Transcripts For CSPAN2 Hook And Where The River Bends 20161015

This topic firsthand with much authority and much sensitivity. Randall horton is a poet having won or Gwendolyn Brooks poetry award and National Endowment of the arts in literature. He teaches at the university of newhaven and serves on the board of directors of panamerican prison writing program, it is his life before these distinguished honors that gives him the authority to write this powerful book about forgiveness and what it is like in the Prison Industrial Complex both during and after and the effect that writing has. Michael mckay is a writer having published a book on the palestinian israeli conflict. We are fortunate to have randall and michael with us today. They will speak and do some reading, and then we will have a few minutes towards the end of the hour to take your questions, and i will turn over to did you a critical first, michael . To michael. Thanks everybody for being here. The title of my book is where the river bends considering forgiveness in the lives of prisoners. The first thing i did want to address is why i as a white son of a doctor who growth in rural appalachia decided he could write a book on forgiveness in prison. It somewhat presumptuous project i think but i found myself skip over most of my life story, i found myself studying conflict resolution and reconciliation in belfast in Northern Ireland 20122013. As i was reading about forgiveness and reconciliation for one of my major papers i noticed there was essentially nothing written about what currently incarcerated people thought about forgiveness. I found out to be utterly fast dating senior people in prison have received and perpetuated some of lifes worst farms and that theyre living in a system up on forgiveness. It seems curious nothing have been written about that. I thought i had the ability to write something about it both from an academic perspective and because i had already spent four years volunteering at riverbend maximum security prison in national for those india, its where tennessees death row is. I had a relationship that i thought i could have those conversations. I decided to write my thesis on the subject edited the masterpieces and doubledigit lead after my master degree and turned it into the book. Disagrees i thought i would do is because it fit into my larger vocation which is presenting a platform for the telling of stories that people rarely hear, that we often, many of us might live the life from above, a position of privilege and goodness a lot of stories that exist from below as was talked about. I want to thomas levet proximity to those of which of sort of experience and see in particular about presenters what their stories and thoughts might teach us about forgiveness. So this book is basically for such as. The first part is an academic analysis, a map of the forgiveness of terrain, how should we talk about forgiveness. Then i do 14 stories of prisoners both at river bend and at the tennessee prison for women. These are stories of people who have as i say received and given some of lifes worst harms. Story of a good friend of mine tony vic hu and wrestling with his identity as a gay man in feeling that wasnt acceptable ended up killing two wives, killed his first want to try to get out of marriage and ended up killing his second wife. He is now in prison for life. There are stories of tonya who endeavor to protect her sister from an abuser committed an act of violence that had edited consequences. The story of jamie who suffered much bullying and marginalization in school and became one of tennessees first school shooters. For the story of shelley and i want to read very opening of her story to get a taste of some of the stories are like. When shelley had to be the papers containing the first draft of her story and the thought of forgiveness which emerged from it, she avoided specifics about her past. Are opening words though devastated me. I am nobody. I have always been nobody. The only thing that was special about me was that i was a pretty child. Unfortunately, the very thing that often makes you special is what makes you a target. As i continued reading standing against a whitewashed hallway wall at tennessee prison for women, my body slowly slid to the floor as i encountered references for a lifetime of sexual abuse. Then came the following paragraph. It was the last abuse that truly broken. I have never heard of gbsd and didnt know if stockholm syndrome until i was diagnosed with them after the crime. It is been a little over 17 years now and i still have nightmares, crushing anxieties and more than anything else, the way to guilt if i didnt a stronger person, if i wouldve taken the abuse in times like i was supposed to, then my best friend would still be alive. And i will invite you to get the book if you want to read the rest of the story. So stories like that, completely devastate you and break your heart but then also moving stores also help you put her heart back together again. After that section of stores theretheres another section bw do those fit into that map that was created and for section . And it take we section taking stock, what do we learn from this . In the appendix to our five stories of my time as a volunteer prison chaplain at river bend where worked on the mentalhealth side in the most violent units in the prison. I tell five stories up particularly violent encounters and offer prayers at the in as an exercise in how do we pray in speech and of god in the midst of such devastation, in the midst of health. So thats the focus of the book midst of hell. For the purpose of this conversation because i want my copanelists took most of the time, the question i wanted to wrestle with was, the thesis i guess if forgiveness is valuable, valuable, if it is a virtue towards which we should be striving, then we should take serious issue with our prison system. Serious issue with the prison system. Because prisons are uninterested in forgiveness. They are uninterested been using. They are uninterested in reconciliation, uninterested in transformation and rehabilitation. They are interested in retribution. Retribution if forgiveness are entirely incompatible notions. Exile, temporary exile is not incompatible with forgiveness but retribution isnt compatible with forgiveness. Just to reference what a mary mentioned at the intro, from my personal express i spent four and a half years volunteering readily at river bend and tennessee prison for them without any issue. Then i finally had enough of the violence of the prison system against the prisoners. Answer organized some folks to protest what other policies the department of corrections against tennis prisoners werent general population with safest of all the prisoners and a system of control and punishment that would be put on one of the units that have not had a single violent street incident. On my First Defense that permanently banned me from river bend and two f. Years later, so this summer i tried to get on a visitation list to a nearby prison about an hour away and i was denied because they still of label me as Security Threat to the institution. I hope that tells you something about the weight our prison system works, that if you try to create community, if you try to humanize, try to break down the walls that divide us, if you try to encounter the other not as a criminal and as a prisoner but has another brother and sister in need of healing and in love, that is a threat to the secure the of the institution. What i found about prisons, prison is a place that holds people captive to a moment. It both holds their body and their emotions, to a single moment, to a single action. Often even to a few seconds of their life. It defines them by a few seconds. Not indicators of everyone. Some people have perpetuated the same harms over and over again like a friend when he was convicted of having molested at least 26 young boys as a catholic priest. There are situations like that. There are others who have a mental breakdown, who snapped and commit a terrible act in a few seconds other like and are forever judged by those moments. It makes so forgiveness difficult in prison in particular because a few of the things that forgiveness needs is that it entails is it entails storing yourself into writing a nutritive, about to life and about the life of the other in your situation. So that it is counting a single stories we often craft of ourselves and about others. Theres a great novelist who has this brilliant talk you should all watch called the danger of a single story. She talks about single stories are stories that depict only one side to a person or an event. A single story produced stereotypes. The problem she says is not that theyre untrue necessary but they are incomplete. Theres always more to the story. Our job is to look to complete the narrative and so often indicates a violence, the case of conflict and in harm we crept single stories whether of ourselves, or the other as a victim and perpetrator. Forgiveness is about changing those character descriptions, changing the storyline so we are no longer cast in those roles permanently. Its about humanizing ourselves anin the other, avoiding a singe stories and its about not forgetting the harm but also not being defined by that harm. Not letting that be the description of who we are forever. I will read you just a little bit from what other guys on the inside and jacob davis was really different of mine and a brilliant, brilliant man. I got to teach at river bend as part of the universitys life program for education to offer associate and bachelor degrees to men and women in prison. Jacob was in the first cohort at river bend when i got to teach at the edit forgiveness and reconciliation. He wrote one paper for class, his final paper and it was so good i set off to academic publisher in england and was published as an academic paper. These are the kind of mice with keeping locked in prison. Brilliant guy. And he was 18, 17 or 18 a senior in high school down in southern tennessee, he got caught in a love trying to and a mental break due to humiliation, bullying and trucks and all kinds of things he snapped and went about again and he murdered his rival at the school, shot him three times in children. Jacob was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole which in tennessee in case you didnt know means he has to serve a minimum of 51 calendar years. Exactly. Thats life sentence with the possibility of parole is a minimum of 51, one of the harshest in the country. Jacob went to prison at 18 and he goes up for parole in 2049 and he will be 70 when he goes up for parole. Not when his release, but when he goes up for parole. So he said in a conversation with him, i fully understand societies perspective that they cant just let people victimized loved ones but i had to call for reform of the system. Whenever forgiveness i found, it is in spite of the system. The system does facilitate any kind of forgiveness. It is focused like a laser on vengeance, motivated out of fear. It uses suffering and pain to punish suffering and pain. It chains me to my pastor forgiveness in christian theology tries to offer new garments but the system chains you to the mud into. It really makes it impossible to fully forgive yourself. He goes onto say, if none of the people involved in the event are the same now. Most dont even know me anymore and i dont know them. We have no effect on each other. At the system is determined to take us back to the event. And that i am now did not do it. The person who did do it wasnt in a normal state. So if i forgive myself i forgive my old self. Identity is quite slippery. It was like the butterfly effect, a billion coincidence had to happen that day for that event to occur. And nobody can change what happened. There such futility in chaining yourself to an event and bringing into the future. We have to recognize we are destroying ourselves. I wish my direct and indirect victims could forgive for their own sake and let us much as they can with what they have left. We all have to face down the specter of suffering and appreciate that its wonderful to be alive. I can live here in prison forever, but i cannot be changed that event. It cannot define me. So the question i kept hearing from folks in prison and was essentially how do i find and give forgiveness in the place so diametrically opposed to it . That wants to change it to the mud in those garments of forgiveness. And again i would invite you to read the book if youd like to hear more about that question. But i want to wrap up my time and turned over to randall. I want to redo this last section, my major take away from the book which is dealing with the question what does this say about us as a society that we sit in explicit or in tacit support of the system of dehumanization and retribution but what does that say about us . I will offer this final reading. And engaging that question. In writing and researching for this book and the previous volunteer work i witnessed prison conditions first and converse with insiders and staff and served the relevant literature. All of this revealed a deeply disturbing nature of a racist, classist, arbitrary system oriented towards profit rather than rehabilitation. More than 95 of all of those in prison would be released back into society. We are wise to care about the security of our communities but we are confused about the ideal methods for ensuring that security. James gilligan, psychiatrist, shows through Statistical Research and professional experience punishment does not deter violence as much as provoke it. Given the retributive a session of the current american system it is Little Wonder that youth recidivism rate, the rates to which people return to prison, its Little Wonder those rates hover steadily between 5070 . Over half of the people released will go back. If we call a department of corrections provides a definition, it is failing miserably. Sesuch unacceptable and dangeros rates are unnecessary and preventable through we imagining the purpose and the practice of prison. I often wonder what would happen to my friends when they get out of prison and return to society. How will they be received . Do we speak of incarceration as paying one debt to society, we could be done in that sense upon return many free to men and women cannot vote or sit on juries and they can legally suffer housing, education and employment discrimination due to the felony records. Or punishment continues long after release from prison. But im interested in social forgiveness for prisoners. If forgiveness growth our health and sanity at the individual level, it stands to reason it does the same thing socially. To function as cultures of violence, retribution, vengeance and shame is a compromise our social health. To begin this journey toward social and personal forgiveness and cultivating a healthy society, we must get proximate to those weve categorically condemned and listen to their stories. If we tell and hear different stories, once of remorse and redemption, transformation and broken humanity, forgiveness and reconciliation, we make unimaginative the world what even the prisoners are forgiven and set free. And so the last piece is the next paragraph, and the men are making earlier jacob davis, a guy in prison for murder, the love triangle, he wrote a piece called who we are and what we want. Its a plea for understand from the outside world and want to end with the words of one of the insiders. This is what jacob davis. We are living question marks. What is the point of all this . Are we still human . Is there any value in our lives . Is there any forgiveness, any retention for those who have truly repented . If not, what does that say about us all . We are human like you want to show that. We are your brothers and fathers and cousins and uncles and sons. We need help in order to construct a positive future in community with all peaceful people. Why in the name of all human good in the future of our society we do not help us in such an endeavor . We are the prodigal sons. We have been told it doesnt matter if we repent, that we will not have a chance to give anything back and that theres no return no matter what. We come back to the gates anyway in the name of peace and hope and love. Where else would we go . For human beings life means forever seeking a home and the love of family and community. Now dont exist for us other than the one from which were exiled. We know some of you will kick and spit on us no matter how to our word or help your our hearts. We know you are not evil, only afraid and to sleep. Wakeup your wakeup your we are not monsters. Here as knocking. We will come back to you again and again. Where else could we go . Thank you. [applause] answered the phone at 10 p. M. Hello . Harlem, new york. Respond with okay. Listen, be attentive when you learn you died in a hail of gunfire at the intersection of minnesota avenue and east capitol street in the nations capital. After thinking, thank old College Roommate for calling. Ignored the could you as a hook, then they can do it by on the street, heading up. You can and cant believe the truth simultaneously. Maybe this will memorialize the image you will never forget in which is already forgotten haq. Before the blackbird echoed thing again sure windowless steel, wake up. Directly to the mahogany desk between two windows, sit and the browns willful chair, star of the building opposite your building. Rearrange papers that dont need rearranging twice. Open digital to the name written last night, disco. Remember the cell doors opening after serving 18 months for three felonies in Fairfax County adult Detention Center. Five hours after that release, meet disco wheeling and a team through your basement on a handcart. Out of the wall with metal chains and pickup truck, he had pulled the money machine. He did that. This is your introduction. Turn on the computer. Type theodoric blandford in the search box. Click the magnifying class. Expect to be surprised even though you know what the results will bring. Dont be surprised when you scroll through maryland double homicide suspect shot, killed in d. C. One lone bird outside your window flies backwards added a become an rate of speed while the world moves forward. The bird is ready. Look for balance in the oddity. Note that double homicide is five syllables. Five delivered plazas before, dammit. Remember you knew the suspect shooter slashed the killer. Suspend court in your imagination. Ad for indeterminate words to formerly the phrase hold court in the street. This is how he will die. Holding court in the street. Prophetic. After reading that the now deceased wife had wanted a divorce, reduce it was because of drugs to visualize the wife insisted just before death in their double wide. Tried to make sense of blood spilled on the carpet. The red is deafening. Screen. Wait for the bus to stop because someone rang the wrong buzzer. Theres always an echo after the blessing. Even after it does is again, dont answer it. It is not for you. Keep reading the online article, but more specifically the phrases Forcible Entry and protective order. Acknowledge that your friend was a suspect in his first wifes murder. A dead body in the trunk. Two days later while driving to school to teach, call short man, because it takes that long to find someone to talk about tragedy. Tell short and he was a barber and has 10 years behind razor wire in his memory what happened. Agreed in unison that prison will turn the brain into a home. Agree again prison taught you to be a better criminal are you both digress. Both of you understand the term anomaly but admit disco was a positive and never learned to be a man. You would been asked the question for the first time, why . Return back home from new haven before rush hour traffic against the bottleneck across county parkway. Day to the closet for the first version of your memoir. Disco ruled the safe out of the department store, the first lines of the paragraph read. Go to the next page where he loves to pull the trigger of a gun more than he loves touching the torso of a woman. Flip to the page where he and himrs. To distribute lead bulles through the windshield and the impressions of circular holes when the discarded lead peers is the class are swift and pronounced. The body is a question mark. He tried to run over the wife with his truck and then threatened her with a claw hammer. She told the police. Ask yourself why this sign didnt signify violence. What theory would ferdinand classify this under . Put the manuscript back in the closet. Dont be just about because you knew he was a killer and said nothing to nobody. Forget the double negative your mom would correct you on and tell yourself its nature versus nurture. Justify your silence in saying that the world he once lived in was filled with silence and mayhem. That is why they called you hook. Dont blog on tree lords your silence will not protect you from your mind. Pretend this is in its. Wake up the next morning. Go back to the computer. Press any key to erase the black screen. Ignore the blackbirds outside your window while telling yourself this is the last time. You need to forget, but before you do, one more search. Click inmate violent death in the news. A flood of blackbirds appear suspended in animation at the top right corner of the webpage. Ignore them but then dont. Tell yourself this is not karma editor allan poe style. He did not want her to leave. She wanted him to go. Said he needed treatment. Think back to 12 step literature that cautions about the 13th step, sexual fraternization with people inside the circle. Feel confident in the same she was a recovering addic addict ad understood addictive behavior. To addicts dont make a right. Tell yourself this. Read about the interaction with police who fail to notice the inevitable. Admit the judicial system is failing to protect women. I and the victim was tattooed on her forehead, yet she remained invisible to the patriarchs, once swore to protect and serve. Ask yourself, that his death matter more than the victims death. Convince yourself the race never stops running, that memory will teach you a life. Say, i am a changed man, but no one will hear you. Get back into bed. Pull the covers over your face. Remember to dream. Forget about. Wake up tomorrow and feel guilty all over again. And so this is the opening to the book, the more i wrote hook a memoir, and this one talks about my journey to incarceration through incarceration and after incarceration. The context for the structure of the book sort of, you know, is multifaceted and that theres these letters that go back and forth between me and this young woman that incarcerated in brooklyn, detention, federal Detention Center. She is being held there. At there. She was held there for about three or four years until her case was resolved but she was a former friend of mine when i was getting my ph. D in suny albany went out on this journey. We begin to serve dialogue when she got arrested, and out of that conversation, out of these letters became sort of shape, part of my memoir. So we talk about, we discourse on a lot of things in terms of the prison and social complex, identity, construction, social construction, gender construction, race construction, and literature. And then sell the memoir are the things that sort of, what led me to incarceration become these flashbacks that are sort of visitor in the mail call. Part of the thing is with the indus book is i wanted to give a voice to a woman who was incarcerated because that is often the voice that we dont necessarily hear. We talk about incarceration, we dont have that voice. Second of all i needed a voice to give me honest as a man in my own thinking, in my own from working through my own problems. And i realized its not that we both were working towards this idea of forgiveness, me trying to be there for her and she was going through, because is a case of mistaken identity where combat this is a stake in identity but it was a case where she had nothing to do with it and they knew she didnt, but they held her for four years trying to they could tell something she just didnt know. In the meantime so it was real dramatic. I once assert be there at a realized part of me trying to forget myself was helping other people go through the pain and going through what theyre going through. And so that it sort of a sounding board for becomes this book. I want to read you one piece that, usually i prefer sometimes but she got out last year but she wasnt able to come. I want to read one of the pieces that i wrote to her. Its called louder than all the sound created. Its worthy of some of these issues i actually talk about. She appears as lxxxx. Her name is linda. At the time she was going, she was incarcerated at guantanamo published. So thats what it appears as lxxxx. We skipped our lives on reaction rather than action meaning daily lives is in response or reply to a command or a demand. The world use of us in that way. We know this yet we become willing participant in our own commodification, the world does this. Then i can think about the question you pose with regard to women and believing. Perhaps images and how we as a society nurture young woman creates this is a duty to the American Dream jokes little girls in so much as not all of them will be able to live up to ideal beauty as constructed by benefactors of the common narrative, those who dictate the ebb and flow of how we live. Beauty is a dangerous thing and understand, brown and black women historically bear the weight of civilization in addition to the own weight which can be daunting at times. But more than that a male plays a role in this insecurity, especially in these socalled streets by his rejection of the woman as equal counterpart in anything other than sexual object. We just want love and have some warm body love us back, objectification is a delicate balance. In other words, i said this objectification play out with men who dominate women to the point they broke their spirit instilled their sound. The women couldnt speak of their own oppression because they possess no by which to wass the unimaginable, reminded me of putting an streetwalker sunshine. Sunshine adored putting so much she strolled around logan circle every night selling the one commodity she knew well, herself. Heres the oxymoron. Sunshine never saw the light. Darkness choke her to death. She never got to understand where the shadows in the dark that Toni Morrison an agenda. Our sound originates from breaking the sound and then again like life, language is only the beginning and perhaps in its death comes a new beginning of a new language. Tonight im imagining with exec escaped and six by nicely sleeping in all its isolation because this is something memory must be reinvented, the gray cinderblock, the silver glow from the medal total. Ive been thinking long and hard with regard to confinement in the bordering of color and how we as a society imprison ourselves within the complexity of skin. As if human survival depends on this one specific thing. Of course, i can make a conscious effort to avoid color or not invade your space which i could make a parallel of them, but history can be a forgiving in the past reconstruction future whether we acknowledge it or not. For summary i feel like histories and future intersect. In other words, i have inhabited the cell door claim, and i cant escape the image of the pinstripe inmate constructed. There it is, that word, construct, or construction, which is another word for confinement on someone elses terms, a sort of deliberate scaffolding. If i could go back to that initial moment after the formulation of earth, and im talking about the first forest sunrise after the big bang, have you ever wondered what that feeling couldve been like . In the beginning i delayed ocx world lacked blue, foliage lacked green. Color had not begun. If only someone could have stopped the progress at that precise moment. Consider the. Will evidenced by two yearold baby boy in an apartment eight blocks from the detonation that killed four logos and a church basement. All the girls wanted to do was sing and somebody stole their little light of mine, the picture baby jesus not off the hook, the department apartment rattling. A two year old boy being constructed understand black and white to choose the site. I was in construction for a came of age. For so long all i could think about was prison not realizing i was in prison before incarceration, and they still languish behind invisible bars. I keep asking if this is a to tell the of my life. True i am on the outside but white inside is tangled up. If life is history, how can i ever hope to escape this . Whether i choose acknowledge the box or not, other people will and theres no escaping this distinction. In other words, allow me to paraphrase thought for a minute. Who says uttered the word free, man was no longer free because hes need to be identified as freight proved he was change. I say i am free every day, but really how free and my . And so that becomes the correspondence between me and linda, linda and i. Theres actually, you know, a few pieces i ask to go into the industrial complex, i talk about my time in incarceration. Made i will read a little piece of that before going into the last thing i wanted to read. Let me see if i can find it. Give me a second. Okay. This is the state 1988. The reality of roxbury correctional within prison effort in the idea that you cannot leave by their own free will. The key word being free. The intake into across the yard taken in pristine lawns and clean sidewalks get a sense of false security. You to be visiting a liberal Arts College Campus in a row town if not for the razor wire circa complex at the rottweiler and a stepping jaws destroy this fantasy. A few paces further in the guard tower comes into focus against the backdrop of the cobalt sky. You cant help but think about the index finger willing to squeeze the trigger, the scope, barrel, and mirrored shades following every inmates footstep. The first night. 11 p. M. Lockean instigated a crippling silence and sell 16 and double doors rolled back at 4 30 for breakfast the first morning. Ourselves into a stream of human flesh migrating toward the dining hall which was a hundred yards opposite the housing unit. Our bodies blended together effortlessly. We could been a herd of cattle going to grace. Midway to the entrance with the suns orange peeking through dawn steel gray, and then moaned and dropped to the ground with a shank protruding from his stomach. At this had to be beaten, so at each step over the bloody body. Im going to read one last session. Its actually, when i go visit, when i go visit did you a little more understanding between our relationship and the book as well. On the number two train and everybody plugged in, or drums occupied with sound turning of the world if only for a moment. The rails create a meditative drone into an exiting, the streaming light passing quickly and then not at all, train car snaking along the third rails curve full a split second, theres a glimpse of putting people in the cars for a. Saturday night and im coming from harlem to the metropolitan Detention Center in brooklyn which is a federal Holding Facility for people awaiting sentencing. At precisely 7 p. M. Eastern standard time i was standing on the corner of 23rd street and third avenue in front of the 24 hour video store and previously waived to l it would be staring down from the fourth floor window at our predetermined time. True, our lives intersect because of prison, but then we have been baptized by gays and course streets through and error and we know that memory each other bring until theres nothing left but to act to dwell in. You in the act, memory and memory. Our correspondent and conversations over the past year have an intellectual in stimulating the sometimes a little hood, sometimes a little confessional. In many ways she is helping me deal and cope with the guilt, and never having forgiven myself for those memories i formed in the streets. I have never really taken the time to enjoy my achievements. Maybe its because i always felt i should been doing these things all my life. Ls you can brought me back to roxbury and traded to the magical lexicon that we teach me to say im sorry. Our letters reminded of my time in Montgomery County Detention Center when i had to write down the things that are the most painful in my life. She has maybe take a deeper look at myself, and for that im thankful. I can only hope that i done the same for her. In the winter just before spring, i often reflect on an old College Friend jesse james jackson. The repetitive wednesday february and march recall his once incessant laughter. His early death was inevitable insofar as one cannot escape the history one is destined to make. Jesses murder presented life is tangible and tactile. I could touch it with my fingertips, and am if it didnt touch me back. My friend died alone in a bathtub, shot and be electrocuted. So many times i place myself in the bathtubs public with water, bulletholes tunneling inside my head at the moment the iron is thrown in, the body jolts a live one more, and then lights out. Jesse was the first thing i knew to die by the bullet. Drug create an alternate reality, and in mind, he was one of many heroic figures. Maybe its twisted but what of the memory i got . This is the only one i know. I cant reimagine events like it didnt happen. When you come out on the other side of the tunnel toward the light, all your friends to your friends . Am i still the same person called hook . Do i get to claim the laughter of my youth . It almost doesnt seem fair. If im honest with myself, there were some nights i did wish to kiss the world goodbye. Many nights i didnt want to breathe or the one, yet something willed me through the onyx a never ending that is an false beginning of the stop and start all over again became routine. I was almost afraid of the steady and assure. Most people associate with today would not understand the sense of belonging a person incarcerated feels knowing someone made the trek from manhattan to brooklyn to stand on the corner and wave like you just dont care. However, it means the world to l come at a know this. My phone vibrates and its a text from my boy. After i went to l i will meet you on 25th for a bite to eat. Ages ago i met him just after one the National Poetry series book award for his work o on the blues positioned to lead the. Later at chicago state, he would offer about the ebook that would help shape my first book. He is a reminder of how everything lucky toad waiting right now is more than i have a whatever right after someone in the world right now for needs to feels she belongs. Its 6 55 p. M. And the early. The detentions and is next to the bronx queens expressway and wonder what significance this might hold to the women to watch cars travel back and forth during any given day. I am sure the use the btb after escape mechanism, which imagine outside of themselves. The phone is ringing and its a blocked number which we find out who the number belongs to. I answer the phone and press five which i deduce what to except a call from a federal inmate. And l is like oh, my god, i can see. Im smiling and i wave and i wave, and then i wait again. We are laughing now, to be on the phone like this as a regular prison visit. She has to save minutes to talk with her son and other family members, thus family members, thus much as i like to stand in the drowning missed and take it, i knew had to say goodbye. Before you just like weight, let me get one more good look at you. She hangs up and i stand by him for another three minutes, leaning against the video store, thinking about my time in baltimore in prison, and then i head down third avenue into an unknown future filled with new possibilities. 8 million stories in new york city. This is mine. [applause] i know you all have questions for randall and michael. Id like to take the prerogative of host to ask the first question, and when you do have a question would you come and speak into the microphone, the standing microphone. Either one of you can tackle this, but in your book, michael, desmond tutu writes in his forward that prisoners are perhaps the most marginalized people in our western society. Randall, you write that the sense of, the smear of incarceration is a difficult thing to a raise with any society demanding forgiveness, a collectively unwilling to forgive. And i wonder if you would address this one specific thing that you mentioned, prisoners not being allowed to do even after being released, and thats voting. We currently have 6. 1 Million People in our population who cannot vote. And then all but 14 states that the case come with florida being the most egregious. Tennessee is right up there in the top five. And i wonder if you would Say Something about the way to raise consciousness and perhaps do something about legislation, what would be your recommendation speak with thats a big, tall order but i dont know if my recommendation. I mean, then it starts with a collective we as a humanistic society. If we say we base our society on values and principles and to hold those principles and dear and every time we get in conflict, then i dont understand the incarceration comes a different thing. I say im collectively willing to forgive is like when you felonies, the idea when you come and serve her time, theres still roadblocks you have to sort of over. From getting a job to getting federal aid, you know, basic things. Im an anomaly the i have seven healthy. It just doesnt like happened like that all the time to either a clue of that. Im on the only one in america that has seven felonies that has continued at a major university. I think people on the way thats very sympathetic, and you have to give the to be willing to give people a chance big idea of not being able to vote or to do some of these things that are the spirit of our society, i think is a egregious. Because if you see some served their time and a gracious aside undecided it is forgiving, then you become, then the hypocrisy comes in. Thats what im getting at. Im not saying i never once said i shouldnt have been, something shouldnt have happened to me for the things i did. I never once said, you know, none of that. I get it. But at the same time like what is our rehabilitation and in prison, like george, like George Jackson talked about whos watching the people who have keys . Thats the whole thing, too. You know what they mean . When you going to prison and these things that you see, it becomes interesting because if i was to go and testify in a court of law, said on the trunk, they would say you get seven felonies, youre not relevant. That sounds interesting, because i teach your kids every day. They think im credible. And i love them. You know . But thats the reality of it. Thats the thing we need to address. Once we the river the cells, hold tenets of her society, i think we can come a long way. I think it starts with the collective we, and everybody, everybody can do something without. Youve got to write, protest, called cant even awareness. Each huge. I teach a prison lit class. They go into the world understanding prison is like another think its a very real thing and they put a face on it. Thats all im saying. Speed and ill just take 30 seconds to say to me the major poison within prison, the major since the present is that it consider certain humans to be disposable. I think that is what at the heart of this, the idea that anyone is disposable. Which it is in the rhetoric of certain president ial candidates about certain groups of people. And we see the prison all the time, these people dont deserve medical care, they dont deserve the same quality of life. Went out they also dont deserve certain freedoms. Just a bar roundels phrase, we have stolen their sound barro randles phrase. We have stolen their sound. Any other questions from the floor . Can you come and ask it at the microphone . Thank you. Just a quick question. I just wrote a book on the forgiveness offered in charleston, felt in charleston. What im carries about although going to read your blog, check it out, what about forgiveness without christian theology . Im sure youve thought about that. If you could talk about that briefly, id love to hear your answer. I wasnt talking about, thats was careful not to talk about christian. How is it possible speak with you have to go back to the human, we are born with humanistic traits. We are supposed to know right from wrong. We are taught that. For me thats the simplest dichotomy that there is, right or wrong. Then i think you go from there. For those who dont necessarily you know if you cant go down the street and she cant go to the store and product or you cant shoot someone or do those things, like maybe that becomes built into your come as you grow up, without anything outside of that. And i think, im more concerned how do we become human again. We can bring on these other things but i mean, are we going to be a humanistic society quirks are we going to let all of these things that are poisoning our society right our society, or are we going to take it back . We dont know how to deconstruct ourselves. Because everything matters. Everything matters and we dont want to give it up. Weve got to give up something. And until we sort of recognize that, then it becomes problematic. Youve got to give up something. You cant keep everything and then moved to somewhere. Youve got to give something up. Allergist at the beginning of this book i say that i would want to discuss forgiveness especially in the first chapter outside of christian theology. I grew up in the church. My granddad was a pastor. Im very thoroughly embedded in christianity but i grow weary of forgiveness being captive to christian circles. That its preached in the globe but its rarely explain how this works but would you say you are supposed to do and is this pressure did it. People feel they are not good christian and they can do. Most of the people in the world are not christians, so forgiveness cant be only for christians because i dont have to forgive because we all suffer and we all give arms to each other so ill have to be able to forgive the. The kind of multistrength process of forgiveness i should articulate and first chapter polls from christian theologia theologians. Its done in a way its done in what i see anyone from any particular faith and no faith at all to be able to find this conversation assessable so hopefully you find that. I apologize for not allowing more time for questions and edges but we are on television. We are on Television Time so well have to cut it short but it would invite everyone to come to the signing colonnade, and randall and Michael Company that time to chat with people. I know they would appreciate the. And thank you all for being here. Thanks so much. Thanks. All right. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] spirit you are watching booktv on cspan2 live coverage from nashville. More from the southern festival of books in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] its interesting how we have come to understand the identity of black women and girls. And much of the discussion about it is centered in a critique of the way in which the identity, the black feminine identity has been presented publicly but also in our scholarship and did our own consciousness. When i talk about school push out i talked largely about the policies, practices but also the prevailing consciousness that underlies how we approach a girls in our spaces, we understand they are, what theyre capable of and who ultimately will become. That study is a profound one for me because it does begin to agitate much of the consciousness around how we understand these identity as they have allied with us toward the constructed stereotypes. Especially in this age of social media where means dominate our understanding of whats occurring. We see the way in which the identity of black girls and women is presented as against the the consistent with being hypersexual, consistent with being loud and sassy, or being consistent with being an escalating, angry presents. But also the latest one which is some combination of all three which we have referred to as ratchets but can also be interpreted in many different ways. And so this way in which we have misrepresented and misunderstood the black feminine identity plays into our subconscious, our unconscious biases about how we understand. So when girls are asking questions in class or when girls are questioning material, its often perceived as being an affront to the authority of the adult in that space or being combative or defiant in ways that are inconsistent with their true intention. In some ways, again, given the legacies and readings that accompany the behavioral patterns that weve seen in school as we also see this way in which this hypersexual session of black girls prevent us from respond to the trauma and victimization, and thats very problematic. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Heres a look at some of the most borrowed books this week from the nashville public library. Our look at this weeks most borrowed books at the Nashua Public Library continues with cnn host Anderson Cooper and his mother Gloria Vanderbilt do a memoir, the rainbow comes and goes. Thats a look at some of the most recently barter books from a nashville public library. Be sure to tune in booktvs coverage of the National Southern festival of books all this weekend. So much of revenue comes from stopping and resting its citizens. 20,000 people in ferguson, 16,000 have warrants. Its a stunning number. In 1,920,000 people, 16,000 having warrants. Thats the town business. Michael brown gets stopped it wasnt because he stole some thing. I was initiated time of this topic it was come he was stopped for jaywalking or these are the types of offenses people are stopped for, particularly in ferguson. A failed experiment of black by any measure, liberal and conservative. All of those things like people to go to ferguson, let people to see to what happened to mike brown. To some extent the story of mike brown was much deeper than the story of particular active state funds. As a School Director proposals and send it out, we were back in new york and eric garner it would been killed, or i should say daniel pantaleo, we often dont talk about the, the policeman who killed eric garner was not indicted and were marching in the street. Were back in ferguson right before that. Before we knew it we went on the tour of really high profile cases the state violence. Theyre kind of comp mike brown, walter scott who shot in the back. Sandra bland was found hanging in a jail cell. Freddie gray he was beaten because he had been tested to look th the copy i would the coi which is why the chase in which is why he ran, et cetera, et cetera. In each of these cases my book tries to get underneath that it indicates of my grandmothers Public Housing and joblessness. Indicates of freddie gray is that the prosecutors office. The way in which public defenders have been so disempowered and the public itself has come under assault. Indicates of sandra bland about the way black women and girls are criminalized. The market becomes the ultimate decider. To adjudicate competing worldviews and privatization, deregulation and austerity these are the buzzwords that have become common sense. If we live in that kind of state we have the other thing going on. My book has that assumption but in each case to give us a bigger story what it means to be nobody. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Be change you are watching booktv on cspan2. Live coverage of the southern festival of books in downtown nashville was the last soccer panel of the day the look at violence in africanamericans throughout history. Offers Patrick Phillips and jason ward. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the southern festival of books and this particular session. Standing against oppression, racial historical violence. It is our pleasure