through empathy, understand ending pluralism and understanding these matters are all really complicated. if they weren't complicated, we'd have solved them for television journalism. you know, you can sort of point the finger at television journalism. you know, clearly you've pointed out this kind of crossfire, which might have started, you know, networks that you might have. i was an intern, worked with the us and and the medium clearly has its its own message in this instance. yeah. and it's own mode and it's got limitations but actually the old crossfire wasn't terrible environment because people were really debating things that they came by honestly they weren't gaslighting. right our our danger in media today is that people are to you it's not that they have opinions. everybody's got opinions and we have we are we are not squirrels we are humans. we can discern people's opinions and we can say, well, i know where he's coming from this. but he articulated that very well and i need to think about that and learn how to debate.

we're going away from that. we're not looking to engage, debate other people. we're just looking for the we don't have to with whom we don't have to debate. that is not what going to create a healthy society. it does create lot of viewers. it does create a lot of followers on social media. but would rather do the opposite. i would rather that if you are operating in good faith and you truly believe what you believe and we can have a basic that we're on the same side of preserving democracy as our as a as the structure within we within which we exist. then on and let's have a debate and i bring those people on to my show and my viewers don't all love what i do but but i'm not here to protect your sensitivities i'm here to allow you to understand the breadth of opinion that that is out there. and that is our role. that's what we should be doing, allowing breadth of opinion to be out there and to be debated on every issue, on every issue. our role and society's role is not to keep people intellectually comfortable. it is not keep them intellectually safe and.

so we need to lean into that in the coming months, the coming days and the coming years to remind people. this country was built on some discussion and it needs to continue to move forward on the basis of a robust discussion. hot takes.

lindsay clemons debut novel what we lose was a finalist for the aspen words literary prize, the california book, a hurston wright legacy award, and the national book critics circle, leonard prize. she is a 2017 national book award. five under 35 honoree. and her new essay collection at freedom is forthcoming from viking. lindsay is professor of english at the university of california davis. nell irvin painter is the author of books of history, including the new york times bestseller the history of white people, sojourner truth, a life, a symbol, and the national book critics circle finalist, old in art school, a memoir of starting

over. she is the edwards professor of american history emerita at princeton university and a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences. she has also received honorary degrees from yale wesleyan and the university of north carolina at hill and dartmouth after a ph.d. in history from harvard, she earned degrees in, painting from mason gross school of the arts at rutgers and the rhode island school design. now lives and works in east orange, new jersey. of course, this evening we're here to celebrate in elle's new book, i just keep talking a life in essays. this comprehensive new collection of essays spans art, politics and the legacy of racism that shapes american history as we know it. assembling her writing for the time into a single volume i just keep talking displays the, breadth and depth of nell's decades long historical inquiry and the evolution of black political thought. henry louis gates jr had this to say no.

irvin painter is one of the towering black of the last half century. i just keep talking. is more than an odyssey for the senses. it's a revelation. and that will inspire courage in anyone seeking to express their truth. we are honored to welcome nelsons and zee to the midtown scholar this evening. so without further ado, please join me in giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. thank you. and hello. okay. hi, everyone. it's to see you all. no it's hello city. it's a wonderful deal to be here and truly an honor to share this dangerous music here.

thank you so much for inviting me, kay. so. i'm very happy to be here to celebrate this book with you. i just keep talking. there are really few writers who can speak with equal depth about history, about the craft of writing and literature about politics, popular culture and visual art. but in unique collection, you managed to do all of that. and then some painters a capacious thinker whose curiosity has never been constrained by genre or discipline and whose courage has led her to distinguished careers in academe here in writing and visual arts, by collecting writing on multiple subjects together alongside her artwork, a full picture of painter's genius, which is not just a sum

its parts but is characterized by her ability to think within and between where in each part deepened by their ability to to each other for its depth. i just keep talking is remarkably readable funny and intelligent without down or pandering to an audience. for those of us familiar with painter's work, the book a celebration of her genius, and for those new to her, this is a delightful entry point into her esteemed and capacious body of work. in the essay, long divisions, which is about the growing recognition of black writers from james baldwin to, toni morrison to toni tanahashi coates painter mentions the 1988 new york times letter signed by 48 black writers demanding the recognition of morrison's work. and it struck me while reading this that perhaps this work might also argue for the

recognition of painter as one of this nation's great seers. a person in possession of striking onto the country's and an implicit understanding of the mechanisms of racism classism and sexism and whose body of work forms an excellent basis to understand our country. so with that said, i'm going to i'm going to let you talk as much as possible. and i want to start the process of assembling this book as we started talking about backstage, because it's both an book and an essay collection. and i wondered how you arrived at this format and tell us a little bit about the process of putting it together. yeah. thank you so much. what a lovely introduction. i'm fortunate to have such

thoughtful introduction and so complete. thank you. the process of a publication is something i could talk about forever. i've been very interested in the history of the book, which is material history and the history of book is a field that is very old, but for longest time it didn't take account of black authors and black writing. it tended toward sort of european elizabethan and so on and the granular history of books made often in britain, but one of the wonderful things that's happened in the current times in the 21st century is that fields have opened up to other. so for. oh yes.

is a chance for me to brag about another new book. second edition of truth hope, think, publish it. two days ago. congratulations. wait. all. you thought i was just carrying this for my lunch. oh, wow. already? wow. and this is the third edition of standing armageddon. the united states at the turn of the 20th century. so the old books are coming back and coming back and coming back. so i wanted you to know about that. at any rate, one of the things that's happened in the 21st century really in the second

decade of the 21st century, is that what we think of as the archive, what we think of as our techniques of knowing society and the past? this is opened up tremendously. so i mentioned the history, the book i use that with sojourner truth. so i mentioned securing in truth. so this book, this was published a quarter of a century ago and worked as hard as i could with the tools i had at that time. i did not have tool like the history of the book with me and. i know we want to talk about paper and printing and so forth, but what the history the book was done for me is to say so or truth as an author, as self-published author of and as told to autobiography that she

had printed. she marketed. she destroyed, muted herself. and when she went to akron, ohio. she was on her own book tour. so that's something that's going to go into my new book on sojourner truth called sojourner truth, which seemed new york. oh, didn't say that. so that's the new we can do with the discourse. but you ask about publishing and printing. so if you have, i just talking in your hand, the first thing you'll notice is the book is really heavy. yeah. and the reason it's heavy is because it has this wonderful paper that you can see full color often full page images of

my artwork. yeah. so i started being interested in paper and printing and publishing in 2005, as i finishing up creating black, which is a narrative of black americans. but it's a history. but all the images black fine art, which means i needed color, i needed reproduction that were big enough for you to see, which meant luckily i had an editor who knew a lot about people and he was able to understand the need for paper to answer the need for paper and to have the book printed. at that time, which was 2005, had a printer who could deal with the paper and the color.

so that's where i first started understanding. and then with aldon school, the memoir, it had, it's full of images, again, my own artwork. it's of works in progress. so you see how i doing as i go along. and so once again, we needed full page, we needed good sized. we need throughout not just insert and again we needed good paper. now the publisher was an independent publisher called counterpoint in berkeley. and they were able to do that. so when it came time for i just keep talking and we were talking about the the contract. i said, i want to be able to put in full color, full page images throughout. and they said, oh, i don't know, we can't do that. the vocal costs $40.

it'll be prohibited. nobody will buy it. and i thought of my little publisher in berkeley, and i said, if they can do it in berkeley, you can do it in new york york. so i said, go talk to your graphics people. they and they talk to their graphics people and the technology is not the same technology. from 1996. yeah, not the same as 2500. so they back and they say, yeah, we can do it. so the book does not cost $40. and it's very heavy. so all of you writers out here insist. absolutely. put it in the contract. put it in the contract. yeah, literally. thank. i want to now go to the title of the book.

yeah. so the title comes from you tell a story in the introduction. about an editor at knopf. i believe, who rejected a biography. joseph hudson. yes, just because he was a stolid artist and the conversation went something like. hudson doesn't tug at the heartstrings. right. and you replied, well, neither do i. i just keep talking. and you say, feisty mouthy, unrepentant is how you describe both him and yourself, which i find highly accurate. i just. i just keep talking. you said. and writing and publishing books that their way haltingly, bringing me just enough of a following for a very nice career. no, no. a distinguished scholar career, etc., etc.

and you speak in the book as well as in all in art school, about the frustrations of not recognized. and despite all this you persist to talk. so that idea of persistence, this is inherent in the title. yes. and i want you to just talk about that idea little bit more. why is it so important to just keep talking? i think it's important. just keep talking and especially for women to just keep talking because there's so much that says, don't. so we just keep talking. and i felt like i had something to say. and in fact, i have a very distinguished scholar career. i my first job was at penn. i was tenured and promoted in three years. and then my second job was at the university of north carolina at chapel hill. and i became a full professor and another three years. so, you know, it was a perfectly

good career of a perfectly good career and i got to be president of the organization of american historians and of the southern historical association and the american academy of arts and sciences. well, hugh, some of this so it's been a perfectly good however, it's been a perfectly good. but i never felt like people were saying, oh, my god, no, that's wonderful. as you said, that has come very late. and i'll give you an example of the frustration. some of you that the book, the history of white people, the history of white people falls on the distinguished career side

in, the sense that it got a front page a gorgeous front page review in, the new york times book review. and this when the new york times book review was a fat. yeah, yeah. when it was when it was itself. and i had a wonderful book tour. my first stop was the colbert report, where i arm wrestle stephen colbert and no, he didn't win. i didn't either. so you know that, went beautifully. that book got no book prize, nothing. so it's that kind of thing that happened on the one hand, hitting all the marks and the other hand, a kind of silence. but i always felt like i had things to say and people ask me to say them. so i never for spec for the new

york times or the new republic or anything that. they asked me to write and i wrote. and in fact you've warmed my heart by mentioning one of those pieces. would you say why that was special for? the one about voting. oh, yeah. and actually, my dad's in the audience, so he'll appreciate this. congratulations. oh, so you mentioned it's an essay where you talk about the importance of voting and historical sacrifices that have been made. and you mentioned the the seeing the lines in 1994 of black and colored south africans being able to vote for the first time. and my mother was in one of those lines in philadelphia voting for the first time of really? yeah. and for me, that was a stirring image. i how many of you remember that?

do you remember that image? it target your heartstrings. yeah. really. it's a marvelous image. and the essay that i wrote it about was around the 2020 when it took a long time us to find out what had happened. so it about voting and about i think i also mentioned voting during reconstruction there too, because are these moments when american voting really has so much additional resonance beyond just the political beyond just the parties that it's kind of quaint? the central action they had mark or the quintessence of citizenship. yeah, yeah. so i think from there, we might as keep talking about the election. that's probably heavily all

minds at a time. seeing as we have you here. yeah, we can, you know, consult for a little. sure. so, you know, i think this is really i think this where your book is probably going to receive a lot of attention and appreciation because your clarity around, the particular historical moment that we're in, is just so well-taken for obvious reason. and you say in the book that we're living in a moment between. between reconstruction and right before things are rolled back. right. yes, yes. yes. they call it redemption. thank you. redemption. yeah. that piece i've forgotten what it's titled, but i.

i remember so clearly going around saying i feel like i'm living. in 1872. and this was after the stirring americans in the streets of 2000 where i felt safer in my country than i ever have in my whole life. i just loved. 2020. we were up in the adirondacks and people were out in the streets and saranac lake and blacks in keene valley, all those places, you know, are represented in congress by elise stefanik. so i said, i feel like i'm living in 1872. this moment of of promise. now i know as a historian that, 1876, in 1877, 1898 and 1912

were still to come. but i want to savor this moment of promise, this moment of seeing a face of the united states, that that says black lives matter. police brutality, wrong of white is wrong. so it's living kind of in two times, in a way. and right now, i almost like we have to do that again. but i so many friends who are just tearing their hair out imagining the united states is going to be like with like what the united states is going to be like when donald trump president again. and i say i'm in 1872 for one

thing. but i'm also i don't think we're going to have to face that because i don't think that he is going to last until. but i'll also take you back to remember, last fall was when everybody was saying, oh, my god, oh, my count, we're going to have this civil war. we're going to have a civil war. yeah. was when was that? i think it's been happening for a little while. really? i hear it so much anymore about it anyway. and i said, well, you know, we had one once. yeah. killed a lot of people. that it ended slavery. and that was probably the thing that could end slavery. and we've got the 13th and 14th and 15th amendments. so if we have another civil war,

our side is going to win because we are organized. we prize organization and government and and collaboration with each other, working together. whereas the other side there would be they have their guns with them all the time and they will be at each other's throats and will win and we won't get the 13, 14, the 15th amendment. but we'll get rid of guns and all dogs will be a leash. thank. that moment in the book me so much hope and comfort. yeah. when when you said that that the civil war is not the thing that

could happen it's pretty it's it's pretty bad. but when you make an excellent point that you have to work through a lot of pain to get out really good things on the other side. yeah. so thank you. for biography. so you've written, as we just saw, a definitive biography of, sojourner truth and is a form that you've been drawn to in your career. yeah. recently you've been writing more memoir. and i'm interested initially what drew you to blogger and to writing the stories of a particular historical figure. and now how you've found writing memoir fits. it's all similar. a process. you know, i could talk about that for a long time. the the sort of founding portion of my interest in memoir is my

sense of not being the right kind of black person. and i talk about that in the introduction and i come an educated family. we were not rich, but we were not. and, you know, there was i didn't have to experience drug or violence in my home and when i read around and i read a lot there's so much that our society and our culture wants of black people that is so different from my life. my life at my formative life. and also the life i just told you about. it doesn't fit in a narrative of hurt. so i've always taken sense of individual specificity into