Ainsfieldwolf who had this prize way back in 1985in she understood that literature could serve as the potent elixir in this fight. In the 84 years since the prize was established, our country has made Great Strides forward with regard to respecting and embracing our diversity. But recently we have taken disheartening steps backward. Reported hate crimes have risen sharply in the past several years, including, of course, the mass murders at the Mother Emanuel Ame Church in South Carolina and the tree of pennsylvania. This is a national trend, but it also hits close to home. According to the southern poverty law center, there are more organized hate groups in the state of ohio than in kentucky and West Virginia combined. A great source of re was one, ba clarion call for action. We must rewrite our Current National narrative to vigorously oppose bigotry in all of its forms. [applaus [applause] and tonights ceremony provides an opportunity to energize that sense of purpose. This is the 16th year in which ive had the distinct privilege of opening the ainsfieldwolf book awards. This ceremony always brings me so much joy and hope and i know all of you feel the same way. But tonight my joy is intertwined with deep sorrow because its my first ainsfieldwolf book awards ceremony in which the seat next to me wont be occupied by my beloved friend, predecessor and mentor, steven mentor. [applaus [applause]. With the exception of edith ainsfieldwolf herself no one is more associated with this awards ceremony than steve minter. Steve made this event nationally important and steve who enlisted dr. Gates to chair the wolf jury, his passion for this event and all that it stands for was unmatched. Steve was one of clevelands great champions for social justice and he personified dignity which he steadfastly maintained despite the many racial afronts and barriers that he had to overcome in his youth. Two years ago, while receiving her award for Lifetime Achievement, isabela stated, quote, when in doubt, ask yourself what is the most generous thing to do. Steve minter was never in doubt. His moral compass always pointed true north, but he was unwaveringly generous in every way. Tonight our Award Winners will touch our hearts as they always do. But their words and sentiments will shine even brighter from the glow of steves enduring legacy. A legacy which i would like to honor now, not by a moment of silence, but by rising in a standing ovation, all of us, for our dear friend, who was and always will be a moral conscience and role model for our city and the nation. [applaus [applause]. [applause] thank you so much. And now, as steve would want me to say, the show will joyfully go on. In keeping with recent traditions i would now like to welcome a young poet to the stage, logan grier. Logan is a fifth grader at Campus International school, part of the Cleveland Metropolitan School district. Please join me in welcoming logan as she reads her poem, city of growing up. [applause] city of growing up. City of pleasant party people. City with gangs. City with learning. City before being anxious. City that believes in gods. City like a flower growing in the ground. City trotting around lake erie. City paralyzed from moving. City with depression. City examining the streets. City of the long road that i walk down. City with my family. City of angry people fighting to live. City of my grandmas macaroni. A city of my life. [applaus [applause] thank you, logan. That was beautiful. Finally, i would like to welcome some special guests who are here with us tonight. It would not be ainsfieldwolf without poet, former poet laureate of the United States and an akron native and National Treasure with her wonderful husband, welcome, rita and fred. [applaus [applause]. And last, but certainly not least, our esteemed and treasured long time emcee for the evening, dr. Henry lewis gates, jr. As you all know, skip gates is the founding direction of the hutchens center for africanamerican research at Harvard University and chair of the ainsfieldwolf awards jury and a hundred of things i could say about skip and all that he does, but you know him. Were blessed to have skip as our host once again this evening and were grateful to him for his many decades to the ainsfieldwolf book awards. So please join me in welcoming our emcee and my dear friend, skip davis. [applaus [applause]. Give it up for ron, ladies and gentlemen. [applaus [applause] my name is henry lewis gates, jr. Look, lets give it up for logan greer. [applause] can you imagine doing that at 10 years old . That child is in the fifth grade, but shes going to harvard. Im going to predict that right now. But i love that poem, city of growing up. Give it up one more time for logan. [applaus [applause] my great joy to join you in cleveland once again this year, though i come from my own sports mad city, i do admire your cleveland teams. How could i not like a quarterback with the stately name of Baker Mayfield . When i heard that i said thats got to be a brother, but turns out. [laughter] hes a brother, just a brother of another mother. [laughter] may Baker Mayfield work out better than tyree irving did for the celtics. Whoa. I like tyree, but i didnt work out. Mayfield is one of the most confident quarterbacks i think playing today and when it call starts to click, he and Odell Beckham are going to be unstoppable. I predict that. That is until they play the patriots on october 27th. As i hope you know by now, i do love this city which had more than 100 events this spring to commemorate your river catching on fire 50 years ago. Thats got to be a record. Now your river has more boats on it than bostons own rivers, the charles. So i love a good comeback story. [applause] you can give it up for the river. Were gathered here tonight, really for one reason. Thats because we love literature, we love stories, we love poems. We love words, whether theyre delivered through poetry, through prose, fiction or nonfiction. We recognize four writers tonight who in their different styles and different genres render visible the invisible. They give life to those people and histories that have been erased and these writers come to us because the remarkable leadership of ron richard and the Cleveland Foundation. Lady and gentlemen, give it up for rons leadership and the great work for the Cleveland Foundation, which has made tonight possible. [applause] also want to give a special shout out to my main man edward moss, jr. And edwina moss. Both are with us in the audience tonight. Im doing a new series for pbs called otis, this is our story, this is our song, the history of the black church. You cant beat that as a title. And i go i have been interviewing people all over the country and i ask name the top five black ministers of all time and name the top five black churches. Otis moss, jr. Is on every list. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for reverend otis moss, jr. To make them a Major National prize. Always a big thinker, he also saw the spirit of inclusion and diversity, as the spirit that is beloved cleveland could embody. He introduced me to an associate whose cooperation and collaboration he told me would be indispensable to achieving the vision that he had for this revitalized series of book prizes. As soon as i met her i realized he was absolutely right i had met my soulmate and her name is mary louise. Give it up for mary louise. [applause] so steve, mary louise and i set out together some 27 years ago to reinvent and reinvigorate the prosthetic idea that it was steve who thought possible and decided that it could be done, important to be done, and he was going to make sure that it was done and done in the right way. So its really steves vision that weve been realizing these past incredible 27 years. And tonight we celebrate that vision, his leadership come his imagination, his commitment to the arts, and his love of this great city, cleveland, ohio. One of his daughters, robin, is here with us tonight. Please give robin the warmest of embraces and welcomes as we remember the joy and openness that her father expressed in all of his wifes work. Please. Life work. [applause] phyla, we lost someone very dear to us this year, a daughter of lorain, ohio, just 30 miles west of here. Chloe Anthony Morrison also known as tony. Enriched us all in measurably and my dear friend, rita dove come herself of course a right of no small talbot will now say a few words in remembrance of our beloved Toni Morrison. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome rita dove. [applause] good evening. Good evening. When i was a graduate student in iowa city, i watered the universities Library Stacks one afternoon. And there behind my left shoulder, a book was looking for me. Right at eye level was the bluest eye. I pulled it from the shelf, read the first pages, and do that i was home. Since that discovery over four decades ago, no words can fully express what Toni Morrison has meant to me as a writer, a woman, a black woman, and yes, a fellow ohio when from lorraine just 50 miles from my home town of akron, and less than 30 miles from here, as you all know, where we have gathered here tonight. At a time when i come the only africanamerican student in the iowa writers workshop couldve easily been consumed by bitterness, she taught me to step back as a poet, and to Pay Attention to everything. But with eight days that took in everything a gaze that took in everything without prejudice. With an extraordinary poetic economy of edm and her signature elliptical elegance, Toni Morrison bert a host of complex characters that we as readers recognize as familiar, conflicted beings and no matter if we like or despised their behavior, except in the way of family. When i introduced toni in 2015 for the National Book critics circle top honor for Lifetime Achievement, i confessed that it was a little like introducing the goddess athena. [laughing] while she looked on with her gray eyes. Toni chuckled, and with her Pitch Perfect comic timing said, we do, that was beautiful, and true. [laughing] please listen as some of our past anisfieldwolf winning authors remember Toni Morrison. [applause] there are many great things about Toni Morrison, herkimer, her humanness, her helping hand to so many writers, also of course her genius. But all her would move me most was how she almost singlehandedly raised black america to an International Platform without us losing our identity. Praise for toni a larson, praise now, praise bride and her blue black beauty. Praise sweetness, praise rain, praise call the. Forgive. May malcolm and dad find his wings. Praise medallion, praise shalimar, praise mercy, praise the blessed earth, lorraine. Praise the dateless date of eternity. Praise the great mothers a legacy praise wholly, holy, chloe who shall finally reclaim her name. Toni morrisons death may come as a shock because her words seem so evergreen. Even eternal as they explore our american dilemmas and the light. Morrison set your blackness in ways and peril although she was not alone in doing so. She let us know she was untraditional. A black and unknown enslaved person she dared give a name. Who else besides her beloved James Baldwin who guided her through the hard times and harder truths. She helped us see ourselves and freed ourselves, and invites us that as she put it, the function of freedom is to free someone else. Brandnew assistant editor at the New York Times for review in the spring of 19 85, the head editor gate read the review those scheduled to run saying, please edit this. My first panic thought when i encountered my Toni Morrison first page was that this had been a mistake. How could i, a novice editor, smitten your earlier i the solomon, lay hands on the pros of a literary hero . She disagreed with a few of the changes i suggested. After we discussed it at some length over the phone, she said with banality, in the rich voice, you have proved to them that you can edit me down. Now let me up. Toni morrison wrote to us again and again exhorting our beauty, making us grapple with our pain, reaffirming our humanity. Her afterward a caress come her every sentence and embrace come her every paragraph a copy of her hands about our faces that said, i know you. I see you. We are together. She loved us when we prayed in saying and made love and danced. She loved us when we lied and his own our children. She loved us at her best at our broker if she called us forth in a pages and made us experience and understand ourselves with kindness, with deeper knowing of all we had survived, and all we had not come all we had made, all we had been made, all we had become, all we could be. How she knew us, how she sings to the world. And now that she is gone, how we weep for our beloved. [applause] theres one more person and you did mention, the Guiding Force of the evening, the person who makes sure that every detail is in place. The person who does so much to bring us all together, my friend karen long. Mary luis sister. [applause] karen is her brilliantly creative and devoted successor it was edith anisfieldwolf that enables us to come together each year to celebrate literature and explores Come Celebrate and complicates race relations. But its karen long who brings this to life. Give it up for karen long. [applause] and now lets talk about tracy k. Smith. You can give it up for tracy. [applause] when Pulitzer Prize winner tracy k. Smith published wade in the water during her tenure as poet laureate of United States, critics were amazed at the ambitious and sweeping scope of her topics. Upon reading the collection for the first time, i was struck by its echoes of walt whitman song of myself and its range of concerns. And im not alone in this thought. The atlantics review asserts smiths work contains multitudes. It is first among her experiences of mother and daughter are poems that speak truth to power in the american context including a breathtaking a heartbreaking section confronting slaveholding and the civil war. Throughout the collection, nature permeates the imagery, not surprisingly. Smith has reported in the New York Times interview, i was an aspiring transcendentalist from a young age. Explaining her fascination with the transcendentalists, smith cites the excitement that she felt on reading emily dickinson. Enter College Admission essays to harvard, was on walden. The same thing the joan poet was equally enamored of gwendolyn brooks. The author notes she has been quote moved, changed, deepened, and inspired by Toni Morrison this lyrical intertwining of new england sensibility and africanAmerican Literature tradition informs this evocative poet reckoning with American History. For its brilliance in wideranging confrontations with the currents of injustice in america, wade in the water is this years recipient of the anisfieldwolf book prize for poetry. It references the africanamerican spiritual that instructs runaway slaves to wade in the water to irrigate bloodhounds and capture. As smith explained to the Washington Square review, shattering experience of attending the performance of wade in the water inspired her to write of the experience with it, at the call, sense of love and deliverance, a faith and compassion of justice, she writes, and survival. That only does the poem achieve these goals, the reader is simultaneously immersed in the record water imagery, which blends throughout the book. Water. Water works as escape and salvation, as exodus and baptism. In her poem the everlasting self, the soul is fluid, come in from a downpour, shaking water in every direction. Gathered, shed, spread, then forgotten, we absorbed. One of the most personal of smiths poem describes traveling during the early months of a pregnancy. Queasy and hungry. The mother orders bottle after bottle of water, denying her own desire for the red wine that shimmered like nectar. At the water that is Life Sustaining in one setting can become poisonous in another. And in watershed, one of smiths most experimental poems in the collection, she adds poetry to news accounts and survivor narratives to expose the dire consequences of duponts dumping of chemicals. Death and destruction follow when a large pipe discharging green water result in a dead black calf and snow. Its eye, a brilliant chemical blue. Poetry can capture solution as well as beauty in smiths hands. Wade in the water is divided into four sections. Those in the second section are especially powerful both in subject and four. These poems are what are known as a ratio, blackout, or found homes in which parts of the previous existing text are excised, enabling the remaining phrases to take on new immediacy or new meaning. Ironically, as the guardian pointed out, what smith is doing is the opposite of erasure. She is making the review continues, shes making visible the words of slaves, the slaves and their owners of africanamerican enlisted in the civil war. These are found poems about people who are lost, unquote. One of these phones concerns a letter opposing the emancipation of slaves. The slaveholder rights, and i quote, neither do i think it would all promote the slaves interest to liberate him, in his present degraded state welcome play, quote, the loss of the services of the servant is great. From the perspective of the slave, freedom is not just a matter of convenience. Smith presents the plea embedded embedded in a letter written to president lincoln in 1864. Mr. President , it is my desire to be free, to go see my people on the eastern shore. My mistress wont let me. You will please . Let me know if we are free and what i can do. Another letter from 1864 from a wounded soldier to his children takes on a more defined and marshall tone. Ms. Katie said i tried to steal you. You tell her from me if she meets me with 10,000 soldiers, she will meet her enemy. As the New York Times writes, these found poems are, quote, full of memorable images nimbly put together by smiths exquisite sense of timing, interfere for the kind of language appropriate to the poem. Wade in the water plumbs the streams of violence that permeate American National identity, but the collection also offers cycler in the spiritual world, permeating ordinary life, in the lovely and lyrical hill country. God comes down from the hills in his jeep to observe the canyons of the junipers, live oaks, and the tiny flowers that grow frantic cal color at his feet. In december revelation, the narrator of the angels is visited by two spiritual messengers, clad in leather biker gear, who smell of ron and gasoline. Taking a cue perhaps from the bible, smith warns us to welcome the alien, she writes, for thereby, some have entertained angels unawares. In the collections of autonomous poem, a singer greets the poet with the sinful i love you, she said. She didnt know me. I believed her. The singer simple declaration of love is repeated many times. And the narrators feelings are peers suddenly by pillars of heavy light, transcending the confines of the world. There is hardly a better image, ladies and gentlemen, for the multiple ways in which smiths poems invite us to transcend the confines of our world. For so beautifully immersing us into the currents of American History and american life, tracy k. Smith is this years recipient of the 2019 anisfieldwolf book award for poetry. [applause] wade in the water thank you so much, professor gates was one of my most gender, race and inspiring professors decades ago when i was an undergrad at harvard, and hearing you speak about my work is so moving. I am deeply honored to receive this years anisfieldwolf book award in poetry. Im grateful to be in the company of the other winners of this years award, and because all writers are really just adamant readers who have been taught to see and feel and recognize the world differently by the work of other writers, i am bowled over to be welcomed into the kindred of past anisfieldwolf recipients, writers of vision and conscious, conscience and consummate craft. I write poetry because i have questions and fears and anxieties, and poems help me to struggle through what worries me, and children something that might helpful, even just momentarily. I think that wade in the water is a book they came about because i have questions about america. I have concerns about this country that i belong to and that i love. I think all of my books are wrestling with america in one way or another at this moment whether it is such a sense of fraud, division, and where some of us feel that the gains that have been made by generations who fought and worked before us have been pulled back a little bit. My urge to think and question took on a new kind of weight, a new kind of urgency. I think of wade in the water as a book that seeks to say to the history and experience of black people in this country, the generative and democracy loving and forgiving and struggling and genius spirit of black life that i think has made this country magnificent, and all the ways that it is. I wanted to center and celebrate that and think about questions fundamental to this nation as they pertain to freedom and democracy, justice, and more than anything the abiding need to make amends for the sins of the past, which continue to hamstring us even in this moment. I was thinking about all of that, and worry was life in my mind. History activated that in new ways that it also illuminated a vocabulary for love that was so surprising and so necessary for me, and i think for all of us. Im hoping that may be together we can find a way that the vocabulary of love and compassion can become even more vital to our citizenship and to our sense of civic discourse. I hope that together we can learn to honor and cherish and protect one another in the ways that democracy suggests are possible. Ill read just a few poems from wade in the water, and i think id like to start out with the title poem. Wade in the water, for the dg goal of ring shouter. One of the women greeted me. I love you, she said. She didnt know me, but i believe there are. And a terrible new ache rolled over in my chest, like in a room where the drapes have been swept back. I love you. I love you, as she continued down the hall past other strangers, each feeling peers suddenly by pillars of heavy light. I love you, throughout the performance in every handclap, every stop. I love you in the rusted iron genes, someone was made to drag until love let them be unclasped and left empty in the center of the ring. I love you in the water, where they pretended to wade, thinking singing that old song that dragged us to those banks and cast us in. I love you. The angles of it, scraping at each throat, shouldering passed the swirling waters in those beams of light, that whatever we now knew we could let ourselves feel, new to climb. Oh, woods. Oh, dogs. Oh, tree. Oh, gun. Oh, girl, run. Oh, miraculous, many gone. Oh, lord. Oh, lord. Oh, lord. If this love, the trouble you promised. This is a poem that i wrote thinking about what it feels like to live in a nation doesnt always recognize you come to live in in a community that dot always recognize you or see you in good faith. And it sat for a while without a title, and then the title announced itself to me one day as the United States welcomes you. Why, and by whose power, were you sent . What did you see that you may wish to steal . Why this dancing . Why do dark bodies drink up all the light . What are you demanding that we feel . Have you stolen something . Then, what is that leaping in your chest . What is the nature of your mission . Do you seek to offer a confession . Have you anything to do with other brought by us to harm . Then why are you afraid . And why do you invade our night, hands raised, eyes wide, mute as the ghosts . Is or something you wish to confess . Is this some enigmatic type of test . What if we fail . How and to whom to address our appeal . I want to acknowledge logan one more time. I love her. I love you. [applause] i always, i think about youth, and i get so much hope and joy and if you like the future is possible. And so im just grateful for your voice. I want to come back to this Award Ceremony when you win the award in poetry. [applause] im going to close with a poem that is my attempt to write a new myth. We use so much of our energy looking backward toward existing myths that tell us who we are as a nation, that seek to justify some of the perhaps unjustifiable aspects of our past. And i think its important for us to try and write in your future for ourselves. So this is an old story. We were made to understand it would be terrible. Every small want, every urge, every hate, swollen to a kind of epic wind livid, the land, and ravaged like a rageful dream. The worst in us having taken over and broken the rest, utterly deaf. Death. A long age past, when at last we knew how little would survive us. How little we had mended or built that was not now lost. Something large and old awoke. And then our singing brought on a different manner of weathered. Then animals long believed on crack down from the trees. We took new stock of one another. We went to be reminded of such color. Thank you very much. [applause] tracy k. Smith, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] tommy orange, when you couldnt find work a as a sound engineer after college, tommy orange made a life changing choice but they get job in a used bookstore. Surrounded literature, orange weekly became an avid reader as explained in the art, quote, i was in my 20s and also searching for meaning and it wasnt a reader, so fiction was a super novel thing for me. Hence the novel itself was. And i just fell in love with it. His job choice evolve into his stunningly beautiful debut novel, there there. Decide to write about native americans in an urban setting, orange has quote enlarge the landscape of American Fiction and earned her praise as a new writer with an old heart. This juxtaposition of the old with the new permeates the masterful prose. As orange points out, despite the fact that seven out of ten native people live in cities, quote, urban indians have kind of a double invisibility going on. In the country in which the stereotype is reservation life, ripping on crooked famous quote about oakland, there is no there there. Orange powerfully reconfigures the city as the home of the Fascinating Group of characters. They are as brilliant and captivating unveiling of the urban native identity. Tommy orange is the recipient of the anisfieldwolf local board for fiction. There there begins with a devastating prologue that traces the history of native americans deploying oranges lacerating wit to present a litany of atrocities. Questions about this opening device often replied quote, for native writers theres a kind of burden to set the record straight because its been told wrong so long. For some readers this information will be a revelation. For those more schooled in native American History, this opening which the New York Times calls abroad laura prologue still will startle with its lightning fast array of facts and images. Beginning with the indian had test pattern that used to close the tv day. Remember that . Until the late 1970s. That poor child and fifthgrade sing whats been old people talking about . [laughing] beginning with the indian had test pattern that close the tv day until the late 1970s, to that of also known as king philip, displayed on the spike plymouth for 25 years in the 17th century, orange dexterously references the defeated native american ubiquitous in american art, movies, flags, advertisements, and the coins that are now out of circulation, quoteunquote. As Washington Post review of the novel suggested, this prologue is remarkable for oranges ability to take references references that seem disjointed, the writer says, and then twine into a rope of which the deeds of american hatred are strong. Yet, embedded in this prologue is the resistance to erasure come in here in urban native like. The narrator issued a series of the fight challenges, quote, and urban indian locks to the city, and cities belong to the earth being indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere, or nowhere. Orange lyrically describes his familiarity with and affection for the city, quote, we came to know the downtown oakland skyline better than we di did in the Sacred Mountain range. The redwood in the Oakland Hills better than any other deep wild forest. As the plot commences, orange shows his mastery, giving each of the 12 major characters their own distinct voices. While some speak in the first person, others are described in the third person. Within this right of approaches each character is sensitively and compassionately evoked. Orange groups of these short chapters into sections named remain, reclaim, and return, indicating again there there intertwining the past and present. For example, aspiring filmmaker dean oxley dean uses cameras and microphones to record his interviews stories about the native experience. Edwin black, amasses degree in native American Literature is unemployed. Abandoning literature does spend most of his days addicted to his computer. Ironically, its to the internet that edwin eventually finds his missing father, and thus his connection to his heritage. Other characters constantly text. And both a drone and the 3d print gun figure in a mass shooting. In the contemporary era, the search for heritage and meaning is fueled by modern technology. One of the most sympathetic of all the novels characters is 14yearold horrible red feather whose thirst for knowledge about his heritage is sparked by saying the native dancer on tv. Entranced by the performers grace, he reflects quote, it was like breakdancing in a way that both knew, even cool and ancient seeming. Although his great aunt, opal viola victoria bitter shield, was part of an American Occupation of alcatraz. She refuses to discuss being indian, treating vote, treating it like it was something they could decide for themselves when they were old enough, like drinking or smoking. Orville instead turns to youtube to learn dancing by watching quote hours and hours of powwow footage. Orville raised himself and regularly of stolen from the back of his great aunt closet to attend his first powwow. For the first time he will hear live the quote, big booming drum and the intensity of the sinking, like an urgency that feels specifically indian. As all the characters congregate in the stadium for the big oakland powwow, the connections between the characters are embodied as parentchild reunions become possible, and this old relationships are renewed. The powwow offers hope for reclaiming heritage, drumming and dancing, or simply making money. Instead, with a robbery gone desperately wrong. As orange rights, and the quote, the bullets have been coming from miles, years. Weve been fighting for decades to be recognized as a present tense people, modern and relevant, alive, only to die in the grass wearing feathers. This sweeping, courageous and unflinching ending is as bloody as a shakespearean tragedy. It is painfully contemporary as the latest viral news story. For expanding our understanding of native american life, both the beauties and the dangers, tommy orange is the recipient of the 2019 anisfieldwolf book award for fiction. [applause] thank you for that, dr. Gates, very generous. Thank you all for coming out. Apologize for reading from my phone. [laughing] first and foremost i want to think, say thank you to the Cleveland Foundation and all the jurors for taking the time to consider so much work, for acknowledging my book in this way, and for bringing me out here and putting me up somewhere nice. [laughing] its a really nice hotel. [laughing] and for putting together this ceremony. My whole life i have feared whenever i get praise its because of pity. I used to think my mom paid my friends to be friends with me. [laughing] even though we didnt have any extra money for Something Like that. I got sponsored by a roller Hockey Company when i was 17 and thought it was because i was poor and was the janitor at the hockey rink, to pay for my league fees. And then when this appreciation with the praise of my book has gotten in these times, ive been afraid its been because of white liberal guilt. But this acknowledgment, this award, feels different, that is coming from somewhere else. And i appreciate where that somewhere else is from here in cleveland, from a foundation with an 84yearold tradition acknowledging that art plays a vital part in bringing about social change, and addressing a talking race and our work acknowledging its complexities and giving vision to the reader and to what they otherwise might not have seen or come to understand but what race in this country, how they shape our world, can help us not keep doing the same harmful stuff we keep doing to each other. I want to thank my wife and son for being my first if unwitting supporters. My agent and editor, everyone at cannot and a special thanks to necklace for coming out from your. To my people in oklahoma and oakland without which none of i wrote about what been written nor would i have even exist without my relatives and ancestors fighting for the lies for centuries. Thank you. Im just going to talk a little bit about part of the book and then im going to read from i worked in nonprofit world in oakland for almost a decade, and for part of that tiny i had secretly started writing this book. My wife was the only one who knew about it, and we got a grant for native Youth Suicide prevention, and some of the things we did with that group inform the book, likely to youth to alcatraz, and i watched the youth watch the elders tell the stories of being there at the time of the occupation of alcatraz, and that inform one of the chapters in the book, and we put together an author not we, my wife was the project director. I was not. [laughing] i would get invited to stop [applause] because i was like, look like an native youth and i was from oakland and i was an data so they were just like toby n, like i was data entry at best. [laughing] but we did an author reading series and brought in some authors and i was not one, but my wife was the project director and shes like you are going to read it. It was the scariest reading experience of my life. These native youth, you know, there are some of the hardest to reach the most rewarding if you do. Most devastating if you dont. And for me i had been writing sickly for a year, this novel, and my wife made me read it in front of them. And it was, i dont know if i wouldve kept going if i didnt get the reaction from them i got. There were some kind of questions into pride, just a kind of crazy experience. Part of what i read to them from that first year of writing this still in the prologue, some going to read from part of that right now. Hard fast. Getting the cities was supposed to be the final and necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure. The completion of the 500 year old genocidal campaign, but the city made a this new and we made it hours. We didnt get lost amid the sprawl of tall builders, the ceaseless den of traffic. We found one another can start it up indian centers, brought out our families and power, are dancing, our songs. We bought and rated homes, slept on the street under freeways. We went to school, joined the armed forces, populate indian bars in oakland and in san francisco. We lived in boxcar villages in richmond. We made art and we need babies and we made a way for people to go back and forth between reservation and city. We did not move to cities to die. The sidewalks and streets the concrete absorb our happiness. The glass, metal, rubber and was, the speed, the early masses, the city took us in. We were not urban indians then. This is part of the Indian Relocation act which is part of the indian termination policy which was as exactly what it sounds like. To make them look and act like us, become us, and so disappear but it was just like that. Funny of this came by choice to start over, to make money for a new experience. Some of us came to cities to escape the reservation. We stayed after fighting in the Second World War after vietnam, too. We stayed because the city sounds like a war and you can leave a war once youve been. You can only keep it at bay, which is easier when you can see it and hear it near you, that fast metal, that constant firing around you, cars going up and down the streets and freeways like most or the quiet of the reservation side of the highway towns, rural communities, that kind of silence just makes the sound of your brain on fire that much more pronounced. Plenty of us are urban now, if the because we live in cities and because we live on the internet. Inside the highrise of multiple browser windows. They used to call this sidewalk indians, called us superficial and authentic, cultural list refugees, apples. An apple is red on the outside and white on the inside. But what we are is what our ancestors did, how they survived. Where the memories we dont remember which live in us, which we feel, which make us sing and dance and pray the way that we do. The things from memory settler in bluin the unexpected in our s like blood through a blanket from a wound fired in the back for hair, foreheads, or a bounty or just to get rid of us. When they first came forth with her bullets, we didnt stop moving even though the bullets moved twice as fast than the sound of her screen. Even when their cables broke her shatter our bones, pierced hearts, we kept on, even when we saw the bullets an in our bodies flailing to the air like flax, with many flags influence of went up a place of everything we knew this land to be before. The bullets were premonitions, ghosts from dreams of a hard fast future. The bullets moved on after moving through us but can the promise of what was to come, the speed and the killing, the hard fast lines of borders and buildings that took everything and ground it down to dust as sinus gunpowder. They fired their guns into the air in victory and the strays flew up into the nothingness of history thats written wrong and meant to be forgotten your stray bullets and consequences are landing on her unsuspecting bodies even now. Thank you. [applause] tommy orange, give it up. [applause] Andrew Delbanco, it is impossible to read Andrew Delbanco written and its isil new book on the divisive forces the rip apart the country in the 19th century without thinking of our current Political Climate and anxiety we all feel daily. As nuke times states, he excavates the past in ways that illuminate the present. Addressing these inevitable historical comparisons in an interview on fresh air, the author war against comparisons between the vicious conflicts of the antebellum era with contemporary political strife but conceded the current lack of, quote, civility and a modicum of respect for the other side, unquote is reminiscent of the anger, he continues, they just started to feed upon itself following the passage of the fugitive slave act. Present concerns aside, the focus of this book, the war before the war is Andrew Delbancos engaging and lucid unfolding of the role that runaway slaves played come from the right of the constitution through the civil war. As a Washington Examiner notes, the author quotes narrates this history with a moral clarity that is best described as terrifying. For his brilliant historical narrative, that transforms the figures of the fugitive slaves from the margins of American History to its dynamic center, Andrew Delbanco is the 2019 recipient of the anisfieldwolf award for nonfiction. As begins a long strip of americas conflict over slavery, delbanco identifies the young countries old problem, as he calls it, the fact that quote slavery is a condition from which insulate people will seek to escape. This is a problem [laughing] that also vexed many of the Founding Fathers. As early as 1783, for example, for example, general George Washington wrote about his concern that quote the tories and refugees were taking fugitive slaves out of the country, including some of his own runaway slaves. Delbanco expertly traces the way this old problem became a central compromise of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, leading to the constitutional guarantee that without explicitly naming slavery allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves. As the New York Times points out, these are facts that quote anyone who claims to know anything about American History should know, but few of us have read these facts. Presented in such a profound and direct manner. Delbancos gripping retelling highlights the conflicts between the vastly different societies that made up our young nation. As he recounts the observation of an antislavery activist, it was a, quote, sad satire to call the states united because in one half of the country slavery was basic choice of life, while in the other it was fading or already gone. While many of the founders publicly inveighed against the existence of slavery, we were thoroughly implicated in its existence to an astonishing degree. In what seems to be an almost schizophrenic fracturing of ideals with lived reality, many managmanaged to ignore the anguf slave life, informing and, indeed, arguing for the ideals of the nation. As delbanco argues, one of the most demanding challenges, as he puts it, and thinking about history is quote, explaining how people in the past could have failed to see what seems so clear in retrospect. Indeed, while most readers may not be shot that the planter class including washington and jefferson routinely posted advertisements for the capture of the runaway slaves, delbancos implications of other figures will surprise and will certainly challenge the contemporary reader. For example, Benjamin Franklin offered unsparing views about the evils of slavery, franklin still owned at least two slaves. Further, delbanco writes, as a young newspaper editor franklin had accepted advertisements for human merchandise. The same compartmentalization, as he puts it, of ideas is evident when James Madison was visited in his life by british abolitionist harriet mart know, who is quote, amazed at his ability to hold forth at the dinner table on the evils of slavery while being waited on by his slaves. While stories such as these seem inexplicable, delbancos particular historical analysis brings as close as were likely to get to understanding, as he puts it, the moral ambiguities of the precivil war years by immersing us in the particulars of the time. As the times writes, delbancos skills as a literary critic also illuminate the contribution fugitive slaves made to the growing antislavery movement. In this chapter entitled war of words, delbanco unfolds the way which the Abolitionist Movement which printed a prolific 30,000 copies of antislavery publications monthly in new york city, he can to focus on personal accounts by and about slaves who ran away from slavery. As someone who himself has stated slave narratives about most of my career, i rate delbancos treatment of these autobiographies and the politics of the 3 delbancos treatment of these autobiographies and the politics of the publication from the early stories to Frederick Douglass 1845 masterpiece and beyond as quite simply superb. By the time of the passage of the fugitive slave act of 1850, delbanco argues, slave hunters and their allies might still hope for public indifference, but they could no longer count on public ignorance. Not only with the fugitive slaves living in the north, at risk, but also freed black people in the north could be denied the right to habeas corpus and sent south on the false pretext that they belonged to someone there. Simply put, being black was understood as the equivalent of being a slave. Solberg northup 12 years of slave published in 1853 as a wellknown illustration of the danger that slavery posed to all black people in america, north and south, of the masondixon line. As lincoln asserted irrefutably, quote, people of any color still dont run unless there is something to run from. Among the tiny fraction of sleighs mostly from the border states the managed to escape, maybe 30,000 through the underground railroad, they were able to have their stories told. 102 former slaves, fugitive slaves published book length autobiographies of slave narratives before 1866. 102. There hundred two. There were 3. 9 million slaves, according to the 1860 census. Despite the impression evidence of the slave narratives in this desire to limit slavery, slavery, lincoln along with many other politicians continued to cling to compromise publicly stating, quote, stand with the abolitionists in restoring the missouri compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to appeal the fugitive slave bill. [music] im touched and overwhelmed i must say by this award. As others have said, to be included in this incredible pantheon of authors, present and past, is really more than i could have imagined. Its a great honor not only because of the anisfieldwolf commitment to honesty for our nations long struggle for justice or because of the distinction of the prize jury led by skip gates and i want to add by the unexpected delight of hearing the poetry of logan this evening and im sure were going to hear more from her. In my case its also a special pleasure for the personal reason that my wife is here tonight with me, grew up in cleveland. [applause] best location in the nation,i believe we used to call it. I have very fond memories of courting her, if i can use that oldfashioned term in the oak room at terminal tower. Remember that . Courtney and lenny out on cedar road. Even downtown here at publix bookmarks which some of you may remember. Now, those were the culinary and cerebral aspects of our courtship. Im pretty sure hed like me to stop there so ill do a thank you cleveland. Im afraid that the end of the lighthearted portion of my remarks the book ive written is nota lighthearted book. For a few minutes id like to talk about some of the dark truths i learned from reading and writing and like every writer i hope of course that it will help readers learn to. To begin with i learned the truth of what William Wells brown, the fugitive who fled from slavery in kentucky told them mostly white abolitionists crowd in new england that had invited him to talk about slavery. I must whisper to you, he said. Slavery has never been represented. Slavery can never be represented. And this from a man who had known the thing itself. Now, nearly 200 years later we who knows slavery from books or films or rainy old pictures are still trying to representit. And so we must, if we want to grasp the hard truth about our country as my friend tahenisi coates pointed that slavery was not a bump in the road, it was the road. My book is about untold thousands of courageous human beings, fugitives from slavery who dared to claim for themselves the promise of america. Namely, life, liberty andthe pursuit of happiness. I have the great pleasure last night of hearing tracy smith read in the middle of a rainstorm under a tent, beautiful poem declaration which uses mister jeffersons language against itself. If you havent read it, you should. In writing this book i learned to many educated selfstyled sophisticated americans do not realize and are shocked to learn that our very own constitution, revered as it is and thereare some good reasons to revere it , its principles are being fought out right now before us. Our constitution contains a clause specifically designed to rob the people of hope. To block their path, to stifle and suffocateyour dreams. Im speaking of whats come to me known as the fugitive slave clause, article 4, section 2, clause 3 in which our Founding Fathers wrote and i quote no person held to service or labor in one state under the laws thereof escaping into another shall be discharged from such service or labor but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whomsuch service or labor maybe do. And that euphemistic language about persons held to labor as skip has pointed out youll notice the word slave is never used, never appears in the constitution but in many ways all over. The constitution emphatically placed law on one side of the slavery question and justice on theother. For roughly 75 years between the ratification of the constitution and the socalled compromise of 1850, most americans remain attached, insouciant , indifferent. I found myself very often tempted to judge them, condemn them, ask that question that skipalluded to, how can they not have seen the injustice . I always stopped a little short of that when i started to ask myself how much injustice do i, do we, stay blind to in our own time. Willfully blind. Northern whites, even those who regarded slavery as something unpleasant or distasteful convinced themselves that it was someone elses problem. Even as they were wearing cotton on their backs or depositing their money in banks that made loans to plantation owners. It was a faraway problem to be glimpsed in a magazine or alluded to in a sunday sermon. Something to shape ones head out and wish it were different but what after all can we do. Constitution, protected the right of some human beings to own other human beings. Plain and simple. And protect the right of the owners to retrieve the owned if the latter ran away. And suddenly in the year 1850 , this sense of distance and remoteness and abstraction for Many Americans that was never distant or remote or abstract for africanamericans but for many it was and that sense of distance collapsed. As the country expanded westward, the border between slavery and freedom got longer and more porous. No longer ran only between maryland or virginia and pennsylvania but also between kentucky and the state ofohio , between missouri and illinois. As black people cross that border, southern whites grew fed up with what they regarded as the failure of northerners to live up to their constitutional obligation. They accused northerners of enticing slaves into the fields and factories of the north with false promises of a better life. Meanwhile northerners accused southerners of sending and unjustly so, of sending kidnappers to steal any strong body black man or soft body black woman that struck their fancy inorder to sell them to some salivating buyer in the south. At the midpoint of the 19th century with recrimination rising on both sides, sleep holders demanded anew law that would put teeth into the toothless clause of the constitution. This was the fugitive slave law of 1850 and it was a merciless law. It denied the defendants right to trial by jury. It denied the most basic right of the angloamerican legal tradition, the right of habeas corpus. The right that is to contest the legality of onesown detention in open court. That protected some of us from being seized and hidden away with no recourse. It made, that law made it a federal crime for any citizen to aid or abet a fugitive, yet the Congress Passed it and the president signed. And once again, the law of the land is a mockery of justice. And here, which is something every storyteller welcomes, the story takes a suddenturn towards irony. Skip has already quoted that phrase the law of unintended consequences which was coined by elite colleague of mine at the university. If ever there was a law of unintended consequences it was the fugitive slave law of 1850. It was meant to hold a nation together. Thats why lincoln reluctantly supported it, because he believed the union would collapse otherwise. But instead , it grew itapart. And for northerners, it turned it faraway problem into a local problem. Slavery was no longer a rumor about dark people picking cotton down in dixie. Now slavery was a near neighbor, a tailor, a barber, a waiter. These were the professions to which black people were largely confined in the socalled tree north. One have seen around the neighborhood for months or maybe years was now dragged and chained through the treat streets of boston or syracuse or buffalo not by a lawless mob but by a Law Enforcement officers empowered by the federal government to seize and man, march into the dock and ship them back to thehell whence he came. Until that moment, until 1850 as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it , when his fellow new englanders and i think he implicated himself in this charge, when his fellow new englanders enjoyed their case or put sugar in their key and i quote, no one tasted blood in the streets. After 1850, it was really hard to fail to taste the blood. These are the broad outlines of the story i tell in this book which does carry the tail up through the civil war when the fugitive slave problem, that is that problem that no human being wishes to be enslaved. One of lincolns comments was to say people who say slavery is good and remember the slave owners in the south that is not only good for the slaveowners, its good for the slave. Lincolns response was its a very strange kind of goodness that no man everwishes for himself. So when this problem of human beings wishing to escape slavery was finally resolved by the destruction of slavery itself, that happened because of a war that cost the lives of 1 billion americans. Think about what that would mean if you do the math in our country today. My book is about the past. The history books but as i wrote it, i kept thinking about attributed to mark twain who probably never said it but you might as well have. History does not repeat itself but it does rhyme. This is a rhyming story, i felt that stronger and stronger as i wrote it. Fugitive slaves were the undocumented immigrants of their time. [applause] a black man running or even walking fast was assumed to be a criminal. Guilty of what crime . The crime of stealing himself. Black people all over the country, not just in south feared and often for very good reason the site of an approaching Law Enforcement officer. Boston, rochester and other cities of the north declared themselves in effect to be sanctuary cities. Congress became dysfunctional. Americans reached for each othersthroats. I dont think i have to go on to make the point. But perhaps most salient of all to my own education, i learned that however pure and virtuous we may feel, we are all still ensnared in the legacy of slavery in one way or another. Thats a subject for another talk. Im deeply honored by the anisfieldwolf award. By this recognition youve improved the chance my book might contribute to the unfinished and essential project of coming to terms with hard truths about what it means to be an american. Thank you very much. [applause] up for anthony, ladies and gentlemen. Sonia sanchez. To read one of sonjasanchezs 14 books of poetry is a revelation. The pure power of her work is best experienced as she performs her own verse. At least as inspiring as her dazzling delivery, but sonja i think of as a pan african version of speaking in tongues. A mixture of santeria and possession by the holy ghost. At least as inspiring are the energy and engagement of her audiences response to her style which has been cited as a critical precursor to hiphop. As alice walker has noted and i quote, there is no poet who sounds like Sonia Sanchez. Only perhaps that wind that makes music in endangered trees, unquote. In her long career as an educator, poet and activist sanchez has shared her get in more than 500 universities and colleges in the United States. As well as around the world. Remarkably, sanchez described herself in black women writers work as a quote, very shy child, a very introspective child. One who stuttered. Yet overcoming all obstacles she became one of the primary originators of the black Arts Movement and a model for younger poets. Thats why maya angelou once said Sonia Sanchez is a lion of literatures for us. And when she writes, she roars. For over six decades Sonia Sanchez has been a fiercely powerful and empowering voice for all of us. And for people of color in particular. For her invaluable contributions as a writer, educator and acted , she is this years anisfieldwolf award Lifetime Achievement award recipient. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Sonia Sanchez. [applause] sonia, you can come up your butt ive got more words tosay. You come up here and tostand. Thats all right. You stand right here. Known primarily for volumes of poetry, sanchez is also also written seven plays, a collection of short stories and childrens books, all of which are infused with her brilliant observation of everyday life told in the black vernacular. Sanchez ps with great affection about the storytelling style of herpaternal grandmother in birmingham alabama , a grandmother who read her fora number of years. As she told the africanamerican review, it is that love of language that has propelled me. That love of language that came from listening to my grandmother speak black english. It is that love of language that says simply to the ancestors who have done this for you, i am keeping the love of life alive, the love of language alive. I am keeping this Great American tradition ofamerican poetry alive. Sanchez narrative poems tell the story of the poor, the addicted and oppressed. In their own language, gaining power and empathy through their immediacy. Interspersed among the heartbreaking stories in sanchezs book on girls and hand grenades won the american book award in 1985, or also lyrics celebrating life, celebrating love , celebrating sexuality. One of sanchez favorite poetic forms is haiku. One such poem rejoices in the transformative power of physical love as it declares and i quote, we are sudden stars, you and i , exploding in our blueblack skin. And the longer lyric after the fifth day, the poet intertwines emerging political awakening with romantic love conventions. With you, i press the rows you bought me into one of fat on spokes. It has no odor now. And i see you handing me a red rose and i remember my birth. In sanchez verse, the personal is always political and home girls love home truths like hand grenades. In the 2015 documentary about sanchez work, bad Sonja Sanchez, i love that title. The author states that her motivation for writing is that she wants to tell people how i became this woman with razor blades between herteeth. She is has honed this lacerating language, weight. She has honed his lacerating language since the late 1950s when she formed the broadside quartet of young poets along with Haki Madhabuti and nikki giovanni. During her long career of fighting injustice getting with her early days in court, the congress of racial equality sanchez poetry as warned the human cost of oppression in all its forms. In one mournful haiku she writes i see you black boy. Toward destruction. Watching for death with type eyes. Poems such as these are particularly poignant in the era of black lives matter and we owes sonja a great debt for both her ongoing political activism and the gripping and emotional poetry that shehas written. In order to adequately praise Sonia Sanchez work, i would like to cite her own words. In her poem from a black feminist conference reflections on margaret walker, poet , sanchez lauds walker, a member of the Chicago Black renaissance in borges, celebratory language. Words from this poem seem particularly at to describe the poet we celebrate here tonight and i quote, there is an echo about her, of black people writing, of a woman celebrating herself and of people. Additionally, i quote, her voice turns afternoon burnout , this black woman poet removing false fails, baptizes us two syllables woman words Sonja Sanchez has requested one thing from her audience and i quote. When you remember me, remember that i love you. With a passion. Obviously, we returned her affection in full. For extraordinarily generous tips of love, expressed through her prosthetic poetry, Sonja Sanchez is this years recipient of the anisfieldwolf award Lifetime Achievement award. Ladies and gentlemen. [applause] cold rain, people. They asked me what id like to have played and i said theres only one person. Thats great, great, great musician. John culturing. I want to thank you my dear brother. [applause] and i always ask people you know my students, have you ever heard coal train . A lot of the students had in the early years but now theyve gone back and retrieve some of the people. I just want to really thank so many people for this award. I we used to talk, some of us in the movement. We said you know what were saying, dont expect any rewards awards or money. My father said thats right. But i just want to thank very much bobby henry, louis gates junior. Thank you my dear brother. I so so so grateful to you and your committee but also grateful for the work that youve done for black folks in this placecalled america and also for america. Brother ron, sister karen, and sister logan, your bad sisters, you know . Were going to watch you and contribute to you also to make sure youcontinue. And sister tracy, thank you so much my dear sister for continuing in the great tradition of poetry. This thing that we do in this place called america, not only to alarm but also to love. To brother tommy, thank you for continuing what we discovered when we went looking for ourselves in a place called america as african americans, one of the strange thing that happened, we went in search of ourselves as we found other people who were also enslaved , had been enslaved in different ways on reservations, in concentration camps and so one of the things that i learned is when you go searching for yourself you will find others who have also been hidden in this place called america and so we found the americans how they learn not to root for john wayne but to rootfor the native americans. And we also found japanese americans in concentration camps, i was walking to a classroom teaching when we began something called black studies at frisco state and when they went here sonia, here. Heres a map. We think this has to do with concentration camps and i came in and i held it up and i had to japaneseamerican students in my class there and i said you know anything about concentration camps and they got pissed at me. And i put it down and later on, we all began then in those early years in 1966, we ended the class always in a circle, in a circle touching each other and so when they held my hand, one of them i said here, take this home with you. We think, we dont know, were not sure this has to do with some of your people. Concentration camps in a place called america and when she came back to class on tuesday they were in tears because when they presented it to their parents, their parents told them an amazing story about being put in a concentration camp in a place called america. Losing money when they had to sell their houses in one week in order to do that. So therefore, i understood that and also we began to understand to when i went into the laundry rooms in harlem that i began to find out about the chinese who helped build the railroads and who also were exploding in yellow when it exploded from all the dynamite. I learned also being about gay men and lesbian women and what people were saying, what even i was saying on stages, listened to people. I remind everybody isnt that funny and one day i didnt get laughs. Not because my brother was gay, but i didnt laugh because i thought how can i talk about change in the world if youre going to stay with therest of the world when their incorrect, my dear sister. Thats what i said to myself. [applause] and also the idea people think people cant change. A famous writer, i was invited to speak against the vietnam war and this poet came up to me and he picked me up and said sonja, miss sanchez, were so happy to have you here speaking against thiswar. It was a big place downtown. A big town hall in new york city. And they said its so good to see you. My friend said why did you curse them out . Hes the one when you are trying to get in workshops and i went to a number of workshops in a place called new york city and i showed up there. I was only email and i was the only black and after a few sessions i left because no one responded towhat i was saying. Imaginethat. And i said to her, did you see him greet me . Did you hear what you said . I said youre saying to me my dear sister that peoplecannot change. I know people can change and this is a changed man here in this place called america. People do change. I want to say simply that this past month, we lost three fantastic women, black women. Great women, scholars and writers. And it was a rough week for all of us. Sister Toni Morrison, sister , i have vertigo thats messing with me today. Paula marshall. And gloria, sister gloria. Come on, somebody. Thank you. Youre getting an a, okay. And they were all around the same time and i was just so i could not breathe for a minute talking talking to sister gloria for she went and could not talk anymore. And seeing some of the other people. I wrote, introduced her to Toni Morrison. I used to, i was asked to introduce her quite often and i write longhand so every time i get letters introducer i had to rewrite, i had to write something new because i could never findwhat i had written. This is the introduction of Toni Morrison by 1812 in a place calledphiladelphia. You said we die, that maybe the meaning of life but we do language, that may be the measure of our lives and my dear sister Toni Morrison, how you do this thing called language, the measure of our lives. How you recapture our words, untangle this language. How you stand words up, let them minuet our blood. How you open up the sorcery of language, spitting people in the wonder of words, recapturing the wings of our most sacred towels. Listen you say. Someone is around the bend and you are not our eyes but surprised bring us into the flesh of rain andlaughter called paradise , love, jazz , the bluest eyes of solomon,a mercy god help the child. We commandeer your words, spitting under this domestic sky and they become a river, moving against winter sales, repelling ice, water, ghosts. Our bodies are tattooed forever with your christopher tong and we are one, alive, apart from the elasticity of the dead. The day comes my dear sister, breathing in your eyes of self and i remember your words dont tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us the wide skirts and the stitch that unravels and i thank you for this process stitch called home. Where men and women shipwrecked with flash and disguise, graveyardmemories , walk themselves back home in error as black as their clouds, their hearts still searching for gusts of light as a dress their limbs in bows and new memory. I put on my eyes, my dear sister. I am in the eyelash of your memory where there is always a small miracle called home. [applause] and i would like to and up with a piece that i did for a fine artist, a young woman by the name of sister one easy mode to read i dont know if youve seen her work in galleries, but she had a gallery show in a place called philadelphia and the people there who owned the gallery asked me when i write a piece so i came for five days inset and watched her install her work there, watched her do this amazing little paper balls she wrapped in tape for the children who cannot afford the balls when they play, when they go and they play soccer. I watched her do a sculpture of women who had been exerted on the continent of africa and who were killed. I watched all of this and i sat and i cried and i wrote lines and then i came back the next day and i cried and i wrote lines again and i went home and could not sleep and came back and opened the gallery and i was there for five days and i wrote this for her. Its called belly, but socks and fake spine for sister moved to. You enigmatic moments, exploding from clouds and intestines, riverbanks , kneecaps, veins and horizons. Tongues embroidered with eyelashes. You burn in mythroat. I want your footsteps singing you are here, you are there. You will never go away. You kiss your own breath, sleepwalk your eyes, stretched out with singing your legs. I know you are fly sweet, your lips taste of the sea. The years dusted with her story anticipate light. Your hands write with pain, collapse in the player, touch this stainedglass where ghosts commit themselves to military bloodthe bleeding hitssurrounding turkey wrapped in laughter, blood laughter, riddled noise , whistling words , who is your sister . Where is your mama . Dont bleed ashes. This is a blue sermon i think, hanging from the sky, scratching at the night where literary brains demystified at, singing from the angle of your life, you turn the ways in red and purple confetti. The day stitches up your python mouth. You stroll black beyond the stars, star leaving black skinned woman, seen from the angle of the camera, you become the mug shot, mugging a century of post, sound, video, writing definite plans. Do not see the animals, they will bite one day. This language were other vowels and consonants and diphthongs do not feed the animals, they slot in her and will bite one day. For red orange breasts, seeking medical hieroglyphics , bones whose sale, immaculate bones with stage fright, ethiopian bodies leaking into the ground, old close unburied, childrens eyes undressed, mens pants unzipped, women slipping still backstage, awaiting. Master monsters without tongues, conducting infernos. It is god telling your limbs to pray on . Whats in a name . A whole heart, a soul, and ancestral limb. Your internet jesus of zerotolerance. A smell, a black woman in white chalk, a woman sleepwalking on corners. What is antiabout a full stat . I wait for my coming, i wait for my coming. Now as your congregational needs neil, now that your birth last a long pause, now that you sigh amid the pale gaze. Is that gods tongue sliding down your throat . Five, you say i know, i know it. I know where is this brown skinned woman going her military hair . This right hysterical flower regurgitating kate, i know , i know. The jellyroll woman squatting in her den, her bright face eating blue sorrow, doctor real urgency of her shuttering female pain profiling her hunger, who scrubs the daylight while women fall down. Can you hear their gravity, can you hear the saxophone bloodletting goes child, and you hear this woman with your fingers, your her confetti seat dancing under positive rhythms. Now hear this, now hear this , harpsichord teeth, put pajamas in a pillbox for a while, a graphic buttocks, you are tattooed against the tabloid walls, mouth anointed with he got tricks, here i am really here i am. Comealong, take your pick. Listen. Listen, listen. Woman of high, bone. Law can make you take yourown blood unless youve got a catchers mitt, dont go playing with love. No consecrated birth borders today, no like its today, no vertical procedures today, just bands music with an activity today, just a night shudder under your arms today, just eight is the wet skin today, just the lord speak today, just a Railroad Train today, just a majestic beat against the sky, just standing at attention today. Listen, listen. Sister, you hear me dont you and you hear, dont you, how your collages stand in effigy delirium, sister you hear me, dont you . You hear that music eavesdropping these gallery walls. Praising your beauty and bones in this hallway of lost sermons. You hear me, dont you . You hear the children running , jumping adolescent rhymes as they like the streets with garbage bag balls as a still there magical spines, their genius, their surplus needs on streets. It is evening and we have arrived in your arms. You hear me, dont you, even as you navigate this halo of ordained voyages, as you uncork the Daylight Pass these shadows, past our doors left open and your gentle breath fills the day with sweet eyelids, as you arrive at the art of your name. Sister, you hear me , dont you . I invoke your name, your gallery of female matadors as they come and dance in funder. Thank you. [applause] [applause]. [inaudible] its a little bit different. I just want to say that as we watch what isgoing on in the country today , can you resist . Youve got to resist. Youve got to look at this youve got to get out youve got to vote. [applause] like youve never voted before. And i dont want to hear any women saying i just cannot vote for a woman. What is your problem . Let us show the world who we are. I mean, my dear brothers and dear sisters, do we really know who we are . We are now coming into this century getting to the mid part of the century and we must show the world and our children that young sister who read that poem that we are a people who know finally that the civil war has been fought and we must move as people who dont believe in slavery, who do not believe that they are the greatest people of the planet earth. Got to understand as poets that we must look and learn how to say youre my brother, youre my sister. Thats what its all about and this goes for all of america,in this place called america. And i thank you, and i think the foundation for what they do. To help us begin to understand those words. Its so easy to say im not prejudiced, i havent got a prejudiced bone in my body. What about those arteries . So every day, wake up in the morning, even before you brush your teeth and all of you are here another day, not saying i need to rest as you get ready toleave the house and go to work, go to school, teach, go do the work. Say im going to resist. Im going to resist. Im goingto resist until we win. [applause] wow. Profits in the house. As doctor yates mentioned im karen long and i work on the anisfieldwolf book award. Tonight, we acknowledge the. Ottawa, potawatomi and the confederacy. Whos lands we stand on and the thousands of native americans, people who represent more than 100 nations who live in northeast ohio today. Let us also [applause] let us also acknowledge the few people who made our evening possible. It anisfieldwolf, stretching all the way to ron richards and the Cleveland Foundation board chair kelly green as well as our inimitablemaster of ceremonies , skip gates. [applause] and please, take note of the many partners who wasted multiple tests to raise the big barn of the week. Especially noticed the Cleveland Public Library who just brought Soledad Obrien to celebrateat the hundred 50th anniversary of literature itself. [applause] in 1869, when our library opened its doors, jesse james robbed his first bank. The Cincinnati Reds played the first game of professional baseball and congress sent the 15th amendment, meant to extend the black men the right to vote for the states for approval. You can read about it in the library and in several anisfieldwolf winning books. And for more inspiration, please seek out to brandnew murals painted thisyear. One interprets Jericho Browns new testament at the 34th street rta stop. And the other, James Mcbrides the color of water for 240 feet in University Circle along the rta track. And speaking of visuals, i must acknowledge our partners , book be and especially idea strength which will rebroadcast and preserve this experience for others but for now, your audience, the night is ours. Please join us on stage then dear Tracy K Smith who calls us to wait in the waters of trouble and love and please come up , Andrew Delbanco who has gifted us in the mid19th century to better know ourselves. ,. And come forward, youre in whose brilliant first book is as marlon james said under and sister Sonia Sanchez whose voice and then calls us to dignity. Please rise, please rejoin us and juror weekend of whose genius helps raise our gaze every year. Cleansing the audience, please join the winners skip gates and we end up on stage for a book signing reduction. We have beverages on state and refreshments in the lobby. And lastly, lets tune out years to the young women of the sisterhood, under the leadership of poet allie black singing the song they created this summer , cometoo far. Lets enjoy. [applause] and now on