All right. Good morning, everybody. We are going to start you off with their rap called i love books. Do we have any book levers in the audience . I need to hear you. We have the book the audience . I like, going to ask you to join us with the refrain, i love books like, i love books like, i love books like, i love books like kids love ginny. I love books like candy. I love books like one loves the copy i love books like hip love stop. I love books like because we have writers in the house, i inviting you to offer us the verse about why you love books are okay . Every go. I love books like, i love books like, i love books like i love books like dollars of bills. I love books like collars of the plume. I love books like night of the loon. I love books like, i love books like i love books like, i love books like kids love candy. I love books like pieces of candy. I love books like corn love thats a cop. I love like hips love the hot. I love books like, i love books like, i love books like i love books like, i love books like i love books like. This is why i staff. Scat i love books like, i love books like, i love books like, i love books like. We need some of the audience to come up. I love books like, i love books like, i love books like, i love books like kids love candy. I love books like, pieces of candy. I love kids like, corn love hip hop. Kids love to hop. I love books like, i love books like, i love books like flowers love the moon the night loves the moon, and the hills, dollars of bills. I love books like, i love books like, i love books like. I love books like, i love books like the sun likes the deed. When he looks i dont know whats up. [laughing] one more brave writer. We have alan king in the house. I love books like. I love books like, i love books like, i love books like i love books like go ahead. I love books like, hip loves the hop i love to drive i love books like, jesus loves the cross. I love books like, i love books like, i love books like i love books like the sun loves to shine. Round of applause. [applause] thats how the masters of do it. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Welcome to the Second Annual black authors Breakfast Party and African American readin. This is the 30th anniversary of African American readin which is an international event. I am Carolyn Brewer, the founder of this event and im grateful to be here are hosts, signal financial credit union. Lets give them a round of applause. [applause] so were going to ask signal to come up and give you a nice warm welcome, and they can do a little rap if they want to. Thank you, carolyn. I just my coworkers. Thats why were Holding Holding hands here. Also happy black History Month. An exciting time and were happy to tap our second i guess now annual book read here. We love to open up our branch as a venue for events like this which is why we designed the speaker if he knows the artwork on the wall, a partner with the art school and we do art shows the first thursday evening every month and would leave artists work up the entire month. We got a lot going on here. It doesnt look like a traditional financial institution. That at all. Im markette sheppard, Vice President of Marketing Digital npr here. Im also a Childrens Book author. Hold them up a command. Im a creative just like all of you here, and would like to introduce yourself. Was built, senior Vice President as the member expense team some responsible for the branches so easy going to branch or call our call center, thats what it do that i love what it did i want to ask the rest of the signal team to come to the front, show how much we really support [applause] would you mind stepping speeders we just want to bring anyone who works at signal. If youre created and looking for for a new banking institution, signal is diverse. We are family. We welcome people. People come into the branches. They know all of us by name, and you have a home here. If youre looking for anything regarding Financial Empowerment, wealth building or just a place we feel like youre going to be heard, signal is really the place to be. Just come up and talk to anyone of these people and we will be happy to talk to you more about how we can help enable your Financial Empowerment on your creative journey, if you are an author. [applause] okay. Thank thank you so much. Another round of applause the signal financial, our host today. [applause] awesome. We hope you will follow signal Financial Federal Credit Union on twitter, on linked in and also on facebook, as well as the authors youre going to be hearing from today. So get on Carolyn Brewer and a to tell you a little bit about why we are here. So we are here because of a woman named jerry cop scott, a professor of english and more than 30 30 years ago as a membf the black caucus of the National Council of teachers of english, it became clear to her that she wasnt seeing a lot of black authors represented in the places that she visited and universities that she was aware of and she understood that was important for us to see black authors, to see them come , to o know their stories, to connect with them, to bond with them because thats what happens when you read and authors work or year and authors song. You start to connect with them and bond with them and you get to experience life from their perspective. Because africanamericans are essential to what the estate of america is today, she knew that it was essential to find a way for us to see more authors, for us to hear more africanamerican authors pick so she found the African American readin. It was initially a oneday event and people from all communities from the very beginning were invited to host readings and gettogethers featuring the works of black authors. She invited school to participate, churches, community organizations, and even from the very beginning prisons participated in having reagans where people gathered around to hear the works of African American authors read. And today 30 years later more than 6. People all around the world have celebrate the African American readin and to celebrate it in institutions as varied as this one that would participate in today. One of the things dr. Scott also wanted was for local authors to be known and so thats why this event is happening because theres just a tremendous amount of talent in washington, d. C. As you guys are all aware and certainly threat the metropolitan area. So we are here because we want to celebrate those people who are poets, who are historians, who are fiction writers, who are Childrens Book authors, who are newspaper journalists so with lots of exciting writers or here today to share the works with you. So i hope youll sit back, relax and just open your minds to a wonderful literature journey this morning. So another round of applause for signal financial being our host. [applause] and recorded by our first author to come up. A good morning. I am here with a book that grew out of my story experience. Im a secret and storyteller, and some 25 euros ago or so i was in a plate in my native new york called christmas comes to harlem. And the director needed a black night before christmas, and i said im a researcher, ill find one. Couldnt find one. It may still be there but i couldnt find it. So when i came back i said, dont worry, ill write one. He said oh, good. Well, i did and they used a form of it, but this is what i wrote at the beginning and want to tell you that people are big on saying that africanamerican, lack english vernacular, its all about style. Theres nothing about substance. I beg to differ. Our language not only bears our history, it also bears our intellectuality, our ability, our range. So this is a black night before christmas, christmas was just breakin. We were studying the crib and business which is breaking everything was great. Nothing was shaking. My napster is operated come i sit to get back a bit already to cut us some slack. Went out on the street some fool start to fuss so i went to check out who was raising the dust. The light from the lamps on the street filled with ice really sparkled and shine so the city looked nice. When i copied old eyes playing tricks on me. I looked and i blinked. I said, no, cant be. Eight dogs as big as reindeer were pulling you can laugh about at was pulling a sled with the big bang incited crest mostly in red. He talked to each one, the each other name which is good because to me they all look the same. Sharon amity, e, move, keisha, then zell and maurice. I watched like a zombie while also a debtor i thought for a minute old nick was intent and i said girl, stop jiving. Start making some sense. Thats just an old man tried to climb your back fence. He should have known better. Old man should be wiser. Please act your age and not your shoe size, why you try coming in are like that . We all decent people. Anyway, you too fat. He picked up his face thinking this file. Look like someone i had not seen for a while picky said to him cool it, old woman, i came by to say Merry Christmas to you all here and if you cant act right and your job keep going its your sister im calling. And then everything started to fall into place. And then that voice started to match that face. Its been 40 years, i think thats right, i last saw this sucker on Christmas Eve night. He yelled, hey, get up and get rocking. Ive got a Little Something for your christmas stocking. My sisters face was us that he asleep. She put her eyes on that lowlife creep who lead to some years ago and hurt us in ways she would never show. But she started to glow with his deep inner light that went out when he left on that Christmas Eve night. So if you come back, i guess its okay. Yeah, Merry Christmas baby, im going to sleep all day. The end. [applause] good morning, everybody. Wow, that was awesome. They gave me psycho sports analogies and i dont know why number two is really important. [laughing] and is going to try to embrace all of that advice as every to you from my novel, melting the blues. In many ways its about the main character is about a man relationship to his family, and his community as he tries to follow his dream of becoming a big bluesman in chicago, but right now hes an arkansas and hes on his porch and hes playing his guitar, and has a conversation with his son. I custis grabbed his guitar, let out a huge aside and commenced to humming the blues. It wasnt too long after that when his piece was interrupted. This time by his youngest son. Charles have been listening from his bed but was drawn towards the music i custis was making outside, i was making its way inside. Those sounds served something deep in and that he didnt understand that whatever it was, to make them want to get right up under it. Right up under the source to feel the vibrations as close as is daddy would allow. I custis didnt really mind having an audience. He kept on strumming his guitar and humming until he came to a stopping point. Charles asked him, what is it that your humming about, daddy . I home the blues, son. What . The blues. The blues is what concerns you real deep. What you mean, concerns you . What bothers you. What you aint got to keep you from getting what you want. Could be a piece of change, some liquor, a goodlooking woman, or some new threads. Events on the person, i reckon. Whats on your mind is between you and your guitar pick your guitar lessons why youre playing and it talks back to you. You. Most times its trying to tell you what you do got, and depending on your mood, yall might argue, fuss and fight the sometimes you all see eye to eye and thats a whole nother two together. No matter which way you all thick as these, but you see, all this is beyond your comprehension. Right now, but keep on living. Like your mama said, you understand it better byandby. Yeah, keep on living here augustus raised his guitar and shook it in the inner feeling real proud about how we just put his words together, like a smart talking preacher man or a bigcity lawyer. Daddy, what you aint got . What do you and your guitar talk about . Boy, did night just tell you thats between me and my guitar . You got to listen to the music and try to figure it out if it is for you to figure. Can you teach me how to play . Before its all over, i reckon i can, but right now you aint got no blues. Just my knee and jamal and get a lesson. Thats all you got to worry about. Charles thought to himself, he sure enough did know about the blues. His brother was always the blues. Sometimes his mama was the blues everybody picking on his little sister calling her slow and him having to fight all the time was the blues here not being smart like i was the blues. Want some sweet potato pie and mama sadie either less piece was the blues. Wanting to go far, far away from china berry was the blues. Having music incited that one to let out but didnt know how was the blues. He promised himself that he would play music wednesday just like his daddy, by then he figured he would have 20 of lose stored up. I guessed his return to his guitar and played on. Charles closed his eyes and take it all in. And the sun after feeling unwanted all day long finally switched places with the moon and saying his own blues. [applause] good morning, everyone. So im alan king, the author of drift and pointblank, but im going to be reading a poem from a forthcoming book, crooked smiling light, working title. Gluttony. Combing the bargain bin, a woman who is not your wife brushes besides you asking if this cd youre holding is any good. She is close enough for you to smell her gender body wash. The angle she gives you in her leather bomber jacket, the one unzipped showing a white tee retracing her athletic stomach and arms. The jacket with its caller flared makes her a bright blossom booming its honeydew senator thune a longer neckline. In your fathers of boys from two decades before warned you about gorging on everything you say. You were 16 the first time he told you when your hunger hovered like that summer at myrtle beach. Sister strutting the boardwalk we need a honey barbecue son whose sweet light weight each of them a long stretch of marinade, achromatic skill of flavors among which your tongue was burning to play. And isnt temptation always lurking, eager to hold our common sense hostage . You tell the flower woman you are married after she points to a flyer for a show and says yall should go. When she asks are you happy . You remember a brother once asking how you could love one woman when the world is a buffet . The possibility of pleasure laid out like jumbo crabcakes, lasagna rolls and buffalo wings. Whats gluttony is not a symptom of our own hunger consuming us . Was it jackie selling his substance for a handful of beings . You remember the story of a stock that almost made him a hungry giants grub. Use children the pastor preaching about glutton wearing the rags of drowsiness, which is how your wife found you, stumbling to the days. Your life before her was a strenuous violin, a dark garden of wilted sunflowers, i camper trailer resting against a molded brick wall picture once a city of power lines, boarded up clock towers, joke cars, blazing drum barrel fires. What you saw in you, only her heart knows. Just like it new you would leave the temptress back at the listening booth watching the automatic doors close behind you at 16. Usada all there was to living with filling your appetite. Too young to know love is the everyday meal, that the lack of it kills quicker than the absence of food. Thank you. [applause] good morning, everyone. My name is natalie hopkinson. The author of gogo live, the musical life and death of a chocolate city. Coco has been in the news because this movement from back in the spring and i and an activist posted a petition they get 80,000 signatures to bring the return of the music outdoor music on the Street Corner in washington, d. C. And what was amazing about the 80,000 signatures, they came from 94 Different Countries all around the world, every state in the union, and places that it wasnt really, i didnt really know they were checking for gogo which is a very local music form but the chapter that i will read from a book which came out several years ago, and if so excited that people are still interested in is called call and response to im just talking about sort of just the Global Dimensions of gogo is an art artform. Its local but its not local. Open with a quote from of a talker and familiar faces and is also the adhesive evolution from the past to the present, thats where this whole whole thing comes from, africa. Drums was used to talk from tribe to tribe, call and response and that whole thing. So thats basically the foundation of gogo. On a visit to west africa, i saw a lot of rhythmic congas and drums, a lot of call and response. They just dont call it gogo. It is one of those hot, sticky summer days in washington when i, my mother mi6 your old daughter and my nine year old preteen son called maverick it out to the caribbean parade and festival on Georgia Avenue. He waits a red green and yellow flight from apparent native guyana while maverick sports abrasive with a tiny green black and yellow flag for my husbands parents native jamaica. My son sulks as we make our way down to the football field set up with food vendors and concert stages. He wanted to stay at home and it is hellishly hot come when i try to hold his hand to avoid being separated in the crowd, he pulls away from me. Early onset teenager. I echo it is as across Georgia Avenue near Howard University campus, past the man of about 50 in a diaper hoisting a big one and an oxygen tank in another. We walked past the mud splattered masquerade cancer visiting sierra leone and the once represented haiti. Past the glittery peacock costumes and rows and rows of dancers. We take seats before the mobile stage on Benjamin BannekerAcademic High School field which is filled with people waving umbrellas and colorful flags. A jamaican mc and white tank top and a tshirt that under said cases the stage. I want one lady from jamaica, another one from trinidad, another craving country. I want them to come up on the stage real quick real . Real quick, real quick. About a dozen women quickly scale the stage and the cherry harmony types out of the loudspeakers as they call out the countries or the cities as they step right up. Kingston, trinidad, panama, guyana, puerto rico, washington, d. C. , belize. One by one the women take turns on center stage. The rumbling begins in their thighs and shoulders and moves like precipitous earthquake. Were in jet out sending ripples of cellulite in the motion. One leg up, headstand, skinny hips shake on a spin cycle, but inflation jiggles at the speed of popping corn. My 61yearold mother exchanges knowing looks with a woman sitting next to her who was about the same age. Thats my grandson over there, she tells the woman, pointing towards maverick. His jaw dropped as a woman drops into pushup position and then grinds her hips against the stage. The women both sides. You he will be all right, the wn says and west indian lilt. Hell be all right, my mom agrees. As will be our seats to buy some food, my son clasps his hand on my shoulder, a peace offering. Im they came, he said. I bet he was. When we get home maven reports her first trip to d. C. Carnival to our neighbor, a white get emergency room doctor in his 30s. There was butt shaking. He said that thats the best kind. The sound track could happen any night at any gogo washings. You would find the same frantic movement, the same sweaty exuberance, the same overtly sexual sexuality commanded by male gaze pick the same loud sound systems that grind melodies into gravel and rhythm, lots of rhythm. When people ask me about gogo and how i i could spend ten ye, not 20 years, speaking of writing that as a journalist and the best i can do is shrug. Its a caribbean thing. Along with the church, the caribbean greatly influenced the gogo creator chuck brown, but the connection is way more than a state might get when i heard my first live gogo broadcast on the right of my freshman year i would university in 1994, my ears perked up in a similar the did when i first heard hiphop emcees show stealing guest spot on the shocker cant i feel for you at my canadian elementary school. When i first experienced gogo live my body begin moving unconsciously just like it did on the childhood visit to guyana when i first heard the music with its jump up rhythm. What was that music . Ill stop there. Thank you. [applause] wow, some great readings here. I am going to switch, flip the switch a little bit, flip the script and go to Childrens Books. Again im markette sheppard, author of what is late. Im so of the story because i voted just after having my son becomes working as a Television Host in richmond, had my son, and stayed home for a year. What i realized in that time is that while i wasnt working for an organization, i was still interested in storytelling and i discovered that my skills are writing stories for broadcast to be transferred to writing stories for the new passion in my life, which was my child and children all around the world. This story started out as a handwritten note and a notebook, and then i said, more children need to get this. Because as i looked through board books like the one i have which is a baby book, i noticed there were not children who looked like me when i was a kid. There were not children who look like my son, and the vast madrid of Childrens Books that use on bookshelves. And i thought, well, you know, just like tyler perry said, dont ask for a seat at the table. Build your own table. So i started writing. I got connected a wonderful Childrens Book author turned publisher, and she embraced me, this was the first title on her new Childrens Book in print. Im proud to say that it reached number one bestseller in the sensation category and category before it was even released. And to me that was a testament to parents all around the country wanting to see themselves and their children in the stories that were being told from the very, very beginning. And so without further ado, i present to you what is light . What is light . . Light can be many things such as the brightness our son brings. The twinkle of a faraway star. The buzzing of a firefly captured in a jar. And then that feeling when you let it go, that spark in your eyes is like a glow. The bright green leaf floating in the wind. The smile on your face when you see a friend. Oh, like can be so many things. A mothers love, a turtledove, a colorful butterfly flapping its wings. What is the light that can be seen around you . It can be found in everything you do. And especially inside of you. The end. [applause] and i just want to add, this book is so special to me. Its because its written by an africanamerican woman and mother, published by an africanamerican woman and mother. Illustrations by an africanamerican woman and mother. I dont know too many Childrens Books that have that trifecta going on and if i do say my second Childrens Book also inspired by my son, my rainy day rocketship is coming out in may and then in the middle of writing another adventure story about a little boy who gets bored one day and decides to become a ninja. Cliffhanger. [applause] good morning. My name is mark one candidate and im the author and director of the callaloo kids series marjuan kennedy. How many folks you have ever had callaloo before or have heard of it . Okay. So quite a few people. Callaloo is a yummy spinach us s due and is mostly eaten in the caribbean comes from west africa. And this story, these stories have really been away for me to express my expense going up as a first generation trinidad american. And to really share the memories and the folklore and the language that is passed down through our food culture. So callaloo actually started ass a theatrical play that i wrote about eight years ago, and has transformed into a book series, into a web series, and animation. We have been hundreds of schools and theaters, and im so proud of this work because its really given a chance for young people, children, to get excited about their history and want to learn more about the black diaspora and our linkages. So this entire series is totally independent, has been produced by local black latino, creative illustrator, directors, producers, actors. And the first book im going to share with you guys is actually in the series, callaloo a jazz folktale that celebrates my heritage of trinidad and tobago, and went to like other books. Our second book celebrates puerto rican folklore, and our third book celebrates our most recent book, some going to start with the callaloo a jazz folktale. On one hot new york city summer day, winston a couple of his favorite dish, callaloo. His eyes were always bigger than his tummy, but there was just something magical about his aunts callaloo, for it was a family recipe passed down from his grandmother to his aunt. Winston what you got the belly of a goat . You ate all the callaloo. Go down to the shop on flatbush avenue and pick me up some more dashing bush. He looked to his left, to his right and to his back. We are did that voice come from . He shrugged, then hopped on the train and headed to the shop. Sitting patiently, winston gazed out the subway window. Where did all the familiar city buildings disappeared to . For he was no longer in new york city but now on the quaint caribbean island of tobago. Winston loved tobago. He often daydreamed about bathing in the Crystal Clear water, devouring morning doubles and listening to his grandmothers stories. He loved tobago even more than ics andcallaloo. He could hear his grandmother calling him. Winston, said grandmother. The sun is almost set. Go down to the river and pick me 2 crabs. Mean needed for me callaloo. Winston thought wow, look at all these crabs. Ill bring back 4 instead of 2. My grandmother will cook themall for me. When suddenly a menacing shadow appeared through the trees. Little boy, why are you stealing from my forest said papa papa lobois. Winston ran off for papa lobois under another word. They grew tonight and as winston stopped to check his breath he saw a man coveredin black paint with curly fingernails and a hairy face , for it was alagahoo who cried and i will stop right there. [applause] okay, thats a tough act to follow. My name is diana vega and i am reading part of my short story that aches and heartache is silent and it will be published in the magazine their house for their upcoming valentines day issue which is devoted and dedicated black love and will feature writing fiction, essays and all ourwork by black women. The white envelope had her name scribbled in purple ink on the front. She had not noticed it before when she had first grabbed it from atop the pile of stamped mail but now the more she stared the more she could see that he had squeezed the letter h between the c and o as if he had forgotten how to spell her name, as if he had forgotten that night that they met. He was fine, her friend had said, but she couldnt resist. They had smiled, bob respective heads to the music supplied by the dj, flirted and laughed. She had chair danced when he moon walked from one end of the bar to the other, throwing back several colorful shots so at the end of the evening encouraged by her best friend and vodka she had written her name and phone number on the teal cocktail napkin and placed in his hand. She thought he would have at least waited until she was out of the door to unfolded as she gave him her back to put on her coat and slid as gracefully as possible off the barstool she heard who sells nicole with an h . I do, the age is silent, he said, spinning back to glare at the same time. He smiled back and widened welcoming and said okay then, thats different. Im terrance with an a so i guess we. He definitely knew how to spell her name, its what made her special. Now she stood in the middle of the living room staring at the bright purple ink and an h that couldnt fit. She wasnt sure which was worse, the net he had obviously forgotten or that he had tried to correct the mistake. She shifted her focus, reached inside the envelope and counted the money for what felt like the hundredth time but in reality was probably the case. As her fingers moved she already knew that when she was done there would be 3 100 bills, 150, 320s, 410s and 15, 460 total, Child Support she supposed. Couldnt call it monthly because she hadnt gotten any money from him in over two weeks and what he finally given wouldnt even cover daycare for 2 weeks. Of course he didnt even have the decency to call first, to let her know that he was on his way because if he had she would have made sure to be home, would have made sure he saw his daughter and understood he was not a fading mail slot but was instead a real breathing, laughing, loving human being was getting bigger and hungrier with each sunrise and sunset and that his 460 was not and when she invited him inside for him icewater, told him to have a seat and then spread the bills across the table, rent, electric, daycare, close, new shoes, college fund, toys, food. Thank you. Good morning. I am lois cooper, the author of mama said and i want to talk a little bit about how that title came about because almost every day, i tell someone mama said and mama used to say and mama said this so Catherine Cooper and everyone always asks where are you in the picture . That was before i was born so thats my mom, my brother , my oldest brother, my older sister so im nervous. Id like to start by saying good morning. I would like to thank marjuan brewer and all of you who came out early to celebrate. I am lois cooper, the author ofmama said and mama said is a story of unconditional love , faith and endurance of a local cemetery in who helped to shape her family, community and the city. Catherine cooper is my mother. Shes 102 years old. She still resides. [applause] thank you. She still resides at her home at 16th street heights with her family in the home that she and her husband bought in 1962. Mama said is full of stories, scripture, impressions from family, neighbors and friends. At the end of the book there is a legacy space where readers can record their own family memories. I would like to share with you a reading about moms alzheimer and the sustenance of a loving family. I wrote this article for the patchwork news in october2016. I dont remember the exact time or date in 2008 that mom moms diagnosis of dementia, alzheimers became a reality for me. As a family we spent a lot of time trying to justify the time and symptoms, since mom was almost 90. It wasnt so much her forgetfulness the decline in her ability to cook and prepare meals which was the real signal. Mom had eight children and sometimes she would go through the list of our names for she got to the right ones. So that part was not unusual. We used to giggle about that growing up. Mom was a great vibration cooker, cooking without recipe. And she tookgreat pride in. That was the way that mom did everything. Cooking to selling to patternmaking, keeping the family healthy to creatively inventing and repairing the thso when mom started over seasoning dishes with large amounts of pepper, salt, garlic and other spices, we knew something was wrong. Once she started burning food we convinced her that the stove was broken and she could no longer useit to cook. I think that revelation dimmed the lights in her eyes a little. Accu. Good morning. My name is deborah and im a reporter at usa today. Last year i waspart of a team that did a series on 1619. That did a series on 1619, sorry. And that series published last year and several other stories published in our black history tab last week. I was part of several of the stories and one of the stories chronicling the journey of a woman named wanda tucker back to angola and she believed that the first descendents of the first africans that arrived in the english colonies so we went back with her. Another story that we did and i worked on in particular was tracing my Family History and trying to use my journey as a way to help africanamericans and others look at how they might do that as well. There was one little thing that made that story extra interesting is that my families name, my grandmothers families name was tucker which is also what wandas name was so its the first of the series. This is in wanda. Wanda tucker stepped off the plane to a sky as great as the tarmac. She inhaled down through a new bag with a straw handle and stepbystep, made her way down the metal stairs. It had been 40 hours sinceshe left virginia before her 61 years and caught up to her. The thing about flying over that wide dark water and brought home the reality of what she had come here to do. The plane hissed and the faces around her were brown like hers but their words were scrambled sound. She boarded the shuttle bus and plopped on the seat, nervously tapping her knee with her left hand. At first she brushed away the tears, then ignore them it was hard , so hard to breathe. Wanda and her family believed they were descended from the first africans brought to the english colonies. They had not proved it but they didnt doubt it. Now here she was in the place those ancestors had called home, dusty, mysterious angola. She would walk walk the road and walked by the rivers they fish under stars that guided them. She would current front as courageously as she could the reality of what happened to them and those left behind. Wanda believed her ancestors had called her here but sometimes she found it hard to listen. And she didnt hear them now. She had come so far and felt so alone. She said aloud could somebody give me a hug . And i cowrote that story with kelly french. Later on there was another story as i mentioned about tracing my history and as part of that we did a dna test, my family and wanda and we waited. This is the end of that story. We waited for weeks for dna results from african ancestry. Com would tell whether my family was related to wandas. Testing required a mail from each line, my cousin sonny and wandas brother vincent agreed to take the test. The call came in last week while i waited for a session at the black genealogy conference. It is a match, director of data analyticstold me. I didnt react. I had to be sure jones understood what i was asking and i understood exactly what she was saying. I repeated the question. Read back her response. Somewhere along the line she said Edward Vincent share a male relative. We might never know that connection because the results cover 500 to 2000 years. I hung up, took a minute and then i cried. It was so much to absorb. The story i stumbled into my luck or divine intervention wasnt just another story, it connected to my own. That means i spent 10 days on the road in angola with a woman i didnt know i was related to. By the end of that lifechanging adventure we had bonded like family. That means when wanda landed in angola during her long intervention asking for a hog, her prayer was answered. I had hunter in the airport. That means my cousin lydia would fight on when she texted me and said actually wanda looks a little bit like you. I didnt know who tocall first, editors who had pushed back publication ofthe story to wait for the results, my cousin who took that dna test, my sister who joined me in that family search or my newfound relatives. I called wanda. Hello, cousin , i said. [applause] amen indeed, there were so many revelations for those of us who were blessed children by the divine or to go to angola. My colleague Deborah Barfield barry was the lead reporter for our journey. We learned so many things about ourselves as she has revealed and i also was on that journey to learn some things about myself, the ancestors apparentlycalled me there as well. My journey started a little bit before we even got the message that we were going to go. As the person who is editor of the black History Month special edition that you will see in the room, one of my tasks is making sure that i research the topic before we get ready to write about it so i started researching 1619 and came across wanda tuckers family story and came across so much other information but one name stood out for me and you will see her name on the poster and down in front. Her name is angela. She is the first enslaved african woman who has a name in the story in jamestown. In 1625 she is the only african woman mentioned by name in the colonies fixing 25 muster, their accounting ofeverybody in the colony. She is attached to captain william petersons household and is noted for growing figs and raising hogs. I thought that it would be a very simple sidebar to the 1619 story, for me to go down to jamestown, hang out with archaeologists, maybe i would dress in costume, maybe i would walk angela there but angela had other things in mind for me. She would not let me stop at making her a character and putting her on as if she was addressed. She made mego to angola with everybody else. She made me really walk her path so as deborah and wanda were walking together as cousins and having experiences that we all as a team were sharing with them, angelo was also leading me to discover who she was, what her part was in being among the first africans to arrive in jamestown. A passage that i want to read for you was the hardest one for me to write in the story. It took me 2 years to research 1619 generally in her story in particular and it took me probably a couple of weeks to get through what the really rather small passage of the entire story because i had walked there where she was and i understood her agony and her wretchedness and there were times when i really had to step away from the story to get through it. The story that i wrote begins with the interview terry in jamestown talking about playing angela, interpreting angela as a character for those who come to visit and we talked about how she gets into character for it and how she had to study who angela was. At one point she said she discovered that she could not write herself, couldnt write the story until she realized that angela was not in jamestown, angela was in angola and then she could write the story so this is the passage where isaac is learning to get to know who angela is and how she came to be in the united states. The young woman caught angela was a citizen of one of the largest and most influential kingdoms in central africa. Since the mid1400s the portuguese had established trade with the end although kings and queens whose title angola gave the country its name. Missionaries were in as well. Recording the history of the people even as they converted them to roman catholicism. Slavery had been a concept and condition all over africa for millennia, enslaved people were currency. Slavery already existed in the social order of colossi, a sophisticated capital city rivaling lisbon or rome in influence. But by 1617 portuguese greed for highly skilled slaves who could mind their metals and grow their food in the new world clashed head on with the ndongo as they started takingpeople and resources without their sanction. The portuguese and listed a tribal adversary , feared for silence and witchcraft to wage war, enslavedeveryone they could and wipe out the rest. The amygdala scoured thomas a from the rwandan colony onthe Atlantic Coast rounding up thousands of men, womenand children. Angela was one of them. Young women like angela were valuable to slave traders. They could be worked as hard as the men but also made to their child after child, ensuring even more slaves. The portuguese new the women who came from the densely populated towns and villages around colossi had critical skills. They grew the family vegetable gardens and race foul. They cook the meals, cared for the children and washed their hands and clothes in the river. The portuguese new these women bargained and sold their goods at the local markets, speaking in at least two languages, their native temple do and portuguese. Angela had all the skills necessary to keep a home in the new world. The mbengala knew this too. Angela was marched to the kwanzaa river. One of the oldest portuguese ports in angola, its primary function was to channel enslaved africans to rwanda. Because of poor portuguese recordkeeping and oral only tradition we dont have numbers but it was in the thousands says a historian who teaches in masangano. 40,000 slaves were exported between 1617 and 1621. In full view of the ndongo citizens of masangano, angela and other prisoners were marched past the port of a path to the port, the slave garden which overlooks the river. Prisoners were based, baptized and branded before being displayed for sale. Once sold, the africans were marched to the fort where they would sometimes wait weeks before being forced to go to a tunnel and onto the news that would take them down the kwanzaa river to the courtyard to the merchants who now owned them. After waiting days or weeks, angelo would have joined the other captains in being rode out through the slave ships anchored in the harbor. Even as angela was a christian before her capture she would have gone through another baptism the sprinkling of water on her head, the administering of salt under her tongue, the receipt of a blessing and a christian name through a place, her undo name. This ritual happened over and over just steps from the church. Where the portuguese were shipped. [applause] ladies and gentlemen that was michelle smith, and investigations editor at usa today, lets give her another round of applause. Allright , so i am back. Caroline brewer, i am the author of this new Childrens Book called Darius Daniels game on and the first rap we did from the book, i love books is a part of the story and we are now going to do another rat for you thats inspired by the very first page of the book and its also a rat where we are going to ask you to participate, so its called the groups song and the chapter is that morning. So the reason its called thes song is because Darius Daniels game on is a book about an 11yearold boy who wakes up one morning and gets sucked into a videogame and it takes him on this scary and rather magnificent adventure. But he is told that he cant get out of the game until he hurts somebody. So the groups song is all about those moments in our lives where we wake up and we have our plans all set and we think we know what were going to do and then all of a sudden what happens . Whoops. Doesnt happen the way we expected it to. So there are a lot of loops moments in this story. It opens with a big one so we want to invite you to participate in telling the story with us by singing along to the oops song and i need to mention that this book is one of a kind. It is also independently published but it has more than 10 forms of poetry so poetry, rhythm rhyme , wrap. Theres some gospel in siren songs, all of it helps tell the story of darius journey and its not something i set out to do but i had this wonderful editor early along the way named Eileen Robinson was a former executive editor for scholastic and she challenged me to make it a series of sonnets and by that time it had already been written, it was 75,000 words and i saidyoure crazy , i cant do that. But i kept her challenge in my mind and i went back into the story and started to rework it and i spent, i dont know how many months rewriting and rewriting until it did become a series of problems and this book is dedicated to my mother. There is a character in this book thats based on an extraordinary aspect of our lives and its also dedicated to children i call hungry readers. Ive had the wonderful blessing of being able to travel to schools throughout this country and even across the world in ghana, west africa and the visit children, some of whom have had some difficulty learning to read what i found was all those children were all hungry. They were all hungry to learn and i never left the classroom, never left the youth center, never left the library where those children did not excel during the time that we were together, so what i have seen is that our children are brilliant. They are amazing. They want to learn. There is no such thing as a child who doesnt want to learn and there is no such thing in my life and my experience as a child who doesnt want to be a great reader or writer. Imagine a child who says no, i dont want to learn to read, i dont want to be a better reader, i dont want to be a better writer. Ive never seen such a child so this book was written to help make the case that children absolutely are desirous of a better reading experience. They just need us to bring it to them in the right way. They need us to feed them as capable and hungry. So heres forall the hungry readers in the world. Oops. [singing] oops, oops, oops. Sing along with us, its a little easier phrase. [singing] oops, oops, oops. There should have been a warning that morning. There should have been a warning. A boy was about to be pasted, hard like a basketball card. They wrote his name and hewas on the edge. Family and friends on one side getting together at his home. Chairs on the other, sometimes trailing alone. In a game world that made his head to worldcom in a game world that made his head twirl, in a game world that made his head twirl. Jacked up his brain, jammed up his brain and rained karate chops and knocked him for a loop. He didnt see it coming that morning. Should have been a warning. But no. All right, lets give my friends karen wilsonamaechefu and al mcrae around of applause. We have one more from the book. And of course jabari exum on drums. So there is another poem in this book during these journey, he goes to a place some of you are familiar with called harlem. And lets see if we can find it here real fast. All right, maybe hes not going to go to harlem. He may not go to harlem. Okay. Are you with me . All right. So, yes, here we go. He is going to harlem. And heres what he finds. In seconds he was looking at harlem, walking people, talkingpeople, squawking people. Sashaying people, lazy laying people, marching people, carping people, sharpened people. Lookingat harlem people. Short, tall, plump, skinny people. Long hair and short hair, straight and wavy, flying without a care hair, after rose and twists, red, brown, black and white. Take a look at this hair. He was looking at harlem people. Jeans, stripes, flowers, even and african african prints, golden people, mixing in with since like peppermints and collard greens. Yams, the smell of traffic jams, mixing with the smell of being pies and fish fries and roasted coffee, roasted allmans and mangoes. Mixing in with the site of kendall caps and african raps , shoes with fancy straps, golden men rolling out back slaps and dabs, he was looking at harlem people. So when d got to the apollo theater, he encountered creamcolored walls connected to creamcolored halls. He saw a stage floor of dark brown would, photos that went back to his grannies childhood. Of famous people who performed here. Upon eachphoto that he laid his eyescame a shocking but Sweet Surprise , the photos firstalive. With the sounds of music. [singing] doesnt it sound like the apollo . So Billie Holiday sang god bless a child thats got his own with a soothing heavily tented mont, nina simone sang no and she was so in the seas of protestwhen she confessed she was so upset and her song about mississippi doing wrong. Doing wrong. After doctor king was killed. After people were despairing and outrage filled, after leaders in tennessee alabama and the deep south constantly feltthemselves with so much hatred. It left the king of love and too many others dead. Aretha Franklin Queen of soul sang in a gospel like way, bossy and bold as she got people told him think. She was preaching that the worlds sisters and brothers needed to think about what they were trying to doto one another. Michael jackson, spinning and popping was giving advice more than twiceto just beat it. To know what was happening wasnt truth or dare so if you want to remain undefeated , better wise up and beat it out of there. James brown was belting loud and funky sounds boasting, i need your help. I feel good. I knew that i would. I feel good, i knew that i would. So good, so good. Because ive got you. [singing] i feel good, i knew that i would. So good, so good that ive got you. [music] you can help me now, help me now. [singing] is why we call this a party, a hand for l mccain, jabari exum. Thank you. All right, thank you again. All right. Peace, family, thank you for being here with us. I dont imagine theres been a book party like this on cspan before. She says number so we are happy to inaugurate it. We also are thrilled to bring our final author to you. His name is e. Ethelbert miller. His name is synonymous with poetry, not just here in the dc region but really all over the world. E. Ethelbert miller is a legend. He is a poet. He is a literary activist, i almost said literacy,thats my thing. And he is a man who founded the dc council on arts and humanities. Which yes, lets give him around the. Which is an institution that still lives today and that supports events like this, support artists and writers all throughout the area. To bring their extraordinary work to the community. He has written a number of books that are in collected works and hes also the author of a memoir, two memoirs, one of them called fathering words but what i have found more than anything is this man who is peers with some of the greatest literary giants in the world, peers like gwendolyn brooks, amiri baraka, this man is a gentleman and a scholar and we are honored he is spending part of his morning with us. Please welcome e. Ethelbert miller. I feel like macy with all that james brown. Thank you for the invitation. I want to talk about someone elses work before my own. A person who i admire, a person who i think has done something that i think we all are probably happy to see is an achievement and thats lonnie bunche. And this is a fools errand, creating the National Museum ofafricanamerican and history in the age of bush, obama and trump. This book should be required reading especially during black History Month. If you are a parent, this should be a book that should be in your house. If you are a person who wants tobe a businessperson , how do i put a building together, a business, this is a very good book to read. Lonnie bunche is a very humble individual. Hes a very funny person to. And when you read this book, its filled with a lot of humor, humility but at the core of it is overcoming the obstacles. And one of the firstobstacles is believing that you can do it. And so when you look at the museum and you look at this room here, we are a living legacy. When you get go into the museum you have to realize you are part of that. Its not something in a showcase, its not a drum, its your heart, its still beating and you have to realize you have a responsibility and ive known many people whose build things, i know many musicians who play but cant explain how they play. Like for example the great charlie parker. Charlie parker said i can hear the music, i just cant play it yet and then he played cherokee. A lot of musicians they hear it, they can play it but i cant tell you how you can play it. Lonnie bunche can tell you how to build a museum and i remember many years ago, not that many. He was speaking to students at Howard University and the museum had not existed yet and he said how do you build a museum and what will become this . He said im going to run the smithsonian which is what he does now and that was back then so you could say he built a museum, you think he would stop at that. I dont know if money is going to show up on the ballots. But i might vote for him. I just say that in terms of honoring a person that i just feel his name should be known to everyone and hes such a humble guy and hell tell you when he was dedicated the museum he didnt want to be out in front, he wanted to be behindbut this is a person who i admire. Which leads me into this poem. Black men are precious. Black men, black friends having strokes, black men younger than me, good men with bad hearts. Men who did not follow their spouses into the factories or the post office, black men who went off to college and pull themselves up by degrees. Men who did not sink into despair but lifted their family into new homes. Black men who survived the bullets, streets and the police. Black men who saw the horizon in the stars, they marched as if garvey held out his hand not to ethiopia but to our hearts, black hearts now failing for unknown reasons. Why . Why do we die so young . Why are we not like our grandfathers hitting on the porch rocking away the years . Why are we not like black men lifting our girlfriends up into wives again . Why do we take this early death, after all the exercise and bills, after the changing dies, why is there such a cruel hunger that appears and takes our years, black men , my friends resting in the open copies, waiting for some of the things same precious loss. And take their hands, black and closing. With so much love still left to give. And i will dedicate back home to kobe bryant. 20 years since i wrote following words. And so the new edition of fathering words coming out thanks to lack plastic press and paul coates. This was the book that the library of dc reads program. Is a book that i just sort of like the lonnie bunche, i like to write. When i first started writing poetry, i would be sitting around reading, my phones are very short and the idea of sitting down and writing a memoir was something i think i never thought about that. I wrote fathering words in sort of one draft, no revisions or anything like that, just came out of me but in the writing about my life and my family, i realized being the baby of the family, that remember you said about oops, when i told my father i was a writer she saidgroups. When i was growing up, because i was the baby of the family, i thought my name was just rid you would learn, what was going on and so consequently what happened, there were so many things about my family i didnt know because i was the baby of the family. And so what my brother knew, but my sister and what i didnt know is what would happen when i decided i wanted to write fathering words and i wanted to write fathering words because in every family, if the order of death changes, everything is upside down. And you hear that saying, no parent should bury their child. And when my brother who died in his 40s, when my brother died and i looked at my father, and thats three , i knew i could not turn around and write a poem. There was too much of my fathers face, too much happening in my family to write a poem so i had to father more words and thats where that title comes out. And i mention this, i grew up in those 1950 movies like tv shows, we tell your daddy comes home and stuff like that and i tell people that was not my experience. In my household, my father was a supreme court. The supreme court, you know what that means . Some cases never got tohim. It would be hard, its like he didnt do his homework . That does not get past to get to him. What happens is that in my house, my father was sort of like god and ill mention this in terms of the great poet carolyn rogers. Carolyn rogers is a poem in how i got over in which she had a little puppy when she was young and the puppy ran out in the street and got hit by a car and the puppy guide and she held on that puppy waiting for her father to come home because she said my father was the fixit man and she knew when he camehome he would fix the puppy. And that is a tremendous amount of power to put in another person, especially your father, that he could fix everything and i say that in terms of this book fathering words but because i was the baby of the family i had to write my memoir into voices so i created my sisters voice throughout the memoir. And so when you pick this up you see the first letter, thats my sisters voice someone agreed to accept,this is my sisters voice i always wanted to have children. And when i couldnt, i couldnt find anyone to talk about it. What when i had my surgery i fully came to realize i was the only person in that bag, that room hospital. I was lying there looking at nothing and knowing that nothing would ever come out of me. I was holding on to being hold by a slender thread. I tried to talk to my husband about what i was going through but he looked at me as if i had contracted a disease. His mail line wanted to see himself in a small line. He wanted a little boy. Was that not be unspoken agreement alter when we took our vowels . I was to be a mother by any means necessary area giving birth is the beginning of life and beauty. Sometimes i walked to the hospital where i work and i needed to leave the emergency ward i would take the elevator up to the floor where the babies are behind the glass or in arms, the newborns sleep. Their eyes to new for this world. I like to inhale the joy and the smell of motherhood, watching the first drops of fresh milk falling into sheets and the space between us area i am different from other women. I believe thisfor many years. When my mother whispered something about my brother living without rulesi wanted to join him. Who made the rules that i couldnt have children . I cried many nights listening to my tears rolled down the back steps of my heart. One of the things that when youre writing a memoir, many times you have to ask yourself what are you going to reveal and one of the things i had to ask my sister was was it okay about towrite about the fact she couldnt have children. She said okay but then there was a whole thing about dont mention my age. And i remembered so clearly my sister who was at that time, my sister is deceased now so i can talk about it even more. She was going out with a younger guy, much younger so she had given a younger guy my book to read and she said this book is getting me in trouble and i said you should just be truthful because it was in the book that the guy who knew how much older she was but ill end with this. This is me listening to my father and were watching tv and he says i can leave your mother and be like everyone else. My father says to me during a commercial, it doesnt matter how old i am. His words will find a place in the cuff of my pants, the corner of my coat pocket or as i turned the corner on a cold winter afternoon and turned my collar up against the wind. My father is flowing down my neck like Coleman Hawkins and someone says the hawkins blood and the notes from my fathers life are rushing at me as accomplice is anything Thelonious Monk can imagine, yes ruby my dear, to bodies in the dark, one talking and the other listening to a strange sound and if you cry for everyone and not just yourself, this is where you discover themiddle passage, the holocaust, the plantation, the concentration camp, the bombing of cities and whatever is left. This is the how Allen Ginsberg described, that spoken unspoken this, those moments between father and son that are not the simplicity of catch with a ball and glove. It is a moment when your father lets you press that into his back, the place where the weight of his own sex and identity need your own and the mirror you are afraid to look into, the face of your own father and this is also the face of history. Thank you. Thank you all and many blessings. Thank you so much, lets give e. Ethelbert miller another round of applause. For sharing those extraordinary words. We are truly blessed in this city and this community to have so many amazing authors and i hope that all of you and the audience will take the time to look up these authors and follow them on facebook and twitter and instagram and linkedin and see what else they are up to. To close out our program, we have the amazing Branch Manager of the city branch of signal Financial Federal Credit Union. And senate emmanuelle is going to give you final words but i also want to thank book tv for being here with us, please give them anotherround of applause. [applause] we are so grateful that you found the time and found the value to want to share itwith audiences all across the world. So we do not being here, getting up so early in the morning and joining us for thiscelebration of literary work. Thank you caroline, isnt it amazing . Thank you so much for coming, this early. To be with us here, its amazing. And you guys, right , we read. Thank you for that. Youve given us knowledge, and its not only that, i write that book reading helps us to stimulate our mind, our brain and it helps our environment. Im like wow, thank you so much for doing this and like caroline said, this is your second time, thank you so much for coming out and thank you so much. And my name is again, on the Branch Manager ill be your contact person. If you need any financial needs or future events, id make sure you have my Business Card before youleave today. And thank you again. Make sure you have your breakfast and you have coffee for you as well. Thank you so much. I have one final thank you and that is our book sellers and cocoa books, sand,. Com, please give them a round of applause. This year next to san, we were able to make books available to our audience, to the general public was invited to be part of this so please make sure you visit the table. Where sample has books from our authors today and take them wonderful books home with you. Thank you again to everyone, thank you to all our amazing authors and writers. Poets, our singers. How beautiful day. Tonight on book tv in primetime kim gaddis who covered the middle east for 20 years talks about the decadelong rivalry between iran and saudi arabia. Espns Kevin Merritt discusses his book the fierce 44, black americans who shook up the world, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nicholas Kristof and sheryl wood on report on issues facing the workingclass in rural america. Our University Story professor Vincent Brown chronicles the 18thcentury slave that took place in jamaica known as khakis rubble and George Mason University professor at h buckley examines the possibility of states exiting the union, that all starts tonight at 7 15 p. M. Eastern here onbook tv. Check your Program Guide her more information. On our weekly Author InterviewProgram Republican congressman matt gates of florida interviewed republican senator rand paul about his new book case against socialism. Theressome of their discussion. If im going to be a successful capitalist and i sell something im not caring about my desire, i may want to be successful but i have to hear about what you want, i have to care about everything you want so everything is focus outward towards trying to getyou to accept and buy my services for my product but if im a socialist, i really am not caring too much about popular opinion or pleasing a consumer , in fact when we socialize things like healthcare, they just say yes, everybodys going to get it, no longer be bankrupt but you will have to have rationing read dont seem to care you have to wait in line for six months or a year for your replacement. The comments directed more towards their ideological concerns of how how does that drive selfishness because it seems youre making argument that a country that is more socialist becomes more selfish. I think that is true and i think that its an irony in the way because they would profess to be its for the other man, everything for someone else and yet in the end it is driven by selfishness and also driven by their ends up being an elite in their society and they consume and accumulate power and money and homes and Everything Else always on the cronyism of their system. Watched as the rest of this interview and by more episodes, visit our website, book tv. Org and click on the afterwards tab at the top of the page. I am delighted to welcome you to our event today, its onthe conservative case for class action , written by professor for kirkpatrick that galvanized this debate. We got three outstanding speakers, panelists i should say but first is the head of the class action practice, he has litigated and defended countless classaction lawsuits including over 20 dismissals of classaction cases so you may have a sense of what his position is on the area he is a graduate of georgetown undergraduate and the university of Virginia Law School he was under law review and he iso