the work that i was doing. and i met my husband, and my husband, his first question when he proposed is will you marry me, and then do we always lived in the highlands of louisville. [laughter] so i'm locked in her life, and at the end of the day coming to know, i really enjoyed having the opportunity to talk about how we can bring rural and urban areas together because i think that is a perspective that i have seen both sides and again i believe is more that unites than

divides us and i enjoyed having the opportunity to talk to folks about these areas. >> thank you for the question. >> along the lines of having so much in common, what is the common thread between the rural and urban poverty would you say lacks >> that is an interesting question and the truth is i think that rural and urban poverty actually are quite different. i think that they are both problems we need to have resources available to address. one of the things i noticed in particular is for example there's a lot of organizations that provide social services and they are supposed to provide for an entire multi-county area and

yet form a very low income clients, they might not have reliable transportation to drive the hour and i hav a half to acs the show so services where they might not be able to affords the gap or make it. so i think that transportation infrastructure and access really matter in these areas and in a way that the poverty is more diffuse to access services because you might have a couple of people here and then 3 miles away. so it's not to say the take away from that is to say you have different strategies. it's not to say that they are not competing with one another or that it's more pressing is a concern. >> [inaudible] >> that brings up another question.

>> [inaudible] in about 2010, there was the electronic protective orders and i remembered a conversation about what is going to happen in the rural areas because we don't have a lot in these areas. you get these others in the discussion right now like expanding the abilities. what happens in eastern kentucky the question for those of you that couldn't hear about them i

still have paper protective orders and electronic protective disorders and fly the time. i have had clients call me and i had to call the police on behalf of clients because there's been a safety threat and if someone has shown up and they haven't been able to get the police to respond quickly enough so i think the answer is when there is a display preventing people with safety services bad things happen and shouldn't and we should do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn't happen. happen. buhappen. the point about wifi access is a good point. we live in a world where we talk about access to internet and wifi as a fundamental right that it connects us all that we need to participate in the society today and i have relatives who to this day have never accused the computer, don't own a cell phone, they've never seen a facebook page, and these are weapons that would never i said

what you like to come to my wedding in louisville, i would love to have you there and they didn't know how to get there. they didn't have a gps. some of them have never accused parking garages so that wasn't an option for them. i was telling people when my husband was like why isn't your kentucky family coming to the wedding. i said it might as well be in taiwan. they don't know -- don't have the ability and phones and gps to navigate, and i think that is something a lot of people still find shopping in this day and age is the sort of disparity that exists with access to technology and access to information coming about how to use the technology. it's important. we are talking about these high poverty areas to talk about how we teach young people to use the technology of the future because that is what helps them connect to the larger world and also job opportunities and economic

opportunities that come from being able to connect to the world. >> yes. >> [inaudible] can you point to any policy decisions [inaudible] the question was about i talk about how my family and my community shaped policies that i think played a role in that and in the book i talk about how my family received food stamps. we got assistance with medical is. i went to a public school and played in public parks. i went to public libraries because at the beginning i was talking about being born to parents who couldn't run air-conditioning. and if so, it was a sort of dual purpose in my life being in place open to the public that i could go and learn and also escape the summer heat.

i am such a believer in having the policies that provide my family with the opportunity in part because my family took advantage of those and had any one of those been missing, i wouldn't be where i was today. i got sick as a child, i haven't been able to become a doctor and my family encouraged a large amount of debt it would have looked different and i wouldn't have the opportunity to go to the public school and get a good education, my life would have looked different. so, i believe they have to make sure we have policies in place that are making sure every child is the same opportunity that i had to grow and thrive. >> yes. >> i work in education. particularly in the rural parts of the state, there may be a fear of children getting advanced education because it means they may leave the

community and go on to higher education and won't come back. and then there is a loss. so i'm curious your perspective on whether that is true in some cases and experiences, and if so, then what is the best way to try to address those completed. >> that's something i talk about in the book. whenever she more than anything, for my mom to be able to go to college and get an education, but my grandmother didn't want my mom to leave for the same reason. she said families take care of their children, children stay close to their families. why would you leave, do you think i cannot provide a good life for you here. the family was the most important thing and it broke his heart to think about what his os children going -- in his mind if may have been the other side of the world. he never had a drivers license and rareldriver's licenseand ra.

it might as well have been a different part of the country as far as he was concerned. i think to some extent, that is getting less and as people see the way that education changes their communities and a lot of people i think there is a focus now of doing sort of what i did and getting education and returning and making the difference in the community that you come from and there are communities to bring people back to the communities. in some ways it inspires them. it provides them to a drunken foundation and values and the drive to get an education and sometimes it is big problems in the communities they want to come back and solve, so i think there is certainly still work to be done and i still hear stories about people saying my entire world i'm never going t to lead, i'vleave,i've heard young childy college isn't for me or high school isn't for me i'm going to work at the jail and never leave or i'm going to do this or that,

and so sometimes it makes me sad people feel like their world is limited. i certainly understand the value of home and family, and i think that people can make good legitimate choices to stay near home and their families. i just hope for a world where every child feels like they have the choice to choose something else if that is what they want. >> i am hearing that our time has left and we are out of time. thank you all again for coming tonight. it's great to have you all here. thank you to my agent, jaime, who came from new york and emily from making the trip down. it was nice to have a team of women supporting me in the project. thank you to carmichael for hosting. i will be signing books. so please, please, support carmichael's and thank you for being here.

[applause] >> here's a look at books being published this week.

>> we want to introduce you to an author. what do you do for a living? >> i'm a presidential historian i do when writing on my website, presidential nospaceco history.com and for a lot of media for presidential history and politics. >> are you a classically trained historian? >> i'm not. >> it's been a passion my whole life and it's been fun to do that writing now and that to be able to actually publish a book. >> and we want to talk about the book which