tolerance, an inning of people with very -- an understanding of people with very different points of view. >> and sunday at 9 p.m. on "after words," prettier prize-winning journalists report on the issues facing the working class and rural america in their book, "tight rope." they're interviewed by oregon democratic senator jeff merkley. >> these people in the small towns around america in the rural areas around america, people are walking on a tight rope. and one miss and they fall. there's no safety net. >> over the last six years, we have vastly overdone it, and we've become kind of obsessed with this personal responsibility narrative, blaming the people who fall off the tight rope for the catastrophes that follow. >> watch authors kevin merida, f.h. buckley this weekend on booktv on c-span2. [inaudible conversations]

>> okay. good evening, everyone, and thank you all for joining us tonight. e on behalf of carmichael's bookstore, i am delighted to welcome you all to tonight's event. if we could all take a moment before i begin and silence our phones, i'dok greatly appreciate that. tonight we are joined by cassie chambers whose debut memoir, "hill women," honors her childhood in an latch cha and the strong women who raised her. she has now worked extensively with domestic violence survivors here in kentucky. she currently lives in louisville with her husband. please join me in giving a very warm welcome to cassie. [applause] >> thank you all. first off, i just want the thank everyone for being here and

coming out in the rain on a cold night. it means so much to me to have people from all the different stages and phases of my life, and it is wonderful to see you all here. i also want to thank car mic's for hosting -- carmichael's for hosting this event. if we want to have the independent bookstores and events like this, let's support them ask use our dollars to do that. so, please, at the end of tonight, i would appreciate if you would purchase if your book, and i will be signing them over at the signing table after this process. what i want to do tonight is i want to -- i'm going to read some excerpts if talk a little wit about why i wrote this -- why i wrote this book, what inspired me to write it and give you an overview about how this book came to be and how it came into the world. and after that i will have time for questions and so, please, anything that is on your mind, i would love to hear from you all. i seeur this as a discussion ana dialogue, and i look forward to hearing your all's thoughts on

the book, the subject matter and anything that you have on your mind. sol the first part that i want to realize comes from the introduction. to read. when i am talking about the county. one of the poorest counties in all of america. it is sort of in deep appalachia. small county aboutof 4500 peopl, one of the highest poverty rates in america. it's hardd for me to know what part ofme the county i could shw the rest of the world. presenting the broken, falling in places helps people understand the extent of the poverty, and i do want them to know how deep it goes. maybe if they understand it, they can help fix it. but iun also don't want them to think that this poverty is all that exists in appalachia. to see eastern kentucky hopeless, broken, dirty. that's notot what i see when i look at this place that i love. i round the square and continue

driving. along the way some of the lawns are scattered with what appears to be junk; old car parts, refrigerators, children's toys. but i know that for some people the piles of seemingly useless stuff serve a purpose and an entrepreneurial one at that. people here make a living however they can, selling old car parts, repairing refrigerators, organizing yard sales. they collect anything of possible value because they never know what will come in handy. if nothing else, they can sell the junk in a nearby town for $50 a truckload. they are always thinking of ways to earn money, help a neighbor, provide for their family. there is drive, creativity, effort in unexpected places. some people look at this image of poverty with a sense of disgust. they see unkempt humans living in unkempt homes.

others view it with a sense of pity, those poor people 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. that last t view of the county feels the truest to me even if the other views fit more easily into the cat guys outsiders -- categories outsiders want to create. for me, there iss hope in the spirit of a people who find creative ways to exist in a community that has been systematically marginalized, in men and women who take care of each other even when the outside world with does not take care of them. in people who broke their bodies in tobacco fields and coal minus to make a living in the only community they have ever known. we don't take the time to see it, the hope in the poverty, the spark againstd the dreary backdrop, the grit in the mountain women.

i've come to know that grit well, that fire that fuels so many women in rural kentucky. i see it every day in my clients, women in the midst of a crisis doing what it takes to keep themselves and their children safe. once i recognized it, i saw its effects everywhere. the way it had shaped people, families, communities. the way it has shaped me. of course, not everything in us a ausley county is exceptional. in many ways it's ordinary, full of normal people living normal lives. these lives take a different shape and arc than they do 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 a

hill, plunging steeply into the ngllow below. it's called cow creek. it shares its name with the stream that cuts through it. a few hundred yards farther, and i'm at the bottom of this valley, a small, flat space enclosed by rolling hills. on the top of one of these hills is a farmhouse looking out onto theil fields below. it resembles an elderly woman leaning into it, folding around an ever-weakening structure. it is gray now. its wooden boards worn and fawlded, but there are hints of the white and green it once wore. there's a strength in its brokenness. it has withstood weather, time and families. iten is it is vacant now, resti, watching, waiting as each new day cascades into cow creek. the holler feels like home, and this house feels like family.

there are women's stories here, stories of resilience, love and strength. this community knowsws them wel, but their ec ecohasn't -- echo hasn't reached far enough into the outside world. instead, these tales have ricocheted within the mountains, growing more faint with time. i want to tell these stories 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 walk toward the house, the memories wash over me like the sunlight on the mountain. and so this introduction, i think, says a lot about why i wrote "hill women" and how i see it being in conversation with some orr depictions about appalachia that we see being really popular both in recent years and presently. so around 2016 it became -- there were a lot of things being

written about appalachia, and a lot of t people were depicting e problems there.n and, of course, these were problems that i was away or of, problems i saw, problems i was familiar with. but what i wasn't hearing a lot about was the creative solutions and the strength of communities that are addressing these problems and addressing them well. and so i wrote this book in large part to tell that soiled soiled -- that side of the story,l to show there is hope in these communities, that there is hope in poverty and there is strength in communities that struggle. you know,st i had always known this, i had always been aware of these virtueses of appalachia and the way that struggling communities have so much to offer, but it wasn't until i began seeing these other portrayals, these other books, you know, movies, films that i realized that something about the story of this community and the story of my family was noteworthy. because i think when you grow up in this wayst and this is your life story, you don't know that

it's something anyone else would be interested in. but all of a sudden these stories started coming out of about people who came from this background of poverty in 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. i looked at people telling these stories thatop had very similar plot points to my own life story. and i realized from the outside that's what my life looks like, that's what the story of my family's life looks like. it looks like a story of being born in a trailer to two young parents who couldn't afford to run the air-conditioning and goingno on to have the opportuny to earn a degree from yale college and harvard law school. it was very different than what i was reading about x. for me, everything that i have and every opportunity i have was because of my community and because of those people that m shaped me ad formed me. so i talk about this book a lot as i call it the anti-bootstrap narrative. in some ways we all know about the pull yours up by the

bootstraps narrative, you know, go and get an ivy league degree. for me, the takeaway from my storyut is that the only reasoni was able to do that, the only reason i had any boots at all is because of not just my immediate family, my immediate community, but the generations that came before me and how the women in my family each tried to do something a little bit better for the next generation and build something a little bit better for the women that came after them. that's really, at its core, what "hill women" is all about. to do a little bit better for the people that come after them. is so just to give you all a little bit of a context and and a flavor for "hill women" and the stories that are in it, it starts off with my grandmother. my grandmother, i called her granny, had a third grade education, and she was born into extreme poverty, poverty so bad that her balloon kept used to freeze at night -- blanket used to freeze at night because her

house was so cold. she never got to play, she never got to go to the movie, never went out to eat to a restaurant or had toys. she lived a life that was harold and she started -- she was treated like an adult from the time she was a child. and more than anything, even though she hadn't had the opportunity ton get an education and she didn't really have the ability to understand what getting an education meant, she wanted her children to be able to dost better than she did, had done andan to go further than se had been able to go. and so she had seven children, theo sixth of which was my mom. andhe she push my mom from the time my mom was born to graduate high school, go get an education. and because of that, and because of my mom's sister ruth who also encouraged her to get a degree, my mom became the first in her family to graduate high school and went on to graduate college. she went to -- [inaudible] college, i see a lot of heads nodding which was a wonderful place that allowed her to get a free education which was something, you know, her family

didn't have the money for her to be able to go to school, to pay tuition and, quite frankly, if she'd had to go into debt, that just wasn't something people did, so she won't have had the chance to get her degree. and my mom, coming from that background, saw the way that education changed her life, the way it opened doors for her. and for her, she felt like she had come so far from that holler in ausley county, kentucky, that nobody left to being able to bro to brie ya -- to governor to barria college and just have her horizons broadened that she raised me to believe that there was nothing that i wasn't capable of doing. because she had come so far that she believed i had the ability to do anything in the world that i wanted to. and so because my mom instilled inte me from a very early age hw important it was to go and get an education, experience the world, take chances -- because. >> she had taken chances -- i was able to go on and earn a

scholarship to yale college and graduate from harvard law school. and then the book talks about how, you know, i believe that when you're the person that three generations have worked to give opportunities to, all of this effort and care has gone into making you who you are, you are under an obligation to pay it forward. and so i returned to kentucky, and i came back and i tried -- and i worked with low income women in domestic violence situations trying to provide other families and other women with the same opportunities i had been provided by my family. and so i have another excerpt that i want to read from the book that sort of plays on that theme. it is about my mother going to college. when i was five my mother graduated from college perk i remember getting for

vacation the first i had owned. lace trim and a delicate flower print. my mother bought me a cap and gown let me walk with her in the processional. we are graduating i told my family as we walked down the aisle. i didn't know then how true that would be how graduated with her degree my mother change both of our lives how the value she had come to place an education would be into my car - - into my core far beyond appalachia her ability to better understand herself and her family would set me up for success. the day after the graduation ceremony the newspaper ran a picture of the two of us my mother and me standing side-by-side. eyes focused forward graduating to the next phase of our lives.

so the last thing i want to talk about and then i would hear your thoughts and questions and have a conversation of the depictions of appellation and ways to move forward to think of rural poverty how is different from urban poverty and education the last thing you want to talk about is paying it forward because i believe when the community gives you opportunities you are incumbent to pay those forward so during my career working with women in a state of crisis those trying to keep them in their children safe and to protect them and their families i work in roll county i call myself one woman traveling law firm i meet

clients at subways and gas stations in public libraries i got very good figuring out when they didn't have access to technology or not even having an e-mail address and i have fond memories from life on the road. but in this work one of the things that was important to me was to find tangible ways to make the system better because my experience in rural kentucky and eastern kentucky showed me there are a lot of barriers in places we don't necessarily see them. working with the criminal justice system i saw ways there were financial barriers that stopped women to fully access a support system to keep them safe. we talk about this in the criminal law context you have in a right to an attorney and people don't have that same

right in civil law. when i was working with these women to get custody orders or protective orders they did not necessarily have the right to get an attorney for guy was representing them for free and that was helpful but not always enough because a lot of times there are fees like having an attorney appointed for your children or pay hourly fees to have your case heard on the docket. they add up. one of the things that i noticed is there was a law on the books that required women , or anyone to divorce and abusive partner that was in jail the law requires they be appointed an attorney which isn't a bad thing they should have a lawyer to make sure their interests are represented but the problem is who has to pay for the attorney cranks it in these

situations is the person seeking the divorce normally the one that was a victim of abuse or the person was in jail for abusing them it was that person that victim or survivor that was stuck with a legal bill. i saw time and again how it made women feel the court system was working for their abuser made them hesitant to go to the legal system to get the help that they needed for a place that did not protect their interest so i decided to work with one of my clients, a woman named jeanette to address this problem i believe in partnering with people to experience the problems the and so i want to read an excerpt from the latter part of the book. where i'm talking about ye --

jeanette and our work together. so what jeanette and i did together is started off with me saying, jeanette, can i tell your story, can i use your story as a way to try to make the better. and and jeanette had a pretty, you know, a pretty dramatic story. she had experienced violence and abuse for a number of years at the hands of her then-husband. one night he came home, he was intoxicated, he assaulted her. he fired a pistol at her, and the bullet ripped through her clothing, and her clothes to this day are still in police custody. so her husband ended up going to jail and jeanette filed for divorce, and i was her attorney charged with helping her navigate through that divorce process. and at first it was just me asking jeanette if i could use her story, the fact that then whenever she tried to get this divorce, she got stuck with a

legal bill so that membered have a lawyer, even though i was representing her for free because sheev couldn't afford an attorney. and every tame that i have asked -- time that i have asked a survivor can i tell your story to try to make things better for other people, the person has is said, yes, absolutely, if it can help someone, use it. is so the fact that jeanette had to payod for her incarcerated husband to have an attorneyal show though she couldn't afford one, that was something she use as a way to make a change. so i wrote an op-ed, and the story startedl to get attentio, and lawmakers filed a bill. at that point jeanette said, you know what? i'm okay telling my story myself. i want to use my face, my name, i want to carry this torch because i'm not ashamed anymore, i'm not embarrassed, i want to make the system better myself. so jeanette and i had some conversations about how she could get involved and how she could do that, and one of the most powerful things i've ever seen is jeanette deciding to testify in front of the kentucky

general assembly and go on the news media and just tell anyone and everyone that would listen about her story and about her experience and why it mattered and why things needed to change. and so as a result of that, a bill passed through the kentucky general assembly and was signed into law by the governor, and it was called jeanette's law, and it was named after her. and to this day,. >>ed she will tell you it is the thing she is most proud of in the world, and i am so proud to have been able to watch her transform the system that has taken advantage of her. i just want to read you an excerpt about jeanette and jeanette's law. my experience with jeanette was a powerful reminder about the importance of telling women's stories. her voice led to tangible changes in the state law. because of her bravery, other women's lives will be better. and each small win is just that, a win. and each win is a reminder that things can change. these wins are also a reminder

that people who have been victimized be it be a spouse or an unjust system nonetheless powerful. some people portray survivors of domestic violence as weak. some people portray the women in appalachia as the same way. i think jeanette's story i'll straits the opposite. the right tools, support and environment, these women are capable of changing the world. and so with that, i will conclude my reading part of the night, and i really look forward to hearing all of your all's questions. again, i want to thank car mic's for hosting this event and, please, please buy books and support your local bookstores. they do amazing work. and with that, i will go ahead and open it up to questions. there's a microphone at the aisle here, and i know that, to make sure that we're capturing the audio, they can that you speak into the microphone if you have a question.

[applause] any questions? okay. >> one of the books you are talking about i would like to hear your thoughts because i also had a similar negative reaction so one of the things i want to ask you how you pronounce the word vienna

sausages. >> [laughter] that's a new pronunciation for me that is good to know. one of the books i gained a lot of attention one of the things about appellation was hillbilly all the g and why we always think it's good for people to tell their personal story i do think that book talks about appellation in a way that's not helpful it focuses on the problems of people and doesn't acknowledge the way the system marginalizes people and of communities and how much honor there is in that that the community has been marginalized over time so that was part of the driving force to put something out there in the world that shows the

positive side of appellation because my experience women in these communities take on leadership roles and in the larger world i think this is a book i hope to elevate women's voices to tell the their stories. thank you for the question. >> any other >> any other questions? i see someone in the back. oh, yeah. let me take hers, and then i'll get you, sharon. >> hi, cast i. i was wondering if you could tell us about what it was like to write about your family and the know that they were going to read it and people who knew or didn't know your family were going to read it and if you -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> thank you for the question. so for those of you who might not be able to hear, the

question was about the process of writing a memoir and what it's like to write about your family e and write about people that are going to read the book. so to write a memoir, i think, it's a really interesting process. there's a lot to be said, i think you have to work with an editor that really understands you and how your brain works, and i'm lucky that my editor is here tonight. and i hope that you all will stick around and meet her, because she's an incredible woman, andre i'm really glad tht she came down. but one of the things that she did a lot of was asking questions, you know? why did you make this decision, why do you think this, why did so and so make that decision, what's underneath the surface of the way you understand the world and understand your story. and it's, i think that kind of digging is what's really important to get at the deeper level and the sort of systemic issues andel the real value in y story. and so i was lucky that i worked

with an amazing editor who really helped me dig into that. i will say about writing a memoir it did not occur to me until i got close to publication that the people i was writing about would actually read the book -- [laughter] and then i was faced with the prospect of driving down with finishedro copies and saying, here's a book, i hope you like the way you're portrayed. [laughter] which is quite an experience. i think it's different than the way we would think about or talkingn about ourselves -- tak about ourselves. i got some advice at the outset, they saidm you'll never regret being overly generous in your portrayals of people. and at the time, that didn't necessarily make sense. yes, yes, that's good advice, but what else can you tell me x now in hindsight, that's what i would absolutely tell other people writing a memoir is, you know, be overly 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. so to you'll never regret being

a little bit kinder than perhaps your initial inclination was to be. and iwa think we had a question over here -- >> [inaudible] same question. >> okay. yeah, just to talk a little bit more about the process of actually writing the book, i was lucky that this book didn't actually take all that long the write in part because when you're writing about your story, you already know it, you know? you've heard the family tales. sitting down, i did a lot of interviews with family members, and i said, you know, i've always heard you tell that story about granny getting married about at 15, but what else can you tell me about that what do you remember? that's one of the things, too, about writing a memoir, this is not a research book. these are stories, and i acknowledge that, you know, everyone's memory is different, and the accounts, you know, sometimes you'll be like granny mad a brown -- had a brown wedding dress, no, it was blue. at the end of the day i think i said granny had had a blue

wedding dress, and i'm not sure, it may have been brown. [laughter] it was really fun 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 memories and sharing her life story. and i think in a lot of ways i was very lucky to have that opportunity and that time to have those conversations. because a lot of us don't have the chance to sit down with our relatives is and t tell them how much we admire them and and how much we've taken away from their life story, so i feel very grateful to haved had that opportunity. any other -- i see someone coming. yeah. [inaudible conversations] [laughter] >> well, congratulations on your book. >> thank you. >> andul i wondered, you know, u grew up in ausley county, went off to yale and harvard, etc., and then you came back and landed in louisville, which many people in eastern kentucky

barely even consider to be kentucky. [laughter] finish right? so so how did that wind up being, you know, your decision? the you could have gone to pike or someplace out there. tell us about that process. >> yeah. i fell in love with louisville when i was a law student and had the opportunity to come and spend some summers here. and i always tell folks about louisville that what i love is it's big enough to have everything you need and small enough to actually use it. [laughter] and so it's true. you can actually get a seat at a coffee shop or at a nice restaurant, you can actually go in. and is so for me, i had gone and i had lived in cities, and i think that there's so much value in cities. and one of the things i'm really interested in is this whole idea of the rural/urban divide because i actually think people are people, and we all have more in common than we have that divides us. but i love living in cities because, you know, i love the unique and interesting things that happen.

and kentucky was always hope, it always felt like home. i fell in love with louisville, and i thought this was a place that i could land and make a difference. and so i moved here and started doing the work that i was doing and meant my husband -- met my husband. and his first question was when he proposed was will you mar me, and his second was can we always live in the highlands? [laughter] at the end of the day, i really enjoy having the opportunity to talk about how we can bring rural and urban areas together because i think that's a perspective that i'vean seen boh sides. and, again, i believe that more unites us than divides us, and i enjoy with having the opportunity to sort of talk to folks in rural areas about louisville if talk the folks in louisville about rural areas. thank you for the question.

>> a along the lines of rural and urban having so much in common, what is the common thread between rural and urban poverty? >> ooh, that's a really interestingqu question, and the truth is i think that rural and urban poverty actually do look quite different. i think that they are both significant problems, and we need to have resources available to address both. but there are unique challenges around rural poverty. one of the things i noticed in particular is, you know, cities and, for example, in louisville, there are a lot of organizations that provide social services, and they're supposed to provide social services for an entire multi-county area. and yet for my very low income clients, they might not have reliable transportation to drive the hour and a half the louisville to access those social services, or they might not be able to afford the gas,

or if car broke down, they might not be able to make it. so transportation and infrastructure and access really matters in rural areas, and the way that the poverty is more diffuse makes it harder to bring people together to access services. because you might have a couple people in a holler over here and a couple people until a holler three miles away, and it's just more diffuse. but that's not to say i think the takeaway from that is you have to have different strategies when targeting both. it's not to say that either is --- they're not competing wih within one another or to say that either is a more pressing concern than the other. yes. >> that brings up another question. when i worked in the court system -- [inaudible] as well. and in, i guess it was about 2010, we went from paper protective orders to electronic protective orders. and at the time i remember a conversation that took place

about, well, what's going to happen in rural areas. because we don't have wi-fi like you have in urban areas or even in areas contiguous to urban areas. rural kentucky -- [inaudible] state legislature and the governor's office about us, you know, expanding wi-fi accessibility. in your -- i know in the rural counties that you've worked in -- [inaudible] because i worked in those rural counties too. they have -- [inaudible] but what happens in eastern kentucky when you don't have that and it takes 8, 10, 12, 15 hours to get to a judge to sign an order, a protective order? >> yeah.h. >> what happens there? >> yeah. so the question, for those of you who couldn't hear, was about in rural counties that don't have wi-fi access, they might still have paper protect f orders as opposed to electronic protective orders, and there's this live time, you know, what happens. i will say that, you know, i have had clients call me, and

i'veed had to call the police on behalf of clients because there's been a safety threat, and someone has shown up, and they haven't been able to get the police to respond quickly enough. so i, you know, i think the answer is when there's a delay in providing safety, bad things happen, and they shouldn't happen x we should do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn't happen. i think s the point about wi-fi access more generally is just a really good point. we live in a world where we talk about access to the internet and access to wi-fi as, you know, a fundamental right. it's something that connects us all, and it's something that we all need to participate in our society today. and i have relatives who, to this day, have never used a computer, they don't own a cell phone. they have never h seen a facebok page. and these are relatives that whenever i said, you know, would you like to come to my wedding in louisville, i would love to have you there, they didn't know how to get to louisville. they don't have any gps, some of them haven't used parking garagings.

and so, you know, that was just not an option for them. i was telling people, you know, when my husband was like why isn't some of your eastern kentucky family coming to your wedding, i said it might as well, you know, be in taiwan. they don't know, they don't have the ability, they don't have the phones and the gps to be able to navigate here. and i think that's something that a lot of people still find shock anything this day and age. the sort of disparity that exists in access to technology and access to information about how to use that technology. and i think it's really important when we're talking about these high poverty areas to talk about how we teach young people to be able to use the technology of the future, because i think that is what helps them connect to larger world and also to job opportunities and economic opportunities that come from being able to connect to that world. yes. >> talk about the women -- [inaudible] point to any policy decisions or

things that were in place that you think helped your trajectory -- [inaudible] >>on yeah. so the question was about, you know, i talk about how my family and my community shaped me, what specifically were the policies that i think played a role in that. and in the bookha i talk about w my family are, we received food stamps, we got assistance with medical expenses. you know, i went to a public school, i played in public parks, i went to public libraries because, you know, at the beginning i was talking about being born to two young parents who couldn't run their air-conditioning. you know where it's air-conditioned every day is a public library. [laughter] and so it served this dual purpose of being a place that was open to the public that i could go and i could learn, and also i could escape the summer heat. and so i am such a big believer in having the policies that provide every family with those opportunities in part because my family took advantage of those. had any onene of those been missing, i wouldn't be here

today. i certainly got sick as a child, our lives would have looked very different, and had i not had the opportunity to go to a public school and get a good education, my life would have looked very different. and so i believe that, you know, we have to make sure that we have policies in place that are making sure that every child has the same opportunities i had to grow and thrive. yes. >> hi. i work in the education including dropout prevention, and so sometimes we hear that particularly in ruralal parts of the state that there may be a fear of families of their children getting advanced education because it means that they may leave the community, particularly if they're going to go on to higher ed, and they won't come back and there's a loss. and so i'm curious about your perspective on whether that is true in some cases from your experience, and if so, then what is the best way to try to

address those complicated dynamic this is. >> so that was, that's something i talk about in the book, actually, my mom experienced that. whenever she, you know, more than anything granny wanted my mom to be able to go to college and get an education. but a papaw, januaryny's husband -- granny's husband, dud not want my mom to leave for that exact reason. children stay close to their families, why would you go away, why would you leave, do you think i can't provide a good life for you here. and, you know, his family was the most important thing to him, and it broke his heart to think about one of his children going -- in his mind, it might have been to the other side of the world. it was ant 50 miles, but he never had a driver's license, he county, might as well have been a completely different country as far as he was concerned. and i think, you know, i think to some extent that is getting lessened as people see the ways that education changes their

communities, and a lot of people i think there's a focus now on doing sort of what i did, getting an education and then returning and making a difference in the community that you come from. and i know that there are programs to help bring people back to the communities that in some ways inspired them to want to leave in the first place. they proceeded them with that bedrock, that foundation, those values is and that drive to get an education x. sometimes that drive is seeing problems in their on communities they want to come back and solve. and so i think there's certainly still work to be done there, and i do still hear stories ab people saying my entire world is ausley county. i have heard young people say college not for me, i'm going to grow up and work at the jail here or do this or do that. and sometimes it make me sad that people feel like their world is limited. i certainly understand the value of home and the value of family, and i think people can make good, legitimate choices to stay

near home and near family. i just hope for a world where every child feels like they have the choice to choose something else if that's what they want. all right. is so i am hearing that our time has lapsed, and we're out of time. thank you all again for coming tonight. it is so great to have you all here. thank you to my agent jamie who came in from new york and my editor emily for making the trip down. i was very lucky to have a team of amazing women supporting me in this project. thank you again to carmichael's for hosting. i will be over signing books so, please, please, please, support carmichael's, buy a book. thank you all for being here. [applause] [inaudible conversations] ♪

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