the same thing with toni morrison and song of solomon. i grew up in a very british, colonial education. disillusionment, change of the geography. i was looking for bigger answers than the church could give. the church can be very, a lot of praise and worship not a lot of intellectual stimulation. it is hard to begin jamaica -- be gay in jamaica. i was a celibate christian. thinking that i was sustaining myself that way. not anything that ever confronted in jamaica. my standards for moving when i left was that i just wanted to be somewhere else. not necessarily a lot a knock on jamaica. i adore my country. it took years of coming into myself and wanting more out of life. what do i want, who am i? i am in all of i am in awe of coates. his article ons reparations was the best thing that has been said about it. people don't realize the acute nature of race in jamaica. our racial mess is a whole different kind of mess. we are far more subtle with ours is more endemic. we have a very british racism. we might not have had to desegregate our scho

she was the one who made me read toni morrison. that changed my life.reis a scene in sula and nown her deathbed finally confronts her. i have done this, i have seen this. i have all this great things that i have done. she says what you have to show for it? then sula says showalter who. who.ow to that was the validating moment. i'll have to prove anything to anybody. rose: you called winning the booker prize affirming. james: it is the riskiest and loosest novel i have ever written. i still consider myself a victorian novelist. i still believe in the nuts and bolts to the point of annoying my students. playing with narrative. writing a chapter in blank verse. writing a nine page sentence. this is the first time the novelist in my head came down to the page intact. awarded to that is a hell of a thing. it means that i can be myself as a novelist. rose: will this affect caribbean literature? james: there so many exciting voices. .e don't just mean anglo cuban literature has been revolutionized. literature coming out of puerto rico. haiti.rom a novel from t

>> i wanted to be tony morrison. i wanted to be a novelist like tony morrison. >> stephen: why didn't you do it? >> tony morrison already has the >> stephen: was there anything in this "year of yes" that you said, yeah, no. my yes is a big no to that? one thing did you is you said yes to health. you lost 117 pounds. ( cheers and applause ) >> i did, i did. i did. that was one. >> stephen: yeah. that is-- that is saying no to a lot of things, lose 117 pounds. >> it was. it was saying no to a lot of things. but it was also saying yes to wanting to hang around for a lot longer. >> stephen: you had a friend who said, "you never do anything fun." >> stephen: like you run three tv shows. that's fun. what did she mean by, "you never do anything fun?" >> my older sister dolores said i never said yes to anything. she meant i go to work and come home. you think people who work in hollywood have fancy hollywood lives. i had kids and i was working and coming home. i was a workaholic. that was it. >> stephen: what was your idea o

>> toni morrison, a huge, huge deal. simon rushly. >> rose: why? simon rushly, part of the simon rushly story is set in church. when i was deep in church and he had a novel "shame" and i had big bibles with leather binding and the preacher is saying we're all going to hell and in it i'm reading "shame" with the three sisters. the idea of messing with narrative like that never occurred to me, just didn't. in reading it, it kind of gave me permission to write in a certain way. toni more rison's "song of solomon "-- you know, i grew up in a very british colonial education. ideas that books like that existed never occurred to me. >> rose: you eventually left the church. >> yes. >> rose: what happened? disillusionment? >> disillusionment, change of geography. i think i was looking for bigger answers than that. jamaican church can be a lot of praise and worship, not a lot of intellectual growth or stimulation. >> rose: different being gay in jamaica? >> i wasn't. you know, i was pretty much just kind of this cursed and pleefg it. >> rose: and believing i

well, maybe. 37% say al gore. 32% say toni morrison. what were you thinking? >> i was thinking al gore and narrow anything down for me. i know there's a nobel prize for physics, so that would go to hawking. dalai lama sounds right for the peace prize. i don't know if al gore has won. but i also don't know if toni morrison has won. >> so here's where you are in the game. no more lifelines. you're at $30,000. you can walk away with that money. this is obviously a chance to get to 50 and that threshold. but at this point, with an incorrect answer, you're giving up $25,000. you walk out of here with 5. >> i'm guaranteed $5,000. i'm gonna take a guess, and i'm gonna go with the audience. c. final answer. >> unfortunately, this time, audience isn't right. neither are you. it's actually d, stephen hawking, believe it or not, stephen hawking. but you are taking home $5,000. you took a shot at it. you took a shot. thank you for being here. it was really nice to meet you. we're gonna be back with armed "millionaire" right after this. antlers on reindeer, gifts tied with

toni morrison was a big influence on my work as a teenager. what she did with english, i joke she speaks 20 englishes simultaneously and she knows how to do that. it's just huge. a long list. >> brown: robin coste lewis, her book "voyage of the sable venus." thank you so much. >> thank you so much. >> ifill: now we turn to one of our newshour essays. women in this country earn just over 57% of bachelor's degrees in all fields, yet they receive less than 20% of degrees conferred in computer science, engineering and physics. a recent study by the american association of university women also found that in 2013, 26% of all computing jobs were held by women-- a drop from 35% in 1990. we asked eileen pollack, one of the first two women to receive a bachelor's of science degree in physics at yale, and who now teaches creative writing at the university of michigan, to share an idea from her latest book: "the only woman in the room: why science is still a boys' club." here's an encore look. >> when i was growing up, i wanted passionately to be a physi

here to show us how self-defense expert toni morrison and his coinstructor along with gabriel david andnk you for joining us today. >> thank you for having me. and what people are calling the new normal. we're hearing more and more. both support for kids going through drills to deal with an armed person in their school, and also, something on the other side, a little fear in parents, if we're doing these drills, will it make the kids afraid, do we need to be having this conversation? tony, where do you stand on this issue? >> i stand that we can't make the kids ignorant about the fact that the world is a dangerous place. so we don't want to scare them to the point where they're paralyzed, and they're not going to be kids and enjoy their life. but at the same time we have to educate them and we start by telling them the things to look for, to be more vigilant, to pay attention to what's going around in the surrounding area. we call it situational awareness, being aware what's going on. so this way we could have a full filed life. >> so moving from scared to being aware and then prepared

another book by reading is from tony morris but i am going back to that because i wanted to hear and relieve tory vote -- john morrison in my head because she has an amazing body of work that i have read most of them and talking all lot about racial identity in this country for all different reasons including pressures of black migration and the changing nature of the blue black people are in america. this is the book that popped in my head. >> as the father of three are you satisfied with them warning about u.s. history in school? >> no. my kids go to public school. my son is now refreshment and high-school. my wife is also on the school board of our community so i get to see and hear they do a lot of reading and great literature but they don't do as much with the complexity of history that i would like to see as a trained historian. for a long time i was on the receiving end of but we do in our classrooms. so i knew what freshmen and sophomores the basic historical knowledge that they have whether or not they're reading when i would have assigned never mind there were not well versed in and social studies of primary

>> i wanted to be tony morrison. i wanted to be a novelist like tony morrison. >> stephen: why didn't you do it? >> tony morrison already has the job. >> stephen: was there anything in this "year of yes" that you said, yeah, no.