and physical well-being of its residents. this is one hour. >> all right everyone good evening and welcome we are excited to host tonight's event with kerri arsensolt talking. before we start i just want to say a huge thanks for making this happen and all of you for showing up though we are not able to host events in the stores at the moment the community of authors and readers is still here and we are grateful for your support and the chance to make the conversation and connection. a couple of housekeeping things before we get started this

evening. you can see and hear the speakers though they cannot see or hear you. the information is at the bottom and you can see your fellow attendees at the bottom as well. you are welcome to post comments and's thoughts as a way to show your appreciation for the author and fellow attendees. if you have specific questions you would like answered in the q&a segment, please pose those in the module and you can find it at the bottom of the screen clicking on the icon. we will be giving questions only from the commander this evening so we ask that you posed them and again other comments are welcome in the chat. we are recording tonight's event so look for the video or the audio version on the social media channels later on and importantly tonight's book is available for sale and it's a great way to show your support for both independent bookstores like green light and for authors

like kerri arsensolt. or you can pick it up at the bookstore or free shipping anywhere in the u.s. we appreciate your support of bookstores and the author. the interviewer this evening is the author of the novel a short story collection on che guevara and the nonfiction work beautiful country burn again democracy, rebellion and revolution. it's received the national book critics circle award, the hemingway award, los angeles book prize for fiction and the novel lord and a finalist the national book award. speaking this evening with the future author kerri arsensolt a book critic, editor, contributing editor of the literary house and also a member, mentor for the prison

and justice writing program and has appeared on the green light stage in the past but this is the first time we had the chance to host her to present her own boobooks we are incredibly exci. please, take it away. >> thank you. i'm really excited to be doing this event. i read this book in bound manuscript around the beginning of the year. there cannot be a more relevant book right now for our time politically, environmentally, just in terms of class and economics and i just think it's one of the big books in the year and one of the big books of the decade so it is a pleasure and honor.

and it's a beautifully written book and we will get into that as well. it gets down into the stuff of life. she could have gone after one or two things in this book, but she went after everything and it's a complex book and all the right ways, so hats off to you. would you just tell us a little bit about this book and how you came to write it? ..

>> i have been doing genealogy research since 2001 and all kinds of information i never would have known about him because he died when i was two or three. i wanted to find out more about him i wanted to find out where he lived first of all. i couldn't find the town so i decided to go to it so we drove up come to find out there wasn't a town with that name so i thought that is wrong in my family tree so

what else and that led me down this crazy pat path. >> let me frame it this way. this is a mystery book not just one mystery but it is the scientific mystery of why so many people in the community of mexico and maine became sick with these exotic cancers that it became known as cancer valley. what was going on their number one? that it became known as cancer valley. what was going on their number one?

and then to realize what was going on why do they stay mighty people continue to work? and then number three is the mystery of your family. where do you come from and what is did on - - one is about your family and the community that makes you the way you are and your family the way you are? any of these could be enough for a book but all three in the book complement each other and a genuine and wonderful way. so what is smoke stack money? >> the largest smokestack in the town like a big giant middle finger in our town

really is how i thought about it. every time the smokestack was operating. it doesn't shut down you can just shut down it's very connected so the town orbited around in the beginning he built banks and libraries and railroads and did everything and they were so intertwined.

and then that smokestack was a symbol so that means he is doing well. >> you could see it from anywhere in town so that is a constant reminder i would say it's air but it is the opposite. >> yes. i grew up in eastern north carolina and my mother's family were farmers. and it was 10 miles east of my

grandparents farm. when the wind was right you could smell the pulp mill. >> it so funny because and this may sound horrible but my father would come home from work with a mixture of rotten eggs and run cauliflower but also the would smell with that constant smell it's unpleasant but it is so intrinsic to the memories.

>>. >> so tell us about the bleach board at the mill. >> have never been there i would have liked to have gone but my grandfather work there and then the magic happens. but to do that come at the beginning of 1997 and what happened in the combustion process but dioxins are one of the most dangerous toxins you

can find next to agent orange but it is equally as nefarious. and then with the regulation regulations, may change the elements which is not chlorine free but elemental chlorine free. that creates remarkably less dioxins. >> and your grandfather as far as i can tell, they only put

the old guys to work in the bleach room. >> that is what i was told. >> either you or your father fought for a long time because you needed the most experience people to work in the bleach room that's not why they put the older guys in the bleach room. >> right. even when they had resources there at the time when she found out she said i figured it out because they were closing in on retirement so when they retired over many one - - they'd only have so many years left because many would get sick and then they would have to pay the pensions and their retirement and that's what happened to my grandfather. she said she figured it out.

>> in other words the bleach room was so poisonous and so hazardous that basically. >> yes they were treated like garbage. >> so if you think about, no management knew what they were doing putting the old guys in the bleach from, i have got to believe, we will get into that later. flash forward to 2012 and the are coming out of the great recession of 2008, 2009 and the journal which is a newspaper in maine, has a

story in the headline that some label, toxins spike as positive paper industry says state officials are not alarmed. so the fact that toxins it means the economy is coming back and probably people will get sick and die but it's like the smokestack to generate stock. >> it reminds me of the response that a lot of elected officials with covid and those here in texas we should all go back to work especially the older people but they will die

anyway soon but human beings or cannon fodder. one of the mysteries of the book is why do people go along with that? >> the mercury poisoning that they would get into and very connecticut and deadly conditions. people would take those jobs knowing it would kill them and the new jersey bureau a respective one - - statistics the labor said it could be induced with death producing

enclosures it's hard to believe men of ordinary intelligence could be so indifferent for your book does a deep dive into this question so you do quote a study in the workplace so talk about that a little bit. >> just looking at the actual silence why did nice say anything? and then to think of the seriousness. so 80 percent but if they saw

something at work that was wrong they did not say anything. so the silence actually it is a mystery to the researchers. they could not figure out why it kept happening. over and over and over. and now i will go back home and then to understand it. why don't you take that seriously? but it is so complex. it could be a compromise but

people are mistaken to think it is a choice people ask me over the years but it is so complex because there are three generations of my family that work there like a fisherman or a fireman and second if you grew up working there and then is and isolated town.

>> but it also provided a great job for isolated and rural and higher education there are a lot of reasons and my mother repeatedly would say that. so it's complicated if they say it is it worth it? that my father died in the middle of me writing this book and gets cancer and eyes. so is that were there?

so also thinking of a choice so it is complicated and to have that ability. i don't know maybe it is true. because then you have to take that and read it then you take it or leave it. that was really hard with the money. your ancestors are buried there or whatever.

>> one of the great strengths of this book is like our town and that you get so many voices or stories in this book. you go around and you talk to people and you must be a very good interviewer the us we and you listen but you get great stuff that alone would have been an oral history. so that's a really strong aspect so why where do you

stay in cancer valley? but that is the acadian community. and that particular cohort of people went through so much hardship and displacement starting in 1750 that do you think that had the stubbornness or the determination of your family to stay in mexico? >> yes.

and these are people that i knew every main character is someone that i knew. wasn't trying to be an objective them trying to understand. so to understand them would understand me. with even more than half of the franco-american and dissent. and never learned about it with this accidental error he was a naturalized citizen in america and then to understand not only who they were and

with my present-day life there are some studies of the dutch 19 forties famine. so trying to look at trauma. so i feel like there is something to that with the knowledge of franco-american history but the emotional transfer that i remember the

stories in the book that she tells me she is born in 1886 and she knew her great-grandmother that is a emotional transfer. >> so that would make sense to years old. so 200 years with the ethnic cleansing of acadia. so that, isn't that distant if you put it that way my great-grandmother and her great-grandmother and some of those are emotional transfer.

and to find that in the family so we didn't understand this history until we start working on the book. >> i'm a lot like my grandmother. >> and she is sitting there bunch of grandkids are around and i'm quoting from the book and says i love you all very much but if i had it all to do it over again none of you would it be here.

[laughter] that is information she loves you but it's a hard life she went through the depression and world war ii that's how it was in our family go, don't drown. >> there is wonderful writing i want to read a fairly long paragraph about your mother and talk about tough women and having the starring role.

going up and down the cellar stairs day after day and then to have the bull's-eye graphic to slam shut after she elbowed it open and that each article of clothing the time sharply into fabric and those reams of white paper my father but from the mill. announcing herself into infinity his hearing long told the that match she let the

vantage expire a new patch from the corner store. though and off i went. that is damn good writing. >>. >> good for her. she comes across very vividly. you talk about sacrifices in the book it is a term of art designated areas and the us

that are next to or close by environmentally dangerous people live in the zones and with those healthy snacks when you know you live it has to be a source of shame that the reaction to that is pride. this is my identity so talk about that a little bit. >> that's a really good point laughter is another thing.

and somebody asked them about that. with this unasked question and unanswered thing and at some point some people said you have to do something. and then to be in definite and with that style love resignation after a while, okay.

is like the dioxin right now are you talking about that clicks carefully and quietly and on the shelf and that's what happens some are shouting about it and i say this liberally have time for and i worked on it for ten years even in texas i got 80 pounds of documents how does an ordinary person have the

capacity the time or the energy or go to work? what kind of job can you get? i can go on and on who the hell has time to worry about that? who has the time to fight omega corporation making minimum wage?

>> so the industrial capitalist society everything is so big and complex where can individuals go to for protection and authority and expertise? the only institution to have the resources for that is the government spending lots of time with government regulations and then with reference to those regulations. and ultimately you come to the realization the lab is what is in the regulation and how did you determine the way it was written? and that is where the smoking gun is.

>> and even try to understand youth a lawyer i and a paralega paralegal. it is all a metaphor who was living upstream and downstream. if you are downstream you have the pollution and all the stuff going downriver and those making the regulations are upstream untouched. >> another one that ties into this while studies or governments determine the risks for everyone it's up to those facing the risk to determine the level of acceptability.

>> the school term body burden. >> but it's interesting because my father got sick but so the body burden it is literally that i can't believe it exist but there it is. so he gets lung cancer and esophageal cancer he gets is

oxygen and measured so they would measure it our river had bubblers in it to fetid oxygen to make it healthy the body burden the environmental burden that they are not carrying those burdens with the disenfranchised people a lot of them are working class

and what is most insidious it is a nutritional disaster is not what you think of as a disaster. violence is done to the human bodies in these communities especially.

>> and then my actual grandmother a chain-smoking like a dormant volcano. >> affectionate embracing with a manic repulsive grip. and with the boston red sox fans will appreciate this. and in 1978 it was one game playoff. >> and not long after that and

then the strike at the mill it that one - - vibrated and then in the hair salon with the comments this is not a magic one. - - magic wand. >> that could've been this - - the subtitle under the tops of the candy colored buildings when those fiery spasms of the equatorial sunset.

at the dinner table every night but then seem to be elsewhere then here is your mother on high with the cover off. >> we might get a little bit political here one of those principles for the book reckoning with what remains and to do everything they were supposed to trumps election

2016 was broken promises and policy across the political spectrum and trump saw us, the working class even in the limo or the gold leafed violet he did not provide what we needed lec stop to open the door and say hello.

and saying the system is rigged. but the story of your family and your parents is a story of the working class to work hard to take care of their family and community and they are like a tetherball. why people do what they do when it comes to politics.

so i can stay is started 40 or 50 years ago but i tried to look at the american dream with the actual truth is that a myth? wasn't necessarily that but everybody was doing better. it wasn't just because they were hard-working they are all doing better now all this other stuff with the dioxin in

our bodies. >> maybe i started in the seventies with the free markets and going with the strike in our town that really tour the town apart and they weren't loyal to them anymore. i'm not and economist and in the seventies and in the eighties with the air traffic controllers and with general

electric nobody cared anymore they started with the strike but also i should say in the chemical companies and the corporation the conglomerate so in the arc of american manufacturing so they don't even know what's going on but

so in the nineties with the berlin wall coming down and there is a recession and i tried to get a job there. but it just kept getting worse and worse because my father's income and inflation and then just kept getting thinner and thinner and then walmart moves in and with this disaster so

and trump chose up then in 78. >> 82? i was there around the same time that like trump tower you admire the wealth not like the doctors brother complicated reasons and have attraction to that. >>.

>> fantasy yes until i was done with mine there are so many parallels that scared me to call him right away is a he didn't copy those lines in the book that this drive toward the 2016 elections to give a glimmer of hope and then the biggest trump voters is just about something or anything.

>> i could go on but i won't. >> toward the end of the book getting to the point where he stop and ask questions i'm not sure you consciously intended that way i can find a smoking gun and no magic bullet the state or federal government is

about examining at the long-held beliefs in the portals of history to push back with them it is lovely passage and that is why we write and go after books like this and read books like this the truth is complex the human experiences complex but only books like this that take deep dives to get close to the truth. it is not satisfying in the way that it will be but to have the story told.

that reflects the truth of the experience. >> and it would be untruthful because everybody is. >> forgive me for interrupting thank you both very much and the last two questions the first one set i read of excerpts from your book for

those environmental issues and it resonates and with that impact on your writing? >> i haven't read the environmental literature think that i would have read.

>> absolutely but that obstruction came from the material itself. and then to combat me people mailing random things. that's not the minimal structure of the book so the next question comes from grandma and aerospace and then on a mountain of garbage

everybody on this call i don't know that's in their path at all. but this is before it came out.

>> and a couple other with the bowling green questions. >> i meant to ask what has the response then to the book in your hometown? >> the most common responses mostly support and people said to me and looking at these people. but it was interesting it's

about time somebody wrote the story although the book just came out and it's more complex and binary with the truth and untruth and it's complicated. and then these leaders that make these regulations that is really the only a binary with

that federal experience and it is unfortunately timely always so thank you to both of you for the enlightening conversation this evening and i will say you can support carry and her important work buying her book and ordering it online or come get it at the store we are deeply grateful for the type of people it takes to do this work. and it's a rare pleasure to host this evening. >> i encourage you all everybody stick around and hang on.

talking about ted cruz and iowa over the rest of his mouth saying words and so it goes of the action plan of the :-) what you could find in a box of cracker jacks and even has a touch of old-time hollywood class just like valentino the same truth all

the high-tech the mad description is the best thing i have ever heard. thank you all for sitting around. >> please buy the book because it is so relevant with this selection. you could change the names and it would be the same thing i think. >> thank you for writing your book and thank you for hosting everybody buys books from green light.

because of the delay full discussion to share each other's works. thank you