thanks for joining us, welcome to another wonderful session at the southern festival of books on behalf of humanity's tennessee be want to thank some of the festival sponsors including the metro national arts commission, ingram content group, tennessee arcs commission vanderbilt university and burnett books. if you're watching today on facebook live, or on youtube and you have questions for the authors during the session, you will need to switch over either to the festivals app which you can download in the app store on whatever device you're using, or you go to their website which is hum tn.org/sf be southern festival of books. and then there is a chapter where you can ask questions for the authors at the end of today's session. we want to mention that parnassus is our beloved bookseller for the southern festival of books. and your purchases of the books being debuted this weekend at the festival help keep this festival free. you'll be able to find a link straight to their online store in the chat. can purchase the book were talk about today or any of the other books you hear about this weekend. i know that your reading list is probably growing long by this point. festival as you know is free. it is a nonprofit organization. and another way we keep this free-for-all attendees is through donations from people who attend. so if you are enjoying the festival and you want to make a donation you can also do that humanity tennessee website hum tn.org. and there should be a link in the chat to the donation page as well. today, we are here with michael gray and joe berry time but michael's newest book i am not your enemy from herald press. michael is an author, educator and facilitator who uses the power of personal stories to heal, make meaning and create connections versus story consultant as well as a storytelling reader he's posted a long running storytelling events. he has a masters degree in compex resolution as currently completing his execution certification and publican narrative from the harvard kennedy school. he is joining us from nashville where he lives with his family. hi michael. hey christie good to see you. >> i'm also joined today by joe berry who was one of the people whose story is collected and michael's book. joe is an international speaker who works to resolve conflict around the world. she is a of the charities building bridges for peace which believes and advocates on bounded empathy is biggest weapon we have to end conflict prayer by seeing the humanity in others. she also restorative justice facilitator, ted x speaker and visiting with the university of nottingham. she's currently busy writing her own book. she's joining us today from england. hi joe. hi wonderful to be here. hi. so michael i thought you could read a little bit from your boo book. give folks are just out tuning and a little information about what it is. >> well, it is a real delight to be here. i want to apologize in advance if you hear some background sounds i have two dogs and a five -month-old baby downstairs. you never know what is going to come up. so this book, i am not your enemy was really a book about a search for stories that might save us. i wanted to write a book that chronicled my travel through places of deep division, israel, palestine, north island, will places be here their names we think of division. and they wanted the stories that chronicled their to do to think specifically. one, to cultivate empathy. to help us see something in a way we otherwise might not see it. and also to tell the truth about the world. i think part of the truth about the world is at the world is broken, breaking full of burism burisma, burdens, tortures and tears. these things are true and i think they're very live for a lot of us right now. and i know in my country were in a sense of panic and fear about a lot of things right now. but this is only part of the truth of the world. another part is the world is full of beauty and friendships, unexpected friendships. ordinary people doing extraordinary things like joe berry who we are going to hear from soon. i wanted to feature the stories as well to remind us there's more to the world and the pain of the world. so i will read a very brief thing from the introduction that gives you a sense of where the book goes and what it is about. the people and stories in this book can help us for they can show us not just where to look, but how to look. they oriented towards help. in these pages we hear from a palestinian peace builder about the dangers of dialogue that does not lead to freedom. we have from a community center director and what to do when trauma is stuck with routine rather than stuffed with memories but a former israeli soldier teaches us to name what is wounded rather than ignore the pain. any mother who lost her son shows us how to refuse vengeanc vengeance. we need a lover of shakespeare who created a haven for beauty for those on the margin. and we encounter people who craft weight stations of refuge for those in need of shelter. we hear how a woman made space in her life of the man who murdered her father. from a youth worker with her reconciliation may mean little if it does not address the surrounding systems of inequality. from a community theater director here of life under oppression and the journey to let go of the hatred that plagues us like poison. and from two bereaved fathers, we are invited to imagine how we might devastating loss with grief and action. theirs are the stories that save us. save us from believing that violence must be met with violence. save us from believing that our belonging will be complete only when we take away someone else's. save us from the prejudice that makes us predators. save us from the midst of single stories, save us from thinking that more guns and more walls and more armies can save us. they are the stories that might save us from our fear. and so, one of the stories i thought could save us is the story of joe berry. i first heard about joe berry, don't member when it was mr. reagan documentary beyond right and wrong that featured stories across the world. joe's is one of them. i remember reading in my study of conflict resolution one way to talk about violence is the disruption narrative. this is really true in the story of joe that she was the daughter of a member of the british parliament. and had a story that was unfolding in a way you might expect in other ways you might not expect. but that a bomb went off in 1984, october of 1984 that killed her father. that bomb was planted by men and patrick mcgee but was a member of the irish republican army which is a paramilitary group in ireland fighting the british. and her story was one about eight person who is pushed to the edges of herself. and had to find a new way to be with herself and to be with her story to reconstruct her story in a way she did not expect she would have to. it was not just the drama and trauma of her story that drew me in. it's what she did with her pain and how she spent years cultivating within herself the capacity, not just sit with patrick mcgee would day which she did in their 2000, but to be able to listen to him with curiosity, openness and empathy. i'm so her story is one of meeting patrick in 2000 and now, over the last 20 years, they have spoken together over 400 times about how it is that we can live with the people that we find difficult to live with. how it is we can cultivate and imagination of the world where there is no other. we can actually look into the eyes of the person who killed our loved one and be able to say to them, i am not your enemy. i'm so thrilled joe was able to join us today to talk about her story. that great. michael, you mentioned this a moment ago. but the stories you have collected in this book, focus, mostly for us on international conflicts in israel, palestine, south africa, northern island rather than competent or home country of the united states. was that intentional? and how do you decide on that as a scope for your book? stu might guess it really was intentional. i think one of the things that often happens for people as we get kind of stuck in her own story. we can develop patterned ways of thinking about our story. because we live with them all the time. there can be thanks about our stories that we can't see paid we don't notice anymore, that we are blind too. sometimes we have to encounter similar dynamics of her stories but in other places. in literature they called deep milieu is a very lovely russian word for it, which is other world eyes asian freight so we have to basically take our stories and put them in other worlds so that disruption of what's expect this helps us see with new clarity and new was in the truth and reality about her stories that are around us. and so instead of just telling stories of division in the united states, become bias in the way we might think about those. i wanted to go to other places where we know their places of division between a knot of the stories fully. and let those stories play out. those stories are similar to stories of our past, stories of our present, stories of what's coming for us. so we can actually see with new wisdom the wounds liberal place that is what he hope the book is able to accomplish. >> throughout the book, michael and your story specifically to use the language of dehumanization and re- humanization. would you explain a little bit about what those two things look like? and how they are related to the work of peace building? stu met joe please why don't you answer first respect they will take you back to 1984. when my father was killed and it was the ira. in the ira that time was completely demonized. there is no way i could understand that story understand why they wanted to use violence. the moment it went off i felt like i have an enemy. and i did not want to and enemy in my life. it was within two days later i decided i was going to understand why someone would join the ira. why would someone plant a bomb in a hotel and kill people? that was important to me to it hear the story. now back in 84 there is no way to find that out. i in the middle of the conflicts. it was very hard to hear. at that time i was seeing the enemy i was on the other side was quite a dangerous place to go. so it's only when we had the peace process everything changed for me. and i wanted to meet patrick. to hear his humanity. to hear his story. i did not go for an apology. i just went to look into his eyes and see him as a human being. could that would rejuvenate something inside myself. something the bomba taken away for me. i saw that meeting as a went up. admit others in the ira is quite sure one conversation would be enough and i would get what i once had. and then i would go in nobody would ever need to know. but that first meeting something happened. and patrick himself started on a journey. he came to that meeting knowing what he had done was passed a military battle that he was justified. he demonized the people in the hotel. he demonized my father. he could only drop that bomb because he didn't think and that's the nature of violent conflicts. then he met me and began to realize he killed a human being. so my dad came back into the conversation. we had this moment were he is disarmed by my empathy. i knew we had to carry on meeting. there was more there. he change her the man who killed my father to the man who i was speaking with. so i was changing the story. and now, i do call him my frien friend. we've got lots of shared experience. we been to london we been to palestine and israel. we have been to places he is the only person i know. i've change the story completely. and yet he is still the man who planted that bomb, that does not go away. >> what michael did shoot share anything as well? >> how just say yes. one of the first casualties in conflict i often say is nuance. so whether that's an interpersonal conflict and might have with my wife laurie macro conflict we begin, lose all nuance to her argument our way of thinking about the other people become one. we reduce people or ideas to kind of the monoliths of something single. that's the project of dehumanization. people are complex even if we don't want to believe they are we are all complex. though in conflict we typically dehumanize people. because once we dehumanize people to the single stories about them it becomes much easier to do the harm we need to do. so actually in the book, there is a scale of secretary and danger identify that comes from that talks about how in conflict we can move from really important and innocuous statements like we are different we believe differently. but we move down the scale over time in conflict until we finally get to the 11th point which is your demonic. but we are at that place that's a people place bombs. that's a people shoot each othe other. and so part of the reconciliation process, part of the peace building process is how we go back and see the humanity. not just in the others but in our self as well as burden we commit those acts of violence we destroy some part of humanity within us. the fact that is very true. my experience is i can have empathy and i know and patrick i reached a point where if i lived his life, would i have made the same decision teammate? i don't know. and at that point there is no other. and i think other ring starts whenever i start thinking i am right and you are wrong. and i am hurting. i want to blame someone to make someone responsible. that realization can grow and grow and grow. for me the work is a daily task. i cannot get outreach, pain and grievances without making anyone else wrong. that is hard emotional work. see when you talk in the book in the story when you relate to michael when the two of you met in ireland about the emotional work you did on yourself before you first met with patrick. michael describes this process is building a firm foundation on either side dish or before you can build a bridge between yourself and your so-called enemy. can you talk about what that process of emotional healing look like for you? and why you believe it was an integral part of your peacemaking journey? student is great to reflect, that's what it was. at the time i had no idea what i was doing. now i'm trains i do a lot of restorative processes the whole process people go through before you ever bring two people together with the huge pain. there is nobody to work with me. at that time even though i did try nobody wanted to be part of such a meeting. early on a peace process. my own inner work. i say is about ready for it. i wasn't really ready because how can you be ready for such a huge thing and mean the guy who killed your father. but i knew from day to that i did not want to use my pain to blame anyone. i did know into my pain to hurt anyone. i did not want to go for revenge. so all of those years still with my emotions. as a time when it got a lot of support. that was about theory met patrick mcgee. during that year we did a lot of releasing emotions and crying. but i did not use my emotions to make patrick more wrong. i didn't use them to want to hurt him. that was about watching my thoughts. i did find things got difficult in my life and i had on there were times when i wanted to blame him and say he is the reason why this is happening. but that would've got me back in the cycle of bombs again and it wanted to end that cycle of revenge. a lot of it was about self-awareness within myself. site had a lot of conversation inside myself. it was very hard to be there. so is listening to myself will i was listening to patrick. >> michael you write about what you call the inappropriate conversation, which is a term for reconciliation when it is experienced as a way to overlook pain or ignore problems or deny patterns of injustice. what corrective would you offer to anyone who thanks of reconciliation in this way? >> yeah i would say we've got to dream bigger. the language of inappropriate conversation is like page two of the book is a very first chapter. i written to a palestinian woman, a professor in the west bank and senate like to talk to you about the peace process, the reconciliation between israelis and palestinians in here though thought. i'm sure about this one yet line is that this is an inappropriate conversation were being occupied. several can talk would talk about justice. as set up the tension between then did justice and reconciliation what do these things mean? with theme that emerged throughout the whole trip that i was on throughout the country, was that reconciliation becomes a real problem we think of it only in terms of eye with we could just get along. if we could just sit down and have a conversation everything would be fine. and that is the end of the imagination. and it becomes inappropriate conversation we don't see that process that process of trust of learning to re- humanize each other. if we don't see that it's actually a carrier towards a more free society more just society. then it can actually part of the problem. i think what i encourage people to do is see justice and reconciliation as it intimate partnership together. because if we deal with themes of reconciliation we might talk about building trust and dialogue when seeing the humanity of each other the quality of our relationship, that is never going to be sustainable if we continue to have systems and structures and processes they're actually benefiting some of us but not all of us. putting some of us above the others that are creating balances of power. reconciliation is a process of learning to live together well with those you find difficult to well live well with. we cannot live together well with people when their massive imbalances of power and access to resources in all these things. so reconciliation does not have been its imagination the importance of dealing with those, then i actually can create more harm than good. matt can add something to that? i would not have met patrick for the second time if he was not open to hearing the impact of his actions on me. that was really, really important. when i bring people together that a been hurt or conflict i have to make sure they can hear the impact of their behavior. otherwise it can do more harm. happy very, very careful make sure the ready to hear the impact. quite often you find that very, very hard. it's really painful someone's been through abuse or trauma that the person will not take any responsibility for the impact of their action. that has to be a crucial ingredient of these difficult conversations. >> that makes me wonder something that i thought about as i was reading your story in particular in this book is what steps can be taken toward peace with one site is still actively harming or even just wishing harm to the other? is it possible to begin that process of both sides don't get possess the qualities that you identify as being necessary for reconciliation which are empathy, trust, curiosity, respect, self-awareness, ptolemy and commitment? can you make peace if you are the only side willing peace? >> i feel i'm quite lucky in a way that it got a name of someone who killed my dad. a lot of people around the world do not know. or it would not be appropriate. so in some ways it's really never going to happen that reconciliation. i think what we can do is transform our own pain. even if awaiting for justice we can still heal. quite often i've seen people around the world what they do as they turn their pain into some kind of action and so it can be different. something that brings close to that and that is one way of healing. i work a lot with victims of new terrorism in this country. and unfortunately got a lot. making sure they have the right support. we know the effects of trauma on the body. we need to make sure everyone has access to been through abuse, they been through justice, they been through any kind of violence they got access to support the right kind of trauma therapy. but certainly we do not need to stay connected to the person who has hurt us forever. this kind of a double paid. that person is still in our heads. whether it's an justice we need to get that in our head and turn it around. for that we need support. we need love, we need the right kind of therapy. >> to add trauma that's not transformed is transferred. when trauma is experiences like the law of energy it's not greater destroyed some really transferred. we don't find a way to turn that energy into something that can help us, we'll dish it out for the next place your next person we meet. until i think joe is right. part of what we have to do, one as we remove our self or the harm. we find a way to stop the harm from happening or simply get out. i think that's really important to look after and safety and well-being. but it's one of the limits of peacemaking and reconciliation. you can't reconcile someone is unwilling to reconcile with you. it's a two-way street. this is how marriages end. one person may really, really want to but the other doesn't the marriage is over. you can forgive someone who doesn't want your forgiveness does not want to reconcile that is possible. but you can't actually reconcile somebody and develop a relationship of mutuality if they are not also willing. when national politics you might hear people say they don't have a partner for peace. that is what that is about. in order to be a sustainable peace you need a partner it's all about building partnerships. so without that willingness on the other side, your willingness of only get you so far. i think that's would have to joe is talking about. cultivate that strong relationship on your sure hopefully once the other has made ready their chicken beat across the bridge. >> i guess i try to not blame a community or group or a country or the community think that delays our healing. the longer we make other people the reason why we are hurting, why our life is difficult, that delays her own recovery. we have to take responsibility for our emotions. we are not responsible for the injustice that habitus are mainly not but we have to have our emotions. the things we can do in my own them we can be creative. but the one thing that will just take away her humanities if we put out there i go it's all your problem. >>. i'm still hurting where's the ones to blame, it's almost like cut me off. they're just those moments were still want to blame someone. that is why it's difficult work, to change that blame response. >> a lot of what we are talking about right now, especially because the nature of your story, joe, relates to she said somebody's whose name you know. someone's whose face you know. someone who makes it easier to humanize him as a person because he is an individual person who know you have a relationship with. how is that process of making peace to heal an emotional or spiritual injury from someone who has personally wounded you different than making peace to heal wounds that are systemic or cultural or national? are those in fact two separate processes? or are they related? >> after going for socialite customer expect go redhead. such a really important questio question. i'd like to make it quite simpl simple. and do it i can do. so at the moment i am working a lot young people in my country who are demonized. sixty, 70 irish demonized or black. a lot of that is demonized and seeing in them less than human pretty work with these amazing girls who every day experience racism. i can't change the people who are racist toward them. i cannot change the institution. what i can do is be a safe space for them to share with me their daily experiences and empower them changemakers because that's what i do. i remember one of them said to me when the first times aye person and not just listen to me but leaves in me. which is kind of heartbreaking but also very moving. take that responsibility hugely. almost the most important work i've done. i'm probably like you, in terms of our freedom to travel at the moment pretty hope to go see them in a couple of weeks. i'm going to provide a safe place for them to share with me where there's more hatred and hate crimes for them to share. that is something i can do. now if i had more power. i'm very grassroots. i could challenge perhaps more, made my book will be able to do that i don't know. but i take responsibility. as aye person i see what my people are doing to impact on those who aren't whites. i take the privilege i know i have, i tried to use that in the best way that i can. >> yeah, i think within the national correctives in nations are all made up of people. in my mind it's not completely divorced the idea of what we do on a national or macrolevel what we do in a micro lever because macros made up of all the micros. i think a lot of the things needed for people to pursue this idea of reconciliation or peace building is, and healing, they need answers. they need and acknowledgment for the pain that has been caused of their own suffering. there's the importance of being able to cultivate empathy pray there is the need to build trust. all these happen on macro levels as wellin the nation. there is a need to be able to cultivate curiosity and trust in the people that you are afraid of that you need on a large scale and acknowledgment of the pain that is been done. this is been really live at the native american community predict knowledge what the u.s. government has happened what it still happen. still very much live because it is not been settled in that way. so i think kind of on large levels to see the importance of things like museums, memorials, national commemorations to acknowledge not just this is the experience but to acknowledge our own shame and think the pain we have perpetuated. think that's a really important thing as well to be able to own her own responsibility in the harm that's been done to other people. whether as an individual or a collective. >> i just want to mention to folks who are watching and listening, that you can submit questions in the chat either on the app or on humanity tennessee's website. and so, we've got just under 15 minutes left. i which remind people to send in those questions now if you have them. and i will continue with my questions. joe, you say in your story, and michael's book story within a story, that peace is about moving from where we have the enemy actually seeing that there is no other. and that seems like it in practice could be quite a long process. and so i am wondering for you personally, how long was it after you first met with patrick in 2000 until you begin to realize that as you said sometimes you travel to a location and he's the only person there you know. he teaches you about his crossword puzzles he does and you realize this person is my friend. how long was it tween that initial meeting when you met him face-to-face for the first time in the realization that you have a strange friendship with this man who is responsible for your father's death? >> at that first meeting i shared a poem that i'd written for him. it was how i imagined beating him is called bridges can be built. i think it's one of the things that helped him to move from justification and righteousness to being very vulnerable. and it said in the poem, everything i still believe. in the poem it was about i acknowledge her suffering. understanding his own story because i knew before i met him when you're six or seven years old you did not grow up thinking i want to kill. when i didn't know is when he was 15 he committed violence involving martin luther king. that was there before the meeting. but then the friendship took quite a few years. because i felt like if i said in public he is my friend gutfeld quite scary for me and i was not ready for that. and as deeply aware of my own siblings and my family it has been a balancing act not wanting to upset a re- traumatized them but also wanting to make a stand for peace. i think it's been tricky managing the different parts. i don't know when it was mighty been five years later it is an unusual friendship. actually had the longest time we haven't seen each other because of covid. we have a lot of talks planned. i was going for the 20s anniversary of our meeting. one into market 20 years is such a long time. so i said it our first meeting you still be seeing him in 20 years i would've run to the other side of the world terrified. here we are 20 years. he has written his book. i felt a little cross with myself he got his done first. he decided to delay the publishing date of his. and i want to get mine up but i have not seen him last year. normally own cm every two or three months. we've had to cancel so many things. i miss the conversations that we have. but they are not always easy. sometimes i got it said that's it i'm going to take a break. it's still challenging. i was have the right to walk away as does he. >> just the fact you could even say though that you miss conversations with patrick is a remarkable sentence to be able to utter. procedure have time for me to it add something to that or do we need to move on? >> no please. okay you're just talk about how long of a process it is. it reminds me there is. peace building it can take as long to get out of a conflict as it took to get in it. so in recovery circles 12 step circles as if you go 20 miles into the wood you've got to go 20 miles back out, right? you don't spend 20 years learning a behavior learning with thinking and you're out of it in a year parts a very long process. and i had found that really helpful at least in eight national levee think you're in the u.s. the way people are speaking can anything be done with the race? come on. with the civil rights act, obama was president twice races a thing of the past he been saying that for a while now. it helps me to it think if we just think about race is a conflict in the united states and just put in those those terms in state started 1619 with the arrival of the first kidnapped african to the civil rights agreement think it's three hunter 45 years. something around that. we were in the post- conflict stage 50 years into a very long journey. which can lead to despair for not careful. but it helps me is not get so premature in my announcement of everything is settled just say these things take a long time. we have been conditioned and ways of thinking about the other. we have been conditioned in the stories we associate with the others. head takes a very long time to unlearn those and begin to tell new stories with new emotional reactions. and so there's a certain amount of patients it's really needed as we walked the long journey. >> we've got a question from somebody in the audience. they say your story demonstrates a potential impact of empathy. how does empathy come to be so devalued between groups and individuals? >> yeah. that's a great question. i think president obama next before he was president he gave speech talks about how the empathy deficit was more severe than the federal deficit. in the former secretary general of the un talked about the empathy gap and the importance of that. i think there is this sort of general awareness. i've been seeing on facebook a lot we have no ability to empathize with each other anymore. as our fear increases so does our distance from the other in the way we tried to reduce them is really un- nuanced and un- interesting stories. and that what it needed was a way of cultivating an imagination to say there is likely a lot i don't know. to imagine that they might actually we could be them in the same circumstances. joe was saying to be able to think had had grown up in belfast and had the same encounters with british army or with police that pat had, i might've been led to do the same thing. that's a remarkable thing to say. those are the things we are not always good at, surrendering the idea of the moral high ground in this way. we imagine but oh no we haven't figured out what is right and there's no other way to think about it. but that way of thinking does not lead us to a place we can live well with people we find difficult to live with. and so this process of empathy is the process of dethroning ourselves in the center of the world and letting somebody else's story. their person that takes center stage for a bit. i'll leave it there so joe can say a word. >> i agree. think with the media it's very quick to find out who has the moral high ground and to make up the baddies and the difference between the baddies is getting more extreme. sometimes people say empathy is not helpful because they think empathy is for like our own people. but i called unbounded empathy. sympathy brought to everyone. the other day back in may my daughter was attending a lunch. she was the part the sky started running towards her. they're very drunk there about age 40 all whites. they almost attacked her in the police came at the same time. these is another far right group in england. i felt completely my moral righteousness. i was angry, how dare they. because it was my daughter. and i'm so proud she'd gone and that's when i realized actually i need to get curious. why did the men come that day? what are their stories? i'm working towards of finding ways perhaps not have the moral high ground. this was self-awareness is got to be that. doesn't mean we can't challenge their behavior. yes we have to chose their behavior. but not by making them less than human. to make that's crucial. michael i have one last quick question for you. then i think you have that reading you wanted to finish us off with. someone else in the audience has asked how many stories are included in your book? >> really ten i guess. in some chapters -- mike there are ten chapters. maybe one or two until a couple of stories. most chapters focus on a one-person story like joe. the trip that i'd took though, i interviewed around 70 people. on so i had all of these stories. the really difficult part in the writing process deciding what gets in a what doesn't. because i don't thank you all are going to read a five hunter page book. there ten stories left in there. and i can sort of transition. christie just something to say before read the last section? [screaming] will sure. i was went to let folks know that if you want to find out more about either michael or joe you can find michael online at either michael mccray.com or at michael t mcveigh on instagram putting talk about joe's organization building bridges for peace.org. and also to remember that the link to purchase michael's book and other books is in the chat if you want to follow through here at the end of our session. and i'll say this book is amazing. and i know that it is just going to spread to so much understanding, empathy and help. thank you michael for your amazing book respect thank you joe and thanks for let me tell your story in there. sure to watch out for joe's book when it comes out as well. the book is also an auto book if you'd like to listen to an audio copy that's available as well. i thought it would reads of the the last page of the book. it's in the final chapter called crack the code retell the story of two men, romney is an israeli father whose daughter was killed by a palestinian suicide bomber in jerusalem. on his daughter was shot in the back of the head bite israeli soldier on her way back from school. you may know their stories by a paragon to do best-selling novel check that out. incredible story of these two men who abuse the nuclear power of their grief is working towards some kind of shared future together. and you say we have paid the highest price possible actually are the ones the best position to make peace. and so i want to read this last section. subject to date ramah is israeli leader in the palestinian leader of the parent circle families form. both men lost what is unbearable to lose, ramah is a former israeli soldier whose daughter was murdered by palestinian combatants. islam is a former palestinian combat his daughter was married by a soldier. in the world of war they have every reason to hate each other. their grief could drive them towards vengeance. but their day has come as it is come for us all. we are left with our grease and of decision. what will we do with our pain? this question is were with their lives day after day they choose again. instead of reaching for a gun they reach for one another. there's are stories that might save us. i called the stories along the way romney and besant tell me in the violence of conflict we may have well every reason to hate each other. because enemies do exist. be a israel. and the worst pain we can imagine may find us at any time. and their stories tell me that we can find a way out. that we can do better than a world of enemies. that courage can accompany fear. and the worst pain we can imagine has the possibility of leading us to a world beyond violence. thank you all very much for your time today. in joe thanks so much, kristi thanks for hosting this priest met great to talk to you guys. >> thank you. ♪ ♪ >> you're watching book tv on cspan2 on this holiday weekend. television for serious readers. here's a programs to watch out for, former appellate judge douglas ginsburg exams the constitution through the eyes of judges, legal scholars and historians but former president rock obama reflect on his life and political career and sally hubbard looks at the history of monopolies in american industry. find a complete schedule booktv.org or on your program guide. >> during a virtual talk hosted by the atlanta history center pulitzer prize winning author isabel wilkerson explored what she called a hidden caste system in the united states. there's a portion of the program. >> the respect access the resources or lack there of comparable beauty. all of these things that accrued through no fault of one's own. and of course there i arrive today responsible for the inherited rankings and infrastructure that we now live with to this day as we live in the shadow of the originating ones that started with the founding of the united states of america and the british colony with the division in the categories of people that occur. in the caste system there can be any way to categorize people in india for example of course based on inheritance. and then based on occupation. it could have been in the founding of the united states and the expiration of the world by europeans where they came in contact with people different from them. and then began to categorize the people that they found. in building this country bringing in people from africa to be enslaved to build the country for free in the process of doing that. that is what happened in this country. but it could have just as easily been any other number of metric metrics. the heathenism was considered the first categorization to put one group over another. columnists knew they people they found her to be heathens. africans arrived. so the initial impulse to delineate and categorize started with religion. then it moved into what we now know as race. so it is a construct is fairly new going back only for 500 years. to race as we know it. now color is a fact. color is a reality. it could've been any number of the lineages. and in the book i make reference to the idea that height could be used as a designated category to divide human beings up. also equally depended upon genetics just with your tall, shorter in between. so this is the infrastructure, it's the invisible bones i call it bones and race of skin. race is the signifier it is the queue of where one is assigned. to watch the rest of this program visit our website booktv.org search for isabel wilkerson early title of her book cast using the search box at the top of the page. >> good evening and a warm welcome to another biography event. i hope everyone is staying safe, wearing masks and reading many biographies. my name is kai byrd and i'm the director of the leavy center for biography, a wholly unique institution hosted by the graduate center of the city of the university of new york. and founded by shelby white in 2007. which i think you first steadfast report supports

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