tony morrison, has repeatedly come to the defensive tween as a black woman author. her application means even more. in 1993, morrison wrote, mark twain talked about racial ideology in the most powerful, eloquent, and instructed way i have ever read. right after the break, we are gonna continue to discuss the controversial big crucial huckleberry fan with matt seabold, scholar in residence at the center for mark twain studies. s. s. ss all your clouds... it's easier to do more innovative things. [whistling] cleaning spell, cleaning spell... oorrrr... this stays between us. if it's got to be clean, it's got to be tide pods. add doctor strange in the multiverse of madness to your marvel studios movie collection. this is xfinity rewards. add doctor strange in the multiverse of madness our way of showing our appreciation. with rewards of all shapes and sizes. [ cheers ] are we actually going? yes!! and once in a lifetime moments. two tickets to nascar! yes! find rewards like these and so many more in the xfinity app. in order for small businesses to thrive, they need to b

i wanted to be toni morrison when i grew up but i didn't know how to do that.lso, my parents had sacrificed a lot financially for me to go to the school, and i did not want to be a disappointment. so, i got a job in advertising for a little bit. and then i read an article that said it was harder to get into usc film school than it was to get into harvard law school. and i thought, well, my parents can't fault that, because it is graduate school and difficult to get into, so i applied to usc film school, i got in, and i went. and i was told i could teach. my parents, as professors said, she is right, she could teach. it felt like something real for them. david: so you got a masters degree at usc, then you are sort of writing on the side a bit during the daytime, or the evenings, or how were you doing that? shonda: yeah, i got a job at a place that helped the mentally ill homeless find job skills and find places to live. i was an administrative assistant. and at night i would write my scripts. i had an agent or a lawyer at the time. you know, everyone got one out

the story that i just mentioned about peggy as a real person in toni morrison's beloved. i found the reaction to her trial after she killed her daughter. the child she killed was not her only child, whether they would be forced to go back into slavery as well. there were a lot of new facts that i learn. i have been writing for a long time and i have done histories of immigration, histories of the american press. i've a pretty good grasp of american history but there are still things i learned. host: more broadly, you report on things like the internment of the japanese and other incidents of populations that have been marginalized and abused in this country. guest: the internment of the japanese is interesting. they were model citizens, but once the war started, things became very polarized. partly because they were concentrated largely in california and washington state. but mostly because they were perceived as different. it was easy to make them scapegoats for the war and to return there was some kind of threat populated by the japanese. the general who was in charge o

. >> the most prestigious award in literature has gone to american novelist toni morrison, the nobeli'm the first african-american to win the nobel prize. >> you are. >> and that is astonishing. >> suddenly people we looked to as heroes, suddenly america was looking at them too. this represents a new understanding of diversity, a new understanding of american possibility. >> everybody wanted to be like us. everybody wanted to talk like us. everybody wanted to see our movies, they wanted to listen to our music, they wanted to wear our clothes. and some people feel like we lost that war, the revolution in the early '60s and the '70s, but we won the war of pop culture in the '90s. >> every city has cases of police brutality. but few are as brutal as the alleged attack against haitian immigrant abner luima. >> nearly 2,000 demonstrators marched on the 70th precinct yesterday, where luima alleged police beat him and sodomized him. the attack comes at a time when new york has gained new respect for its plummeting crime rate. but complaints about police misconduct are soaring. >> the plus t

about the story of margaret garner, she is the subject of the book called beloved, written by tony morrisonplace that is an active antiabortion legislation, and she did it in the middle of the night and the thick of winter and she crossed a river by foot. they had mules with them, and with her children, she began trying to kill her children when she heard the hounds and dogs coming with her and the air. she began trying to fill the man herself. she was later charged with murder, and the question around the world it was debated all around the world, was she human? if she was human, she could stand trial for murder. if she was just property, then she could be returned to slavery. the result after asking that question was that she is just property. the systems could continue because if margaret -- were deemed a human being, that would mean black women would be free and free of this subordination. >> this is why i love talking to professors. professor michelle goodwin, thank you so much for helping us understand american history and the context of this moment. please stay safe. coming up, you m

. >> following in the footsteps of robert frost, leonard bernstein, and toni morrison.. >> perhaps the closest anyone can get inside laurie anderson's mind is this virtual reality world she created with a collaborator in taiwan. >> it's a world that looks spatial, but it's made of words and drawings. >> whoa! >> it feels as though you're flying inside a work of art. >> you've been working with technology for 40 years now. does it still fascinate you? >> yeah, it does.i'geek, u know? i doink i worship hope? >> oh no. and this was said to me by a cryptologist. if you think technology is going to solve your problems, you don't understand technology, and you don't understand your problems. and i liked that very much because, you know, people just go, oh yeah, that's going to fix it. really? >> laurie anderson's largest exhibition is currently on display at the smithsonian's hirshhorn museum on the national mall in washington, d.c. it's an odyssey through her singular creative life. >> this seems very ominous to me. >> good. there's so much flag-waving these days and it beco

the story that i just mentioned about peggy as a real person in toni morrison's beloved. found the reaction to her trial after she killed her daughter. the child she killed was not her only child, whether they would be forced to go back into slavery as well. there were a lot of new facts that i learn. i have been writing for a long time and i have done histories of immigration, histories of the american press. i've a pretty good grasp of american history but there are still things i learned. host: more broadly, you report on things like the internment of the japanese and other incidents of populations that have been marginalized and abused in this country. guest: the internment of the japanese is interesting. they were model citizens, but once the war started, things became very polarized. partly because they were concentrated largely in california and washington state. but mostly because they were perceived as different. it was easy to make them scapegoats for the war and to return there was some kind of threat populated by the japanese. the general who was in charge of