That is the bio they use it as wisdom about what its about. I think. Oh yeah. Like author writer who lives in columbus. I was like, so none of the carnegie that New York Times bestselling like none of that. I dont got a flex in front of family. Okay. Well, im a flack for you have run a family you know thats what family to write that im just so honored to be in conversation with you tonight about this book. A writer so deeply and part of book for me was also trying to grow as a writer, to grow out of simply kind of an academically trained writer into a writer who was bringing in her own story, bringing in history, bringing in theory, and kind of melding into some kind of form that was legible and accountable to the communities i feel accountable to. And so your writing was so helpful in that process and thinking about what that could be. Let me start with a little bit of a reading and then well jump into a conversation and then well move q a. And i hope you all have some Great Questions for. Us questions, questions, questions. Just emphasizing that life. So. I wanted to start here because. Theres a part of me that i was really torn about what to read tonight. I dont want to give too much away. Was tempted to read and hear epilogue. The book is a love letter to my bryant. The was finished and in production. So you can imagine if anyone is writer in the room when your book is already in production being like, hey, hey, i want to add Something Else to the book. You have to have an editor who really supports your vision and what it meant. And so i had 48 hours to write for her, but id rather you read that im sure im ready to read that letter yet. I was ready to write it, but not necessarily read it. So tonight actually want to give you a little bit of why america. What powered this title obviously its a riff. Nina simones mississippi goddam but theres a very specific reason that i thought about this title, thought about why i would name it this and why this was the perfect and only title for a book about the wearing down of black girls and women. In nina simones autobiography i put a spell on you. She talks about the assassination of civil rights activists. Medgar evers in mississippi on june 12th, 1963, as an inspiration for her first protest song before writing mississippi goddam. And she pondered, how can you take the memory of a man like medgar evers and produce all that . He was two, three and a half minutes in. A simple tune. Evers was a prominent black activist and one of the most violently racist areas the country, before being killed, he survived notable attempts on his life, shot in the heart, in his own driveway. After returning home from a meeting with, acp lawyers, the 37 year old evers perished, just 50 minutes after being admitted to an all white hospital that initially refused him care. His wife had been the first to find him after he was gunned down. His assassination sparked National Outrage and protest. Deadly white supremacist violence. A widow, Mary Louise Evers and three children, daryl, rena, denise and james van. Without their loved one, he was a prominent figure in the movement, but he was also a beloved father, husband and member of a community. How does one put all of that into a three and a half minute song . The other catalyst for simone penning and performing her first protest song was the 16 8 Street Baptist Church bombing in alabama on sunday, september 15th, 1963. Four members of the local ku klux klan chapter planted dynamite on east side of the church. Five black girls were changing their choir robes in a basement bathroom in the church on what should have been an uneventful sunday morning at. Their religious home at approximately 10 23 a. M. , the dynamite explode hit and brutally killed 11 year old carol denise mcnair, 14 year old carol rose. And on robinson, 14 year old Addie Mae Collins and 14 year old cynthia john wesley, those killed known as the four little girls in additionally more than a dozen black people were injured, including the younger sister of addie may collins, sarah collins, who was the fifth girl in that basement bathroom. The explosion blinded in one eye and several pieces of. Glass embedded in her face. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a gut wrenching act of terror that shook civil rights activists, allies of freedom struggles and everyday black folks to their core history too often remembered addie, Denise Carroll and cynthia as the four little girls killed by white supremacist notes. When we talk about the bombing we dont often say their names. We rarely talk about who were before that fateful morning of unrepentant white supremacist violence. Denise loved baseball and was a brownie. She also loved to perform to use her artistic gifts to raise money, muscular dystrophy, research. Carol wanted be a singer so the choir was one of her beloved training grounds. She loved reading and dancing and playing the clarinet part. Although allegedly poorly adding, mae was also artistic and delighted, going door to door in white and black neighborhoods to sell kitchen items made by her mother to help her large family make ends meet. Cynthia was an academic standout and thrived in math and reading. She was in her school band as well among these young girls denise, addie, carol, cynthia was an abundance talent, laughter and aspic in their lives so much more than the seconds in which were killed. The murders of these girls and the broader on this haven within birminghams black, combined with evers assassin ation, however compelled somone write mississippi goddam. Although she conceded that she quote didnt like protest music because a lot of it was so simple and, unimaginative, that stripped the dignity away from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the alabama Church Bombing and the murder of medgar evers stop that argument. And with mississippi goddam, i realized there was no back in, quote, mississippi goddam as a mere glimpse into the violent history in which antiblack violence is constant and ravenous. This song was her resistance voice, a forthright, truth telling the lyrics of mississippi goddam also about collective resistance, Racial Injustice and violence, and a history of black protest. On march 24th, 1965, simon performed the song thousands of people. Near the end of the selma to montgomery marches for voting rights, notably just a couple weeks before her performance, protesters, activists such as the indomitable boynton Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee member and future congressman john lewis and many others were brutally beaten by state troops and county posse men as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus bridge, their march from selma to the Alabama State capitol. Bloody sunday, as it came to be known, expose both a national and a global audience to gravity of the brutality. Nonviolent protesters endured similar participation at the historic final march, befitting and more firmly cemented her as a powerful voice of resistance and as an artist to whom we continue to return when we cant find our words, to capture the abundance of violence against us. Simon followed up her pro first protest anthem with two more politically charged and theme songs for women and to the young, gifted and black. Mississippi goddam stands out among her cadre of anthems because it depicts both antiblack violence and the struggle against it. She didnt just tell the story in terms of what happens us. She sang about our fight against centuries of brutalization calling out those blocking the way to progress and those demanding that black be more gradual in their approach. Simon unequivocally rejected efforts that didnt trumpet for equality or that kept the door open. Violent acts like the murders of medgar, addie, carol denise and cynthia. It matters deeply that the deaths of four black girls at the hands of racist violence propelled someone to write song so scathing in its critique of violence against black people in the u. S. Frequently, how we talk about pivotal moments in both black freedom struggles and americas history more broadly ignores or limited acknowledges violence against black women and girls as powerful catalyst. Its worth parsing through why violence against us time and again doesnt incite the kind of collective and sustained outrage expressed in this protest anthem the non naming, the four little girls and the erasure by some of their murders as catalysts for the release of mississippi goddam struck me as i reflected on we talk about historical and contemporary antiblack violence and black freedom. I always try to say their names when referencing what happened that fateful sunday, adding carole denise, cynthia. Im im glad you read that part, because i was going to ask about nina specifically later but im going to ask first because i i watched. There are so many videos of nina simone performing mississippi goddam. Yes and as her career progresses and as the amount of time shes had to perform that song progressed, you can of see the song itself shift or perhaps see has shifted and therefore what the song means has shifted, you know, like earlier it was never a playful song, but it seemed like she there was an exuberance in her playing of. Yes. And then you catch her later in her career. Its almost like a fury. Yes. But that and i asked you this before you came on, but im interested in how you are feeling, because as we know, a book you live a book for a long time and you immerse yourself in the book for a long time and one of my mentors, a poet, bobby francis, said this thing about people having hard time exiting the book because it still lives you. Right. Right. And have this kind of book live within you. Im wondering what stage if we are to map this along the nina simone trajectory. Right. How are you . How are you feeling . Like at what stage are at in terms of being able to celebrate this, a massive but also perhaps detangle yourself from what it took to create the art itself. Yeah thats wonderful question. You know, so i launched monday and had this event and im surrounded by part of my village and theres this excitement because, this thing that youve been working on and sitting with is out in the world, right. As creator. There was something beautiful about that moment and also that these stories were going to be with other people that with these stories, perhaps someone be inspired or incited to think about how. They are thinking about these questions right and do Something Different and choose to hope differently. And even in the midst that, you know, the question asked is go, well, and then its the actor in the book signing when people are like, im survivor too. Yeah, i know this all too well. X, y, z happen to me and. I know this because i wrote a book about it and i know this because the method that i talked about writing the book was about witness and witness. So i witness these things. I can document these things and put them into this book, but theyre with me, right . My experiences, their experiences of people i love, their experiences happening right now. And last night, the name i invoked in the space was literally an example of the violence that write about in this book of a black being killed in her home. And it hit close to home. And its like im writing this book. This thing is ongoing. And in fact, since i started writing this book, it is only intensified. So when the i talk about a black woman being killed every 17 hours at this point with the most recent data, data, its an average of four black women every day. Right. So what does that mean to relegate that i remain made with that and, and and also choose hope at the end and, say im hopeful, i believe in us, i bet on us. It is our duty to and remain committed in that and see black girls playing, making tic tac videos and and being their best black girls selves and black gender expansive, new selves, life that matters deeply and that theres a that tells them whats your experience . Youre not alone. That there are those of us who are right there with you. And we also are trying to make the worlds in which you can do that without fear. Whats next . Without the world where . When you down without me able to predict the kind of premature death you may have right. And so im feeling all of the feelings that it is exciting to have a book when im thoroughly to fighting for black girls, women. And i know as we speaking that black girls and women are being and book has made me more aware of that than ever. And i never want it to be desensitized to it because. I was writing about it. Theres a way that reading after story after story that you might feel like you tried to distance yourself as a practice, as care. And i found the way that i had to care was actually to pull away. But to closer because many of these girls and women werent held warmly by this world. So my job as someone documenting this is to hold them warmly and to hold that and to hold processes of healing that im going through, you know, as a way to kind of see as an evolving and still evolving response to ongoing and trauma. Its also fitting that we got our dear ancestor in the vacuum the wall, because theres this quote that i always think from for colored girls, the. The speaker says being black and a woman is all i got. But being colored is a metaphysical dilemma i havent figured out yet. Right. Yeah. And i when reading this, i was drawn back to that quote a lot, because we are to believe what the speaker is saying in that moment its like i can only tangle with so much of this at once or else it will actually the life out of me. Yes. And yet i think your book i guess to cut to the quick of the question is the requirement to tangle with all of that at once feels much more perhaps ever present than did when that book was released. And i dont think id be sitting there saying that with interlocking stories like point of view. Thats the speaker of the book. But when setting out to not even write this book, but actually. What was was there an urgency that that of came through desire to wrestle with all those things at once, to be black, to be woman and to be alive. Yeah. So let me be perfectly honest. Right. I running from this book. The next book i was going to write was about the nineties and the hold right in like nineties kind of girl. Im talking about black girl culture, different world. I was like, really arent about this . And then we go into because of covid. And the first thing that i wrote during covid in a public space was about covids disparate on black women and girls, which more or less came to be right initially, right. We saw certain impacts, but the we know now are even more stark of how desperately impacted black communities been right back home. In all its manifestations, both as an illness, in terms of death, in terms of economic exploitation, in terms of deprivation and being forced out. Right. So there was that. And then, of course, the of george floyd. Right. And the subsequent uprising that emerged out of that and, then finding out about the murder of Breonna Taylor. Right. And its only in light of george floyd being murdered. We actually get a certain of a shes murdered on march 13th, 2020, and he murdered may 25th, 2020. Right. And so this actually brings to the bare worlds out. And youre seeing breonna and breonna, actually, unlike many the women and girls here, it becomes kind of a figure within the movement in a ways that very black women, girls and gender expansive ever have been in in in recent history. The notable exception probably be sandra bland. Right. Sandra bland is probably the notable exception. But in doing so, know the four other black women who were killed, Police Custody the same month that sandra bland was. Right. And so it is illustrative versus exceptional and but agnes charged this Breonna Taylor moment. How sandra blands. Right. Wow. Okay. So what youre doing ancestors. So. Breonna taylor happens and wondering and im curious as to what is propelling the interest in her, but also the secondary interest in certain ways to this larger moment. Im also thinking the 17 year old black girl who films the murder of george floyd darnella frazier. And the eight year old whos with her as well. The time witnesses this almost 10 minutes snuffing out of this mans life and. Theyre witnessing and witnessing. Right. And im like, i still dont want to write this book, though, right. Im like, i dont want to write it. Im alone in my house and its just me. And theres no selfcare to write this book because i would need that. The reason id been doing research for years, but id been able to go out friends or call someone and this moment there was no one to hug, cry with, go with, laugh with. There was no touch. So i was like, this feels like an ethical choice to choose to write this book for. And then i go home, visit my mom, drive straight from columbus to the d. C. Area to see for the first time in quite some. And it was for the anniversary of my fathers passing and i witness in the middle of these uprisings, this black man assaulting young black woman and throwing out of a car and i tell this in the books, i wont go into full detail. We stop. He drives off, intervene. He comes back, he comes back to the scene. Shes in distress, very clear distress. And cops arrive on the scene. And so the paramedics take, her and im so furious that this young man for assaulting her. But im also so worried that these cops are going to shoot him. And so im because i stopped to intervene, help this young black woman whos being assaulted by this young black man and. Now im bearing witness and begging so that hes not harmed by police. Right. Or that any us who are witnessing in this moment are harmed by police. And i was like, i got to find a way to explain this complexity of what it means to feel accountable to everybody. Every black person in. That scenario, while Still Holding the truth, that at the core of this is both patriarch and antiblackness and that that mattered deeply to me. And it was at that moment i literally home a comment is like i think i have to write book which she had just been sitting and waiting like okay i do this. This is the book you need to write. You also need to write it because you keep having these personal encounters with violence in your own that you feel more ready to tell than you ever were before. And so think about that as a way in to write this project and to tell these stories. So i committed to it and i wrote it probably the quickest ive ever written a thing. I started writing a chapter, then wrote it down in august and finished the book in december of 2020, right. Because i had i had all this stuff right and thats not advice to anybody or like dont be impressed. Like not grad as though grad students were here. No, absolutely not. The shared time with that. But its the fact i just had it like. Thats how i know it was supposed to be. The book i was writing, it was just there. The words were there, the feeling was there, the emotion was there, the conviction was there. Urgency was there. And i leaned into it. Just breathe through it, wake up writing about it. It didnt go to sleep writing about it right . I held space for it in a particular moment. Then i step away from it and go, whatever i was watching, it was blind or something. Something very unrelated to the work that i do. Yeah, yeah. And, and filled that space in that way and. So it came me, the book and i met each other. Yeah. Can i say this is a brief detour but what ears perked up when you talked about writing in nineties book only. And we dont have to like get into that, but i was working, i was working on a piece, a young black woman like six months ago that was like oral history of living. Yes. And it just didnt come fruition. We couldnt get enough we couldnt get enough of the folks who were involved to talk. But i put pin in that mentality and was like, somebodys got chase that or chase the traps an oral or a retelling of arra. So we dont have to get into that now. But later, i would love to. Oh, i have a lot of questions about the research process, actually, maybe to distill it theres a theres a there was a single event recently that reminded me of the that people, particularly white people, think about violence only through interpersonal conflict and that structurally right. Its only like because when its interpersonally rendered it can be binary like violence is bad its good to be nonviolent. But what i loved your book was that there was so history poured into an understanding of violence what which i had to agree but i went back and reread it last cause i feel frustrated by i was going to talk about that publicly, but i was so frustrated by peoples just lack of understanding of what far violence has reached actually, yes. And by people who clearly didnt go to public school. But but i was im also i guess the question asking is, how do you continually run against the walls, the limited imagination, the limited american imagination and, propose Something Different, propose a different understanding of what violence actually is. Yeah. And so part of this was figuring out i meant by violence to write, writing this book, there were different forms. So each chapter kind of takes on a different form of violence. The first one is like police violence, of course, resonated with people i thought was the one folks could kind of be more immediately connect with in this moment. This is a way that were responding to the ways that violence shows up. And i thought about targeted mass incarceration and what that looks like specifically for black women girls. So thinking about deaths in Police Custody, for instance right so thats how you have a sandra bland or jones a Joyce Cornell so many polanco like we could go on on and on with names here and also black women who are criminalized for surviving violence. Right. So marissa alexander, who very soon after the Trayvon Martin case, the same prosecutor who ultimately in the case prosecuted George Zimmerman for murder. And i say that not killing the of Trayvon Martin, you, you know, fails to get conviction or whatever and then goes so hard at this black woman who fires a warning shot at an on record abusive ex. Right. And she like well, thats not stand your ground someone else could have been injured. Right and is facing at next years. Right. Because of this and actually is of this and eventually has lesser sentence but is mostly time served. Thats what ends up happening. And so in that context, the same prosecutor feels what George Zimmerman did. And this woman womans experience with violence and abuse was illegible. Right. Write to her or rosa meadows and toya brown, some of the names that are more common here and quite a few in ohio so ohio has a lot to reckon with specifically in this text. And what i realized as i was writing, i then got to medical violence and what it meant. Write this to columbus and think about maternal mortality. Maternal morbidity lupus, hair loss, asthma. I mean, there were so many ways that black girls and folks with gestational capacity were just desperately impacted by a careless care system. Right. And deprivation and living right. Poverty. How wears black people down, right . The distinct ways in which that happens. And then words right . Right. The words we to talk about people in the words weve internalized. So one example of that for me that ive been thinking about a lot recently is opioid patient. And i thought about opioid patient, a lot as i was reading articles and, things about the opioid crisis, the devastation is working homes and families, communities and this health care to addiction which is exactly what we should have right to addiction. And theres more to say, there. But i remember being crack holes and crack babies and junkies and particularly kind of feminization of the ways that thats racialized. And even hearing it in culture, your mamas on crack rock, right . And this song details that and so just what that internalized version of particular narratives that criminalize lives devour and just evac you wait. Personhood from black people. And so understanding that violence and the ways that these chokes these phrases these were have all kinds of power because crack makes it a lot easier to criminalize de personhood a rescue and say no involved which is an actual term been used that relationship in particular to drug addicts and sex workers right and so i think its really important to think about expanding imagination as you say, to encompass all of the ways that violence is precipitated and manifest in our lives and in our world and in our inability to do that, save for i hit you you means that were always going to be talking about the singular exception all incidents as opposed very, very historically rooted, ravenous structures that are little really built on exploitation and murder murder of black people. The indigenous genocide of this world. Right. The support nation of genders outside of had men write the structuring into particular notions of ability right. Were going to continuously see this kind of violence manifest and its in our laws, in our policies. Its in the ways that we to one another. Its in the jokes that are acceptable or or the jokes we should just laugh at. And off. Its all embedded in. And they tell us suddenly you dont matter. You are disposable all your pain is illegible. Its so illegible that we see it in medicine that black people are believed to feel pain the same way that white people do. Right. Thats still is part of our medical training because our medical training is based on experimentation and exploitation. Enslaved people. So how can a care system thats rooted in that ever be a system that cares for the wholeness of communities and of those people . Yeah, right. So we have to think about whats your textbook. Thats why battle right now about what we see classrooms and all of that is violence, right . Not just that. Its poor education. It intentionally violent and its the ways that we can think rhetoric and policy and and name that, as it were, so that were actually able to do something in imagined worlds that are different and more caring and, more loving and more just. I really really. I really when the book itself up to hope which is interesting because im a bit cynical probably or at least i would be considered cynical by most people. But when the book opened itself up to hope, i was really interested how you built that bridge kind of seamlessly. And because the book didnt necessarily close with hope, it was kind of in the late third act. If were going to think about this in like a act project, um, my just class standpoint, im interested in the placement. Yeah. So the whole came in because at first it was a book that had no hope. And actually, no, thats not right. Right. If this is something that is intentional reflecting who i am and my perception of the world, dont move through it without hope. And i say that is like not hope. Like hope and change. No shade. Ill shade, but i move through it with what Miriam Carver calls right hope as a discipline and to me also relates to Assata Shakur as our duty to fight for freedom. Right. The belief that we when it is the belief in going back several times that guides Harriet Tubman and, other conductors along the underground, it is because the Combahee River collective who takes their name from Harriet Tubman to ro quick act of liberating over 700 enslaved people in south that they Something Else was possible they believed other worlds were possible and so hope for me is saying against all of this and i lay out a lot of what the this is and its still not exhaustive that my belief in us is stronger than the lies these systems tell us. And for me i think of myself already doing ancestor work. So the things that i do now, what other folks who come along if we dont kill this planet before then. That inherit, we build and then get to new things. Yeah. And for me, the discipline not temporally bound to right. And so its not about necessarily being my ancestors while dreams as much as understanding they had dreams and that the ability to do that means we push forward in particular ways and that my belief and love of people, of marginalized folks, of folks on the margins of the margins supersedes all of the hate and the harm and the violence that encases these worlds that we currently reside in. But these worlds can be different. I have to believe that. Me, right . I have to believe. Otherwise is possible. Right. And the fourth act with the epilogue. Right, which is the love letter to Makhia Bryant was about like this is what were up against right. I didnt want to make it like hope do it right, but more so this is what we have to hope alongside right . The realities and what puts in that hope is that i hope that i can create a world in which future marcuse or her sister did not are still here. Right . Because theres no justice for her. Theres no for any of these people that im talking about whose lives have been snuffed out. We have to build a more just world in honor of the lives that they had, that thats whats life affirming about that. And so i end in the epilogue of saying i promise to keep fighting for the world you deserved, right . Thats hope that i actually can create the world that she deserved. Right. And that so many the black women and girls and, gender expansive people in my book deserved. This is a good runway to win and a little devil in america. I write about the picture Trayvon Martin that space camp. And when we lost micaiah were the beautiful videos of her tik tok doing hair and makeup. These things that seem to exist in, opposition to the narratives that exist when black folks die, particularly young folks in particular, young black women. But but the flip side of that, its like that is to say, i dont get pleasure out of seeing these folks alive. Yeah, but the flip side of that is weeks ago i read about and watch video about this center, this kind of safe housing space where black queer folks and black trans folks who are old who are elders, just kind of like live just kind of i live in peace, you know what i mean . And it made me once again consider and reconsider that some of worst work that happens is this embedding of an understanding. All we do is die, and no one lives a full life beyond a certain point right. Even though we all, many of us in this room, many black folks in this room. No elders have elders. The elders care for elders. Theres its really insidious. Theres something really insidious about how even honoring folks who are at the margins like black folks are not just happening like at the margins of the margins reinforces understanding that life is is is has a clear limit. Yeah and and i think about that i remember there was a statistic a few years ago that was that was floating around and this speaks to this that the average for a black trans woman was 35 years. Right. And so i kept looking for the citation for this the source of this right to like back it up. I need to back this up because im it and im hearing it. Im hearing it and the shadiest study right, right. And i understood the impulse to believe in that because were like black trans are dying and its so important to talk about so many of the things that were about in this instance. You know, say if like america has a cold black people got pneumonia, black trans women on a deathbed like right that that is the narrative that people were trying to drive home. However what does it mean to continuously hear that as a black trans woman and its untrue what does that mean that then you went by you know in imbibe this idea of leadership in your twenties. Mm. As a way of moving through the world and thinking through black age as always and ever connected to death and murder and the rapacious of antiblackness and misogyny noire and so i had to take a step back from that and think about what is the way in this book to still hold and not say right, like if were thinking of racism in the ways that premature death operates, right . This clear connection about predisposition towards premature death and yet black people defy that all the time. Right. And we create world aids in our communities to care one another to ensure that we make to our nineties right, that we make it and have that kind of support and see these life affirming examples that we reach. Elder right. And what that means. So finding these moments for each of these people, as you notice in the reading, i of saying something about these girls that you what who they were in life so they also arent just objects this study and not just people were killed but were who were living and are snuffed by these forces. But these communities them are still living the younger i talked about who was hit in the glass with i i mean often when the anniversary comes up its like hey still here. Yeah right. Always reminding us that shes still here. That still here. And i feel like every year shes a reminder. Yeah, still here. And thats so to think about that those are still here are charged with that and also sits with that very vicious memory right. Right. Of four girls that she was with. And shes the one that survives right. And so i think that there is both hand right of wanting to life affirming in the ways that i talk about individuals who are snuffed out and also acknowledge that like black life creates and and and loves engages in a and does it does and does and does and does right. Thats what i want to write in this book to talk about the things weve been doing. Yeah, yeah. Stuff that we do right. And the Amazing Things that we do in spite of. Right, right. I know were running up against time for audience questions, which is sad because i have so much more, but i want to ask maybe a boring craft question because. I was really in awe of how writing history youre a historian which shows up in your work in ways that i appreciate as someone whos like vaguely or a historian of not important. So most, you know, i mean, i story and the things that are important to me but rarely other people youre like an actual dyed the woods story and and was a point when i was reading this book was like this is this is a lot of history but its not dense. Its not overwhelming. And i feel like wading through the deep end of a pool. And its because i just really loved how gently you inserted yourself in your own stories and allowed for the kind of even though its on the page, the kind of oral tradition, like, you know, like so many holes in certain probably have a relationship with oral tradition or know someone who passed an oral tradition and understanding the word tradition out of the which makes none of our history i think. But is still hard to transmit actual difficult histories onto a page while still saying and also here is me. The stakes are the stakes are what they are, because i am not detached from this and here is a story of my life. What was the Decision Making process on when to insert yourself and when to pull back and go for kind of like steeped in history . Yeah. So i wanted it to feel like you were in a conversation with me and if youre in a with me youre going to get a little bit everything right . I am going to drop some history probably. I am going to, you know, talk about a concept and i am probably going to make it personal and have this relate ability to it. I wanted to feel like im sitting here talking to you and then there are moments where i pull away, kind of just talk about it and then i come to you again. And so for me, the ability to move through it in that way meant this balance between heres the archives heres how im processing archive. Heres some tools to process the archive and heres me figuring this and processing through this and talking about some of my anxieties as im writing the book right . Talk about worrying about this being weaponized against black men and boys in particular ways. When i talk intercommunal violence and worried about criminalization of black people broadly, i say that in the book i dont hold that back because in moment of like, how am i going write this . Or maybe i should just write that i feel this, write that to let you know that the anxiety i feel writing is part of what makes this work do what it does right. Part of i have anxiety because i understand the stakes of what it means to add kind of criminalizing narratives that become pathologizing narratives and narratives used justify as the ways were going to see any justification is based on all logics, fantasies. And yet well say, see what you did there. That means youre exactly what we said you were. And so my concerns that that the the rhythm of that chapter im a dancer by training so finding particular kind of rhythms and obviously can see by my movements here that the rhythm of that is the most anxious of the entire book the way it needs reads that tension of pull push and to really process through what it means call in a certain of violence that feels so close to home and knowing that a lot of nonblack people will be reading this and so what is the way that i talk our business in front of strangers who are often already apt to read us in particular ways. And so i hate to say that i was preoccupied with whiteness or white people. I like to think im someone whos not. But i was preoccupied with black people and the way that that gets taken up because im about our family and our communities. Before we go to the audience i really, truly want to say its not lost on me that. This is a monument to book that was a heavy emotional lift and its not lost on me that, you know, we talked a little bit about backstage, but coming out of a book, completing it and feeling good and having to revisit it after, you know, because it takes a minute for books come out. Right. Would it be great if the minute youre done with this, shes out like mine . Yeah, if only it was like albums, you know. But i. To express just immense gratitude because i think any book thats this heavy of an emotional lift in that required as much work like actual labor to be seen through it as much care this much thoughtfulness and this much rigour is a real gift to our people and im thankful for that. Im thankful for your work. Thank you. Congratulations. Yeah. I got to a with people have questions if thats a mic. Are you holding it. Yeah we have a mic stand up here. If anyone would like to ask a question and please try to keep the middle aisle clear for the cameras. Walk around. If you cant get up and get to the air easily. We do a couple of mikes that we can run around, so please raise your hand or walk up to the mic. My bad. I didnt know youre supposed to keep the middle out. I walked all up and down the middle house. Okay. Okay okay. Hi. Is actually, linsey, thank so much for your work. And this moment, its an honor to be in this room. And my question. Im really interested in how you handles and engage and read this archive with this idea of witness that youve been talking and witness and to these black women and girls with care with gentleness. And i would love to hear you talk more about how you put that forth in practice practice and in the writing of this work and in your work in general. Thank you. Thank highly so there are a couple of things that were really essential for me. So one, if you noticed in the. The part that ive read i refer to everyone by their first name. Right and some of that is just a subtle thing of the way that you create intimacy with a, with a person, with the subject. But also often when were using last names of black people, were using it to criminalize eyes or to identify a perpetrator or to do that. So i notice instance we talk about a case like well say the Trayvon Martin case and the George Zimmerman trial right. But theres a way that we do that. Its the rodney king trial. I charge anyone tell you the four officers who were charged with this killing . Right. I mean, because assault. Right. And so for me, that intimacy of that within of like what their names what did they do . Who were they before this spectacle in the moment. And i only know them because this spectacular moment right there, people in the book, because im talking about personal experiences that i do know before the moment encounter. But most of the people in the book, i dont. So then it was on me as, both a historian and as someone investing in this work to find other things about them, to tell a bit about who they were, who were the people who loved them, who cared about them, who feel this differently than i do, even as someone who deeply cares about what happened to them. But theyre still not my kin, right . In that in that intimate way, that we think about kinship. And so what does it mean to build a robust fictive with the figures of my book and that for me was this process of witnessing and thinking about and why i brought my own story at different points in to it. Imagine what were the emotional registers that i went to after sexual encounter in my life . What did mean to lose a friend to Domestic Violence . Homicide . What did it mean to encounter classmates who were in the same dc shelter where when lisa rudd disappears from in washington dc and think about the unhoused children who were in my school and the ways that they were talked about and treated in those spaces because they were unhoused right . And so that with this thing came from my experiences with certain encounters in my attempt to the kinds of intimacies and emotional to each subject in a particular way that honored their lives and also honored the fullness of the communities in which they. Thank you for work. And i love you to. I love you too. And bree, we have the best picture here in the club. This museum of art, to mark my i love you fighting worlds that make it better you to thank you hi trevor. So i have a question about what through your research. What kind of did it make it like what was your kind of bar of this is violence im talking about and this is what im not and i say that because theres a few ways in which we criminalize without criminal activity happening. Like you said, the rodney king trial, hes not on trial. The george floyd trial. Hes not on trial. And also this idea of violence through erasure. Youve said this before around when people write about nobody cares about black women. Now there are black women who care about black women and were not nobodies. So this this way in which erase every kind of criminalization without really happened. But im wondering what didnt make in what were those things that was you could see it as violence but its necessarily not everybody thinking about expansive imagination maybe probably wouldnt think of that way. So i want to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. So there were things there was almost everything could have gone right. So at a certain point it was just like editorial decisions, right . So there wasnt for me like met this needs some criteria and this didnt write its bandwidth on some level. Im thinking of the bandwidth the reader as well what it is so for instance one of the sites where incredible violence is happening is our schools, right. And ive written extensively about assaults and disciplining and disparate violence against black girls women in gender Expansive Youth in schools and also some of my people i alongside like Monique Morris bettina love with nicole brown and others really i mean have really written books that are here at the end of the book i point to all of these organizations and places where people are doing the work to do this. And so i know in the beginning like this is not a fight. Heres what it looks like right . Give an overview. And i thought about this intently because i wanted to start one chapter with the assault in spring high when this 15 year old black girl was thrown across the room by a School Resource officer and the black girl who stands up for her knife. Kenny is also arrested. So the only person in the room who is like, stop is another girl. Which goes to that point of like, no one cares about black girls. Black girls care about black girls like all the time, like all the time. And the fact that we say no one or even that we invest in saying that no one cares about us, begins to race. Weve internalized something about our no. One ness, our no body ness. And so schooling didnt make it in the way i could have done. But i was like, here are some resources. And this why . But its not because i dont believe the gravity of whats happening in schools. Its important for me. I was like, let me introduce some of the childhood about like disappeared black girls and let me introduce the problem of and the unique impact it has on black girls. For example, as a way that we often dont think about homelessness and children specifically in kind of gendered homelessness right the idea of homeless are often male adult and we think about so what does it need to think about a young black girl and young black girls at the center of this and the connections it has to to other forms of violence that are often part of systems that lead to one being unhoused. Right. And doing so. And i invite people to think about violence i was thinking about violence in Detention Centers was another space i wanted to think about. And i briefly mentioned in here and i had her image up here, don, whos the whistleblower in the detention center, georgia, that was forcibly sterilizing detained women. And i looked at statistics of the women who were sterilized and most of them from east africa and haiti. And so thinking about how antiblackness was operating and that that could have been its own chapter of thinking about the ways that kind of policing and violence and this longer history of, forcible sterilization. So, you know, theres a things left on the cutting room floor, not because unimportant but because bandwidth and theres just so much and hopeful that other folks and other folks are writing the same day i shared a book birthday with the amazing dorothy roberts, who has a new book out called torn apart, about the the devastation that the Child Welfare system has done on black families in black communities and black. How she takes up mickey, for example is really rich and interesting and compelling that both of us thinking about her me through one lens and her through that lens. People like patrice douglass, miriam kaba, andre richie. Theres such a thing as sara haley, really incredible people. And thats also why i did a lot of citations in the book and hope that people look the citations to see who i am in conversation with. This is collaborative is a solo authored book thats only possible by the hundreds of organizers, thinkers, creators, everyday folks on this that this book exist and stories exist. So im hopeful that this is part a conversation and not the converse sation about black girls and women women. Can i just real quick also applaud i want to applaud your citations because i not enough perhaps think of citation as a work of generosity and as a work of like lineage expansion, you know . Yes. But for those of us who grew up in the nineties and grew up reading liner notes on the back of records, you know. Yes. That types it we understand that the citation expand the lineage in a way that is a really great so thank you for your citations. Yes. And youll see its a lot of citations for was otherwise the book but it meant to say right i do this in community and my citation is are also who i feel accountable to in addition to the black girls and women and gender specific people that im writing with and engaged with, it is really expanding this tremendous legacy of documenting and chronicling and trying to make sense of the worlds that weve inherited and that we inhabit. And so that a particular kind, robust citation and citation as a an effort an exercise in collaboration and accountability as to a demand that you cite somebody because its going to get you in trouble if you dont right. But thinking more about what it to be in collaboration with person and what it means to be accountable. The work that theyve offered to the world and to. Use military. All right. Well, if there is an either questions, last chance. I have a question, actually. Hopefully i can word it in a way that makes sense. So to think about first of all, thank you, trevor. Thank you, neve. Thank you to our poets that set the stage and im really grateful and you know, just so happy to be here and witness everything you all have talked about the importance of language a lot and. It was making me reflect on. A phrase that i heard somebody recently instead of referring for black brown people as minorities, as the global majority, and how language can be a vehicle for systemic violence. Are there any language pivots really you think that we should more mindful of or your favorite kind of language pivots that maybe its easy internalize if youre not being super of the words youre using. Yeah thats a great question i have to think about that about what im using right i often say minoritized and think about that as an ongoing process of what it means, which doesnt mean a condition or an identity as much it is thinking about particular sets of experiences in material realities with regards to that because the global majority by concern for with that framing is that because the ways and we talk about the limited capacity sometimes of us to hold multiple truths all is that that language to me somehow gives the semblance of like power and like big p power. Im not talking about people power, but like because were the global majority, we should have x, y and z and its like we know that a global minority, right, is debt dealing and ravenous in its commitment to death dealing. And i think we have to name how that predominates in so many places. And its many sites and that that creates context for minorities. Asian to happen right and marginalization to happen. Im weary of women of color and of color. Yeah. For various reasons, namely because often people arent citing the history out of which those terms come, which is a very much though a political history and about a political commitment to certain kinds of solidarity and coalitional politics and not an identity per se. Right. And that evacuation of the political commitment that comes with that. Like you dont just get to be a woman of color. Right. There is a political commitment that comes with that particular kind of figuration that debt. Its a reproductive justice thats indebted to the third world. When theres alliance thats indebted to these different spaces, were thinking transnationally and and anticolonial. And so if were not being intentional about that, it becomes this marker of identity t that doesnt really tell us anything about dynamics power beyond in relationship to white people like were nonwhite which still vilifies whiteness as default and center. And so im leery of that. So when im talking about black women, im talking about black women and im very specific that when i want to talk about other communities, other other power relations, i try and be very specific about that and so specificity and history matter deeply to me and the roots of words, the rotc, rotc words, and then the roots words, how they then travel and how they used and misused and misappropriated and often elide the violence that undergirds very conditions that made those words necessary as descriptive as analytics. One more question. So spoke a little bit earlier. Obviously, the title of the book. But i also know music is very important to you. You had some opening music playing to get us situated. So i was wondering what was like your audio accompaniment maybe when you were writing this book or in your citation or practice this book, and thank you for being here and for having us here and all. Yeah, thank you to. Its funny, while i was writing. I actually really listen to a lot of music i would listen to before and after. That was my like free and like im shutting down, so im gonna turn on make the salient or im going to do i ended up writing about i mean interesting enough because in 2020 is also the incident with toy lane right and so but was listening to her not because of that right is like savagery makes a drop right you know were at home so im trying do all the challenges and not put them all ticked up. So there are ways that music was the the you know on but with a book in and so we were discussing this event and the about a playlist that were here were actually the songs couldnt listen to while i was writing it but because they were songs that were so deeply connected to the narrative and to the stories of these women and girls that i was writing about and which was hard because some of my favorite artists were on their right, like no names on there. Magic lives is on there. Brandy, jasmine sullivan, rhapsody. So i couldnt listen to these songs. Tracy chapman so i when i got to make the playlist a little while back, it was like, i got to reintroduce songs into my life because i was finally at a place where i could listen to them and not be in the depths of this, in the way that i was almost two years ago. So you i would post videos of me dancing as i was writing through this. My go to is always Donny Hathaway and that part of that was my own like my relationship my father was like so much of that was through Donny Hathaway and creating movement to that but that his version young gifted and black he has a version of that ninas version and but also like mya from because she was from pg dance into like fallen like just finding different modes that just made you remember like im writing about this because i want different worlds to exist. And so sometimes have to practice freedom. I have to practice the world that i want and so sometimes i have to practice the world i want to exist which means dancing with abandon, eating good food, getting on zoom happy hour during the pandemic 4 times a day because it is happy hour somewhere. And with various strength, not all. And it meant being very intentional about the community i was building here and writing this book, for the longest time i had been in columbus and secondly i never spent more than 3 weeks at a time prior to covid and that i was here and i was here and i was here and i was here and i was still grieving but at that point only a few months after my father passed and grieving here and here and thankful for so much here today is right now and my colleagues who were still present in that moment. There were so many ways figuring out how to be joyous and practice joy became part of the system i was making for myself and how i thought about things for the people i was writing. [applause] that concludes our conversation but the night is not over yet, the museum is open until tonight. Her book is available downstairs in the museum stores. If you havent bought a copy yet go and purchase one. Thank you so much. Be uptodate in the latest in publishing with booktvs podcast about books with current Nonfiction Book releases plus bestseller lists and Industry News and trends through insider interviews. You can find about books on cspan now, our free mobile apps or wherever you get your podcasts. s piece and now cspan now has everything youre looking for in washington. Keep up with todays big events with floor proceedings and hearing from the u. S. Congress, white house events, the courts, campaigns,