Rebecca roanhorse. So, we are not going to take audience questions but feel free to chat amongst yourself in the chat feature and let us know where youre viewing from. Well re recording the event so folks who couldnt join us live can watch this later on and ill give you a quick rundown of the format. Were going to give each author seven to mine minutes to talk about anywhere upcoming books and then we joy will lead a chat of the group. So without further adieu ill pass things over to zerina and well take it away. Zerina maxwell the msnbc political analyst, commentator, speaker and writer the and the senior director of progressive programming for pierus xm cohost of signal boost. Take it away. Im so excited to be here this evening. I know so many of us are struggling through our individual circumstances during this quarantine, and maybe were thinking and wondering what we can do in this particular moment to make the world around us just a little bit different and a lot better. So, i cant to thank book expo and Publishers Weekly for having us here tonight. Im so excite for the discussion but also to take this opportunity, the first opportunity to talk about my upcoming back, the end of white politics. Out on july 7th and im so excited to share with you. So, what is the end of white politics . A lot of people are going to ask me that question. What is it, zerina and ill say, politics. Politics is what white politics is essential. We have been doing it the entire time. I want everybody to hear me out on this. What my premise is, the end of white politics is putting an end to the signal and solitary focus on white voters and thats a fact. According to pew research, white voters will be a minority of the american electorate by the year 2045. So why wait until then to start moving and voting and organizing like were the majority. In fact, some states like california, white voters are already a minority of voters. But even beyond these demographics and generational shifts that are already underway in america, we must fill demand that still demand atunder leadership, both reflect our diversity and our progressive values. Diversity and inclusion are about more than a pretty picture congressman presley, another member of the squad, in addition to representative omar who will be joining us later hopefully, she says that the people closest to the pain need to be closest to the power. That means the people who have the statement lived experiences as me, black woman, may have a better understanding of the needs of people who also look like me. And that is required in the future in terms of setting public policy. Lived experiences matter. And i want to ask everyone at home a question. I know were virtual so i cant hear your response back but i want you to silently think about Election Night and all of the graphics on the screen win youre watching the returns coming in. So aisle a black College Educated woman. I also have a law degree which is why its good this wasnt held at the Javits Center because thats where we lost the election in 2016, and where i took the bar exam. So not a good place. But on Election Night, when youre looking at the graphics, do you ever wonder why there isnt a graphic for a black College Educated woman . I do. Im never in any of the graphics or pie charts. Why dont i get the privilege of nuance . I dont get a slide. You in the how this works and you know what im talking about. The slides go like this. White excuse me working class men, college educate women, suburban women, these all mean white. Ever wonder why we have different analysis for different segments of white voters and latino voters are just latino votes. And black voters are just the black vote. In fact the only time latino voters get nuanced is when we are talking about the state of florida. As we sit here and we understand that voters, particularly those of color, are never a monolith, why are we not affording them the honor of some nuance. Because what we want to do Going Forward is avoid what went wrong in 2016. So now im going to read a shore excerpt from the introduction of my book. It is based on a situation that really happened at a conference in los angeles, california, right before the 2018 midterm elects. The audience was full of mostly bernie supporters but some trump supporters, just in George Washington but the audience was very rowdy. The panel was called, what now, liberals . So heres my else say about 2016. An excerpt from chapter 1. I lived through 2016 with a birds review of it all and have the battle scars i suit what worked and didnt and while arch had something to say about the failed political campaign, usually dont include the fact that black turnout dropped 7 from 2012. And that largely impacted the outcome of the election. How could it not . And it isnt that most black people were just too busy. Its that 4. 4 Million People who voted for barack obama in 2012 either stayed home or had their vote suppressed and a third of those people were black. The nearly 1 million black voters who decided not turn out in 2016 would have likely tipped the election to Hillary Clinton. But we have on sellsed incessantly about 77,000 votes which we assume all White Working Class voters. In bastions like wisconsin and michigan. And there doesnt seem to be enough media or party focus on the black voters. Or latino voters. The last time i checked, the number one million is bigger than the number 77,000. The tangible imtact on voter enthusiasm that took effect in 2016 that we have yet to deal with. Some attributed to russia, of course, some of it is really just our predisposed biases and well never know how much that had an pact. The voter precision that led to a Trump Victory resulted from many factor but one that cant be denied is that the party stannment and the leftie types all contributed to the outcomes as well. Because they were exactly the warrant exactly doing a in job of engaging voters like me because we are an afterthought instead of the central focus of the Democratic Party. Since the beginning of the country issue whiteness and white voters have been analyzed obsessed off however the country is changing and politics must to. After more heckling by the mostly white audience he was the moderator tried to calm everyone down. Tried to say stop it. But i chimed in with this. There are kids in cages and i you are progressive we can Work Together to get this dude out of the white house but the only way to do that is to engage women like me, black women, and that is when the spark for this book came. In that political room of leftists became a clarifying moment as he recognized the need to define the strategy for the fewer of democratic succession success. That sees will be built on a foundation of people and communities of color who will need more than a few lines about free college no deliver their much needed votes. We also arent going to show up for folks trying to yell and manipulate us into submission and arent willing to listen, including to our feedback about their shortcomings. No one and to win future elections across the board and reestablish the power of our democracy, we need to start looking at the reality stairing news the face, the future of politics is not only going to be about what white voters want and think. But will expand to include the ideas and the needs of people of color. Who look like me. Black women. Our party will need to evolve to meet the demands of women. One thing i think people dont understand about me is that i didnt join the Hillary Clinton campaign because im a Hillary Clinton obsessed woman. I joined after working on the president obamas campaign because i saw the threat of donald trump from really far away. Going forward, we need to listen and be honest in our assessment how things have been done in the past, where the Democratic Party in the country has again wrong in reaching voters who look like me and let us lead the way. So, that was a brief excerpt from me book and i only had nine minutes so i dont want no go on too long because we have a poet lowerat laureate coming and that up thats cool. My become is out july 7th and i hope you pick it up and at least examine the way we talk but politics is often focused on white voters and esteem wiz dont even put the white in front of how we discuss politics. And so what i would like to do Going Forward is to center all voices and particularly the voices of women of color who an incredibly important growing force in the american electorate. Thank you for listening to me this evening about my book and i know we have so many great guests coming up. Thank you so much. We cant wait to get our hand on that book. So up next, we have joy harjo. An internationally renowned performer and writer of a poet laureate in the United States. In 2020 she was named to a second term as poet laureate. The author of nine books of poetry, several plays and childrens books, and a memoir, crazy brave, her many honors include the ruth lilly prize for Lifetime Achievement front the poetry foundation, the academy of american poets Wallace Stevens award, i a pep u. S. A. Literary award, Leila Wallace readers die just fund writers award, rasmussen u. S. Artist fellowship, two nea fellowshipss and a guggenheim fellowship. A chancellor of the American Academy of american poets and they founding board member of the native art. She lives in tulsa, oklahoma and is the tulsa artist felley. Ladies and gentlemen, joy harjo. If you can just enable your microphone. Okay. Hello out there or in here. Youre all kind of in my room, too. Im happy to be here, and to talk about the Norton Anthology of native poetry called when the light of the world was subdued. Our songs came through and Norton Anthology of native nations poetry, finally time for a norton an alcohol of native poetry. So im going to talk about how it came together and the challenges in putting together such an anthology. When i first kind of came on the scene as a young poet and with a chance sometimes these huge conferences like the modern Language Association as a young native poet and it was in the beginning of the multicultural awareness in american literature, it was interesting the africanamericans only had their africanamerican critics and editors. Shame asianamerican, asianamerican american critic, chicano and latino and look at the area for native poets and native literature, and they were all nonnative critics and editors and so when we came to this anthology, i was think can but how far we had come from that point because always had poets, too, is that i started assembling a team but first i knew i needed a lot and i was a chair of excellence at that time at the university of tennessee and i look around and had wonderful students, so i said i can do this if i bring them in and then i brought in leann, a choctaw poet, writer, academic and she became my rising person and eventually jennifer for evidenter, and i assembled the team and this how it got down at the university of tennessee who learned about native poetry and helped immensely and then we brought to a team, all the ed tore, the contributing jet tore are native poets which i think is kind of a first here, and but we started out with a lot of challenges. At first the thought, most people have no idea that some people in america think they dont know were alive and think john wayne killed all off us and some think they might be natives but poets . I became poet laureate and they said, okay, one poet. Well there are many poets. We have i think it was 14 or 16 poet editors for this anthology. And all working poets, native poets, and then we so then we went to work, and we decided the other thing is that this country, the roots of poetry in the country, usually people look to europe or but the root of poetry in america come from china, come from all up and down the hemisphere and yet its indigenous poet thats indodge introduce poetic roots that really have affected all of American Culture in one way or the. Other so it is important to do this, to do this collection to highlight, and but what were working with these were the challenges in trying assemble this is that, one, we have internet so we can all meet together on skype, zoom, whatever, and we would have any students get to see incredible discussions with native poets as we started assembling this. But we had lot of challenges like, okay, we have first we were given hundred 50 pages 350 pages and how do you fit literatures of over 527 thoroughly recognized tribe and other tribes beyond theres other numbers beyond that, how do you feel that with distinct cultures and languages and literatures into 350 pages . We did go over but that was a challenge. And also we wanted to make it historic so we good from the oldest, the oldest piece is from hawaiian, and we have tried to fit in as many older translated pieces and they were contemporary translated pieces in original language in here, i too. So we have 350 pages to go from time immemorialal to the youngest poets born in 1991. So that was one that was one challenge insuring. We had to cover the interregion of the mainland u. S. , alaska, hawaii, and some of the pacific islands. So, that was really quite a task. How do you do this . How do you assemble this, and yet theres so much literature so much dynamic literature being written so many poets, younger poet, older poets. So, what was exciting was to gather we divided decided, okay, how do we get across that sense of consciousness that the americas that was my generation calls it, where indian country. All indian country, the whole hemisphere. That was another thing. We could i have always wanted to do one hemisphere because in the indigenous way of thinking the hem fear is a body of one. We founding can hes on the u. S. And so were trying get it across, okay, how is it geographically. In our literature theres a con desk and theres a place and its land. So, anyway, we started we divided the u. S. Into five geographical areas, northeast, midwest, plains, five geographical areas and so the anthology is divided up that way, and each area goes from the oldest literature to the youngest, and we only had room this anthology could have been three our four times as big. So we are right now we have i think its 167 poets, and its been quite a task but i think what i will do is to read you maybe read from something from one over the youngest poets, and i guess some of the oldest. I said one of the oldest poets we dont know his his him in was elir. From the northeast and he was raised in a mission camp in the mission school, and his first piece which is actually part of a sermon was published by cotton. Thats one of the oldest. One of the youngest is two youngest poets are jake skeet, 1991 and i think he was just awarded a whiting award, and then a jamaica a young poet performer activist from oahu, and i might read a little bit of her poem. I guess whoa i a the poems have quite a range. Theres no one native poet there are many native poets and the art of poetry is so alive in this country. I remember being a student at indian school, and a lot of times we wouldnt talk in class but we passed poetry around and it is a living art. It is native even if its printed its still made of our brush and poetry we all turn to poetry in these times, in times of transformation because is carries as our breath does it carries or wishes, hopes, dreams, and kind of the poems are like little stations that can up the level of our perception and our hearts. So, this one i heard jamaica do this at the brave new world, the competitions for spoken word and i believe she was probably a High School Student then. Just going read the english. The last of the poem, so beautiful in hawaiian, and its her genealogy, which is so important to say, this is who i am related and this who is i am related to and im related to this island here and these trees and so on. This is just the beginning of it and ill end with this. Thank you. What happened to me once forgotten, the ones who shaped my heart from their rib cages. Want to taste the tears in their names. Trace their souls into my vocal chords so i can feel related seven because i have forgotten my own froms milledle names what colors god used to sew me death. Theres culture bee night the skin i have been searching for since landed here but hard to feel sometimes because at stanford we are innovative. The senior mcintosh thinkers of tomorrow and i have forgotten how to remember but my roots cannot remember how to dance if we dont chan for them and will not sing. Everyone here listening but feeling too foreign in our own mouths and dont dare speak outloud and we canned even remember our own parents names so when we were little kids, to remember mine if i dont teach them. I want to teach my future children how to spell family with my middle name. How to hold love. How to taste culture. Please do not forget me, my father. Who cannot fit forget his own. Do not forget what is left because thats all we have and you wont find our roots online. We have no dances or chaps, we have no history, just rans no roots, just tearsthis is all i have of our Family History and now its yours, and then theres beautiful, beautiful chant in which she names herself as part of those roots, part of the roots of the island, of the americas, of american poetry and says do not forget it. Thank you. Thank you so much, joy harjo. So, next up we have carmen maria machado, the author of the moment moyer in the dream house and he short story check her body other parties. A finalist nor National Book award and the win are for the fiction prize, the lan dough literary award for lesbian fiction, the brooklyn publicly literature pry and the National Book critic circumstances john leonard prize in 2018 the New York Times listed her body and other parties as a member of the van guard, one of the 15 remarkable books by women shaping the way we read and write in the 21st century. Carmen. Thank you