And the brooks still worth reading. Thank you for your time and good nights been a good afternoon. I want to welcome you on the half of humanity tennessee to the southern festival of books. I want to particularly thank our key sponsors, Metro National art commission, and chrome content, tennessee art commission, vanderbilt university. This session is entitled dreaming america. We have a panel of three authors and three books and our first we will read some, but im going to reduce the authors first. I will begin with amra sabicelrayess. She grew up in bosnia. After surviving ethnic cleansing and more than 1100 days under the serbs military siege she immigrated to the United States in 1986. By december, 1999, she earned a ba from Brown University and later obtained to master degrees in a doctorate from Columbia University currently, shes a compass a professor eric on the egg working on understanding how and why societies fall apart and what role education plays a rebuilding decimated countrys. Shes published on education related issues and has lectured around the world to adult and adolescent audiences. Her student feedback, shes consistently praised as one of the most inspiring professors them encountered are throughout their career. And our secondguessed Stephanie Griest is a globetrotting author from south texas took her books include the Award Winning memoirs of across the block my life mask out, beijing and havana. And also mexican enough my life between the borderline and best selling guidebook, 100 places every woman should go. Shes also written for the New York Times, washington post, virginia quarterly review and edited best womens travel writing 2010. Her coverage of the texas mexico border 18 award for social justice reporting. A renowned public speaker, shes assistant professor of creative nonfiction at the university of North Carolina chapel hill. Sahar mustafah is the daughter of palestinian immigrants. Her first novel, the beauty of your face was named a New York Times book review editor choice, los angeles time united we read selection and one of Marie Claires magazine 2020 best fiction by women. Is currently long listed for the center for fiction 2021st novel prize in her short story collection was this winner of the 2016 willowbrook friction award. She was the recipient of the David Friedman award for best fiction. New city magazine recently named her one of 2020 with 50. She writes and teaches outside of chicago. First, we would like to hear from today Stephanie Griest from her book entitled how about it, stephanie . Dispatches from the us borderland. Hello and thank you for joining us. To give you some context for the exit i will read its a burke book that examines life in the us borderland both texas mexico border which is where im from and the new york Canadian Border in particular the mohawk collation nation. Im reading from a section called code 500 and that is the terminology used when an undocumented person is found on land who has not made it in their journey who has died along the way and as you probably know this is a major crisis happening along our southern border with the regions of the section of the southern border that are essentially becoming a graveyard for all of the people who are dying because of immigration policy. The six i actually happen to be in the Sheriffs Department of Brooks County texas when he received one of these phone calls. I went to assist on the body recovery. The undertaker arrived on scene and older man with a slender build turkey carries a white bed she and walks up to the limits the cover sets down his parcel, slides on a pair of blue rubber gloves. He searches her pockets, inches from the pit. Percy finds dollar bills pick he piles them. Next he pulls out a lg cell phone and white to clean. Renny his fingers along her brow line he checks to see if anything is tucked inside, an idea maybe, phone numbers, but theres nothing. Now comes flipping the women into the bag. Handfuls the bed sheet and lays it out beside her. Although, ultimately it must go beneath her. He rolls the women onto her side. That makes her scalp fall off. She has become a liquid, all of her is leaking and dripping. The undertaker touches the scalp and touches it puts it back in place. While the rest of us stand and stare he goes over to help pushing that she beneath her enrolling her back on top. She is small, probably quite a mall. They swaddle her in the she and stuff her into the black body bag. They fan out 30 feet and scan the brush for approximately half a minute before heading back to their truck. There is no evidence in the site. We leave behind only an empty water bottle. No words are spoken. No rights are given. Have to make sure theres no bodily fluid on me because it will stink, he explains. The undertaker struggling with the gurney. Together they prop it up and roll it into the back of the van. I went to say how fitting and applaud his professional grace, but before i can speak he tells him im a writer. He shakes his head. And a lot of people write stories, he said, nothing ever gets done. I hear this a lot. It never fails to shatter me. I usually ask brush it off with a smile, but theres something about standing in the woods with a three day dead woman that gives me the audacity to hope that maybe it will change this time. Although hope vapor rises before i can even articulated, theres a spark of hope that by virtue of being written about she may be remembered. This [inaudible] to be memorialized inside of a story and at the very least i will remember her as someone who hiked illegally and got annihilated for it. I will remember her. Is it wrong to pray this counts as something getting done . I wish to say this, i wish to say all of this and a great deal more, but there is time only for the people who smile before he removes to the drivers seat before he removes a pair of badly soiled gloves. He knows he will be back tomorrow. And i, i will not. Thank you. Thank you. Now, we will hear from amra sabicelrayess and she will read from her book cat i never named everyone. Im going to read from the cat i never named a true story of love, war and survival, my true story of a muslim girl who was born and raised in bosnia, but i was also born hated and ultimately survived the bosnian genocide early 1990s against all odds and with the help of a stray cats that i never named. Im going to read for you a brief opening to the cat i never named. It didnt spring on me all at once, instead like a cat he stalked me quietly. It might have been a rustle in the leaves, a glint of golden eye, but like a mouse i didnt believe it was there until it pounced, 1992 chapter one. My brain is willing to ride that train back home. The tracks push westward the setting sun gilding the hillside. Families, mothers, children in a comfortable [inaudible] im sleepy from a long day of tests and i will be lucky to get home by 1 00 a. M. Most nationalists, the tall hats, the men have beards and eyes are on anyone whos not serb. I saw them all over the streets sneering and shouting at anyone they thought might be muslim. Quoting his hateful speeches. Arent you afraid i would ask my cousin, its not a big deal she replied with an indifferent shrug. People feel like they can just say anything these days. But when the soldiers invade my train i fear that they will have far more than words for this alone teenage muslim girl. Notes hear from, and her book is entitled the beauty of your face. Hello can you hear me . Host you are muted right now. Im so sorry about that. Suspect that is alright. [laughter] you got a moment head start. I want to say so sorry about that. I thought those passages before me were beautiful. Thank you both for those. The beauty of your face begins when aye mail shooters enters an islamic American School right outside of chicago. The principal thanks that it is firecrackers went to shooting begins because the school is constantly harassed to this predominately white neighborhood. Then they quickly realizes that they are not firecrackers. So we are with back in time over the decades. The chapters are interspersed with the point of view of the shooter. Im going to read from 1976 when he is ten years old in chicago. And her sister has disappeared. 22 days past. Shes gone back to her husband with a promise to return in a few days. I came to the door to collector. He did not step inside awkwardly apologizing. I stop by in the evenings when hes home carrying pyrex dishes the wives have prepared. A few around the neighborhood also drop by bringing a famous eye so she is incapable of ruining coffee. Promote wire basket at the sink they pull mugs down that she washes when she comes home from school. On the women shake their head and suck their teeth. Every stir you safely to you. The best from visits with her mom there and they play outside with her mother watches bulls and glasses. And mama sits at the Kitchen Table sobbing. Where could she have gone . Her friends dark hair is cut in a short straight bob. Last summer she crashed her bike into an electric fence and a broken chain broke off the tip of her pinky. She begs her friends and let her touch the smooth scar tissue. Looks like someone bit off. Iversons, shes a longer allowed to ride her bike. That overheard her mother telling mama about it. See what happens when you give a girl too much freedom in this country . She loses a finger. Luckily had not changes mamas mind about writing her bike. She turns the knobs on her friends back digital pad and shrugs her shoulders, i dont know where she went. They take turns drawing on the pad. Rainbow and flowers disappear. She sketches a kitten with long whispered under whiskers but she wishes for a pet but mama refuses that any fourlegged creature in their home. They have a fish tank but the novelty is quickly worn off. She once to hold and cuddle, feeding indifferent dishes like any other choice shes expected to do around the apartment. I guess the police would have found her she was hiding, she speculates, laying her chin on her shoulder as she draws. Why would she be hiding, dummy . She does not intend to be cruel but once to escape any talk at least for a little while. She turns a knob on the pad, trying to join two arcs or join a heart but ends up looking like an uneven inverted triangle. The young detective working the case was at the apartment one evening, she offers the detective a chair in the kitche kitchen. He washes in the doorframe her parents bedroom, shes very young his slick braun hair parted on the side gives the appearance of a schoolboy, a homicide investigator. Detective harold jones, he shows her father his badge and tucks it back into pocket of his corduroy jacket. Someone phoned about a suspicious man in the old union stockyard. His eyes dart between her parents. We investigated pretty turns to them, go watch tv. They go to the front room and sit on the sofa bed. She listens hard catching parts of the detective sentences. We investigated and a body, these photographs, can you identify your, chair pushes back, mama slow moaning. Are you sure its not her . Any distinguishing marks . The moaning grows louder than shuffling slippers. The bathroom door slams shut, mamas vomiting becomes the only sound in the apartment. The detective stance gathering his photographs before he closes his folder she catches the image of an arm badly bruised and finger nails caked with dirt. I am sorry about all of this, you should take comfort in the fact that she is still out there, we will do our best to find her. The dead girl in the pictures turns out to be beyond coat lopez, 16 years old gone missing a day before. Genesis almost worse than her parents not being her battered and broken because it means more waiting, more not knowing. Enke. Host thank you all for those wonderful readings. I dont think that one can hear that and be unaffected. Now this time i want to make sure that everyone in the audience knows that you are able to ask questions. So they will be relayed to us and we will answer them for you. So, while you are thinking about your questions. I want to propose that in all three of these novels, or all three of these books they are not novels. Theres a current thread or there is common thread. In fact there are two the other one is hatred. How is the hatred that you see today in our country, different from or similar to hatred that you write about . And lets start with you. Spoon back you know my story is centered on islamic phobia and the hatred that exists because of bigotry in this country. So i felt inspired to write this after we realize killings of the americans in North Carolina that happened in 2015 was well referenced in the epigraphs of my book. Her husband and sister in cold blood by their white neighbor. So yes i am very much immersed in that hatred in this book. It was just really important for me. I start in the present. I think people might be a little hesitant to pick up this book because they imagine is going to be incredibly graphic. And then they realize okay were actually going on a journey of one young woman who before she comes facetoface with the shooter, we get to see what all of the micro aggressive behavior, all the bigotry that she is grown up with has shaped her. And this also shape this journey she takes. So i was really interested in not just presenting sort of the sensationalized events, i wanted to make sure that i was presenting, what hope is a new narrative in that respect, sort of dispelling some of the ideas and stereotypes surrounding the muslim communities. And yeah, i thought this was an amazing opportunity. It was quite ironic that it was going out in the world after trump entered into office, which now we see that the situation is even more desperate and critical in my opinion. Host thank you. Stephanie. Is a hatred underlying theme in your work . Guest i would say love is. [laughter] but ims searching out love but its increasingly difficult to find in terms of the political landscape. I catalog life between 2007 and 2017 thats the tenure project for me. So basically i was researching throughout the obama administration. It was pretty horrifying the many things i found. Everything from severe environmental injustices on both borders, cancer clusters around Oil Refineries and will take Cat Companies that are just entirely surrounding communities of color in particular indigenous communities. I was getting my reporting right when the act went into, was a realize it was 670 miles of concrete and steel wall were implemented, cutting throughout the border dividing at peoples homelands, making it impossible to cross as we have always crossed along the border. So many families have to live on one side half of on the other. Now going to visit what shouldve been a matter of crossing a bridge, were still crossing the same bridge but now it takes two hours instead of two minutes across the bridge. The border deaths is whats referred to. The situation was catatonic when i was during this reporting period now i actually handed in my book just a couple of weeks before the election. And wow, my god what his status happened since then. Now we have more than 6000 children separated from their parents. We dont over their parents are now. Kids are living in Detention Centers alone being cared for by other kids. The psychological impact of that, the cruelty of that is really, really breathtaking. So yes the inhumanity that one witnesses is really stark and the borderland. But theres still a lot of love that comes to the surface through the workup activist, the work of artists, to the work of faith keepers. So im always in the process of trying to seek out that. I do see hope among the residents its the policy, the political aspect of it is the opinion of hatred. What role does hatred play in your account of your years . This is an important question and i really appreciate you asking it. I think when readers in the United States see the official description of my book, the cat i never named, sunning of genocide in the stray cat who protected her family through it all, think the first inclination may be to think this is a story of the war that happened to someone else in a distant place in a different time. In a place or people hated each other for a very long time. And that is nothing like it could ever happen here in the United States. I think once they start reading the cat they never named they will begin to see that i was very much like them. I did not think the work at ever happen in my country. In the same way that most americans today think it cannot occur here in the u. S. I was a math and physics nerd. I was 16 i loved writing. I played volleyball i had great friends. And even started to love with a boy. And then an instant, it all changed. And i suddenly found myself in an entirely different world. The world that i never imagined before. My country was torn apart, women and girls i grew up with, raped. All because we as muslims stood in the way of a racially pure nation. Which the dominant ethnic group in my old country wanted to build. I think your audience members can draw the parallels between that context and what is happening in the United States today on their own. I could not go to school for years, for nearly four years. Which again many teens and parents can now relate to. And even though many specific stakeholders in what is happening in the United States are different, the sense of dramatic upheaval. The sense of fear, hatred, racism and uncertainty are exactly the same. So my book is not just a memoir, not just a book. It is also my call to action. To begin to counter hate through storytelling. Hatred is not exclusive to anyone nation, any one group or any one person. Im just going to share detail with you that a couple of days ago i received an emotional note from an american pilot who served in bosnia. He was deployed as part of nato efforts to end war in bosnia. And he said to me that he never cried forwarding the book as much as he did cry while reading the cat i never named. He recently retired and he said he was questioning what his purpose in life was. And the cat that never named volk to the emotion and realization that really his purpose in life was saving my life. And lives of people like me. And that was just one instance in American Foreign policy work