and getting an award that's meant to honor toni morrison. don't i was raised as a in an environment where. books were paramount, but i was an avid reader and books were the way i found myself into the world. and yes, indeed, i did stumble across a it wasn't urine soaked alley and city lights and it was home. it was home immediately. and what i've come, understand and know and experience and witness for all the years i've been there is that that's certainly not a unique experience for me. people all the time. and find home there. and there are people who don't even come there and think of it as their and it's uncanny and and beautiful and important to protect. speaking of toni morrison, of course, i remember the first time i ever saw toni in person. i mean, who doesn't remember that it was an event held at the main branch of the new york public library celebrating publication of a new city lights edition of narrative of the life of frederick douglass, which includes two lectures on liberation by angela davis that night, angela and toni had an

i remember the way the mother of contemporary black literature tony morrison described her own bookste you give this past week. quote, it is not fast food, it's a meal that you should relish. now i am not here to counter tony morrison and her yardstick to measure literature but it seems to me that they do give is the sort of fast food that one does relish. like the best not as you've ever had or a delicious hamburger. thomas wields accessible intimate language state from the halls of your local high school like a weapon. sharp, to the point and real worry another author might make her reader work more. thomas gives her readers the assist. the ceiling multi layered concepts like cyclical poverty, insidious, racial stereotypes. the constant abbreviate and code switch murray with ease. this is by design at its core the hay to give as a coming of age story star navigating her place in the halls of her high school grappling with her first love and broken friendships in ways that we have seen before. thomas masterfully uses the familiarity of these why a tropes and first person perspective

i., they are not going to produce shakespeare or tony morrison.rtainment, and the american people may just get accustomed to that. so, we need to make sure that writers and humans, actually, at the end of the day, are producing the product, and then we have to figure out how they are going to be compensated in a way of a. i. and where the checks are not to be replaced. so i think the rioters are absolutely in the right here. and the studios need to work with him to give them a seat at the table. the biden ministration said today that the companies must ensure that innovation doesn't come at the expense of americans right and safety. how worried are you about the potential for this technology to spread disinformation or disrupt civil discourse in a way that makes us less safe? >> it's an issue. here's the biggest issue that hasn't been addressed. the a. i. is only as good as the data you put into it, and we all know that the internet is filled with conspiracy theories. so if you are putting in bad data and now you are amplifying it and building sol

testify was informed by their individual and collective sense of, self love, self-respect and what toni morrison called regard. targeted people's testimonies provide, a counter-narrative to the we've been told about reconstruction. suppose that failure speaking with one voice, they said white southerners were waging war on reconstruction by attacking the people who are making the most of freedom and naming their attackers, detailing their injuries, saying the names of their slain crying out for justice and doing what they could to keep the record of what happened to them alive. survivors said black people's lives, freedoms and mattered. reporting and testifying about the war on freedom or. survivors best defense against erasure. these testimonies did help to drive the federal. that eventually drove the klan underground, but not before they seriously undercut freedom and black people's participation in american. after confederate overthrew reconstruction and boarded the temple of liberty, they crafted i call the big lie of the 19th century that the experience in american democracy had failed they

but i think of books like carrie by king the bluest eye, by toni morrison, the kite runner by collettehosseini. they're all works of first fiction, all iconic books in their own rights, and yet they're made more impressive by the bodies of that have followed. so tonight, getting to acknowledge and honor these authors and their stories feels like a celebration of the great that has been done, as well as an invitation for more to come. a call to continue with the writing revision and commentary that made these books sing. this award is the only one of tonight's honors that nods to the past, present and future of these authors and to literature as a whole. and so ultimately what i'm saying is, to all the nominees. your work is fantastic and i cannot wait to read whatever it. is that you do next and the finalists for the 2022 arts and bomb award first fiction are the return of faraz ali by amina ahmad. this is the gripping story of a policeman sent back to his home in the red light district of lahore to cover up a murder. this novel told, from multiple perspectives, is propulsive, thrillin