Transcripts For CSPAN3 Author Discussion - Telling Our Stories 20220924

Welcome again to the 16 National Black writers conference. My name is erica boddington and as youve heard on the ceo and founder of langston, a consulting curriculum firm specializes in culturally affirming instruction materials and writing for late night segment called how do we get here on the amber ruffin show . Speaking of how we got, were all here for roundtable entitled the souls of black folk telling our stories. Todays roundtable title is taken from w. E. B. Duboiss landmark book, the souls black folk. And in this regard, todays speakers will discuss how their work to the complex experiences of black people. The African Diaspora through fiction, drama and essay each featured here today will illustrate the ways in which his or her work speak to the complex experiences of black people in literature and i know were at the 16th National Black writers conference, but the speakers youre about to listen to are not living by the pen. Youll witnessing the unraveling of whitewashed history through the eyes of historians like dolan valdez, whose work plants its palms into american soil and pulls out narratives that are imagined and true all at once. Youll be looking at executive producers like jelani cobb, whose influence ranges from marvels luke cage, the newly released lincolns dilemma. Youll be listening to sci and fantasy tv comic book connoisseur like marlon james, whose works will be splashing our screens in the coming years. And well and that will be no surprise to any of us. Youll hear voices all too familiar because youve heard them times before, like kahlil gibran, whose words have graced many documents and Media Outlets, shaking the speakers, the archives simultaneously. Youll see pictures clearly like maza, mingus, who not only reclaims the diasporas narrative through her stories, but the black and white photography. And if that wasnt enough here the speakers, formal bios, jelani cobb is the director of the Center Journalism and civil and human rights at university and a professor at columbia Journalism School. He has been a staff writer at the new yorker since 2015. And in 2018 was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. Hes the author and editor of. Six books, including the recently published the matter of black lives. Writing the new yorker his 2020 film, whose vote counts, received the peabody award for news documentary. He is also the author of the essential Kerner Commission report, which came out in fall 2021. His earlier book, the substance of hope barack obama and the paradox progress, was reissued in 2020. Marlon was born in jamaica in 1970. Hes the author a brief history of seven killings, the book of night woman and jim crows devil. His recent novel, moon which spider king second novel in jamess dark star trilogy, african fantasy, was published in february 2022. Hes a recipient of the 2015 man booker prize, the american award, the mansfield wolf prize for fiction, the literary peace prize, and was a finalist for the 2019 National Book award and is a fellow yardie muslim engage day is the author of the shadow king shortlisted for the 2020 booker prize and mississippis of the American Academy of arts and letters award in literature, as well as a Los Angeles Times book prize finalist. It was named the best book of 2018 by New York Times and time, elle and other publication. Beneath the lions gaze, her debut was selected by the guardian as one of the ten best contemporary african. Kahlil Gibran Muhammad is the Award Winning author of the combination of blackness race, crime and the making of modern urban america and a contributor to a 2014 National Research council study. The growth of incarceration in. The us exploring causes and consequences. He is currently cochairing a National Academy of sciences report on reducing racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. Carlo cohosts the pushkin podcast. Some of my best friends are and is the frequent reviewer and commentator in National Print and broadcast Media Outlets such as the Washington Post nation, National Public radio, pbs, msnbc and the New York Times, which includes his essay for the 1619 project on sugar. He has appeared in a number of feature length documentaries, including the recent release amend the fight for america. The oscar nominated 213 2016 and slavery by another name, 2012 kilo is an award teacher at harvard and has received numerous for his commitment to public engagement, such as ebony power 100 and the distinguished Service Medal from Columbia Universitys teachers college. He serves on several boards, including the Vera Institute of justice, to war, violence, global and the museum of modern art, bohlen, perkins, valdez, the New York Times bestselling author of wench bomb and the forthcoming man who will take my head when she was a finalist two. And the Naacp Image Awards and the Hurston Wright legacy award for fiction. In 2017, harpercollins it as one of eight out of titles limited edition modern classic that included by Edward P Jones lewis eldridge, Zora Neale Hurston. Dolan received d. C. Commission on the arts grant for her second novel, bomb which was published by harpercollins in 2015. In 2013, dolan wrote the introduction to a special edition of solomon moore, 12 years a slave, published by simon schuster, which became a New York Times best. Dolan is current chair. The board of Penn Faulkner foundation is associate in the Literature Department at American University in washington, dc. For our next section, ive asked our speakers to speak. 5 to 7 minutes on the following questions. As it relates to their past or forthcoming works. What Literary Works . Comic books or films and tv shows illustrated the complexity of, the black experience for you, where they are sparked . Which one and how so . How did your upbringing, your personal black experience shape your writing . And what monolith or falsehoods about black people in . The diaspora i plucked apart or negated within the pages of your work . The last 30 minutes of our conversation are reserved for audience questions. Please use the q a to ask questions as the speakers are speaking, the chat feature can be used to make comments and i will reserve 30 minutes for you for your questions to be answered. And if something resonates you or if you have an hallelujah indeed, feel free to drop them in the chat. Jelani, well start with you. How are you going to stage a lot of your first . I my good friend will muhammad there who i would eagerly off the initial duties to actually im just happy to see him i didnt know he was on the board of moma. Hoping you can get me like a complimentary membership or something. So im happy to be with you all, happy to be able to participate in this conversation. You know, as a panelist, particularly the fact that this conference was so integral to my development as a young writer, i attended this conference as a young person. It is where i made many of the formative relationships in my life, my career, notably. My first interaction with Stanley Crouch was at the conference. 1995 or 19 six. Youre not going to a huge heated argument as anyone who knew stanley would do automatically. And we continue to argue with an increasing degree of affection over the next two decades, more than two decades until his untimely passing. But i say that to say that this conference doing the crucial work of building the foundation that enabled that will enable our narrative and our contribution to the global thread of literature to continue and move forward. Now, to answer that question about me specifically, i think that theres a book there that terribly well known but had a tremendous impact on. And its a book by a writer, by the of Maurice Lemoine called bitter. And it was assigned to me my first year at howard and a class called black diaspora, which all students were required to take. And the book follows the experience chronicles is the experience of haitian cinema of. Haitian Migrant Workers in the Dominican Republic and not only does it tell the narrative, the individuals who are experiencing the bitter exploitation that happens in that context, but it connects this narrative to transnational corporations, the wealth and western industries that are based in north america and the exploitative grip that they have on labor throughout the diaspora, particularly in the caribbean and in reading that book, it made me cognizant of threads that were in front of me. My entire life. You know, i grew up queens, new york, which is, you know, statistically the most diverse county in the United States. My next door neighbor was a rasta jamaica. My neighbor upstairs, downstairs as were was a family from and the building next to them. The neighbors were, a family. Theyd come from haiti, you know, to the United States. And i remember them explaining to me the significance of the fall of the duvals duvalier regime in the 1980s. And so what that book did was give a context. For me to be able to understand relationship between sugar in haiti and the Dominican Republic and cotton in georgia in alabama, where my parents had grown up and it sparked this nascent sense that there was this global thread interconnected, that there was this thing diaspora and that i have my mind is never tired of to understand the ways which our lives are interconnected and the ways in which the dynamics that begin the moment they begin taking us off of those slave ships in, different ports of destination, and have made the incredibly complicated and crucial tapestry of relationships that we see between those two experiences of these myriad experiences to this day. Powerful you know, you talk about being a part of the National Black writers conference for all this time and i myself grew up here in this since i was a teenager and watched many a heated debate about numerous topics i was there for, how hakeem out of and cornel west going back and i remember that okay you were there for part too. I was 19 and i was blown away right. It was amazing. And you know, i, i also had the realization that the narrative that i had grown up with. I grew up between brooklyn and long island in hempstead. Long island, to be specific, which im sure youre familiar with, were making its way into the literature and i was blown away to the connections were happening between. What i learned growing up, the redlining and all of the differences, issues in the way in which they made it into work. And so id love to ask. Right, those narratives that you grew up with neighbors next door are the systemic things that were unraveled for you growing up. What works do . You feel like those are centered in the works . Youve what narratives which that youve grown up with are centered that informs everything ive done i think it shows that probably most prominently in the work that ive done at the new yorker, you know, in in talking about, you know, the ways in which you know, many of these communities overlap and many of these histories overlap. And so the history informs everything that ive done. And so i would probably say that, you know, theres like it just comes up in all of the things that i do, you know, particularly most commonly my journalism. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Next up, we have marlon james. Oh, my god. Did i knew i was going to be next. Yeah. Youre youre on the hot seat now. Yeah. First of all, it was well, was alphabetical. Im for me, just the the existence of of black literature, black art. I actually black science, black research and that was complicated. I was born, what, eight years after jamaica was independent, but i still had pretty British Colonial and and i was still sort of trained in empire. So there so things like language, i was raised to think that part of, for example, it was broken meaning theres something im wanted it need to be fixed. Most of the books i read, i still love them. I love dickens, i love all of that. But thats what thats what i was raised literature for me was victorian literature, you know, the, the idea of i went to a school where were raised to be gentlemen but gentlemen, were a muddled on on royalty. Its as ways as way when a lot of the winner of speed became to england saw no blacks, no , no irish. I mean. Oh, so they dont mean me then then. So what i was saying is i was, you know, people one thing you always you will you will still hear people from the caribbean say those things like, yeah, in jamaica, not a race class. And of course would tell you that thats what colonialism taught us. Meanwhile it never occurred to me that the fact that the nightclub in kingston wont let me in for wearing a tshirt. But they let all the tourists in was a race thing. It just didnt occur to me. I was like, well, need to put on a certain extent. And so what im saying is the very existence of black american art complicated things, the very existence of of song of solomon, for example, or, you know, a jamaican black brother man, 1988 would have been public enemys it takes a nation of millions to hold us back and straight outta compton, which between the two of them made my head explore. And not just because got to say a lot of f words, but also because ive never interrogated the relationship between police and institutionalized power, considering i come from a cop family. It never. It never occurred to me that this idea of blackness, a social, cultural, political identity, where it where would i have gotten it from . So a lot of those works created this sort of awaken thing. For one in me and sometimes its its its something as as people dont talk about i that i thought about like a different. Its not its its seeing its is the evolution of seeing even shows that we may have low opinions like good times but the evolution from good times to different world to other shows which that man of ruined the talking about but the the idea that black was not a monolith is something that i wasnt raised to know so know you know. One of the things one of the things that direct things that are novel like say the color purple did was for me liberate my to a way it gets thats i was raised i mean what it is what i write to i and you know i remember when there was a saying that had stopped i had sent my second book of night woman to a british publisher shall remain nameless viking and they sent me back a letter saying, yes, this is good and its great and so on, but would you reconsider rewriting the whole thing in english. Because if you dont, britain and the rest of the world may not like it. Mandy the book became aitn the uk, but that was the kind of thing i was still expecting. And its is interesting to me, even present criticism, british criticism of my work, just how unsophisticated it is because there is still this taken for granted that if you are writing literature surely youre reacting to a way it used. Thats what literature is about and it me a while and man, i dont know where id be with black american because is it one of the things that it did was then have me turn maggies back some jamaican art for example, until reggae came along, the idea of using jamaican patois to speak to power or or to talk about complicated issues, to talk about grief, to talk about the consequences of violence. Bob marley song that johnny was it wouldnt have occurred to. Thats not what thats what i write those wrote about even somebody like claude mckay who was crucial to the harlem renaissance couldnt get past a room and despising of english and couldnt get past our romanticism. A certain of english. It took me a while to realize every time i opened my mouth a song, they let the butler cadets the language we were taught. Its not just is. Its not just in the in the black and African Diaspora. Indian writers still are the same thing. Sri lankan writers tell you the same thing nigerian writers still the same thing. We had to completely throw away this english. We knew all along, and if it wasnt for at Toni Morrisons and alice walker and the James Baldwin and the these and cubes and the delta shoals and and the qtips, we wouldnt have known it. So for me that that is those the works for me that that illustrated the complexity of the black experience merely by showing me that there was complex that you know you know something the idea a soul album is so far removed from an n. W. A. Album, but it says something that was obsessed with both of them equally, because i, i just never that sort of complexity was something that was never taught to me and something that, you know, culture and africanamerican culture taught me. And it continues to, you know, that spills over in my work. I think theres a different question. Thank so much that is really powerful mean im learning i about Zora Neale Hurston in the way in which she had the same sort of pushback with using certain language within her work you know down to my Family Living room growing up where my mom dad and i often had those conversations of, you know, using patois and saying things, like ms. Johnson and realizing thats rooted in language that. You know, we were taught during enslavement and the way in which weve created it, like its ours now. But the roots of it, we we have to contend with. And so that from you has me wanting to my gears on several things as well as i think well some of the things that we get know the roots, we get confused with a very simple thing about, about jamaica and part and nigerian pidgin verbs are always present tense because action is always action is always present for us is what reasons why white can understand unnecessary. When we talk about slavery we speak in the present tense. Its is time is a continuum. And thats one of the things thats essentially african. It didnt occur me i thought it was just bad english that i didnt say he went. I did go, you know, im going soon. Go wont go and can go even go. He going and thats because a lot of languages like wolof an example verbs are man present tense action is always active why wouldnt action be active but that is just another example of one of the things that the slave ship couldnt drum out but i had no i had it listed as of a sudden not a thing i need to fix. Thank you so much for that perspective. Getting lessons today. Next up, mother. Thank you erica. Its really my god, its such a pleasure to be here and to be doing think. You and i had one of our first book events on our first books, a long time ago. Marlin is such a good friend of mine, jelani campbell. Its really an to be here with you. I ive been listening to what the speakers have been talking about and thinking about my own, my own experiences that led me to writing the shadow king about mussolinis invasion. Ethiopia in 1935, in an attempt to colonize it and. A few a couple of things. I was thinking about the books that i had read are things that i, as a child, a black girl growing up here in, the United States, a relatively new immigrant. At the time, i didnt really have any books that introduced me to my it until high school that i read anything that had that a teacher had brought to me and it was one of the first books was again it was a ghanaian writer by the name of amartya. I do our sister killjoy. And in that book a story about a woman moving from ghana into europe, into germany i suddenly began to understand own experience of blackness. But i understood through her that sense of disconnection and longing in an a kind of nostalgia and the way that blackness can be commodify can be essentialist and used against. The black person. But it wasnt anything i read. But one of the most distinct memories i have and i was relatively new in the United States was sitting in front of the Television Watching the news at one point and it was in the news clip came on of the fires and from adelphia, the move movement when when the home was burned by police. And i, i saw and i saw that that the state violence there and suddenly connected something with what was happening in ethiopia during the revolution. And it brought home to me the way the experience of violence and the experience of racism and bigotry crosses borders, crosses it, affects all of us as black people around the world. I will never forget that. And i think one of the first the most moving representations of it that i have seen lately was on lovecraft country, when there was an episode that depicted this and i think it was lovecraft or watchmen, but it it it spoke to me back then about a kind of diasporic existence that i understood very well coming from ethiopia. But i wanted to think about in novel, the shadow king of this state, violence that is often under the cloak of colonialism like. Martin you were talking about and the way that that violence continues, whether its in language or what continues to exist in the archives, because if we were forced to be forgotten at the First Encounter with whiteness, with colonialism we been continually moved out of the of remembrance through what exists in the archives the archives are. History is contested territory and archives themselves are the documents of history that continue to leave us out of out of world and global. When i was writing the shadow king of the things that i wanted to do was put black people into the conversation about world history, not just african history, not just black history. World history. We been there from the beginning. If homer is writing about princess leia, a black woman who charges against achilles and she fights so bravely that he weeps when hes he kills her. Hes not making this up. Black people have been there from the very beginning. And when the greek tragedies are talking about the chorus, their chorus is in the greek tragedies. Its not because the greeks made them up. Its because i can trace that through ethiopia, through north africa, through subsaharan. Weve been the chorus we have done these things. And the greeks were only emulating a culture that existed for a very, very long time. And i speak of greek tragedy because it was also one of my First Encounter was when i was a kid when i picked up the iliad and i see ethiope and im like, holy , been here from forever black people have been here. So when is telling me in my classroom, why are you reading the greeks . This doesnt belong to you and i can tell them im here. Where are you . We have been there forever. And the those experiences are have continued to inform my writing and i. I those echoes in writers. Toni morrison in the works of. Baldwin am beginning to hear some of those things that i was recognizing a child, that they are also within with some of the questions that that i have and i use them as teachers but more than put us on that front page put us in the books and didnt care about centering anything else and as a young as a youngster, when i stumbled on her, it felt like the entire parameters of my world had been shifted and reshaped. And i really informative ways to kind of stop there. Erica, thank you. Im here very quickly. Wow. Thank you so much i would like to quickly remind our audience that the last 30 minutes of our conversations are reserved for questions. So please, please, any buttons and questions as the speakers are speaking and the comments using our chat feature. Next up, we can load jibran muhammad. Thanks. This is a lot of fun and its wonderful to hear how theres so much overlap in everyones story, the sort of origin stories that what motivated there. There were the writing that created energy. My path is, is runs really through a couple of currents that that i think will add to conversation. So i mean, i grew in chicago where i have no memory of, any representation of blackness other than mississippi. And that just in the way that i would be exposed to later in life, west indian or african immigrants as as be true. When i started visiting new york city as a as a teenager. But the reason i mention chicago is a kind of origin story is, you know, growing up basically as part of the nation of islam, black nationalism was like the water i was swimming without realizing that i was a fish and that i was different in that. And having the final call in muhammad speaks or my own relatives in these cadences of a black pride of a kind of alternative history, of a commitment to, black entrepreneurship. I didnt understand these things. And i often say to people that for me that experience was like being a preachers kid to some degree, because you take for granted all of the scaffolding that makes the experience for the worshiper or the follower a very visceral experience. Interestingly, though, my parents divorced, i was very young and as a consequence, i grew up mostly with my mothers side of the family. And these were people that i lovingly call today blues. I mean, i literally had the matriarch of my family been married three times. Her second husband was a boxer. She owned the bar and was famous for getting naked and dancing the bar drunk. So this kind of i want to meet her. Im like, im here for it. She was really the closest thing i had a grandmother because my own grandmother, my mothers mother, died of a Drug Overdose when my mother was not in an orphanage. My mother and her three siblings, they subsequently grew up with their grandparents. One of whom was a ostensibly white guy from, mississippi, who married my charcoal black great grandmother. But it turned out that he wasnt really a white guy because he was like Third Generation of a former slave holder. So i say that to say that. One of the things that was so clear to me as a kid was that my understanding of blackness was always heterodox. It was very real for but not in a diasporic sense, as a sense within a working class to middle black community where i could see the full round rainbow was always apparent to me and enough i was a i was a reader as a kid. But dont remember reading black writers so much as a kid. And the First Encounter i had my father handed me beloved 1987 when the book came out and. That was my first real struggle with black fiction in the work of Toni Morrison, and light bulb started to go off. I started to see in the complexity of her own historic historical accounting of black Life Connections to my own. And then it was later song solomon, which i read as a Senior High School and the very first class that i would call africanamerican literature was an elective in my high school. The only time i was actually in an english class to read black writers. And so it was formative moments that i moved this experience from, this lived to seeing in morrisons a reflection, a of my life that i could actually start to, see some of my own relatives know from drug dealers to people who had done crime to soap box orators to, nationalists. You know, it was it was all there in her work. And that was very powerful. Me, i will say that it wasnt really until that i encountered dubois for the first time. And in that way i started find a kind of. I guess a muse, someone whose own wrestling with this, both as intellectual and, as a, as a partizan and someone who began to think about the work of fiction and nonfiction as inseparable tools in an effort to defeat white supremacy. And for me that became inspiration in ways that shaped all of my work to this day. I mean, it just so happened that while jelani and i had been friends for 30, 30 years now. But, you know, we were both trained by the same guy. Who was the dubois biographer . Two time pulitzer. And so theres no way to separate my exposure in college, to my graduate training to my own really powerful understanding, adding that dubois, while he didnt grow up like me he grew up in a white world, he came through education and through literature to and appreciate blackness in all of its complexity. And so, you know, i wanted to say that for my work, focusing on the myth of black criminality really became a way to use nonfiction as ways to expose the fiction of social science. The fiction of eurocentric scientific of category ization that that categorization itself has been a tool of the colonized or of settler colonialism, of violence itself. And dubois was the person who opened all that up to me. You know, i cribbed this quote that inspired my, my, my book condemnation of blackness. But but this to me just sort of says it all. So dubois writes, murder, swag or theft may rule and prostitution flourish and the nation gives. But spasmodic, intermittent and lukewarm attention. But let the murderer be or the thief brown or the violator of womanhood been a drop of blood and the righteousness of indignation the world. Nor would this fact make this indignation justifiable. Did we all know that it was blackness, was condemned and not crime. And so it was. It was from him that. All of my lived experience, my college experiences, struggles with reading the kind of literature that morrison and others were writing at baldwin to. But ill also say, know i read those story when i was a graduate student on crime. Crime and punishment and i mean, it was life altering to me because. The interiority of the person ascribed to criminality was another way to upend the violence of categorization, to see in the form of literature that, you could recreate a a life inside that couldnt be seen from the outside. And of course, the entire point of social science is to reduce or to centralize people to what what their quote unquote essence is. So so thats kind of my origin story. And i will just add for fun that while non literary influences for me Like Television and film were a big part of my childhood, you know, i can still remember to this day read not reading, watching car wash. And which way is up . You know, two movies that i probably saw a dozen times each, which i dont what they meant at the time. But there was something about Richard Pryor in those comedic roles rather than his standup that stick out in my and my childhood memory. But i will say it was do the right thing at 17 and boys in the hood at 19 that at the end were speaking to this question about criminality, about state violence, about white supremacy, about the role of a black writer in on and exposing all of those myths. Thank you so. You speak about the boys and the literature and i remember listening to the vinyl, his autobiography and. There is one section where he talks about, you know, delivering an article, i believe, and coming across market, you know, entirely about the stamp mentoring and coming across items that were inappropriate to me that my husband and i could literally spread his voice. The pivot happening on his upbringing on that. And im like, forget that. Its type of money that your mother so thank you for that. And so next up, we have moments horrible well the best thing about going laugh is that i can be very quick because i know we need to get our conversation. The bad thing about is that everything that i wanted to say has gone out window because now that i listen to everybody here, i just want to respond. I will say that i am so happy to see maaza and marlon again. Ive never met jelani, who also was nice to meet you. I think when you say you were trained by the dubois biographer, you probably David Levering lewis, who inspired my first novel and who i had conversations with about that. So its, you know, six degrees of separation here and its just to be on this panel. I love that talking origin stories mine is probably the prototypical southern origin story. I am originally from memphis. Both of my parents are from the historic black neighborhood of orange mound, and both of them went melrose high school, which is a historic black high school in memphis. Both of their grandparents came up from mississippi and both of their parents. My grandparents. So my my Southern Roots are deep in that soil. And i will say that my earliest black did not consist of books. My earliest black literature was oral storytelling from the elders in my family. I also come from a family of black southern preachers. So what i say, im a prototypical and thats its all there. And one of the things that preachers like to do when they arent preaching is to sit around, talk, and on sundays at dinner, i would hear all of these. And the thing that struck me when i was growing up, when i would these stories about the things that they had, they talked a lot about, jim crow ism. They talked a lot about indignities that they had endured. And the thing that struck me as i was listening, one, they talked about these things in a way that in a that was sort of jovial. They had somehow managed to craft a survival of humor around these stories that in my mind, were quite horrific. And i remember looking at them. I remember looking my grandfather and my grandfathers men were hats and i remember how he would put on his suit. And he would put on his hat to go up to the shopping center, walk out of the house with such dignity. And i wondered, how did he do . How did he do . How did he just manage his day, day and walk around with such dignity . He had such dignity. And the other thing that i noticed in a lot of these conversations is that the women were silent. And i wondered what what were their stories . And as you know, in sort of Church Culture and that traditional Church Culture, the women were not even often the pulpit. So wondered what what were the stories that women had to tell . So as i came into my own as as a reader, i still didnt have a great deal of exposure, black literature. But when i was in high school, i was a clarinetist in my High School Band and i had clarinet teacher who was his name was jim golson. And he was the principal clarinetist in the memphis symphony orchestra, a black man. I think he the best clarinetist in the country. And i think many people agreed with and gave me the souls of black folks when i was in ninth. I want to say it was ninth or 10th grade, because he knew i was a reader and i took it home and i didnt understand that. I couldnt make sense of it, but wanted me to have that book and he wanted to expose it to me. And i went back to him and i said, what is this book about . I couldnt make sense of it. And he said, well, keep that until ready for it. And then he gave me the biography of Alberta Hunter who was this blues singer who had been in obscurity for all these and had made this comeback at end of her life in the 1990s, eighties and nineties. And he wanted me to know about vernon and that book. I actually was able to read. And so he recognized, although i wasnt quite ready for the souls of folk, i was ready for something about a woman, her and. I have tried in my career to those stories about black that my family didnt talk about, ive always been interested. My daddy went tuskegee graduated from tuskegee in the late 1960s. And so i grew up learning about the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment and and i knew that it was this horrific thing that gone on for 40 years. And i was struck by the fact that people knew about it and that it was an open secret. But when i learned about what happened to these two little girls in 1973, the ralph sisters, who were 12 and 14 years old at the time. I was curious about why more people werent talking that and why no one had written a book about that. And then i learned about in college, i had learned about jay marion sims, this this early doctor who had done these surgeries on black women, enslaved black women, these public surgeries, alabama in students had come to witness this. And he had developed this very painful operational technique, fistula repair. And i learned the names and our west scott, lucy zimmerman, betsy harris of these enslaved women who no one knew, no one knew who they were, but to the extent you call jay marion sims, the father of modern gynecology, have to call these women the mothers of modern gynecology, because it was born in their bodies. So this this is sort of bs. And i know. And i want to just go ahead start so we can get to our conversation. But for this has been the driving factor me which is shedding light on some of the stories of black women that arent being told that should be told and that are really open secrets in the south in. The same way that the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment was an open secret for 40 years. Well, thank you very for your research. So i want to i have a question and honestly anyone can answer this. Often we have to create you know context for complexity that isnt necessarily there. And im talking particularly about right when we researching for our novels, articles sometimes there are items in census records, photographs, etc. That you youre not going to find written narratives, right . Youre not going to find that whole history. And you kind of have recreate these, you know, based what you find, what is there. And so would love it if anyone could speak to what that looks like when you are confronted with either no historical record and you have to speak black experiences or you are confronted with a historical record that you know was whitewashed that does not necessarily speak to the full picture. What does it look like when you have to shape that experience to put it into your work. I mean, i could go first because, you know, im writing these these fantasy, speculative novels for me. And i see in my head that right. I was writing historical fiction. Its a historical fiction with a sort of a Judeo Christian point of view. Theres a lot that had to be done to to write these works. You know, if its a history about africa written before 1980s, 1978, it was pretty useless useless and a lot of that i read really just for economic value. Its its its you know, or anything about african religions. Its its its. The getting over the colonial gaze and the racism itself was pretty, pretty. One of the things that that those books do is that they dont just change what you read it change you read. And i had to change that as well. Its not just what i read about how i read it. So so something that i would take us as just here, see, like somebody transcribing from a grill. I had to take that as a authority and the book written from 1952 as having one or two things of use maybe. So there was a lot of that was a lot of going back to original sources. Theres a lot of going back to oral, theres a lot of trusting modern research and present day historians, preferably african from the continent or to the diaspora. And, and. At all times, not just looking at all this new stuff im reading, what realizing had to read it in a different way. So to treat myself to read about certain things like well, things that that i had to stop myself from doing. When youre writing an african fantasy novel is to always look above the Sahara Sahara is like, yeah, we can throw some in there and so on. And of course these all fantastic. And yes, we should talk about pyramids and we should talk about kush, miro and so on. But sometimes what that does is that its still kids are still a white gis because its like, let show you that we can build multistory to where theres absolutely nothing wrong with a hot meal of the month we have this i remember thinking how i used to romanticize the vikings and and it was of living were hard what anybody would call sophisticated or romanticize is you know stonehenge and so on. I mean, britain was one of the biggest backwaters in europe, but was it was it was me not to do the whole. Let me show you whole. Western africa was in the story because thats still means i feel the exercise it was realizing value and the ingenuity in what i was in what i was seen our own may instead of trying to do a kind of european in blackface and so that was so so that that was one of the things that that was one of the big things i going and doing the work and stuff and also changing my idea about what i was reading, how that helped to contribute to to i wrote. Thank you. Does anyone else have anything to add we can if there are other questions erica we can. So i have a few audience questions that were going to bring to the front. The first question, how will the opposition to crt impact students of color and learning about black history . I know that the question comes from covered zone tv. I was going to go generic goff hes reigning now its just a little warm where am i know that looked like i was ready to fight you know although although i mean quite honestly way that these people have disrespected derek legacy i should whip my jacket and invite some people step outside. So the thing about. This is that well be clear about definitions so Critical Race Theory is, you know primarily a body of legal which to understand how racial hierarchy and marginalization is adaptive in the face of litigation strategies and legislation that was intended to uproot it. Highly specific body of legal literature that has had subsequent influence in other fields of study. Crt is not black history, but for the purposes of can convenience in order to what do what Patricia Williams of a legal scholar in the great critical race theorist referred to as definitional theft. They turn Critical Race Theory into this hodgepodge of ideas about basically anything that opposes racism and then built a house of cards arguments argument about how terrible and it was in order terrorize white people who were never familiar with what the idea was itself on the other side of that we sometimes see ive seen progressives ive seen people arguing in of crt but using the defense in that hostile reactionary white people have put upon that body of thought. So should be very clear i think about what crt is and is not. That said, under the banner of stopping crt people been able to ban to impede the access that students. I mean weve had a banned Toni Morrison and James Baldwin like i mean its bad enough they always wanted already one to pat down the black literature to make sure it wasnt carrying any concealed weapons but now like even a nobel prize for literature is not enough to get you past and. So theres that portion it theres the portion of it that will impede what are learning in High School Just on the basic level of civics because the way these these laws are written now are so and so abstract that i cant even teach where the 3 5 compromise in the constitution comes from and what it actually does without running afoul of the ideas that these people are saying, you know, divisive and harmful to the delegate and fragile psyches of young white children to theres that theres another effect, which i think were not talking about enough, which is the Chilling Effect that this will have on young scholars, people whose work is steeped in the traditions of, Critical Race Theory, which deals whose work deals with crt in some way, shape or form, if you are and weve this with Nikole Hannahjones you know as prominent a as she is a scholar as pamela a journalist as she is and the Journalism School at the university of North Carolina turned her down for and tried to try to avoid giving her tenure. We were part of this here sitting in the Columbia University graduate School Journalism at this moment and immediately dashed off a letter which, you know, thankfully very many, if not all of my colleagues sign saying that, you know, as the preeminent school in the country, we would tend her is like dont know about yall what youre talking about down there but we would which with them was picked up by very many other institutions we saw around the country. If you are a young scholar who was untenured and, you saw what could happen to Nikole Hannahjones jones. Despite her macarthur and pulitzer. When we went through the list of her awards, i said that would be a great achievement for a department. If a department had that many, you would say that was a premiere. Nicole has those in her pantry in her on her shelf by herself. And so if you were a scholar thats emerging in the field the sign would be dont dont do this work because you were incredibly vulnerable. So its all of those things that we talk when we talk about dr. Woodson, we talk about dr. Dubois. We talked about the circumstance is that the boys wrote the souls of black under those are the kind of dynamics that were talking about trying to reinstate and impose on black scholars, writers, black students and and really offshoots they say students across the board anyone whos interested in knowing the actual truth of this nations history and its functioning. Can i just add really quick addendum . I mean, this to me is just obvious, but this entire convening would be outlawed and banned. Wed be in some version of Margaret Atwoods dystopic gideon by virtue of the infrastructure that medgar evers represents for black literature, the schomburg. So when we ask the question, whats the impact on students of color it is devastating because we are are the consequences of the exposure and the importance of black literature regardless of how right wing lunatics have defined as crt . And we know exactly as marlon has and maaza has so articulated, so today that, you know, you get to see the scaffolding of colonialism if you and therefore the the possibility for it is exactly what comes with that exposure. Thank you. So our next question is the panelists have talked about various of writing fiction, nonfiction, comedy. Im curious about how and whether you think about genre in terms of telling our stories. I ill jump in i just feel i feel like every Single Person this panel right now speaks to the multiple genres in the stories of blackness and i think the dolan you were talking about oral storytellers in your family and i think we all have that and i. I dont remember any stories that my family told that didnt involve the supernatural that didnt history that didnt involve you know within one story could be a mix of so many different elements in ethiopia absolutely was convinced because this is this is one of the stories that i grew up with that men there were certain men who could turn into and is how they managed to evade state police but is also how they managed to run into the mountain and hide and and create revolution and i believed it. We have these things. So just to that, i think those genres are very they have happening for a very long time we call it that or not. I didnt and also martha, you are a photographer so you know, theres all modes of narrating the black experience that that we can tap into. I feel like for me and i know we had an earlier question about encountering a silent archive about, the black experience. I feel like me, i feel liberated by fiction and by the novelistic when it comes to telling black histories for the very that sometimes you encounter that silence in the archive and. I feel that that allows me to tap into those stories that my family told me that are not in on the record right theyre just stories that were passed down and allows me to tap into the emotions, those stories as well. And i dont think my stories are any less true than what the record states believe that i can tap into that i remember encountering the first time Richard Wrights 12 million black boys. My mentor in graduate school, and the man was a Richard Wright scholar, jim miller. And i remember going to his office and talking to him about collective memory and. I wanted to write this paper about collect collective memory of black people because i thought that that was something that Richard Wright was tapping into, especially in his earlier works. And i get i deliver it in this paper at a conference in vanderbilt at Vanderbilt University in nashville and i remember giving the paper i remember my dad was in the back of the room, like just quietly. And i remember being challenged by the white male scholars in that room, very aggressively about the impact, possibility of collective memory. And i had come with the theories i use hobsbawm. I use all of these theories i thought would get their respect and know i got zero respect in that room. But i knew that what i said was true and afterwards i remember going to my dad. I was a graduate student, young, and he said, you were right. You were, and you need to just take take hold of that. And so i think that these genres allow us to tap things that arent necessarily in the record, but that are no less true that we know to be true. I hope everybody listening has confidence in that absolutely. I agree. Thank you so much, denton, for question. Our next question comes from billy wade. Oh, brenda, im sorry. Dr. Brenda greene, what can you do as scholars and writers to resist the effects of this racism and sexism. I mean, ill ill the obvious is we have to keep writing and i mean, the labor of producing whether it is out of whole cloth imagination or whether it requires hours hours in archives is taxing on its long terms and to add to that labor within the context of what feels like an existential threat to you and yours can make it feel pretty easy to simply retreat into nothingness. And ill speak myself. I certainly struggle the past several years with this because of the context which ive tried to continue to work and and to do things. This is, you not to get a little too much on the couch. You know, i have found making podcast to be more liberating in that way than the act of writing because it is for a way to be engaged without the rigors of the written word. But that would be my response. In addition to Everything Else we could imagine politically. Thank you so much. Our next question is from billy wade. Billy wade at the plethora of writing workshops and retreats are taught by white writers. Where is the how to for the techniques and nuances writing black literature. Oh i can i jump on that . Absolutely because i just interviewed Walter Mosley the night before last and hes written two books, you know, on this and that, specifically about, you know, writing the nuances of black literature. But he is a black writer who was very deeply steeped in the tradition of black literature, who has written these how to books. Also think that there are things that universal, you know there are some, you know, skills that you have to cultivate and develop, you know, that you pick up from wherever you pick them up. And you know, for me and you know, i imagine probably not but im not the only person here today that comic books had a huge influence on my perspective on writing or my idea of how a works. And for me as a person, you know, these overwhelmingly, especially back then, overwhelmingly written by white people and i was taking, you know, they were using one purpose and applying it to my own ends, you know, or when you think about frederick douglass, you know, using those cribbed books that he found those those alphabet primers that he got access to which were never intended to fall into the hands of any. And, you know, frederick taking them and using them to craft some of the finest literature that this country could hope to humbly lay claim. And so i think that there is its important while its important to acknowledge our tradition and, see that there are black people working in that tradition, that some of this is that you take what you can get from where you from where you can get it with. Yeah, i was trying to think of how to, to answer that question when i was like read this book, know. Yeah craft in the real world by methods is is the korean korean American Writer and is a of it is is also dismantling the idea that we dont have that normalizes white. I was on a panel yesterday and a student asked that said theyre afraid to white in their theyre afraid to write about and and answer the question had for that student is you sure youre about whiteness because i havent read it. As like what is it what whiteness have you ever got a i know whiteness in the context of of racism and superiority and or whiteness in the context of nonentity. Dude, i dont see color or what is it . I have read that novel and. I think you all think youve written it, but you have it. So its so even that i think should interrogated i was that this writing conference and Robert Coover kind of interrupted it and it was just he was just so emotional like when are we going to write the literature of the oppressed . When are we going to write the literature of the other people . When are you going to do this . And when i said, you know, those people are writing their own books, it just glazed over everybody. Its like they didnt they they really could not figure out how to process a sentence. So they moved on to another topic, you know. So its its still theres a lot of and theres a lot of that going in these classes. A joke. I remember my school was 60 in application for a job and. They sent in writing samples and it got to the point where it could be read our editing stamp and tell it a program that came from so there is. There is. That said there is a lot on there right there. There are a lot of this book has been a game changer a lot of writing workshops there still you know there is a lot thats happy news and a lot that needs to be done and theres a lot of that needs to be dismantled or then there are still people out there who still think, you know, your whole purpose, your whole of coming to a creative writing class to be wallace stegner, you know, and and that you know, its still its this sort of of stuff that needs to be dismantled. And sometimes it it does become a matter of knowing who not to listen to. And if you are right or if youre a writer of color, you already know this from a writing workshop. You dont listen to and and so on. And its still, you know unfortunate sometimes it still comes down to that to know to know how to listen. And one, one more thing i would add to that, marla, i really appreciate everything said is that i do not think that we should assume that being in a workshop of black writers is not in itself itself that you wont receive different of challenges, that black black literature and writers are not a monolith. Not everyone thinks the same. Dont get the same questions you might get with white writers, you might get in the workshop with black writers because people are coming from so different, so many experiences and i tend to find that the workshops where you have other have writers who are white, you have writers who are asian, you have writers of different religious backgrounds, tend to be the ones where maybe the conversation is will be the kinds things you should expect once. Your work is published also, but yeah so thank you, marlon, for that. I wanted to add this other part. Thank and you know, ive also found that you can find some of that how to in literary literary critique so like playing in the dark by Toni Morrison is is a book that i really look to all the time and memoirs of writers as well like Edwidge Danticat creating dangerously yeah so i just wanted to ask that as well. So my next question is again from dr. Greene. Your origin stories that we read this now. Did your origin stories in multiple voices on storytelling really revealed the complexity of the black experience . How do you expand the canon to include the very generous you represent. Kind feels like just writing them forces the parameters to to expand a bit i just, i feel like even the conversations that we here are its sweetening ground for another thats thats coming up thats already doing the work. Were not the only ones doing the work that were doing and excited to see the new new crop of writers that are coming forward and. I think theyre expanding. Weve left off. Yeah sometimes it sometimes it boils down just teaching those teaching these books, you know and and expanding expanding that, you know, expanding the stories also encouraging into of those books as well you know. Yes, i read song of solomon, but also. You know, read out, you know, you know, you know, books that are in print and out of print, you know, and and discuss them. I think we would these canonical think i think we have but also but also think it also means reading some of these kind canonical works with different eyes as. Well, its one of my absolute favorite things. Neither writer is black but is one of my favorite things to do is to have students read jane eyre at in wide sargasso sea. Yeah. The the or even something that if you want to go into real european its beowulf and grendel. You know that the whole reading book can teach you how to read the other book. And i think thats one of the things that the ways in which two ways in which a kind of can expand is one, reading more books, but also reading these established books in different ways. Thank you so much. And wed love for you to continue as he carries on his asks questions to you that says when will we see brief history of seven killings on the you know what were were is being developed by netflix. They have a writers room open so hopefully soon. Oh wow thats amazing amazing. So another question that we have is from dr. Green again is Walter Mosley talked about speculative fiction being a natural genre for black writers. Your thoughts. Yeah, im not going to let me answer the first maybe jelani, answer this since you just had a conversation with. I would say that i dont think its any more of a natural genre than any genre. You know, my feeling on is that all of the genres good, they all bring different ways of framing the story, the table. I think Octavia Butler was tremendously influential. On science fiction, on, you know, black speculative fiction, fantasy writers. But i also feel that she was influential for me as a historical fiction writer. So i feel that the genres are interconnected in more than we often speak of them. I like with some of the young, well, im calling young and i hope they dont take that as a but i like somebody like victor laval is doing with genre right blending genre i like with you know someone like johnson or you know are there are lots of writers out here who are actually hybrid things because theres so many possibilities. So i dont know if i necessarily agree thats more natural than any other genre. But im curious what you think, jelani. I mean, i dont i mean, i dont think so. I mean, i cant speak for walter, certainly. But i mean, i do think that. Theres a certain surreal element. Our existence in this country, you know, i think shows up in all of these different ways, you know, in in the narratives that we tell and the the that weve had, you know, on the United States, you know even when we about the most elements of our existence here. They sound fictional we wrote about what happened in lynchings. We say, oh, thats a horror story, you know, which is why i mean, it took people a long time to realize that, you know, that get out, you know, could be, you know, the basis of a story, horror story is like, no, no, this is just the stuff that you all do you know. Oh, we were talking about jay marion sims, like, you know, and what he did. And know the torture of these enslaved or i mean if someone said like theres a president of the United States. He owned 600 people and including the half sister of his deceased wife who he is impregnated multiple times like what ever a story is that you know and so i think that that all these things lynn, have lent themselves like these wild interpretations because the underlying reality of is i think that, you know, i cant speak calvin and i certainly had that experience in graduate school as we were moving deeper into the narratives. You know, there were all these points where would engage the history is almost seeming like some sort genre narrative, you know, what genre does this . Theres this history that were fall into as literature because. The think of it as just plain straight reality is very difficult to digest digest. Yeah, i think it made me think of several things. One, just what is if there is such a thing as as speculative, then were seeing something is real and im not sure that line we would draw, but i think i get where walter is seeing and in some ways i think miles already on so the question as you talked about the stories the stories and there are always fantastical there always use in them and i think thats one way in which we tell stories. Weve always has in a way, its its all its mythmaking and. Weve always turned to these mythologies to answer a deeper were starting to turn to them to answer the Big Questions about ourselves always. Thats why mythologies theyre ive always always been there but i also think that speculative appears in in in you know, just sort of pushing the boundaries of that. We didnt impose to this day, i believe i that milkman fluid end of stone something i still think he did and nobody can tell me out of ways that that dude flew and i think the fact that morrison leaves that open is the is even sort of raucous on that this idea of speculative versus real that thats a boundary that i dont necessarily think exists for us when, you know my grandmother tell me things about seen her seen her, you know, seeing grandpa, years after he died. I absolutely believe her then and i believe i know you. And, you know, there was these two stories that i fell in the delusion thing to me there. And i think thats thats why it may seem i guess that it feels like a natural genre because i think for us its not a giant. One of our audience members up the fact that theyre very excited that jelani brought up comic books and i know that thats a particular of marlin and perhaps somebody else on this panel that missing but i do want for you to cite maybe a book, you know, for me, my curriculum work before i ask the question ive been trying to get schools educators to center graphic novels and comic books as core instruction. I think that theyre equally as important and theyre a gateway, a multitude of things that kids can explore. And so i would love to hear some of your favorite works marvel dc in the etc. That have inspired your work as well. Oh wow, really xmen xmen. I is just a read the xmen is a lot like being an xmen. Especially growing up as a nerd. And i was a nerd doing all the cool kids or have been kicked me out of their club and im like, god, i remember that mutant here. Youre my helping the world. It hits me. Im an actual mutant, you know, just again, you know, i up in also in the seventies, the original black panther. Our man i think they call him luke cage now permanent nine finished then even even even you know even a story like master of kong, for which i read none all of his, but but at the time, you know, these are stories that, you know, we took ownership of in ways it was a big thing to see. Black lightning and and and wondering why we didnt see more more of. But there is the very best of these comics tap into this sort of outsider ness that happens certainly when im reading most literature its it blows me away. People talk about, oh, they cant read this, but i dont identify with im like, well, welcome to the black persons were less than 99 of the books we read. Mm hmm. And we got past. I can tell, like, i mean, you know, those csk have come in this in this, in this. So Toni Morrison talks about tulsa. There was a rare thing for a black girl. The re in ohio but he spoke to her anyway so you know there its its i think comics in a lot of ways came closer to speaking me than the literature that i read and still know what it was just werent there was something about spiderman that brought me closer than say, other literature that i read. Yeah. I was the xmen person to me and, interestingly enough, you know, early on with magneto, you know, you forget that, you know, as in my very Nascent Development as a teenager i felt like magneto was like malcolm x, which was a point that lots of people made, you know, as observation of people made, but, you know, i was attracted to, you know, the fact that the storytelling in comic books was often, you know, more sophisticated than know the kind of storytelling that we would see, you know, places, you know, you would have heroes and antiheroes or you have villains who were complicated, you know, and you could easily summarize their motivations and, you know, this person is this thing which on the surface appears to be wrong but is actually like more, more complicated than than just that. And interestingly enough, i not identify with the black characters in comic books explicitly because was something i mean, i didnt have a critique like when i was ten or 11, but i remember the luke cage, what they call power men and then power men and iron fist, you know, comics didnt appeal to me because, you know, tony stark and, captain america, you know, and you know, the vision and all these other characters, they were fighting to save the universe and the black characters had, to my mind, smaller, you know, with the possible exception of black panther. But they had such smaller stakes. I remember there was like one issue of of powerman where the whole centered around him trying to make rent on his office and just spoke to like the parameters. Now itd be like now that is heroic, like a brother who just got out of prison making rent for his office. That is a hero. But as a young person, that was that didnt appeal to like the sense of fantasy that i was trying to get. And then now i still engage with the genre. I think the most recent thing that i loved loved was kings run of the vision, which is just kind of astounding approach, you know, to this comic book story and so and of course, alan moore, you know, the watchmen graphic novel, which is incredible and is honored to finally and then also has the kind of interesting point that when the hbo version of the watchmen emerged, which was inspired by alan moore story but certainly was you know what, alan moore created and it was the only time i ever seen something that was as brilliant and a comic book form that had been done, you know, on television. And i think that the watchmen was, Damon Lindelof and oh, my god, my, my black in my brothers name, i know, director. I cant remember who it was. Really. Yeah, yeah all right, ill come back to me. Hes going to be mad at me. But anyway, there their creation of of watchmen, i think, was maybe one of the brilliant things ive ever seen television. Most brilliant things ive ever seen on television in my entire life. Yeah. Watchmen episode five, i thought was the greatest episode of American Television ive ever seen, which was directed by jimmy cohen, who went to my high school with it. Theres a to add to that. What a drag it is point to for an hour is, you know, theres a recent turn in xmen been interesting and a lot of the old time and even the old time writers of xmen have problems with because the basic context is humans are never going to change, theyre never going to accept us. Theres justice, theres just us. So lets form and they form their own get their own island and go off until the world these are overturned terms. And if you dont, you can either agree with it and move ador agree with it and become my enemy. But we are no longer have faith that this that we are going to bridge the divide we have no longer have faith that you will learn to accept us. So we going to go off and do our own thing, which has actually surprised a lot people, a lot of traditional people, including the creator, one of the creator of the xmen, actually to it. I remember having lunch with and i said the same thing. Im like, do after, you know, 26 years of Martin Luther king, were going to give malcolm us some point. You is. So thats been interesting to watch in i mean that how that comic turned. Thank you so so you know we dont have time for any more questions somebody people multiple people are asking for all of the books that youve mentioned and i just wanted to that ive created 16 tabs right here all the books that were mentioned from burning sugar a craft in the real world to the Alberta Hunter. So i will send that and it will go out in some sort of email so i want to make that promise. But alberta on vinyl is amazing. Oh, okay. Its no, im a crate digger. Thank you. So thank just want to say thank you so much for joining us today. Im honored to be here once again ive been doing this. Ive been coming here every other year since i was a teenager. And to sit amongst people who ive gifted their books, to family and friends who delved into your words across multiple Media Outlets who have sent me down wormholes of research, who i sat in front of as a 21 year old teacher at harlem childrens zone hello right and heard speak literally rocked my curriculum framework im so honored to be here you thank you thank you again for your words can i can i just say one thing. Yes the cowriter with cord jefferson and i would i would not be able to like but if i didnt mention, you know, cord. So that is the cowriter for that series. It was a pleasure everyone. Thanks so much for