experience. wrapping up our look at some of the best-selling nonfiction books according to new york city's strand bookstore is the autobiography of black panther member a shada shakora. most of these authors have appeared on booktv and you can watch them online at booktv.org. [applause] >> thanks molly, good evening everyone. welcome to this evenings ã [laughter] welcome to this evenings screen join. tisch college distinguished speaker series featuring a conversation with cyntoia brown-long, an author and activist for criminal justice reform. i want to thank molly goal, we just heard from. it was her suggestion that we bring some toyota campus. she was also instrumental in developing the program for said toy isc-span2 11's instrumental

the program for cyntoia's visit. i would like to acknowledge ndmore than a dozen cosponsors tonight's event. there are really too many to name individually but i hope you saw them recognized on the screen before we started. it's gratifying that so many organizations from across the university joined us to support this event. it demonstrates the concern and commitment of so many students, faculty, and staff on the issues we will discuss with tonight's guest. we understand these are challenging topics that touch on difficult personal experiences and want to encourage you to support each other and to seek support from offices like care and others perhaps you are well prepared and committed to dealing with these issues. as you saw in the introductory

ãbtisch was founded in 2000 with the purpose of advancing tops university commitment to civic life. our mission then and now is to ensure that all talk students across all schools and academic disciplines acquire the knowledge, skills, and values to become leaders and problem solvers in their communities near and far. tisch college began with a single student program now known as the tisch scholar, other tisch scholars here tonight?he let's give them a shout out. today we offer in support dozens of initiatives for students in and out of the classroom on campus and around the world. we also are home to a nationally recognized research center that studies youth voting, civic education, and other aspects of civic and democratic life. our community otpartnerships always a central element of our

work have evolved and expanded to encompass more communities and broader impacts. the distinguished speaker series began seven years ago with a visit by senator elizabeth warren. a bit of irony today. today other tisch college events have grown to match ãb i did it mean that in any way, we it was a treat to have senator warren, we were honored to host her here. today other tisch college events have grown to match the breadth and scope of her work. we are excited about this line up of visitors and guest speakers, yesterday we host a lunch about the black power movement with professor rhonda williams and later this year we host congressman joe kennedy, congressman eric swallow we talk about impeachment and veteran journalist chris wallace political strategist scott jennings and many other scholars and leaders whose work

will inform our views, challenge some of our beliefs, and encourage participation in civic life. with this diversity of thspeake we want to highlight different ways people can impact the issues they care about and help build a more just and equitable world. tonight's guest personifies that idea and reminds us that from humble embeginnings far outside the halls of power all of us can learn from our lived experiences and use them to become a force for change. cyntoia brown-long is an nt author, activist, and advocate for criminal justice reform and for victims of human trafficking. she was born to a young mother who struggled with alcohol abuse and who is a victim of sex trafficking. as a teenager said toya became a victim of trafficking herself and at 16 she was arrested for killing a man who solicited her

for sex. cyntoia was tried as an adult and sentenced to life in prison without parole. her trafficker was never arrested. in prison some toyota found a profound personal and spiritual transformation. a document called me facing life's and toya story chronicled her expenses and as a result many celebrities clergy and people began advocating on her behalf. the hashtag " "free cyntoia" became viral. her sentence was commuted by governor bill has some of tennessee on august of last year after 15 years behind bars cyntoia was released from prison. since then cyntoia has become a powerful advocate for criminal justice reform, especially for women and children in american prisons. she published a memoir "free cyntoia" my search for

redemption in the american prison system " which she wrote when she was incarcerated. she had her husband jamie founded the foundation for justice freedom and mercy and in january of this year the vera institute of justice recognized cyntoia as one of the best of justice reform arteries. she was also in 2020 nominee for the naacp literary image award. joining our guests on stage tonight is professor hilary bender, a tisch college senior fellow in the founding director of the tufts university prison initiative at tisch college. i mentioned earlier that tisch college has expanded the scope of its educational programs and top it is one of our newer initiatives someone ãba partnership between tax university and bunker hill community college to award an

associate degree to a group of incarcerated men in the program. as part of the persian initiative hilary also runs an insight outside course at the maximum-security prison in shirley massachusetts through which tufts students and incarcerated individuals take a course together. hillary's current research is in the field of higher education and incarceration. she's a senior lecturer at tufts with a phd in english and also directs the program in women's, gender, sexuality studies. hillary is a strong advocate for the importance of bringing higher education into prison and we are grateful she joins us tonight in conversation with our guests. please join me in welcoming professor hilary bender and are distinguished speaker cyntoia brown-long. [applause]

[applause] >> cyntoia, i want to start by thanking you at such an honor to be here at such an honor to have you at tufts and the first visit i hope it's the first of many. i also want to thank you for your beautiful book for sharing your journey with us and educating us on issues of criminal justice system. your particular journey on your faith and on faith. for people who have it may be yet read cyntoia's book i want to start by acknowledging how recently you are free. august 3:18 am.

i'm wondering if you want to share with us a kind of first all of the first that you get to experience like the first neil or something everything is pretty much a first. meal actually talk about in the book a can of ravioli. >> was that? >> at 3:18 am it was great. >> before we start talking about your story i wanted to ask if he could reflect a what it's been like telling your story i can only imagine that going over some of the really difficult details can be hard or maybe also very helpful in ways. >> it's definitely been a blessing to be able to sit and atalk about my story and what went through. coming from my background i

find that a lot of us don't have a voice. our voices are stripped away. our experiences, they don't count. to have the opportunity to sit and talk about that is incredible. to tell everyone my testimony of what god did for me each and every time is a blessing. >> you talk at one point in the book about your various trials and being in a battle of narratives not really about who's telling the truth but whose telling the better story and i wonder if there's a way that you are getting the final word here and shaping your story. >> god definitely always has the e last ãbi found that out. a lot of times when you're in the courts system you think, if i just explain this and let them know what happens, this is what's gonna take place if i just present this case law to

this court there to rule in my favor, but that's not what happens to stop what happens is whoever can spin the best narrative, whoever can put on the best performance of the courtroom, that's who wins, who ends up winning. nine times out of the tendency to be the prosecution. that was a very very hard hurdle to overcome. like i said, i think god i serve a god who always has the last say. >> one of the things you do so powerfully in the book is convey the sense of yourself as a child, particularly in the early part of the book. as a teenager. as someone who was loved and loving and searching for love and independence just like all teenagers do, that's their job. you talk about ways that he repeatedly ouvictimized.

how long it took you i until 2017 10 years into your sentence. being a victim of trafficking rather than team prostitutes. for you for so many women i imagine who experienced that horrible reality. >> you always hear the saying about people who have their childhood taken away from them. i don't think we really understand what that means. for me my experience is that there were several adults i was around who were putting me in the position of being an adult, and i was a child. i had grown woman who were teaching me my body was a commodity. it was a means to get things from men and completely

acceptable to expect things in return for my companionship for sex and things of that nature. i was told that my entire existence was involved around pleasing a man in some form. i was 13 when they started teaching me these things. that is really what started me on the trajectory to being more vulnerable to being exploited. i was told these things were normal. my worldview had been reshaped to think that this is how relationships work.this is how relationships between men and girls, i was still a girl, i wasn't a woman, that's how this goes. the time i met a man who mconvinced me that we were in relationship and part of this relationship meant i would go out and have sex with men for money and bring them back to him i thought that was completely normal. the society i was in at that point is made to believe these

are my choices they were made of my own volition and there was never any conversation about the adults that had taught me these things not from the people i was around that from the court system. it took a long time for that understanding to really shape. we have a lot of work now. i can't tell you how many times i was told i was fast and just hot instead of the fact that i was a child who is being misled. >> and then sometimes having a gun held to your head. the media portrayal of you through those early years and well into your incarceration was pretty horrific. do you have a sense of how the media might handle the situation better? it sounds like you do.

have things gotten better since then in the last 16 years or so. when i was first arrested i was painted as this horrible monster. the media refer to me as a team prostitutes. i was painted at this filthy dangerous individual. i still see media referring to certain otcases of child prostitution there's no such thing as child prostitution and sexual exploitation. it's changing but there's still work that needs to be done.

pictures are posted up on the news and painted as this horrible individual not talked about the kids they are. some of the circumstances they might have been involved in at the time. there's always a rush to judgment. the rush to try people by the media. i think that's unfortunate especially since we live in a country where you are so supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. >> one of the things we expect is that i'm not sure any of us in the room expected at this theory one is incarcerated or enters into the system and the rehabilitation begins. >> sounds good. [laughter] >> and what if you could talk about the reality and the re-traumatizing effect of getting caught in the web of the system and whether there are specific ways that that impacted your sense of yourself. >> the reality is, what i and

many of the woman i was incarcerated with experienced is that from the time we stepped foot at the facility we were treated as they were there edto be warehoused, put under some kind of strict control, rules changed every single day, the only time our rehabilitation was an issue was when there was a federal grant that state. when there was some kind of funding that was going to come in but part of receiving the funding they had to be certain funding g ãbprograms in place. even then, however much was necessary to get by to comply with whatever standards they had set for that grant. we definitely need to work more on treating people from the time they walk into that door as we need to be focused on how to be get them to the other side of this?how do we help them accompany their best self. what can we do to make sure this person has a successful reentry into society.

>> as you talked about the processes going through multiple trials and preparations for various trials, you also described lawyers you're working with like rich who is really on your side even in that case one of you didn't want to tell the story but was essentially silencing you. that really struck me that it's really not personal, there is something systemic about entering the system and being kind of obliterated. >> the entire nature of the court proceedings, the trial proceedings, they are so adversarial and it's all about strategy and all about taking, this is what they have and this is how we are going to spin it. yes i understand this is what your truth is, this is what happened with you but it doesn't sound good. we are going to go with this.

doesn't only happen with the defendants, it happens a lot with the victims. you have victims who go through this process and at the end they think they're gonna get some sort of closure or some source of justice there is no real restoration no real rebuilding of what's been broken. >> yours is so much a story of incredible survival ãband wondering if we can turn to some of the more positive things that happened once you are in the system. many of us involved in network to hear you talk about what the role of the lipscomb university program was.

there was an inside-out class program generally. >> they call it part of the salts curriculum commence earning and learning together. it's the life program the lipscomb ãbi was four years into serving my sentence when the opportunity became part of the program. at a jump a lot of hurdles.. by the grace of god i got in it. i was expecting, i'm going to further my education, i'm going to get something that's going to look good when i go before the court and go before the governor and discover look really good on paper but once i got into the class what i realized is i had been welcomed into a community. i was in a place where all throughout my early life and public school come in my own community i had always been made to feel like i was an outcast. i had always been made to feel like because of things that i

had gone through or things that i had done i was just written off, i was no good. the court process that just amplifies that. for me to djust be welcomed int this community of people who they didn't see any of that. they just saw me. they loved me. that was redeeming beyond anything i have ever experienced. i saw something in me that was worth salvaging. they saw something in me that was worth investing in. it help me to believe in myself. i started excelling in everything that i put my mind to. i ended up getting a 4.0 in class.single [applause] prior to being in that program the highest level of education was seventh grade.

what were the interactions like? under oath there's a specific example of a moment to treat you a certain way. >> the university itself is a university where there is a lot of affluent people who send their children there. [laughter] although they were the same age as me in early stages completely different from my own. it was cool to be able to sit and have these conversations and see that they were interested in learning about what life was from my

perspective. how can they be more helpful in changing the prison system. >> there is that much more invested to actually try to change hthings. >> do you see as a result of that experience? or a role. >> i thought about law school. setting aside time to do that it's very rewarding. we will talk in a few minutes.

>> i wanted to ask you about erthe really powerful role as y created in the book that your adoptive mom played in your life and in your journey and wonder if we could talk about that. how was she part of it? >> my mother adopted me when i was eight months old. the only mother i had ever known and always fought to really just give me the lives that any moment want to give her child. even when i struggled she was always there trying to figure out how can i trhelp. the school would call her up she would be like what can i do?obviously they gave her no answers that were helpful. but she tried. she tried very hard and she was

there the only person left standing there was my mother. she had been my best friend from that moment. she came to visit me every other week in prison. we are still close. her and my husband, the closest things to me. >> she got to know your husband before you were out. >> they yes.me best friends. [laughter] >> i was very struck by how you never, it's just a teenager's job to blame their mother ãb for everything that goes wrong in their life that the mother may not even know about. you just, at least at this point and as you wrote the book, just had have such a loving relationship with your mom. there was very powerful moment you talk about the plexiglas when you got sent to the visits were behind plexiglas. he felt not angry but guilty.

you were an incredible child and you're an incredible person. >> i wasn't always a good child. i went through a lot of the n same feelings. i think everybody in their a teenager you feel like your parents, they don't understand what life is like. i thought my mom was ancient. she couldn't understand what life in school was like for me when i told her things i was going to i felt like she really wasn't listening to what i was saying so i stopped telling her things i started keeping things from her. so she really couldn't be there for me in the ways she needed to be as my parent. as that positive role model in my life. i deftly spent some time in my life pushing her away but it was that time when i was there asitting in jail and had done

everything under the sun to try to push myself further from my mother but there she was still standing and she was the one that was there for me. that made me realize that, i got this wrong. >> is it fair to say that not all women serving time have a person like that in their life? >> that's very fair. a lot of people in prison they go and if they do have any family, they do o have children it's hard to maintain a relationship. it's very hard to parent or play a role in your family over at telephone. that's a lot of people's experience. it's very hard for a lot of families. if you don't get hassled and somehow get your visitations

plumage is restricted by the administration there's a lot of barriers that serve to pretty much break the families when it comes to the prison system. many women don't have their mother there, especially as long as she was there for me. >> in massachusetts they just decrease the number of visitors you could have. >> of course they did. >> i am wondering if you would share a little bit. i will say that just working in prison for the last seven years or so has brought me to questions of faith like nothing else in my life has up to this point. that's been an enormous part of our journey. i wonder if she can talk about the role of faith in your journey. >> i was speaking with a group of students earlier and asked

the same question. i will tell you guys just like you told them, faith is the only reason i'm sitting here with y'all today. i tried everything trying to get out of prison. i put my faith in case law and my journey i had seven of them and very experienced attorneys in each time that failed. i look back and i said, wow, every time i put my faith in man, get failed. i met my husband who told me, god said you getting out of prison. this is the time when all my appeals had been denied and he said, eager to trust what man says or trust what god says? and i said, you know what, i'm going to try trusting what god said. he introduced me to jesus and i say introduced me because although ed heard and been told about jesus i had been told about someone who died on the cross for my sins and if i

believed in him i would have eternal life, i never really knew him. i never really got to know him i never knew what having a relationship with him meant. never really understood his own journey as he went through his life here on this earth. i really got to know him through a whole different perspective and it changed everything ...... different about anything else even growing up in a baptist church about faith. as i said that is been my faith was truly born was then. hilary: and as a christian, christian as a christian university. >> although it's a christian university is completely resistant to any talk about being so angry at that point i thought that are specific either i was afraid i would

not be given a life in prison would not be tried as an adult i've tried as an adult, this is not real no one isne listening to me. i went around and until that's anyone who would listen that god wasn't real. but i was proven wrong. i saw that just because we think things are supposed to go on a certain way. just because the things we see don't line up, that doesn't mean he doesn't have a plan. he has a plan for each and every one of our lives. we can't see where he's leading us but i promise you, he planned for our good. we will fall out of his good. he made a believer out of me. >> host: you talk at one point about seeing god as

community. is that something you talk about a little do still feel that way? >> this is a journey so when i talk about my faith and now, it is not always been that way. i went to this long searching process i'm thinking this must be what this is this must explain this. when i really got into the community and it's a community of believers is the first time i've really had interaction with people who profess to believe in jesus in my experience was completely different. they looked at me how jesus walked around and looked at people jesus would look at people who were the lowest of the low that's what he came in not too he wanted to talk with and have dinner with, he said you are no different from this guy over here. like i love you just the same and they treated me that way.

as a completely different experience to say wow i do blowing to a community i'm not an outcast. i'm not something to be thrown away. that was powerful. >> you kind of alluded to this earlier. seems like your personal growth, your relationship to love particularly romantic love and your relationship to your faithth in god were all kind of intertwined. there is a moment in the book where you describe something that your husband, jamie said and you describe it as the sexiest thing he ever said don't revere me, don't put me on a pedestal is not me who should be on a pedestal. that's a very different version of love and what you had experience as a child.

can you talk about that? that sort of intertwining of loving god? >> i was speaking earlier how i was told everything about my existence should involve around pleasing men. the men i was introduced to i was supposed to put them their needs on this pedestal. zoe's top that's what i'm supposed to do as a woman. and then i meet jamie and he's like whoa, wait a minute that's not what this is. you don't live for meat you don't live your life for me live your life for christ. i was like wow. that's completely different. and he showed me the difference of being with someone who's led by their own ambition, who lived by how they should treat other people and see someone who's led by their love for christ it'sel completely different. that's it really showed me that god put this man in my

life. all this time i was looking for a man i was looking for my own ideas about what relationship was he's the one that sent me the person he created for me was completely different from anything i ever encountered. now i get to spend my days of my best friend, with my partner. i'm he's my husband he's everything. you know? he's awesome.. >> so i wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you are doing now? you did a lot of work as an some instances you found your freedom before you were released or even knew you were going to be freed. he started working on juvenile sentencing laws, i think you work on a reform bill in tennessee that hadn't passed

the first time maybe continue working on that, redesigning juvenile facilities, thinking about different protocols to work with juvenile who get caught in the system. you also talked about your capstone project for your experience as developing glitte glitter, gosh i'm suddenly forgetting the first word. >> did hear that? okay. .es i'm wondering if you could talk about, and you've talked about the importance of speaking and how you see her role as an activist in the world going forward grants this is been a few months and i'm sure things will continue to shift you are already so involved. >> like you said that began was still in prison so inside join the college program with

the initiative for education, they helped me to it understand just because i was told i would spend my life in prison that did not mean my life is going to be over. i can still r choose how to spend my life and i wanted my life to have meaning. so when i saw there were things that needed to be changed i went to sit in the classroom and be talking i don't want to say this isn't right with the system and this should be this way i wanted to see what i could do about it. so start having conversations with people and next thing you know i'm sitting in the prison visitation area with the state representative talking about a bill that he's going to present on my behalf to changes sentencing laws for juveniles. i was in tennessee, where he conservative so it has yet to pass i just testified in the senate about the bill spent

five years in the making but so many opportunities like that to design, redesign the juvenile facility for davidson county has yet to be built. it will be built soon. really putting myself out there feeling empowered that i have a voice in my experience of matters. what i have to say it matters i can have a seat at the table two. it is made all the difference. >> thank you for that. >> host: have many more questions i was just signaled that was our last. sowa i'm going to open it up now to the audience. i'm going to ask people to be sure you are asking a question, not repeat questions, be concis concise. we have a mic so if you would raise your hand will have one brought to you.

>> first, thank you for coming here it's wonderful all you have done. i would like to ask, you have gone through quite a transformation was there help along the way to address what that would look like? did you have spiritual advice. >> guest: what now? >> was an understanding of god for you? that is a good question. i had my own my own i start having these prophetic dreams

is my usual explanations this wasn't real this doesn't exist or something going on d here. maybe it planted a lot of seeds god headed to get there a lot of different processes for those seeds to bloom. he sent my husband along to water it. that really helped my faith. it is definitely a long drawn out process. we all have our own journeys. we all go through phases. who is god is god real. some of us struggle with being angry, i struggle with being angry. he definitely has a plan when i had that opportunity to sit and be still and really focus

and put my eyes on him, he spoke to me and he'll speak to you too. you will know his voice. >> hi, firstly, thank you for sharing your story for the transformational way you are shaping the community. i briefly introduce before the initiative on offering associate degree through bunker hill community college for covid of 21 men in that medium security prison. the persian initiative is not working to offer a bachelors degree with a major in m civic tudies, our students want to have a positive impact on their communities while they are still incarcerated this gives them the tools to do

that. mission statement said tough is dedicated to the knowledge of transformative experience for students and faculty in a cooperative environment. includes complex challenges to have students as having dunning education in prison and under saying the it can have on someone how to understand the mission statement or how do you have the role in upholding that mission statement in that context in their rolls in general? >> i think every university that seeks to try to better their community, that tries toe equip young people to be successful, you have to acknowledge the other population, right? oryou have to acknowledge the population of party your community as well they are

deserving of education to so what about them? i know my own experience, the small group of people who actually brought the program into the prison had to fight for. they currently do not receive any funding from the actual university. that would go a long way for university to stand up and say hey, we know there are conversations on about reform and reentry. we know equipping people and giving them the tools they need to succeed is good for all of society, and we want to be part of the solution. we are going to go into the prisons are going to go into the prisons and help and do our part. it goes a long way and absolutely keeping with the mission statement. the question is how committed are they to that statement? so hi i became completely engrossed in your story on

twitter about your story and is glad to seen you in person. i just wanted to know historically black and brown bodies have been policed in different ways and other bodies. there's a disproportionate amount of black men and women compared to white men and women in prison for it and wanted to know how you it mattered who knew where you came from, who had the money, there so many different factors to degrade people and put them in a lower class. so classes of individuals were

denied justice. i sawsa that a lot. i thought that a lot in the hispanic population. they did not get access they were not given any kind of resources, they were not given translators for medical service services, the list goes on and on. they are poor white women who came from situations you had abusive husbands who happen to be police officers. their stories were never told her they were given life sentences for defending themselves. i think whether you are a woman, whether your poor, there so many different factors to put people down and make them undeserving of justice, that iss unfortunate. because for everybody life matters. it is ridiculous, justice is for all not just for some.

>> hi thank you so much for coming tonight and sharing your story. in response to the earlier question about tufts with the mission statement and upholding that with a bachelors degree at the prison in massachusetts, when talking to students and faculty across the university to try to answer and try to figure out some the questions or worries they might have been doing this potential experience with the program. and although the topic of inequalities in achieving social chains are brought up extensively talk about formerly incarcerated people matching the academic rigor of the universit university? tufts is a teaching assistant at the program but the students i see first hand they often surpass what i am i not incarcerated classmates can do and they just with a greater appreciation and dedication to education than i see here.

so the experience of intersection of experience in incarceration heidi think the experienceie of our students at the campus and those who have similar stories and backgrounds would further their academic abilities and environment here? thank you. >> i see would you all are doing. [laughter] like you said, the professors will also pay so we were working harder than some of the outside students. they did just enough to get by a lot of them are like my moly doing it because my parents on me to it do it i don't really feel like school and rather party. but for those of us who had been denied it, we had no kind of simulation and they're looking to something better do something more. a lot of the women in the programs over the first one in

their family to go to college and take college classes they were always told it was not for them what they weren't good enough for it, they couldn't afford it, it was not an option. so we were that much more hungry for it. what i found was we can encourage the outside students told us i just kind of took this for granted. the learning experience having that real world experience, the same thing from beyond a textbookhe. from beyond the lectures for more rewarding for them. i love what you're doing, all of yould could go out and advocate for the program just how you doing, continue speaking that truth and continue calling it out. >> thank you so much for sharing your testimony what an

amazing story with breakthrough in the boldness and bravery you do have thank you for sharing that. i wanted to aski a question more what are the systems of trafficking? he said your trafficker was not arrested i like to hear a little bit about the supply and demand of trafficking given that it's a billion-dollar industry and there is a lot going on there and it operates like a business. so what are your suggestions? when you thinking about in terms of organizations or solutions to dismantle theic trafficker? what is that look like from the top down? what are some ways we can support and help in a way that we can decrease the demand. works of the sexually broken world and see it restored. >> you said the word when he said supply and demand.

there is a lot of talk about decriminalizing the buying of. when ever it's open season like that you will see even more people being motivated to exploit p young girls, and vulnerable populations. definitely not supporting that. it's definitely not saying were going to punish the people for purchasing, no they're part of the problem. like he said supply and demand. what a lot of people don't know under federal statutes not only are people encouraged young girls to go out and sell their bodies, but the people who purchase young girls for are legally traffickers as well. so john there traffickers. continue to talk about that, educating people on that that's something i am personally committed to.o. the glitter project is on teen trafficking, exploitation and rape.

it's a dialogue that talks about that because i saw a correlation about a lot of things we understand is normalma and okay as a social norm that grew up with an icy now, that contributed to my understanding of what was alright for me as a young girl to do with t men. that is a conversation we need to bee having. we have movies that glorify women's bodies and that's a conversation we need to have. so is glitter base at this point we talk about your expanding it in some way? >> it definitely will be expanded. were actually working onnnd tha. the grassroots running initiative that means you can leave here tonight and you can talk to something you learn to someone you can read this book and talk about something you learned to someone else it's about educating one another

it's only weights of social norms of the only way to reprogram what's okay in our society. started the glitter project hewhen i came across a study that said 57% of mandated reporters that young women prostituted themselves for if these individuals who are on the front line of defending young girls are being exploited think tha that -- yeah, that's a problem that's an issue. so that is really what i would like to see change. and in order for that to change we have to start trying but with the truth is. so hi, thank you for coming tonight i appreciated hearing your story. in the intro that talks about social media major story go viral. i want to know how did it feel to get out and see your story being toldd through social media? what was ahe level of accuracy

your story was told and how can we social media in the future for advocacy work? >> this question, social medias not always accurate or think all know that. [laughter] but, for me what's important is there were people in the conversation. it was not, for me and about me personally i thought about all of the young girls who were currently going through or our currently going through it it went through. to think about the women who are still in prison, people forgetet about them and their experiences. the men who people write those expenses off so when i saw someone talk about my own situation m i said that shutting a light for them. that has the potential to create change. but like i said, you have to take a step step further than just having that conversation.

for me it was really promising is really hopeful. i really hope that a lot of things we see on social media with the system in individual cases, it translates to changes in the law, changes in the practices that benefit the people who don't messily see their nays. >> any more questions? >> i was going to follow up is there someone else i can't see up there? oh great. >> hello i've been following your story for years. i cannot even imagine of receiving a life sentence in prison i'm just wondering how did you not and should not fall into a cycle of bitterness how did you not give up and turn this horrible situation into advocacy for

yourself and other people? >> that's a great question. it was devastating. it was devastating to be told my life is going to be over before i had ever had a drivers licens license, i'd never been to a prom or homecoming it all the sudden they'rene telling me my life is done. completely devastating. but there's something in me that was defiant. that said i'm not about to alloww these people tell me my life is over i'm not done. l'm not done i'm going to continue fighting in them going to keep fighting definitely that resilience. that comes from the lord i didn't know it at the time, that was the lord pushing me on and keeping me going. he was definitely him because when i look back i can't tell you how i can sit here be of sound mind and be able to not have that bitterness. it is nothing but him, him and forgiveness.

>> those women in your acknowledgment, you and with god but before god you name some of the people who were your community inside and are still inside. i am wondering if you could say something about the complexity of freedom given that? >> so, for me a lot of people only talk about being free. when i was incarcerated the chocolate they were going to do the things they wanted toha do foror me. felt a sense ofe, responsibilit. this isha something god has allowed me to it do. he put me t in this position to help him and shed a light. a for like i am carrying this. when you t look at me on to think of the other people have been written off of people think they have done this and they need to be sent away for x amount of years. there is nothing that can be done for them. no, god can turn anyone around.

these are people some mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters they could be sitting here have the same conversation with you that i am. it's really just putting a face to them in a face to their experience because i think a lot of times they can demonize, they have been painted in the worst possible light. at the end of the day they are people just like me and you. if you ever get the opportunity to go into the prison program i highly advise that it will completely change your life i'm not saying it because i'm biased by been told time and time again pretty soon should come to the prison, the judges who sat on an up pellet court my only former district attorney, releasing the humanity in them. >> thank you so much for being here ensuring your your story with this for your beautiful book which, thank everyone here for coming out.

i hope you will read cyntonia book. so its world bookcase was a good day to doo it. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] [applause] >> you are watching book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here are some programs to watch out for this weekend. author and robin hood ceo wes moore talks about the 2015 baltimore uprising through the lens of several city residents who witnessed the unrest

following the death of freddie gray. former national security adviser, john bolton recurrent accounts his time in the trump administration. ralph reed weighs in on white evangelical christian should support president trump. former defense secretary robert gates takes a critical look at the u.s. power around the world since the end of world war ii. he joined in conversation by former defense secretary james mattis. : :

>> starting now it is our summer series that features programs from our archives with well-known authors. tonight it is jane goodall discussing her book "hope for animals and their world: how endangered species are being rescued from the brink" from 2009 at georgetown university.