Doing a signing at the very end so if you could buy your book downstairs and then come up and she can do signing for you and remember to silence your cell phones. And then tonight, we have Something Special going on cspan is here recording. So when we do the q and at the very end if youll raise your hand angela or i will bring a microphone over for you so get it nicely and recorded for the show. Okay. So i would like to introduce to you guys tonight julie best selling author how to raise an adult, and she holdses b. A. From stanford a jd from harvard law and mfa from College California of the art tonight shes here to read from her new book real americans. Please welcome julie. [applause] thank you [laughter] hi everyone. Wow, it is so cool to be here at book people it is so cool to be in austin, texas i bring you greetings from your sister region the San Francisco bay area. [laughter] we think of you often and always. Annie thank you for introducing me for having me it is amazing to travel a great distance scene come to iconic bookstore to see friends like lisa this my mfa program and fellow student and author of the gift of failure so lovely to see the people i know and recognize my former students, but also strangers. Because when had strangers come out to see you that feels pretty awe so those of you who have no idea who i am thank you for coming. [laughter] while i have the microphone on this book tour which is with a book on race, and finding my voice, ive decided it that whenever possible which has turned out to be always, im going to step aside for a few minutes to make an opportunity give an opportunity to a younger writer. So i want to introduce Taylor Williams taylor is a 16yearold jr. At brown Rock High School and taylor is a writer. Taylor has a couple of poems that shes gong to share with us when i put out the call it is asking a young writer to respond to the prompt of being the other. In america which is kind of broadly what my book is about. So Taylor Williams come and share your work with us. Thank you. [applause] hi. [laughter] okay, so this is my first poem that i wrote and it is called pretty. And i wrote it to basically break down the word pretty and show it for what it really is is. My dear dont let them call you pretty. There are peemg who used to keep you down, to keep you contained, to keep you hopeless. Because i know just how dangerous you are. You see its its a spider web word. It clings to phrases like, youre pretty for youre pretty for a black girl, a white girl, a short girl, a fat girl, a skinmy girl a tall girl a girl with with short long hair, with a crooked smile a girl with brown eyes. It hangs from phrases like youre pretty before. Youre pretty before you cut your hair and youre pretty before you started wearing those clothes. It attaches to phrases like youre pretty because. Youre pretty because you have long blond hair. It gripses to phrases like you were pretty before. You could be pretty if it werent for that scar and you could be pretty if you were hit by a car. Take the edge off of this word i ask. Break it down to we can all see pp, pretty. Like a pretty judge notion is simple misconception or o simple about a no mallty so if you were a butter fly have been is trapped in a web of beauty if youre been spun around white lie and if you have felt the spiders venom try to leech wing of color and acuity, if you have felt the sting of a prejudice notion drowning you in a web but feels like a ocean start a commotion. Im not a victim of this word you see. Because i have never been and never will be pretty. And some will be at a loss. Pretty is only word they can see. Sensors are not wired to feel ends for that they have my petty. Over the word they cannot begin to hear so they decide to call me pretty. Thank you. [applause] and this is my second poem and i call it bang. Bang, you may not have is heard it due to the white supremacist cotton swab you have plugged in your ear and you may not have felt blood as it pierce its way through a body. And it may not have smelt stench of body long before it hits and you may not have heard about it on your local news channel buzz it was important to discuss feet of the air of the day but no longer inhaled by a person shot while colored an my not hear about it on National News channel because it was more important to skyscraper being up to the heavens rather than another black man or woman being brought down to the ground. Do not beseech this matter dumb now have to believe that every bullet that was hit by a black man or woman was loaded with not prejudice but justice. Is that were dumb enough to believe a bullet accidentally fired. As if mother and fathers of black sons and daughters dont have to tell their children to bite their tongue so they dont bite the bullet. Because the silence of one black voice in the face of humanity is better than the silence of a Memorial Service because if you do not choose to acknowledge that an entire race is being killed because of the color of their skin, do not stand in the way of those who are trying to protect their kin. And this, this is not just a bullet thing. Little brown boys and little brown girls look to the mirror to be seen because they know the only time they see themselves on the big screen is when theyre hyped new the most ghetto extreme and contrary to popular belief not all of us want to be overhype get to fabulous traffic queens. To be valedictorian or ceos we strive to thrive and we want doctor by our names not dead on arrival. Theres a body on the ground with a bullet to the head. And i wonder how many more will have to be bled. Hush bang, hush is not seen nor heard and that is why i use these words and you can see it. Especially in the use today. Theres a fight in their eyes and it burns with the pain of the lies that have been fed to them like a prize because it had the most unfortunate demise of being born with the gift that is wise. What will you do . Every bang starts with a spark. Will you be the spark that ignites us all or will you be the hush that letses us fall . So consider yourself educated. More than your with history class will ever allow. Thank you. Tong taylor my goodness give taylor another round of applause. [applause] can you imagine the joy i get to meet young people like taylor and knocked it out of the park thank you so much. I have a honorarium as a token of my respect for you as a writer. And an artist, and i believe in you. Here you go. Thank you. [applause] all right. Okay so you guys i wrote this book im 49 going to be 50 this month. Whew, and i ted to tell people these days that i came to live out loud and i finally can. It took me this long to inhabit self i could love and hate in america, and upon arrival at selflove. I began to write it all down i wrote this book. Most books have all books probably work of fiction have an ash those of us who studied writing who teach writing know were supposed to grab readser hold on to them bring them on a journey with some suspense or conflict and reach them to this point and then theres a climax and we resolve it. My book has more of a pit okay so if that standard, you know, ark of a book is like a letter a this book has a letter v. The nine parts of it are it begins like this an american childhood but coming the other desperate to belong selfloathe, emerging, declaring, black lives matter, onward. And so tonight im just going to try to read from across the book to try to give you some glimpses of where i am in almost every one of those sections and then as annie said well take questions at the end. Okay. So this is a reading from real american. It begins like this. In a lead up to the 2008 president ial election, a persona stepped to fore front of public conscienceness. That of the real american. These real americans found a voice in their candidates grew in number, became a mob who raised slogans, signs, fists, and arms. Who long to make america great, normal, regular, white again. These newly emboldened rural American Issue angried or os to the rest of fuss you dont like it back to where you came from. Theres no back. To where i came from you stole my homeland from me. Me from my homeland i mean. I dont even know where it is. Literally i came silv unpaid unrepented damage of one of americas powngdzing crimes. I come from people who endured the psychocultural genocide of slavery reconstruction and jim crow who began to find a place here really only quite recently amid strives towards affecting more Perfect Union of liberty and justice for all. I am silvy great, great, great, granddaughter she was a slave who worked on plantation in a late 1700s in charlton, south carolina, harbor town through which close to one and two african slaves entered america over the centuries. She bore three children by her master joshua eden. By which i mean he raped her. There is no consent in slavery. I come from people who survived what america did to them. Aingt i a real american . When the mob goes about the needs and rights of real americans they dont picture me. People like me. But as anyone more a product of america than those of us formed by america in aning a ray war with herself . The contradiction of being less than, with in a nation whose forming documents speak of liberty and justice for all. Playing plague me for much of my adult life im so american it hurts. This is the section in american childhood im just trying to give you a glimpse of what my Early Childhood was like. A year later we move to virginia boasting sort of utopian commitment to sociocommitment diversity. Pet jimmy carter had appointed deads to be his assistant Surgeon General with responsibility for running the Health Service administration in department of Health Education and welfare it was 1977. On a School Field Trip to our nations capitol with my had fifth grade classmates i felt a swell of admiration for america in a surge of pride to be american as i stared up at the gleaming Washington Monument heard my voice echo as i back to lincoln and his chair trace my fingers over bronze plaque and walked back to our bus and for a few minutes caught in jumble of people trying to hurry down sidewalks to and from their jobs. I stepped to the side so they could pass. Important people work inside the city. I knew my daddy was one of them. Back at home i had black friends indian friends and jewish friends as well as white friends. There was even another black family for the very first time in my life and amanda was a few but we could both sense that it was important it our parents that we become friends and we did become friends genuinely telling each other secrets playing board games and sequestering ourselves behind locked doors to review the girly magazines our thought they kept well hidden. I felt a mix of wonder and awe as we pawed through page spreads of creamy white skin. Over o the years, i did extremely well in school with a Student Government representative sold girl scout cookie and tide a thick Yellow Ribbon to tree that stood at our curb in honor of american who is tamings in iran. I adored deads. He was 50 and coincided with career that began against all odds against hatred of jim crow south, oklahoma. I was his last child of five. The product of his second marriage to my mother and i knew from the way his eyes twinkled whenever he lookeds at me that he loved me no matter what. He gave me a variety of nicknames old sport, knuckle head when sounds crude to my grown ears but then spoken in butter of his baritone, it felt like melted love. He never had to call for me twice. I came running every single time. When i was little and skinned my knee he pull me up on to his tall lap kiss me and asked with all seriousness how i was going to become miss america with that scar. I didnt know then that no black woman have been not crowned miss america that no black woman would be until 1983 instead, i heard in daddys words that had i was beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. We all called him daddy. Even my mother, he was formidable comangding, grusk, loving, and funny. I hung on to his every word whether it was baby bring me my greats or well placed retort to the man on anchor tv. Daddy was the protagonist. The lead. Daddy was the son. Beauty pageants wrnght my thing, though, i wanted to be something more like president. By the i end of my junior year N High School back in wisconsin i had been lebtsed Vice President of my class for the third year in a row, and in the fall of my senior year student counsel elected me president of that governing body in an allWhite High School i was celebritied for badger girl state a statewide program for kids interested in policy and politics held summer after high school graduation, and was lebtsed senator there. I wents on to be one of four president s of my class of Stamford University won four elected class leaders of my graduatessings class at harvard law school. I was on track to live the American Dream through hard work, big dreams and a bit of luck to become whomever i wanted. Mine was in many way withs very american choold and with a money and influence that came from my fathers professional success, television also a childhood of material comfort that set me up for a privileged life. The section is now becoming the other. Daddy never liked the force fourth of july i couldnt understand it because i adore parade, song and flags neighborhood barbecue, explosion of fire crackers, and smart looks on everyones faces that reveal the enate understanding that our country was better and by extense we the people were better than the rest of the world my mother was the one to inform me of daddys opinion about the fourth she did so in a whisper sideways glance way with with no explanation as to why he felt it. I understood from the way she said it that it has something to do with daddys past his experiences, his blackness. Her silent why, pain too painful to discuss so i never asked. Didnt think it related to o the america i was inhabiting anyway. Didnt think i was black in the ways he was. Thought america was beyond all of that. I wases wrong. Looking bag over the years of even my earliest childhood the clues were everywhere. Back in the landing new york a community i lived in when i was 27 back in landing begun to sense that something might be wrong with people with dark skin. I lacked the language to describe it and e intellect to analyze it but i felt chill of it in my bones red heat of it surging up back of any neck when i was out and about with daddy. Daddy was 62 and lean with a neat tightly coiled afro he kept skin dark and crinkly like a top layer of a brownie when he wasnt busy he is take me on an errand in town and at an event in manhattan holding his hand walking down a bustling city sidewalk, i noticed that some strangers stared at him with eyes that seemed like a as if therm brand him like an animal with their sering focus. If he dared to look them in the eye i look up at my daddy for reassurance pleading with my small brown eyes to know what was going on. But he gripped my hand tighter, kept his eyes focused straight ahead purse his lips and kept walking. When i walked down the sail streets with my white mother, nobody steamed at her that way. The glances she got as a white Woman Holding tiny hand of a small brown child were far more subtle. It took a lot longer for me to dissurgeon and pity and disdain by choosing to marry my father she crossed the line. By choosing to have me in fifth grade in welfare one of my white friends pulled into the gifted and talented group she was smart. But no smarter than i was i knew. And now she was getting tods cool projectses and puzzles but not me. I went home and mentioned it to o my mom who came to meet with my teacher a few days later. Polanski was not persuaded. So my mom escalated to the principal insisting that i be tested. They brought in someone from the district to give me an i. Q. Test mailed the resultses to our house, and mom thought i wasnt watching when she openedded envelope read results and put it away in a drawer. I was put in the gifted group soon after. And shortly after that mr. Polanski announced to our entire class apparently all it takes to be gifted is for your parent to meet with the principal. But in a privacy of an afternoon home alone i peeked at all right from the district, the raw score was 99 percentile as my teacher stood smug it was the first time in my young life i uttered a very silent fuck you. [laughter] im now iN High School in wisconsin my all White High School 1200 kids and me i spent a lot of time at my best friendss diana house she at mine one day when i gone over to her house to hang out i found her in the basement reck room watching movie on her vcr gone with the winds. She looked up at me and said hello and then turn her gaze become to the Television Screen and sighed like a southern bell wouldnt it have been great to live back then . [laughter] no why not . Because i would have been a slave. Oh, but i mean if you wrnght black. But i am black. I dont think of you as black. I think of you as normal. So far mare year on Exchange Trip to france with a different school. I stayed behind after language lesson to ask professor a question and found myself walking back to youth hospital alone. I came opinion a small park where little white girl with no more than 10 kicking gravel out of her shoes. As i neared, she stop what she was doing, looked up at me and spoke [inaudible conversations] why are you black . Deck decades later i would read words who had a humiliating encounter with with a little white frefnlg girl but on that day as a 15yearold walking through paris, i was alone. With just my rudimentary french and fragile sense itself [inaudible conversations] she demanded. [inaudible conversations] because i am lucky. I told her i didnt believe it but i wanted to. I hoped my words would send this Little Stranger home with some Big Questions maybe they would even fuck her up a little bit i didnt mind as far as i was concerned she was ever white person to question exist going through my day without drawing scrutiny or fascination of others i didnt want to make excuse or give this little girl a lesson i wanted to shine. I wanted to shine so much that this little white frefnlg girl would ache to be me. Ache like me. I realized there are other people here. They would then bring their kids to the bookstore to hear the f word. [laughter] theyre escaping world series an they did not want to hear the f word. [laughter] it is now senior year i am the president of the student counsel my all White High School show debuted on nbc in september with shows father being a doctor like daddy, and middle daughter denise looking like me on tv screen that resembled mine i was glued to it every thursday evening reeding it for guidance about how to be someone like me. I turned 17 that november. A few weeks after the president ial election that reelected ronald reagan. My best friend diana made me a locker sign filled with words an image cut from the pages of tiger beats 17 another teen magazine. She woken up extra early to tape it my locker before my arrival we did this for each other her birthday was early in november. And i had her locker just two weeks before. I answered school and lefted to my locker located in reserve for senior in central hallway near Administration Offices conveniently close to everything. Even above the den of student voices and slamming lockers i could hear my heel clicking with precision i could see the birthday locker sign 50 lockers in front of me with its five sheets of white paper taped one to the next to the next in a kind of in a sort of vertical column with silver ribbon to top and side spiraling into the hall. I felt a surge of anticipation of the attention i would get that day. A friend shouted happy birthday as i made my way down the hall and i shouted thanks. When i got to my locker i stood and admired diana creativity reading from top to bottom all of the bits of language and imagery gone to ouch trouble to cut out to glue on there for me. I opened the locker put my backpack inside, pulled out the books i needed for my first two classes and i i turned and smiled at someone else saying happy birthday. Clang locker door shot and twisted lock or combination a few times i went down main corridor to my first class feel like i owned the place. Some unknown minutes later, someone took a thick black mark ep and wrote nige spelled incorrectly i knew what they i passed it immediately my mouth went dry i found a black mark and crossed out each of the word. At days end i took the sign home. In the privacy of my bedroom i pulled my senior year scrapbook above bookshelf and opened it to first blank page there i pasted my birthday locker sign so it could be completely unfolded to resemble what it looked like hanging on my locker before closing i took a pair of scissor like a surgeon excising tumors removed three of the shameful word. Then threw them in the trash. I closed the scrapbook and returned it to the shelf containing recorded history of my childhood. Over the Christmas Holiday i typed my application on brangd new apple 2e computer my parents among first to buy in march 1985 first internet domain name was registered symbolic diagnostic in april i accepted an author of mission to stanford, university a classmate harris had applied to stamford but not gotten in. Harris and i were in precalc together and held during the 7th final period of the day. One day in april, right after the bell rang signaling end of class, harriss father walked in. Sat down at empty desk next to mine and talking to me in a playful tone. So you got into stanford i looked up at my friends and harris asked why is your dad here . Then i replied yes. So what were your s. A. T. Scores . I responded do you think it is fair that you got into stanford over harass when his scores were higher than that . Harris was not president of the student body our grades were roughly the same. But i had stolen his spot at stanford with my blackness. I told no one about the lock oar sign. And i would go on to tell no one for decades not my parents, not the school. Not my boyfriend not my best friend. For more than 20 years, though, the truth of that day hunkered down it inside of me and ma its metastasize i was the nigger of my town and now section desperate to belong. Im now in college at stanford and i have gotten a 2. 0 First Quarter a b, c, and d and ed ive been waiting for someone like me black and female from middle of nowhere, wisconsin, doesnt actually have what had it takes to be at stanford. Im in a civil rights class with 200 students. In the spring jim asks a very tough question in our civil rights class which was not unusual. What is unsocial that i know exactly what hes getting at and i ache to respond. But to date i never raised my hand many a class at stanford and still dont dare to do so besides this is, obviously, a really complicated question. No one else is raising their hand. My fear of being wrong of being black and wrong silences may even though i have a good idea here. Scanning the huge room for potential volunteers glances at me, something in my face must be showing him my brain is working overtime. He nods once at me and raises his eyebrow signaling that i should speak up. Well, i begin it clearing my throat and playing with my hair and then i keep on talking. Professor never wanted to down play a dramatic moment folds his arms across his chest, leans back on one heel and starts nodding his head vigorously as i talk. So i keep going. My classmates watching the clear evidence in the behavior that i am saying good stuff begin scrippabling down what i am saying. I am teaching my classmates. I am speaking from a place grounded in knowledge and bolsters by a tiny bit of confidence. Steyer is giving me with a voice pushing through the bramble out to the clearing. This is the starting line of my efforts to be better than white expect a black person can be a run and try to win for the next 20 years. Were city in the selfloathing section. No were moving is is that where we just were . Okay were now in selfloathing. Im now administrator a dean having practiced law for a while and now university of dean. On august 29th, 2005, katrina makes landfall and army knew he levee wiewld not, and in new orleans 9th ward black people on rooftops wave signs on pieces of cardboard help us the people plead with their bodies and their signs sure as helicopters fly over that their government is coming for them. Well help them. Instead the government flies by. Over 30,000 residents stream into the louisiana superdome a building whose roof would leak and airconditioning and refrigeration would fail where without enough food, water, restroom or supplies these residents would live for five dies. As a supercome to grows more bank with a stench that is mixture of rotting food, urine, and feces the government relocates people to the dome over 350 miles away from their home in houston. The astrodome and organizational wherewithal of houston government save the day and save lives. Some evacuees will stay for weeks, some for months. The former first lady of the United States barbara bush takes a tour on september 5th, 2005 when it is brand new this its role is savior. So many of the people in the arena here you know were under privileged anyway so this is working very well for them. Most of us black folks are democrats. We believe as democrats that our government is an organization that will be there for us even when our fellow citizens who see us as other seek to shut us out kick us out shut us down, but in late august 2005, we those who live in gulf coast we with with love ones there and we have no connection to u area but windchill on television learn that our government has had no plan for us. Them anythingers should be grateful she might as well said here have a hot dog we gave you a damn hot dog, dog be grateful pledge your allegiance stand for it. Stand. This is in a section emerging im a dean at stanford and consult educate you know a professional coach has been brought in to work with my bees and his team about six of us. Where she first starts working with us mary ellen a buddhist master when she first starts working with us i think it is my job to tell her whats wrong with everyone else. Literally [laughter] after nine months working with undergraduate understand and dean of the university after nine months working with his direct reports mary ellen conducted with 360 review on each of us and ready to tell me how im regarded by my colleague by now i trust her enough to listen to feedback. Too emotional too aggressive might as well give me a list of stereotype and black women and tell me not to do any of of those things tell her. She let me continue. Yes i have a tend soy is blurt things out when i get moved or frustrated but my emotion is warrant withed. Is it getting you what you want . She asked when i practice law, my passion anger could be channeled into useful argument but it seem to push people away and then im one who has to apologize i want you to know why im this way i plead that can take 20 years of therapy mary says chuckling how about we focus on when youre this way to start to notice emotion cooling to decide what if anything yowpght to do about it. What if anything i want to do about it mary ellen isnt sighting with stereotype but telling me my power lies in being in charge of my voice with her help i begin taking notice of my behavior when i foal a strong emotion coming instead of acting on it i try to Pay Attention to what im feeling and where i feel in my body and what triggered it and i write it down over a close mongst of this attention to self of mindfulness, with i begun to be able to sense emotion coming. I can then pause ask myself what it going on tell myself im okay. While the conversation around me keeps going. I begin to see that the trigger is a feeling of being overlooked doubted or dismissed. I begin to see that my fear ill be judged as not good enough makes me desperate to prove constantly that they are wrong. I begin be to see that i cant control anyone elses opinion or behavior. To see that only thing i can be in control of if i work hard at it is myself. With mary ellen guidance i begin to see that i can love and accept myself regardless of what others may or may nots be thinking of me. I can choose whether to speak or not to be silent or not to go off on someone or not rather than let those impulses simply happen to me. As her coaching begins to impact me i feel renewed with the help of a white buddhist master, i begin to emerge into a healthy black self. A day come when is i summon guts to tell mary ellen one of my most pain of the secrets that as a child i hated being black. And was afraid of black people. This gut spilling fear sharing, loosens up knots of shame losens muscles not just in my mind but in my soul speaking this awful truth outloud through tears, needs the pain out of o me. The relief feels astonish oringly good i wake up the next day no longer feeling the vice grip that racism had my psyche making me loathe asked me to prove i was good enough despite being black i look in mirror to allow myself to see not what behight might want to see or what might not want to see no, maam not conforming to what they admire to see my actual self. So see the color of my face and body brown paper bag sorry paper bag brown in fall and spring high in winter milk chocolate in summer and accept that some in america see me as the other. And being fine request that. To see white spoach and not up to committee to be black it took me 40 years to stop twisting and turning this way in response to how i fear and hoped people of both races would see me. I drive to work that day having shed the loathing of my black self and my extension of all black people from my eyes which had prevented me from really seeing other o black people. I look into the eyes of one that another and then another black person and i feel my heart swell with feelings like compassion admiration, love, even desire. As if discovering their existence their magnificent for the first time. Might as well have been first time that criming out of a deep depression i hadnt known i was this afflicted until i wasnt. White americans you are infatuated with statue of liberty whose tablet contains words of welcome who did welcome you and your ancestors and you are simultaneously infatuated with carving line and borders between who does and does not belong here with that one side of the line and other half of america on the other. You think your whiteness makes you better than the rest of us you make us your scapegoat your excuse or o your violent rage. Its not all of us. Stop saying it is all of us. You say it shall my white brethren, yowpghts to be treated as an individual instead of a stereotype. I will go to streets of america and find true love raise children who know how to work hard and be kind to others. And speak this is in section declaring we people cannot continue to abide story of police and civilian telling us in seeing our black bodies they were terrified. You have to be terrified for justifiable reason. God gave us this black and brown skin. The the skin god gave us is not a reason for you to be justifiably terrified were terrified of you we continue to try to forgive to live my son, i look at the faces of trayvon Freddie Tamir of 12 and i see you son, my precious son, my beautiful black boy so smart and bookish and inquisitive and philosophical i see you grow taller grow muscles grow a mans face, and i weep for the future self who will leave this home and discover that in pockets of this great country, youre loathed fears and worse, my son, you did not ask to be born. I chose you. I asked you to be mine. I gave you a skin of brown. And you are exquiz this is black lives matter section. Almost done. You hiding there behind your drapery across the street it was you acting like zimmerman who called the cops about a disturbance in your neighborhood. You who said there were multiple juveniles who did not live in the area or, quote, have permission to be there. Which you know because you guard the white experience, and you know who belongs at the pool and who does nots. It was you who saw black man getting into a nice car and decided he was stealing it and call the police who had trailed him pulled him over and pounce five at a time on this 25yearold black body this former student of mine. This man now getting a ph. D. In engineering at northwestern driving his own damn car. It is you who call your dogs who bring their dogs to bring us down. To keep America White to buff us out of your existence. You want to stand your ground. It means arm the white. You think of giving a choice any of us would have asked to be born black in america. You think we want to be the object of your evidence fear as you pass us on votes and crowd away from us in elevators. In the wake of this zipper man verdict guest love wrote about this and describe himself as 62 300 black man and pleaded, i mean, what can i do i have to be somewhere on earth, correct . Correct. Sometimes i wonder where is god in all of this . But maybe god did give us the choice. Maybe he gathered a group of souls and scdz asked for have thes now who wants to go down there and inhabit a black or brown body maybe he said that. Maybe he said, who wants to take that on. Who wants to live a life in america where you may be treated like the scum of the earth. Who will walk among white people and be their opportunity to learn compassion and the bravest souls look around at each other and raise their hands. Thank you. [applause] thank you, thank you. Thank you very much you guys i appreciate it. Im going to take your questions, comments what i want i should have said upfront is we call this a posed poetry memoir where they expand or contract to fit the intention i have the picture im trying to paint with the words. So if you buy the book and i hope you will youll see things that you might think did she depend that theres white space on some pages big white margin and places where the rules of syntax are ignored and if you wonder yes she extended it and every piece of it. All right let me take your can i grab water thank you so much, appreciate it, chris. Yes. Because were being taped yeah were going to give you a microphone. [inaudible conversations] so that instangtly made me think of the spaces with the ones in chapters who are you writing with with influences . Thank you for that. Well one of the first things ill say is i didnt have a black mother but i found a literary black mother in Lucille Clifton an africanamerican woman i read her collection good woman. Round about 2005, 2007, and i found in her words a mirror to myself and my soul and my life she writes about blackness and womanhood and femaleness and i thought to myself as Lucille Clifton is possible, and words are possible maybe i am possible. Ive been drawn to claudia ranking post poetry a citizen was influential at form. I love her she chose os poetry and fiction shes got a new book actually origin of others which is a nonfiction account of utterness in america. Lots and lots of people but seal clifton is one of try to pay homage ever step i get. A two part question of my way also did the v you talked about follow a chronological past and then number two did you see another v o occurring as you continue your life along this gownmy . Journey. Hoping no more vs yes its definitely a chronological path except for section one it begins like this. Which is sort of a summary more of lea rhetorical summary before i plunge into account of life from young childhood on. Yeah. One more thing in terms of another v im 49 i came to live out loud and feel like i finally can. Im not longer trying to be what orr people dont fear loathe or disregard ive decided i can just be myself. Regardless and that has brought me tremendous peace, and joy and so there will no doubt be challenges over this life. But i think that challenges around race and others in america are challenges ive well examined and im really clear now on that and me. And so if another v comes perhaps it wont be about race. Do you think that these problems that are being faced by black youth make give you guys background that make use guys stronger and better people in some way sh . What a lovely question better people no. Not better people like to say were not black supremacists. [laughter] when we say i know thats not what you meant but inform form that larger thing of black lives matter an what were trying to say is cant black lives matter too . We give the talk to our kids you saw maybe you heard emotion in my voice as i address my son an 18yearold, and the challenge is to teach our our sons and daughters to be smart, safe, out there so theyll come home to us. The challenges to do that while simultaneously helping them grow in selfesteem to feeled good about themselves how you tell someone that terrible things might happen in the world because of the color of their skin which in some minds is associated with bad, criminal, thug et cetera how do you teach them that and teach them to love themselves we all should love ourself os. You know it is hard to love anybody else and find love if you cant love yourself. So theres this dual task of teaching both of those things. I think theres strength, obviously, strength that comes from struggle and from suffering. Many, many, many people across every possible identity can experience suffering you think about refugees. To this country who are stronger vastly stronger than some of us will ever be because what they have to go through to simply survive theres something about surviving that can can make a person a lot stronger, of course, with surviving great trauma can also do the opposite and really break a person. So in aggregate who knows but i am grateful to be black. Im grateful to have learned what i have about my people and our time here in the country. And i have a pride in that. That i try to pass on to my own kids. I mention i think that pride helps give us a rutter or core of strength when the wins of rhetoric and worse will seek to knock us over. I mentioned my great, great, great grandmother Sylvia JoshuaEvelyn George my dad, me, i dedicate the book to her she made me a real american and not even considered a human when she lived in charleston. But of course she was. And she made me a real american so pride that i have in that i think does strengthen me its a beautiful question. Thank you. Weve got one over here and someone with over here you might have to come closer to be seen by the microphone person. Angela one of your colleagues here next okay. Julie im basically i have to thank you. I was at stanford with with you american study major ashley we were in oxford together and what i want to say is that back then, you know, im this is my mom. Im from dallas from a very white part of dallas. And i was an american studies major at stanford, and what i remember is just the joy of discovering so many other people based on what we were reading at time i kind of said i majored in black women writers of the south because it was a huge discovery of Human Experience for me. But at that time i remember you just being a joyful student so it makes me sad to think you sat that time because you were a wonderful person to be around. And im a parent were parents now and we have a son who is applying to stan ford but i want him to meet you but how to raise an adult applying to cheap schools too and i feel like i feel common balance after having read that book i feel like im a better person because there are a lot of places to get a good experience besides that wonderful place. And my last thank you is for writing this book. I have a book club ill make them read it. Im happy for you that youre sharing this experience with us now. Because to be as incredibly successful as you have been in your entire career, youre exposing your truth the fact that it has been a struggle and we know we need these kinds of stories moving forward for our struggle as a country. Thank you ashley highs to see you, and i want to say had this. Youve given me an a opportunity to acknowledge my privilege. I got light skin thats a privilege in krnghts ive been educated thats a privilege upper middleclass thats a privilege, and i got tons of privilege what this book is about what it has also been like to be africanamerican and birational, in this body and this time. The things we call microaggression people wave them off its not a big deal stop being a victim all of that, and i think this book is a compilation of some of the aggression ive experienced because im trying to help people see that they can contort and distort a soul in a spirit over time that you know we may emerge stronger but we we often first at least suffer from this tremendous selfloathing label part of the book selfloathing regardless of this trappings of success regardless of what my resume said i loathed myself as many black people do and were people and anyone who is made to feel like another a country so obsessed who belongs and who doesnt. You know this other despite you know these tremendous opportunities ive been given. Is is i think eye opening for people who dont know they think of to have come to stanford and made it and that life is at cement it brings me to Colin Kaepernick 49er live in the bay area. You know people say he should just stand up and play hes a millionaire and a i think his point is first of all his point is, of course, about Police Brutality towards black americans. And i think his point is that you know even when i am highly accomplished highly successful im not immune from any of this. You know when you walk down street and somebody decides to harm you based on skin they dont know you have a white mother or stan fords or o this much money in the book racism is a hatred that applies, you know, to skin color. Its really the no, you know, youre rising in class stature did you doesne you immune from it at all, in fact, you move into circumstance circles where people will say most awful thing i detail from a power in heart of Silicon Valley my neighborhood a woman comes and you know, so theres that. Yes i thought you were doing Something Else but now listening to my talk. Hopefully i dont get into trouble. You look like my son thank you so much for your words. But more than that, even though youre describing your life in like really intimate detail its my life, and my mother and fathers lives, and you know, it goes, its very deeply felt. I guess my question is, youre someone who has done a lot of works accomplished a lot, and especially the work of, you know, coming u out of that sense of selfloathing and like , obviously, existing as a black american an whiteness and struggle against blackness, and now that you have kind of, you know, come out of that struggle against that struggle of selfloathing, what how do you set challenges for yourself and how do you kind of look forward so that your life is not just predicated upon some sort of struggle internally or o externally but more of a series of goals . That is a lot in that question. Thank you. [laughter] im interested in humans. Im interested in all of us getting chance to make our way. Im a lawyer turned University Dean turned writer my first book how to raise an adult is about harm of helicopter parenting im sure that doesnt happen here in austin at all and i didnt write a book because i care about parenting but because i care about someone is getting finger pointed at her. Are those your parents taylor . Okay. We have got that all on tv. All right. [laughter] i wrote that book because i care about the young people who are overparented and what that robs them of agency and i have written this book because racism and otherring robs a human of agency. So thats what i care about when you ask me whats your passion you know my passion in life is helping humans on their path and find agency so they can march forward regardless. So i guess my goals are around continuing to try to be useful in lives of other humans to apply to lessons ive learned. So that maybe someone elses past can be slightly easier by the sharing of the lesson that i have learned. I will say this that i alluded to it in one section once i finally came to materials of the selfloathing, i thought i was only person who felt that way. I was so ashamed to have been ashamed of my black ancestry that my family spoke it out loud and it did, it just felt like everything in me began to flow and loosen. And i call to stanford next day where i worked and i say in the book it was, you know, im seeing black people and smiling and theyre smiling back it was like every black person on stanford campus saying smile at julie today. [laughter] which is, of course, not what happened. I was able to love this self and so therefore ixd look at my Black Brothers and sisters and love them. And then to discover so many of us as i began to open up so many of us struggle with feelings that this is the poisonous drip of racism on to souls and spirits that it actually makes us loathe ourselves to be able to share that feeling and and acknowledge it. It was strengthening, and i have found this tremendous embrace within blackness even as a lightskinned person with this kind of hair and this kind of speech. You know when i was younger i didnt think that was black. Biracial made more sense to me but i finally was able to locate a selfof love to love within blackness and black community has grown much more aware and mogging and accepting of the differences among us in years that ive been alive. And so so my work continues to be around not just is humans but helping but interested in black and stories being told. The former mayor said like it or not, this is ellis island for more than one of two african slaves and their descendents. It is not like ellis and, they were not coming here voluntarily. This is the first land that the Building Museum and i think is fabulous and im interested in things like that. And just want our story and the truth being told becoming part of the American American narrative has been dominated by white voices for over 200 years. Over 300 years and i am interested in everyones story being told. I hope to help others tell their story. My name is antonio. Thank you for coming. Like you, i have stanford and harvard degrees. I also went to west point for undergrad. I ran a private school here and i really appreciate your first book. That is how i found out about you. My other passion is Police Brutality and i got into that. And anti Police Brutality . Antipolice, antiprison, antiPolice Brutality. An identity that not on purpose. I had a run in with a cop and had a really bad experience. That open my eyes to a lot of issues that black lives matter has and other people have been pushing for generations quite frankly. But the thing that happened after i had my runins with the police, i found that my west point classmates turned against me. Publicly. And my stanford classmates by and large, went quiet. Distance themselves from me. Through this experience, as much as i love stanford, inasmuch as i am still wearing his stanford shirt, i have come to be quite disappointed in institutions. Higher education institutions in particular. And given your position also as former dean, i love stanford. And in a lot of ways, i see that our universities are not really centers for pushing society forward. They are protectors in a lot of ways of the status quo. And i have extreme disappointment that people with so much privilege are the ones who are the least willing to speak out sometimes. This is not really an easy question for you. I just want to get your thoughts on that and feel free to expand upon that in any way that you would like. I would appreciate that. Thank you for sharing your experience with this crowd. Im sorry that you went through that. The encounter with the police and then the rejection of communities that matter to you. And that so matters to you. I think fundamentally, each one of us has to be right with ourselves and too much in the direction that we know to be the right one for us regardless of what others think. But it is nice not to be lonely. It is important to us also to be in community with people who will love and respect us for who we are. We are all seeking that. Sometimes it is our family and sometimes it is not our family. Sometimes it is our chosen family. A community that there was simply no we can feel safe and heard, believed, supported. I am sorry that west point or certain people at west point and stanford have not been there for you. And i hope that you will continue to express yourself and that you will find community with people who can hear you and believe you. In support you. I left stanford five years ago to try and write a book on helicopter parenting. And i have been gone for five years. I was in an important role. I cherished the role. The zimmerman verdict came in 2013 and i remember experiencing such rage. For many of us, particularly those uppermiddleclass that that will pass without status, we think we have rented a place where we have our children a sifter child. Trayvon martins murder shatter that illusion. We all expected the verdict to be different. Went out on facebook and begin to pour my rage out on facebook. I remember when my former students wrote and said dean, dean julie, thank you for saying that. Youre speaking for a lot of us. And i said thanks. This is just chewing up. Do you think i could have said any of this as dean julie . Im saying that there are tremendous limitations on work for big institutions. Where we are not there to speak our minds, we are there to be representatives of a place. And so i found tremendous freedom in detaching from institutions. The ability is in and of itself a privilege to walk away and i recognize that. I think our universities are really struggling right now. I think about what flintstone is doing around acknowledging that it had to sell close to 200 slaves to keep afloat . Financially. That they have acknowledged and have been making reparations to the descendents of the slaves. It is nice to see people and places coming which was so successful because the workers werent being paid. Of course money was made. Humans were enslaved. I watch institutions started to come to grips with that a little bit more than before. I want universities struggle also with wednesdays free speech, what does it mean today to contend with difficult issues around which there are many opinions. I am a lawyer. I believe in the First Amendment in the importance of capturing with my speech rather than shutting speech down. I see people twisting and turning not knowing what to do with this concept. I believe in safe spaces and trigger warnings. Because i like the nurse that we might give a heads up to somebody that some really nasty stuff is about to be said. So you can equip yourself and strengthen that router. Saying i am ready for a period a safe space is a place in a campus where you can go and not be subjected to your dorm, hateful speech. But i also believe the university campus, classrooms and labs and public spaces are the only spaces we can count on for the exchange of ideas. We have to count on our universities to continue to support that. Im all over the place responded to your question but i think, i guess institutions have a lot to contend with the das and i think theyre struggling time as we are as a nation. With all of this. And universities are, they are not corporations but big nonprofits and the interest and donors and all of that and they are self interest, it often does not align with the needs or the rights or beliefs of any single student. Yes, one more. Hi. I went to school with you. I thought i recognized you lived, megan maxwell. Yes megan and i were in calculus together. I got a c. I think she did better than me she has lots of cousins. I am interested in we have multiethnic child and i also grew up, my father is caucasian. I am curious to know how come i think because my experience with having an asian mother and a white father, as a child, it kind of, it did not affect me until 2020. But as an adult, i have a different experience with having a white parent. And so i am wondering what your experience was with a white mother versus a white dad and how that influenced your experience with race and if that was made different than i dont know, i guess, since i grew up with both an asian mother and a white father, i feel like i can relate to some of the things that my asian friends with two asian parents went through in america versus, and it was a little bit different for me because i had a white father. So it is like i had a little bit of the White Privilege but it was different because it was a male White Privilege that i was brought up with. So i am curious about that. This book is a journey from you know around a lot of topics. Including my relationship with my white mother. I adore. It was really transgressive when they fell in love and chose to be married. Their marriage was illegal in 17 states. They got married in west africa but in 17 states he was illegal here then was born the year of loving. My journey around being a black or biracial kid with a white mother has been quite a struggle. And ultimately come to terms with my mother. The father has been gone for 22 years. He died in 1995. So i could not say any of this to him then because i did not have that consciousness around any of this until the last decade or the last five or six years really. I am now in this rageful pleased with my mother about the choices both of them made to raise me in a white town. You know my father was assistant Surgeon General of the United States under jimmy carter. He had reached a position of prominence in the chose to raise me in places where they had the bigger house and the lawn. And i never knew how to say today, who said to me, white boys will be a fence but they will never date you. He told me that iN High School. And i couldnt find a wherewithal to say to this magnificent man. That why did you choose to move me here . Does analysis matter . Dont i deserve to be loved . What are you saying . My mother has borne the brunt of this. Unfortunately or fortunately, that is the way it is. Ive struggled with, i have a white jewish husband and i have two kids and my son resembles me more and my daughter resembles him more and im trying to raise my kids in a 21stcentury america and the era of black lives was real connection to their ancestry. Their black ancestry and the Eastern European jewish ancestry and the white coalminer ancestry. Im trying to help my children have a more rich, multidimensional experience with ethnicity and race and self in place. That was never offered to me as a child. I was sort of, i have the task of trying to figure out what i was. In times when i was just different from everybody. I think if you get this and read this, youll find yourself nodding vigorously in places. In the beginning wanted to generalize my experiences of people can relate and my editor said no, it is the opposite. You have to be very specific in your strength telling because it is the specificity that will help people relate. When my joys in writing this book is not only are black folks in biracial folks saying that you know i had that experience or what have you. But other people of color andi think people can find residence in this book. I do not know what it is like to be you or what it is like now. But i am excited that we as a community of mixed people on a more Critical Mass than ever in our stories are increasingly part of the american narrative. [inaudible question] i think this, you let me know. Get this book. You let me know if i have made some headway toward that goal. Let me end with this. I appreciate that youre here and give me the time. Often times people say what can we do . And you know when i speak at a bookstore and speaking to the choir. Nobody dragged you to listen to someone talk about race. Theres something in you that wanted to be here. I want to talk about how ally ship ally ship. To me it is radical compassion. We all have the capacity for compassion and love. And i think that ally ship is taking the love and doing something with it. It is saying when a child says, this happened at school. This was said. They did this to my locker. Whatever. It is listening to the kid. Not just loving the heck out of the kid but listening to him or her. Asking questions and that the questions as they are you sure it happened that way . Dont you want to give them the benefit of the doubt . Did it really happen . Listen and leave this child does not have a voice in america who is told that their experiences either did not have an urgent matter very much. Based on what you can say i am listening to you and i believe you. And with whichever privilege you have based on whatever identities you inhabit use that to flank. Sometimes it is just the privilege of age. We are a little older, a bit more influence. Sometimes it is race, sometimes it is class. Whatever. Use the privilege to flank that person so when they go out into the world saying this is my reality, this is happening, youre there to say i believe them and i believe her. And it is not right and im going to stand up for this person. That to me is radical compassion. We all deserve it. Every human deserves that radical compassion. And i think we all have the capacity to be that person in the lives of others. I think we are done. [applause] thank you if you like to get a bug, they are downstairs. We would love that. I would love that and i would be happy to sign it for you if you do get one. The holidays are coming up so you might get one for a friend people that love reading about race. All right, thank you [inaudible conversations] booktv is on twitter and facebook. We want to hear from you. Keep us. Twitter. Com booktv. Post a comment on her facebook page, facebook. Com booktv. [music]