Its a very useful program. I would like to see it extended to childless dads or dads who are not living with their children so they can have an incentive to work and employers can have an incentive to hire them. We can have more Child Support paid and more families working together. There are some things we can do to try to help this population the middle but its really hard. Its difficult because the factory jobs we saw in baltimore are not coming back. Host labors love lost is the name of the book the rise and fall of the workingclass family in america. Johns hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin is the author and here is the cover. Charles blow Richard Blanco discuss their memoirs at the miami book fair. This is about an hour, 15. [applause] good afternoon. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce the presenters for this program. Richard blanco says he was making cuba, assembled in spain and imported to the usa. His family fled cuba after the revolution and eventually settled in miami. As a child he possessed a strong creative spirit but also excelled in math and the sciences. In fact, before obtaining a masters in fine arts from Florida International university he worked as a consulting engineer. Mr. Bongo released his first book of poetry in 1999, city of 100 buyers which one day agnes lynch poetry prize. In 2005 he published directions to the beach of the dead which received the beyond margins award. His 2012 is 2012 collection of poems entitled looking for the golf motel touches on his life as a man negotiating space between domestic and immigrant cultures. When he was chosen as the fifth inaugural poet of the United States for president Barack Obamas second inauguration mr. Bongo followed in the footsteps of greats like elizabeth alexander, maya angelou and robert frost. He tells the story of that experience and in for all of us one today and inaugural poets journey. His latest book, the memoir the prince of los cocuyos a miami childhood explores his comingofage within two imaginary worlds. His parents nostalgic 1950s cuba and his imagined america the country he saw on reruns of the brady bunch in leave it to beaver. Richard blancos personal narrative is a resonant account of how he discovered his authentic self and ultimately a deeper understanding of what it means to be an american. Roz chas is a National BookAward Finalist for nonfiction. Her cartoons have been published in many magazines including the new yorker, scientific america, Harvard Business review, red book and mother jones. She is the author of theories of everything, selected collected and health expected cartoons of roz chas 1978 through 2006. A compilation of her favorite cartoons. She also illustrated a to y with bonus letter c. The bestselling Childrens Book by steve martin. Her awards and honors include honorary doctorates from dartmouth college, Leslie University and pratt institute. She is also a member of the American Academy of the arts and sciences and a montgomery fellow at dartmouth college. Her latest book cant we talk about something more pleasant, mmr, told through fourcolor cartoons, family photos and documents. Her memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the lifealtering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are just in there 80 of sink receives the themes are universal Adult Children accepting a parental role. Aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution, dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies managing logistics and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. A portrait of two lives at there and and an only child coping as best she can. Cant we talk about something more pleasant shows the fall rains of roz roz chaste talent as a cartoonist and storyteller. Charles blow is the New York Times visual oped columnist. Mr. Blough graduated magna cum laude from bradley State University in louisiana where he received a b. A. En masse communications. Columbia law professor, Columbia University law professor Patricia Williams tells us that Charles Blough was only 24 when he was asked by the New York Times to direct the graphics department. Apparently the youngest Department Head in the papers history. His eloquent chart distillations of political and social complexity jolted readers with their logic, lucidity and sheer beauty. Before long he ascended yet again reinventing himself and configuring a new genre of journalism as the papers visual oped columnists. In fire shut up in my bones, charles blow reveals that he was abused at age seven by a cousin who abused and bullied him for years to come building a firing range that nearly cost him as a College Student to kill this cousin. He realize he had to stop hating his abuser and start loving himself. Forgiveness is freedom. He had to let go of his past so that he could step into his future. He had to stop romanticizing the man he might have been and be the man that he was not by a neatly fitting into other peoples definitions of masculinity or constructs of sexuality but by being uniquely himself. In the words of professor williams fire shut up in my bones is a story that builds and overwhelms. Its filled with a gathering roar like an oncoming hurricane. By the last chapter the tension explodes and then drops into a quiet sea of inner peace. With grace and eloquence, erases the exclusions of either or. Presents complex central to humanity reconfigured as fields of simple possibility, of compromise, of forgiveness of the eternal incompletion of the fire unleashed at long last from our bones. Thank you. [applause] [applause] good afternoon everyone. How are you doing . Its wonderful to be back home in miami and wonderful to be home at miamidade college. Im not sure its widely known that when i first started writing the little engineer that good i guess who wanted to start was curious about poetry. My first creative writing courses were here at miamidade. [applause] i would like to share with you one excerpt and a few photos. The engineer cant go away for me. I have to do powerpoint somehow. There are no charts and graphs dont worry but to begin by saying something that guided my writing is that i think it was a poet and i tried to research this but every wider every poet in some ways writing one story or one poem all of their life. What that means figuratively of course is we all have unique central obsession and that her whole body of work every poem or story we attempt us in some way an attempt to mention some aspect of that obsession to ask questions about that obsession to answer them announced new ones. For me that obsession was one word home and all that big word means in terms of Family Community place coulter cultural identity and National Loyalties and all the rest. Its no wonder in the sense there is something that is obsess me before birth. As i like to say i was made in cuba assembled in spain and imported to the United States. My mother left seven month pregnant from cuba to madrid where i was born and we immigrated to the United States. By the time i was 45 years old i had lived into worldclass cities. This is somewhat of a birth certificate the eiffel tower and the swiss alps just to screw with me even further. The newborn photo you see there was my green card photo which was my first i. D. In the United States. If that wasnt a higher power saying guess what little ricky is going to be assessed about when he grows up home and all sorts of questions that brings into play. Good to continue that narrative we moved as marilyn was saying growing up in miami is the growing up between two imaginary worlds. This 1950s and 60s cuba the stories my parents mind. The mangoes were juicier and assaults was sweeter and there were real beaches and not that landfill on miami beach that we have to go to every weekend. That whole nostalgic thing. There was a real place that i was from but id never been there and the other imaginary rope as the brady bunch of course. This is my fantasy one day is to be able to be in that. Thats a little photo of me. I had to mix alice but what can you do. I wanted to do an excerpt from the first chapter which is called the first like saying thanksgiving a whole other kind that captures a little bit of the psychological where the book begins in this negotiation between these two worlds. You will also be introduced to my grandmother and another possession of mind which was winndixie. [laughter] which came to epitomize my mythic america just like the forbidding Grocery Store in the 1970s that we wouldnt dare go in. My grandmother and me are in cahoots in this and its part of their relationship that continues throughout the book. Every day after she picked me up from school she chased after daily staples in one of three bodega she frequented. He would camp under a palm tree in that parking lot smoking a cigar and reading a spanish translation of the dimestore western in the shade while he waited. Some days we went to a little surprised come the smallest of the three bodegas. Some days we went to the golden place where they cuban bread was 10 cents cheaper than anywhere else. Another day the patrons of cuba our lady of charity the neon version with flashing halos were so lifelike that manuel would insist that i make the sign of the cross before going inside. [laughter] advertising the special too tempting for a abuela to ignore. A whole roasted chicken, and drumsticks crowned in a banner jump anime its not so fancy price. Twentynine cents per pound. What does it mean that abuela asked me . [speaking in spanish] she said incredulously. I made her before send. I played on her peak curiosity. Its a great price. You sure can save a lot of money. [laughter] she agreed and let the circular in the kitchen counter instead of tossing it out with the rest of the junk mail that came in english. Few things intimidate abuela. Among mr. Black magic santeria and cars. As for americanos, abuela wouldnt go anywhere she proceeded at least not alone. This included the Social Security office downtown, any restaurant with englishonly menus, even teens chinese palace fancy Department Stores like burdines and definitely not winndixie. But abuela also couldnt resist a bargain. The following week it appeared at 26 pounds per pound, 3 cents cheaper than a week before and then 24 cents a week after that. The friars hunted abuela. Her stinginess slowly overcame her fear of americanus until finally she broke. Will you go with me shopping a winndixie miami . Of course, abuela. [speaking in spanish] soon are pantry would be stacked with oreo cookies. Our freezers stuffed with swanson and eskimo pie our fridge filled with hawaiian punch and american cheese. Then i stay afterschool abuela and start yesterday to winndixie a gigantic red sign marks the entry of the letters spelling out winndixie. They glow even in daylight. What does that mean she questioned me . I struggled for a translation that would make sense, but none did. [speaking in spanish] i finally offered. How can that be abuela said perplexed by her thought of people made as me, which is for my literal translation in spanish. Why not the chicken people she amused herself. A abuela toward advertisement for the fryer from the flyer and stuffed into her coin purse in her brassiere encased abuelo is a she might not return. God be with us achieve under a she said nothing until we reached the store entrance. Now take me straight to those pollios. No talking. We dont belong here. The electorate doors yawned open. I reached for a shopping cart twice, big as the ones, but abuela said dont you dare with her wideopen eyes too afraid to speak. I could really speak for myself. Not from fear just pure awe. I was finally and winndixie. The airconditioned air smothers crisp and clean as lysol and each of the checkout lines as numbers with an illuminated sign in the cashiers all wore polyester uniforms instead of warped squares of linoleum polished floors cleaned and music rain from the speakers on the ceiling. I was finally in america. We stepped into the produce section full of fruits and vegetables i have never eaten or even heard of. Squash apricots, russell spouts, squash apricots. I kept pronouncing them in my mind, trying to imagine the taste is not made pretending i was looking for the chicken i deliberately wove abuela to every aisle taking an cartoon faces on the cereal boxes, the frost lake fell in the freezer cases, flavors of jello i never knew existed. Soup made from Cheddar Cheese from potatoes. I wanted to buy everything i saw. But of all the things i had tried at jimmy dawsons house my absolute favorite was cheese. Theyre in the snack aisle i saw it. Can you buy read this, abuela i said grabbing a can of the shelf. What is that she asked. It is case so americom l. [speaking in spanish] unable to fathom the idea of cheese in a can. But i can tell from the tone of her voice that she was intrigued. What i said spraining tap on my finger and it off. You dont even need to put it in the refrigerator. [speaking in spanish] she looked at me and my finger and it can in my finger and i can end back at me. [speaking in spanish] she marveled at the ingenuity of americans. They taste she asked holding out her finger. [speaking in spanish] she postern in question. How much . I looked at the price. [speaking in spanish] well okay but only if we promise to eat it all. I dont want to waste it. But lets get a fresh one she said putting mccann back on the shelf. [laughter] [applause] so yeah that is my grandma. But apparently that is very universal. Apparently everybody in the entire world. It transcends cultures sexuality, everything you can imagine. Some of the characters did the concept of the book the prince of los cocuyos is proverbially the poet to raise a child. So it is a particularly wonderful relationship and amazing to me in my life sometimes creatively, but nonetheless part of the bering of my site. One of them is my mother of course id like to show this side because that is actually a lightweight bag lightweight urchin of her 80pound [speaking in spanish] which means just in case of the flies, which means be prepared for the worse. So she had everything they are from toilet paper to nail polish to tictac to bandaids to mosquito repellent and including i think in chapter for a pistol on our first trip to disney world because you never know if a band of crazy americans is going to attack us north of the city limits. [laughter] but in reality, why a show that picture of my mother was actually a feather and writing the book was a psychological response. The woman left her entire family in cuba. Her sense of control you know that sense of loss. So there is really this idea that the instability inside anything you do to react to that is to control Everything Else that she could so that her life but had some sense of psychological stability. As my father and also another character called [speaking in spanish] the malibu the 1970s now abu, my dad first car, First American dream car that he paid more attention to than most of us. This is my older brother who is six and a half years older than me, which i think statistically is exactly the worst years you can have two boys apart. So he is my superhero and my archenemy. Hes my baby sitter, my torturer. And i knew how to play baby of the family but i am not innocent. I would get my mother to dress as alike just to piss him off. One of the characters is my cat throughout the book because my grandmother was very tomaso of course cats were gay, a long with fruit loops and any number of things. So the cat is a friend and a source of comfort and also just to piss her off. I would show miami i grew up or its not the miami of today, but just like miami of yesteryear. So how are city becomes our place and it contributes to ask. There is a lot of miami like these other kind of stores and i really thought it was important to be an emotional historian of what it felt like to live and grow up in miami. And this is kind of like a firefly. Same magic of catching, you know, with your father and also it is the name of my grand uncles store. It is a big turning point in the book because what happens is very key is looking for missing america and easy cheese and the brady bunch. The counter turn if he has this wonderful cultural comingofage in discovering cultural comingofage and discovering that will essence of the cuban heritage of all of these stories in this history that just are the parents and that happens at the Grocery Store and i started working there since i was 12 and under sort of where we keep become the prince and a sense of that alleged them through the customers, the regulators that come in three or four times a day, the other employees the families they are because i think there is a little bit of misunderstanding sometimes that as children of immigrants. I am an immigrant by 45 days. We would grow up on thanksgiving and the process of coming of age culturally is a process really coming to terms and maturing into coulter and that is essentially what much of los cocuyos is the cultural journey and the rest. The last thing i will say is that the book is read in some ways i see it as sort of a great steward of the American Dream story because you realize this little kid who grew up behind a red wall with a bookie grandmother who wants easy cheese and nothing else and in some ways it still amazes me that happen to me in my life. So it is a hopeful story in the sense that in the sense that the American Dream that the wonderful things can still happen and are amazing in this country. So, thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] hi, my name is saturday. I read a memoir called can we talk about something more pleasant. It is about my taking it is about taking care of my parents at the end of their life. They grew up in new york, like me and they lived in the same apartment in brooklyn for 59 years. But when they were around 90 they started to fail. I was not living in brooklyn. So this memoir is a little niche about my taking care of them and a little bit about who they were and their relationship with one another and their relationship with me. Anyway this is the beginning of the book is a little bit about what my childhood was like here it is stored it explains about what they were like. This is the wheel of doom. No, hold on. [inaudible] davis is advancing all by itself. This is advancing all by itself. [inaudible conversations] im sorry. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] its not working now . Okay, okay. This is the wheel of doom. This explains a little bit about where my parents were at understory growing up. He saw happening. A friend killed by falling tower pot. Headache instead lump and dad. He was too happy. He jumped off the chair and broke his metatarsal. A guy who almost died after playing the oboe. This was explained to me because my mothers brother played the jazz trumpet and he knew this guy who played the oboe and i was nine years old and i heard him tell my mother, one day he woke up and he was bleeding from every pore. It was explained because play in the oboe was like so much pressure to blow the air on the read. You just like exploded by gas. Killed by base ball until i was about their team i was afraid to sit directly on the ground because my mother knew a girl who sat directly on the ground and she got in her kidneys and she died. Just like crazy stories. One time i found this bracelet that had sort of the elastic on it and it was a little bit tight. She said take that off. Youre going to get gangrene. Your hand will drop off. So this was their orientation to life. So this takes place this cartoon takes place. Im going to read it because its too far to read. My parents and i never discuss that. So, do you guys ever think about games . My father said what kind of things . You know, things, plans here i have no idea what you guys want. At this point that they are in the early 90s still living in the apartment. Lets Say Something happened to my mother to universal sign for something as crazy. [laughter] am i the only sane person here . You know what, nevermind. Forget it. Basically it wasnt like i was trying to bring this conversation about their wishes at the end of life and they were ignoring. It was like all three of us had our heads stuck very deep into the sand, so when stuff really started to happen, it was like holy. I was quite aware my parents had tough lives, way way tougher than mine. You dont know what trouble is. I had heard the stories my whole life about coming over from russia at the turnofthecentury with nothing, about how my maternal grandfather had been an engineer in russia and the inability to speak english and being jewish and one that barely been able to support by kids and his wife working in the Garden District and how bitter and angry he was and how we washed goes for other people and how we been spattered my father stanley was. His mother was one of nine children. Not only that but not on the wish of your macro, but she was also the over one of her siblings to survive the russian cholera epidemic. Then her father had cut from ear to ear. I dont know what happens to the mother, but she came from new york with just one child. My father but the section in 1912. A horrible ordeal opening her up from her back to her you know what. Between one bad thing after another lives, depression and world war ii when holocaust it was amazing they were crazier than they were. Who could blame them for not wanting to talk about which is where the title from the memoir comes for my father. Lets pick a more pleasant subject. I parents referred to each other without any irony of soulmates. His head matched the holes than mine. They were born 11 days apart and they grew up two blocks apart in east Harlem New York city. They were the same fifthgrade class. They never dated, much less anything else anyone besides each other. My father said we were too poor. [laughter] plus, we look at our parent so we were married. From world war ii and go into the bathroom we did everything together. Hold on coming through. My mother had been washed my fathers hair for him. Its not as if they never thought because they did. Dont sit sideways, youre twisting your intestines. But the concept of looking for Something Better or being happy dallas for modern people are movie stars i. E. Jack generates. Favorite type of the unit. Codependent . Of course codependent. Maybe they believed if they just held onto each other really tightly, nothing would ever change. I visited them the first time in years in their apartment in brooklyn where i grew up, but i notice first the level of wine. Its not ordinary datastore assaults up there hasnt been cleaned in a week or two. It is more of a coding, something that happens when people have acclaimed in a really long time. One day my mother told me growing up was you have to dallas. If you dont does come dont dust, dust gets into the furniture and breaks it all apart. It was clear she had stopped worrying about that. But what do you do if you pick up a sponge and start cleaning. Look at me perfect daughter. It would not necessarily be perceived as helpful. The person you help my feel insulted or embarrassed. Put that down, leave that alone. Dont touch that. Daddy and i are fine. I was a great essay caretaker and they were not great at being taken care of. By 2002 there were 90. Its hard not to notice that every time i came to visit the grime had grown thicker, the newspapers magazines and junk mail had grown larger and they themselves had grown frailer. I can see they were slowly within the sphere of tv commercial oldage. Totally independent, just like a normal adult but with silver hair. This is like the is like the ads you see for insurers. The people are 55. You know, agreements are a part of old age that is scarier, hard to talk about and not part of this culture. Extend human lifespan to 140. This guy didnt know anybody over 100. Something is coming down the pipe. It is no accident that most of their pitch to people in their 20s and 30s. I am going to take up tennis. Im going to need a lot of new stuff. Lets redecorate the house. One thing theyre less likely to have gone through the transformative process of cleaning out their deceased parents start. Once you go through that come you can never look at your stuff the same way. You start to look at your stuff is little post mystically. If youve lived more than two decades as a consumer come youre quite the accumulation even if you are not in order. Ergonomic price, throw pillows, dessert plates and seven travelogue clocks and eight now clippers on a colander of flatiron and barbells and a set of bocce and Patio Furniture and your Old High School and a walk that you never use. This is like a typical thing when i would visit my parents. Mom what is this . It is from the year one. Its disgusting. It is all burnt and ready and have patches on it. These patches come from the skirt made 40 years ago. Please let me buy you a new oven mitt. My mother, why would you . It still works. Im going to go little faster so im going to skip a couple. This is a typical conversation that i had with my mother over the phone because there were a few years there where i was starting to visit them a lot but they had no desire to move out of their apartment. Things are starting to go downhill. This is me. How is your cataract removal operation recovery coming along . Gray. Its like a job film over a rethink and now its gone. I still have a patch over the ipo, but not to worry. Theres unanswered in the house. Daddy and i just came back to my father never learned how to drive. Hes two inches so my mother drove. So she was the little old lady with the big giant car like this. I dont know if any do know brooklyn but they have to cross Ocean Parkway to get to ball valves and this is like a six lane very busy road. Mom listen to me. You cannot drive with one eye. You have no depth perception. Its no problem. Daddy guided me. Last night [laughter] these are the things that happened later. At some point i mother did have to go to the hospital and she was there for three weeks and my father came to live with us in connecticut for those weeks because he could not live alone. He had senile dementia but what happens is sometimes as many of you i know once they are in their familiar circumstances, a lot of the symptoms you are not aware of how demented, how much senility they really have. Anyway, i will read it. Dad, what do you think of this letter . Holding up a red sweater because his closer in tatters. They had gotten close shopping in a really long time and i wanted to be the Good Daughter to buy clothes. I cant wear that. Why not . It read. Communism. [laughter] my mother had a strong aversion to doctors and hospitals. It didnt surprise me that she didnt want to call the calvary. Doctors they have a god complex. They tell you to do something on the next month never do that day. Some people think doctors walk on water, but not me. Hospitals, dont get me started. That is where you go to die. The body wants to be well. Im a jewish christian scientist. [laughter] [applause] im sorry. Im just going to skip a little. Finally, i got into an assisted living place. My mother was constantly falling. My father was leaving the stove on. Im terrified to answer the phone because i thought this is going to be the call from the police. So finally i did get them to an assisted living place about 10 minutes from where i live in connecticut. The first few months were fairly uneventful, although sometimes i had a feeling that my dad was less than 100 senate is aghast at. This place is a. I knew what was it a but even atop the middle of the line or bottom or top of the line, the place is still an institution in institutions have rules. This is every week like an ethnic meeting with the staff. My mother never called it a, but she had opinions. Residents are inmates. I am sure it wasnt easy but they were adjusting. Your father has an ache in his pocket all day yesterday. Thank god it turned out to be hard oiled. [laughter] this is a typical afternoon at the place. Look, dad, i brought you a cheese danish. My favorite. Jaime, care to share with me . My mother said no because i ate my lunch unlike some people who were so busy socializing that they neglect their lunch which is why some people are hungry now. Ill cut it into quarters. That way if you change your mind you can have some good as i told you, im still full from lunch come up i will cut it in half and i will eat one half of it the other way for later. And then some people wont be hungry for dinner. And then here is me because i am so brilliant. I dont get why you are dads danish adjustment. Actually, your mother is right. Shes a brilliant woman. Thank you elizabeth. [laughter] i always made sure their door had decor. There is little hook on the back. This is the door at the assisted living place. Indian corn, flowers, things like that. No indian corn. I mean they lived in brooklyn. People didnt decorate their door. Its very lovely. What is it called again . Door decor was not import part of my parents lives. Why would anyone want to call attention to their door . Besides, waste of money. But when in rome. I didnt want other residents to think they were weird or antidoor decor. These are two other residents. They are from new york. Here is what i used to think happened at the yen. One night old mrs. Mcgillicuddy fell unwell at six to her bed. She stayed there for three or four weeks, growing weaker by the day. Soon after that she died. The yard. What i was starting to understand, a metal panels a lot more painful, humiliating longlasting, complicated and hideously expensive. And my father, when he was 95 his tape rope and he started to seriously decline and Hospice Center of the picture and this is what my mother said. She said the hospice lady has started coming around. She was very nice but i told her i dont want anyone coming around to what they longside face. Im a positive thinking, not a bunch of people standing around singing to my. [laughter] and then, my father, he did die at 95 and my mother lived for another two years and with many, many ups and downs. And when she was around 97 she was in hospice twice. She was very good at it. The second time she was in hospice, the decline went on a little bit longer. Some strange things started to have been. She started to lose her marbles a little bit. And she would tell me these strange stories and i started keeping track of them. Dad to dad. Your dad died before you were born, when i was pregnant with you. My father, harry, said he would buy me a house while i was at work. Mom, thats not true. Yes, it is that i should know. Okay full of buckshot. There was a break in it. All the men were moved over to the womens side. I shot the intruder with my bb gun. I gave him an asphalt hotshots. Id like to put them on stage pulled on his pants and take out the pellets one by one in front of everybody. Unusual adoption. Did i ever tell you about the milkman . Ive heard this story, but it wasnt like this. They went shopping and when they got back to their car there was a grocery bag leaning against an inside the bag was a baby. And then the story stopped and i was continuing to visit her and there was really not much to do besides draw and i guess it is because that is what i do. I really was not aware of why completely was doing it, i just knew i needed to. I think i wanted to look at her and be with her and drawing was a way for me to do that. So i did a lot of sketches. I dont know if you can see them very well here. And that is the last one. You know it was very surreal. Her helper called me when my mother was passing and i drove down there as fast as i could and i guess shes sort of just slipped away. When i got down there you know there is all this official hustle and bustle that has to happen. They just sort of left me with her for about 15 minutes. So i drew her and that was that. And this is the last one i think. On the floor of my closet, llima shoes old photo items wrapped in paper, sewing machine shall for teachers, carter makassar perkins and other miscellaneous stuff marked to special boxes. One was my fathers remains, the other by mothers. I fathers boxes inside a Navy Blue Velvet drawstring bag which i placed inside the ancient channel 13 bags he took everywhere. My mothers boxes inside a maroon velvet red bag. It is on thin air. Until i figure out a better place for them they are staying in my closet. Actually this is the last one. I wish at the end of life would eames were truly done, there is something to look forward to simply for pleasure oriented perhaps opium or heroin. So you became addicted, so what. Allyoucaneat ice cream parlors for the external hd or Bigger Picture books and music extreme care for when he tied up with Everything Else. The xrays, mris, boring food in the dont do anything at all. Would that be so bad . That is it. [applause] i have to adjust this up a little bit. So backstage we were trying to figure what the order was going to be for whos going to go first and i figure since they had slides i should go last. I dont know if i picked that appropriately. We only have about 15 minutes left in this session, so im going to go as fast as i can to make sure weve did everything in. The title of my memoir is fire shut up in my bones, a comingofage story about rolling up in north louisiana. A very small town segregated town, probably about a thousand people when i was born. And i am always fascinated by the kind of response to the book. There are a couple of questions that i think people ask all of the time. One of them is you know why now, which is a very strange question to answer because if anybody is writing a book coming out takes forever to produce. I started nine years ago. People say why now. I say why not bad. Because it really does take everything out of you to complete it. And there are points when you feel like you are literally going to die and it will never fully be finished. James baldwin once was being interviewed by Seth Mckinsey about finishing his first book. He said i thought i would never finish and he went away to switzerland. You know how he talks. It was all [inaudible] he said he took with him one typewriter and also one betsy smith album. He said he had never allowed himself to listen to betsy smith and america, but there is switzerland surrounded by these White Mountains and white bases, he listened to betsy smith. And, you know, maya angelou used to say the bird doesnt sing because it has an answer, the burden sings because it has a song the bird sings because it has a song. So in a way, the writing of the memoir becomes the song of the bird. But i do understand what theyre saying when they ask why did you where the book, because theyre asking about the sociological themes of the book. It is more a marketing question than it is a literary question. However, aye ive learned to answer that question because it is true that the memoir for me, has many sociological themes, and those are themes like family and poverty and race to a certain degree, identity and abuse. And so what i want to do is just to talk about those concepts and those constructs as they present themselves in my book. I have a couple of packages here i want to read to you. The first one i want to read is about family. And it is really about i always read this, and its kind of one of the [inaudible] of the book. But it says so much to me about the complexities of the intergenerational experiences of families and how all that intersects with things like poverty and our experiences of love and pain and loss. Let me just read this peace for you. Its actually chapter one, which is called the house with no steps. The first memory i have in the world is of death and tears. That is how it would mark the beginning of my life the way people mark the end of one. My family had gathered at papa joes house because maam grace was slipping away only i didnt register it that way. For some reason i thought it was her birthday. Papa joe was my great grandfather. Maam grace was his laidup wife who passed the days in a hospital bed looking out through a large picture building at a street watching the world she was leaving literally pass her by. We were in the living room when he called to us. I think she about to go. I didnt know what that meant. I thought it was time to give her a gift. With that, my family filed into her room surrounding her with love. Their hearts were heavy. Mine though was light. I thought we were about to give her Something Special they knew Something Special was about to be taken away. She peacefully drew her last breath as her head tilted and she fell still. So dramatic beth battle, so death battle no last minute confession. Like a raft pushed gently from the shore, she drifted from now into forever, a Beautiful Life beautifully surrendered. But i recorded it differently. I thought she turned to enjoy a gift that wasnt there. When maam grace left the room, she took the air a with her. No one could breathe, they could only scream. My mother was overcome. She ran from the house and i ran behind her. She threw herself to the ground at the hog pen wailing her back rocking against it. I shooed the hogs away as they tried to lap at her hair. I was too young to know what it meant to die, but tears i knew. Sorrow flowed out of my mother like a dam had broken. It was one, though, that she would soon rebuild taller and stronger than it had been. As a child, i would never see my mother cry again. I spent most of my life believing my 3yearolds version of what happened that day until as an adult i recounted my memory to my mother, and she set the story straight. Our gathering at maam graces bedside was not to celebrate the day she was born, but to accept that it was her day to die. [applause] now, part of the reason that my mom had such a strong reaction to that, it was part of the complex of the family. My mom had been raised by my grandmother because my grandmother and my grandfather you know these are two people who should have never been married in the first place. You know those couples where they just amp each other up, and its like does anybody have any control here at all . [laughter] so they were that couple, right . So they moved away to houston, and my mom stayed out there for, i think, a month or two, i dont know how long she stayed. I have to get out of here. They put her on a bus, and she came back on a bus as a kid by herself. They put you on the bus or a train with a note, and this is where you were going, and you would arrive like mail or something. Laugh [laughter] so that was kind of her mother. And so she spent her entire life looking up to my great grandmother as if it was her mother, and kind of in a way rebelling against her own mother who was kind of a very different quality of woman and very flamboyant. So my mother is very staid, so shes one of the most conservative women youve ever met. She has four colors in her closet; white, black, brown, navy blue. Things that are some combination of those things. There is no red, there is no green, theres one of that. Theres no eyebrow plucking because her grandmother, my great grandmother told her a woman plucked her eyebrows, she went blind. [laughter] she, you dont start something on a friday that you cant finish because my great grandmother said woman once did that, she tried to make a dress for her little girl, little girl died, had to bury the little girl in no dress. Everything my great grandmother said thats how my mother lived her life which was the opposite of the way my grandmother lived her life. You know my grandmother is one of these women who has been married, you know, she was married like four times. And, you know shes not a single girl. She did not like to be without a man. Theres some people that could do that not my grandmother. And she married for the fourth time a man who i considered to be like a father to me because i grew up with him and her for the first three years of my life. Every time my mother got pregnant, she got dreadfully ill. And so my grandmother would pitch in and say, you know, give me that kid. You cant even get out of bed and ill help you with this kid until you get older. So i stayed there with them for three years. But the fourth husband was, to me just an amazing human being. Ill just read you a quick description of him and then ill read you something about one of the other sociological points of the book which i think is really important for me as a writer which was to establish the incredible diversity of masculinity, particularly as it relates to africanamerican men. Because in literature and in film, i think that this is drawn much too narrowly, and we do not see all the fullness that people can be, particularly men can be. And particularly we cant see the gentle person and the person who would do anything for love. Jed, this is the fourth husband jed was a chain smoker with a strong back and soft eyes. It was those eyes that struck you, brown maplesyrup sweet. A hint of gray around the edges, Sunrise Yellow where the whites should be deep enough to get lost in. Bottomless like martins pond. Damp like the beginning of a good cry or the end of a good laugh. They were the kind of eyes that saw down into the dark of you and drew up the light the kind that melted worry like a stick of butter near a warm stove. The kind that forgave secret shame before it scarred the throat on the way out. It would take a man with eyes like that to make big mama move to the middle of nowhere and bathe outside. Now, big mama, thats my grandmother. Big mama would not move into the middle of nowhere for anybody other than this man. She lost her third husband because she was using the condo money to buy, you know,s and shoes, and he didnt know it. He was illiterate, and he trusted her with the money, so he said you pay the note. I think she might have paid it one time so she gave him the receipt, he gave you know, she put it away, he put it away, but she would steal it back. Every time he put it away, she would go buy clothes and give him the same receipt. And the repo guy comes and says weve got to take the he goes into the box where hes been putting the receipt, he can find one. The one shes been recycling. [laughter] my grandmothers not that kind of gal but jed completely changes her. I want to read you this quick little passage. The only remnant of big mamas past was a waterdamaged, handtinted portrait of a man and her i didnt recognize both sugar sharp, sitting on a bench in front of a painted backdrop. He was sitting up tall and strong, she was laughing, legs crossed, her head resting delicately on her shoulder. There was a power in his pose, but there was more in hers a feminine power, the kind that lights a room and buckles a knee, the kind that makes men do things they know they shouldnt; sneak in through open windows lie to loved ones give more than they have. I often stared at that picture trying to connect that woman then young radiant dangerously alluring with the woman that i knew now as big mama, but i couldnt do it. She was different now. Jed had made her different because he was more powerful than she was. He drew his power from a different source. Not from hollowness but from wholeness. It was a grand, simple kind of power. It came from the knowing and accepting and loving of self that made the knowing and accepting and loving of Everything Else possible. It didnt crush but accommodated. He hadnt taken away big mamas power, but given her a Peaceful Place to harness and transform it to calm down and grow up, to move out of the woman she had been and into the woman she could be. She was like a river always running, never still, wanting to be somewhere other than where it was that had finally reached the ocean vast and deep and exactly where it was always meant to be. And i [applause] thank you. I particularly love this, the idea of thinking about masculinity as an ocean because i think that we as a culture dramas clipty dangerously, precariously narrow and basically weed boys out and make them feel like they are constantly failing because we have defined it as a peak to which we must ascend, a side of a mountain we must scale rather than as the ocean deep in some places shallow in some places and roiling in some places and placid in some places and that all of that is part of what it means to be a man. And basically, by removing that we rob these boys of a basic part of humanity. And so they believe that they are constantly failing to be what we have done to them as boys. It is almost like we, you know, the person who writes the note of a song so high that only a few people are ever meant to reach the note and so one is ever meant to hold it . That is what we have done. And that is what we must undo. Another kind of one of the sociological themes of the book is poverty, and its really about what rural poverty looks like. We constantly in our kind of political discourse talk about poverty only as urban poverty. We talk about it only as people who do not work and, therefore it is an effort deficiency is. You are poor because you did not try hard enough. But that is not the way that i experienced poverty. It was not urban and everyone worked and some people worked more than one job. And the poverty that i understood had nothing to do with lack of effort. Its just that they did not make enough to lift themselves out of poverty. So im going to read this quickly. At the house with no steps i had not sensed our shortness of money, but now it was all too apparent. We hadnt been well off before, but now we would truly struggle. Most of blacks in town lived in some gradation of poverty, some barely eking out an existence some whose existence could hardly be called living. Poor as jobs turkey my mother called it. They were the kind of folks who dud hard jobs and odd did hard jobs and odd jobs. Any work they could find to keep the lights on and children fed. They were women whose hands stayed damp from being dipped in buckets and dried on aprons. They were men who worked in boots with steel toes the kind that didnt take shining, the kind that leaned over and told stories when you took them off. They were people whose bodies melted every night in a hot bath but stiffened by sunrise, so much so that it took pills to get them out of bed without pain. Yet they seemed to me content in what they knew life to be; sharing old stories deep laughs and sweet tea. As the old folks had imported to me early on, grandeur never witnessed could not be coveted. [applause] another thing that was a big theme of the book that a lot of reviewers have focused on is the abuse piece of it. I was, im a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and i dont think we fully understand what sexual abuse is in america because we have one concept of what it is. We have the Catholic PriestJerry Sandusky grownup, you know to catch a Predator Concept of what sexual abuse is. It is a stranger. It is always an adult. It is always towards an older kid. It is penetrative. That is not what sexual abuse is in america and we have to dispel ourselves of that mythology. Very often it is a friend of the family or someone who is in the family. It is not a stranger. Very often it is happening in your i wanted to cry but couldnt. I wanted to scream but couldnt. I was dead now and dead boys forget how to cry. Part of that damage is not even the abuse itself, but it is what society puts onto the abused child. They abuse children over again. And a lot of times it is done by the people who care the people who are outraged by it. Because if you dig deep enough into the outrage, a lot of it is laced in misogyny and patriarchy and homophobia. Because what society tells the kid is that you are dead because you arer revocably ruined. Er revocably ruined, that you have been spoiled that you have been destroyed, that your manhood has been taken. And that is, that is not real, and it is not true. It has a lot of very negative connotations in it. What is true is that there has been a betrayal of trust there has been an exploitation of a power differential there has been an invasion of your zone of intimacy and sovereignty of your most intimate self. Those things you can recover from. The suffocation of society that tells you that you are forever broken and beyond repair is much hard orer to recover from harder to recover from. And i know were running out of time, so im just going to read this one last piece which is about learning to love yourself and having the courage to confess to yourself and to the world that you are strong and resilient and deserving of the life. Concealment makes the soul a swamp. Confession is how you drain it. Daring to step into ones self is the bravest, strangest most natural, most terrifying thing a person can do. Because when you cease to wrap yourself in artifice, you are naked. And when you are naked, you are vulnerable. But vulnerability is the leading edge of truth. Being willing to sacrifice a false life is the only way to live a true one. Thank you very much. [applause]