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Transcripts For CSPAN2 2014 American Book Awards 20150101

go to booktv.org. >> the before columbus foundation presents the winners of the american book awards in san francisco, calif.. >> i am the chairman of the board of directors and i want to thank our friends for their sponsorship for this afternoon's awards and my colleagues on the board of directors for their presence and persistence and devotion to this very worthy and necessary and urgent and i would say even medicinal organization. at the beginning of this year january, the united states lost one of its most innovative and exciting writers, mary barracca twice winner of the american book award a strong supporter of the before columbus foundation. his last appearance in san francisco was a fund-raiser not far from here to raise money for the before columbus foundation. still in our embrace of the panorama of american literature and history of this afternoon unlike to dedicate my portion of the program to the memory of appellates and writer, amory bar barracca barracca. we have quite a harvest this afternoon. we are honored by the presence of many of the most fertile writers, as i mentioned a moment ago some strong medicine for some very ill times. before we get into that, i would like to start with a gentleman a good friend and can't be with us today but received the american book award for a very important work, "breach of trust: how americans failed their soldiers and their country" by andrew bacevich. some of the most egregious journalists on television and in print have been sheared leading and saber rattling this country into war for a very long time. the most venal over at the new york times, david brooks. he is just one. but the responsibility of journalists to present an honest representation of the relationship between the united states and the rest of the world has utterly fallen by the wayside. there are very few who still present us with rigorous, inventive and deciphering journalism about our relationship with the rest of the world. andrew bacevich is one of those people. this book squarely puts much of the onus on us as citizens and journalists as well. in accepting the award for andrew bacevich i will read a very few words that he send us that he would like to share with you. to have "breach of trust: how americans failed their soldiers and their country" recognize alongside the other books being honored here it this evening is a cause of great personal satisfaction to me. i apologize for not being here in person. my teaching schedule did not permit me to attend. as we all know, writing is hard work and it is work undertaken with no real expectation of actually being read. much less understood and appreciated. an award like this is a welcome indicator in some quarters, the sort of thing that encourages you to keep at it when you get up in the morning. there are many untold stories that deserve to be told and many overlooked and underreporting issues that demand greater attention than they receive. and the storytelling in this book, and issues explores a uniquely important but like it or not, ours is a country that has embraced military power with something like reckless abandon. the vast majority of our fellow citizens have come to expect that we must remain not simply militarily powerful but militarily supreme not just now but in perpetuity. our political establishment is dedicated to that proposition, democrats and republicans alike. in my view this expectation which emerged in the wake of the cold war has produced exceedingly pernicious results. one of the most pernicious of all is the fraudulent relationship between the american people and their soldiers with something close to unanimous the americans profess to support the troops. in reality we are complicity in their abuse, committing them to open-ended wars that are both unnecessary and mismanaged breach of trust examines the relationship and suggests an alternative more in line with the values we profess. thank you again for this recognition and i am exceedingly grateful. andrew bacevich. [applause] >> now i would like to introduce a colleague on the board of directors at before columbus foundation, poet active this writer jenny lynn. [applause] >> it is great to see everybody here. this next recipient of the american book award also wasn't able to join us today. surname is joan naviyuk kane. i don't know the correct pronunciation, she is from anchorage alaska, from king island. received the writers award for her first book of poetry and recently received a native arts and culture is foundation literature fellowship among many other honors. joan naviyuk kane, one of the best poets of her generation and at the top of the next wave of indigenous poets. joan naviyuk kane. i want to read in little bit of a quote from d.c. walter about her books. heavy-handed and a blue slopes. in these vivid, disturbing and mysterious poems written in english, joan naviyuk kane writes out of the landscape and language of the fine arts. "hyperboreal" is situated at a threshold between cultures between inner and outer worlds and the poems are voice with throat slight swell her compelling vision is earned through a language that will dislocate in order to relocate and whose shifts are exact and existing. that was a quote from arthur z.. now let's switch to thomas mcgovern and juan delgado. it is my pleasure to introduce these two authors. juan delgado and thomas mcgovern traveled together into the desolate yet vibrant desert scape of san bernardino in the heart of california, the neon signs and faded murals once with the spark of the painter rent neighborhood. yet the place and traces still speaks through the still frames intimate and close-up portraits, documents, narratives, meditations and all of a sudden removed, pick up the steps and meander through another map the unofficial cartography is, they are not really faded or worn, they keep on in one long poem and when long image, accordions before the talks off walls, hair styling salons, barber shops, street and parking lots we are the consciousness of the people and places that continue. we are the heroes, they say, stand up. let us applaud this--the signs of our time. bravoed to juan delgado and thomas mcgovern. that was a quote from the poet laureate of california as no other person could say it. [applause] >> there is your kodak moment. congratulations. congratulations. >> thank you so much. >> moving right along here. thank you. oh yes, of course. >> you wonder why we are just standing here. >> i thought was a san bernardino oakland thing. >> you poet there in to these lands and all that. i just want to thank the foundation, ishmael and justin and everybody for recognizing our book "vital signs". at least juan delgado had the sense to bring a copy. i would like to thank marion mitchell wilson, the executive director of the atlantic foundation the first group i brought the photographs to and asked them do you think you could support this as a book and she said yes and when she mentioned that i said i would love to work with this putt i work juan delgado, she was very excited. i knew this idea of the collaboration between my photographs and juan delgado's poetry would resonate with folks. we thank our publisher and the editor, a publicist who helps us get to work out their lot, juan delgado's life jean is fabulous, a big supporter and his biggest critic and as my wife who is also my biggest critic and my biggest supporter ultimately we would also saying our colleagues at san bernardino, the former president, and provosts and former dean who we are all very instrumental and supportive of this. before i let juan delgado squeezes were denied would like to comment about how fraught the idea of doing a collaboration is and how difficult that is and it is like magic. you think it is going to work and a lot of times it doesn't. yet with juan delgado who are referred to as a brother from another mother we seem to have found that's perfect consternation between respect and love and criticism and insight to hopefully make this collaboration one that will last. >> thank you. i want to acknowledge tom and the partnership, we spend hours in a local city driving slowly looking at murals. the cops caging the place and the street lights you want to buy this or that it was interesting. one of the great benefits of our partnership is we know all the best places to eat in our town. we might start our talk coach with the book, go to all the cool places to eat. i want to read a poem and dedication to the ceremony today, specifically i want to dedicate it to a couple people. i grew up in neighborhoods that had a lot of neighborhood moms we're if you did something two blocks away your mom knew before you got home we live in scary places but these women kept the place save for us. our book is a love poem to the city but also love poem to the people who keep the city together. i totally understand oakland. most people see us as a gas station, between l a and palm springs, so we are in the shadow of those other places so this poem neighbors, also a dedicated to all the fabulous writers and some i have been following for many years, honored to be here and meaningful first time. it is also a dedicated to afro-cuban poet nicholas giron you have got to know his work. he is heavily influenced by langston hughes. there's a little bit of spanish in here. they line the window sills that night. as their prayers flicker if they take comfort in their plastic rosaries. the fajitas and cilantro of the childhood and smell like a wooden pews of corner iglesias. they are not afraid or scared of looking like you. the fajitas spit out the forms of their past, not even to their laziness. the stitch and patch new families together when driven beyond their own. [applause] >> thank you so much. we appreciate it. [applause] >> thank you very much. one of the most wonderful things about working with before columbus is discovering through my colleagues on the board many of the books that would otherwise not come my way. and unique work of history american history, that has been balanced with exceptional love and logic, great empathy and intuition and courage comes to us this year from a gentleman jonathan scott holloway. this book "jim crow wisdom: memory & identity in black america since 1940" -- "jim crow wisdom: memory & identity in black america since 1940" confronts the much of the history of our nation that has been violently suppressed. the author again through courage and intuition and empathy helps us along that way through his own personal discoveries so it creates a very unique and sometimes startling form for a work of history. it is a great honor to welcome to the stage jonathan scott holloway. [applause] >> thank you for that love the introduction. and some asian. part of what justin was referring to, i think about the book being a little bit different as a book of history, historians might not consider it a book of history. i began the book as a third person narrative and then got stuck for three years when a book dealing with memory, my family memories kept invading a book on other people's memories and after three years i gave myself permission may be because i ran out of ideas to use the first person. the first and third person i interwoven in a way that i think gives a new textured to this particular history. i want to actually in acknowledging method turned to another author basically right to beautiful histories of southeastern united states, and form family collection of essays, and he tells a story when he was 9 years old growing got very poor with a father who was consistently disappointing him, never falling through an amazing promises, tells a story of being very excited about watching the apollo moon shot and hoping somehow to get a telescope so he could see the mood when neil armstrong was on the face of it. his father promised he would do it and young tony was convinced to fall through, to not follow through. on the evening of the moon shot when the alarm strong walked on the moon his father showed up with an instrument to see the moon and the until any major he found neil armstrong walking on the surface of the mood. the adult tony writing the story of this moment of his father's final arrival coming through with his promise and set off to the harper's and a fact checker rights back and says -- i skipped an important fact. young tony said he imagined seeing the alarm strong walking on the surface of the brilliant full moon and the fact checker right back the moon was a waxing crescent. this is the most powerful memory of my childhood, the moon was full but then decided to check the record. the moon was a waxing crescent. even though he knows the fact that the moon was not full, to this day that mood is very full in his imagination. the highlight in that moment the tension between history, the waxing crescent and memory of that full moon. they are irreconcilable and insulation for me that he is so much of the african-american experience itself. so crafting that book especially beyond my boundaries as a historian was not a task that came to me by myself. my first editor sean hunter who saw what the book could be before i go and gave me permission to do something different and also thank the students who taught me along the way because students always teach, students who taught me, friends who supported me and my family who was very determined to share their memories, in particular i thank my late mother who taught me to listen to everyone especially those whose stories were too often written out of history. the final thanks goes to my father who after reading the book -- i did not share this with my family in the years of its creation but gave me the best review i could have hoped to receive. this was a direct quote, i never knew my life would matter. now i know it has. thank you for the strange experiment of mine, the most personal book ever written and one that i hope resonates with others as well. [applause] >> i think that quote struck a chord and that is why we are here. with many of these authors and books we didn't really realize we manage until we expressed our history through poetry research, history, that set distortions right. i thank you very much for saying that. i also want to acknowledge as justin acknowledged barracca's contributions to the literary world in a voice that really addressed issues that would never have been addressed the way they were with blues and jazz and poetry and plays i want to acknowledge my peers sisters who i have missed so much, jane cortez, a powerful poet and wanda coleman who we both lost in the space of the last year as well as my peer fred hop who wrote extensively about the connection between asians and africans and the history of oppression, expressed through music combining the asian aesthetic. hold up half the sky and hold up the other half. another awardee who wasn't able to join us i want to thank those of you who made the trip from across the country to be here with us and this author this nick terse. he says is an incredible honor to be recognized with an american book award. i look back a list of past winners from daniel els greg to chalmers, to toni morrison to my fellow recipients this year i find myself humbles truly a select company and i couldn't be more grateful to the before columbus foundation for be stowing this great honor upon me. my only regret is that i cannot begin in person. i spent years writing kill anything that moves, and a debt of gratitude i can never truly repay but i would like to recognize. i want to thank the many funders who supported my work and allow me to write kill anything that moves, this includes the fund for investigative journalism, harvard university's institute, new york university's center for the united states and the cold war and john simon's guggenheim memorial foundation and nation institute and its investigative fund and metropolitan books. i owe so many other people real debt of gratitude, too many to thank you but none more so than my wife an exceptionally talented photographer who reported alongside me in southeast asia on several locations. finally i want to close by expressing my gratitude to all those who truly made my work possible of repeated trips to vietnam. i had the distinct honor to speak with hundreds of men and women whose courage, strength of character brazilians, openness and bravery continually left me in a state of law. i spoke with survivors of massacres rapes and tortures, people who had endured almost unspeakable brutality. i dropped in and out of the blue and asked these people to talk about the most horrific events imaginable, the most terrible days of their lives and they in turn opens up to us stranger from country that so wrong to them. at the end of the ordeal they invariably thank me for my efforts. i was continually stunned by the response and remains so today. i share this great honor with all who shared so much with me. thank you. [applause] >> and now someone who is here and i am so proud and happy to have met him, koon woon cut his book, water chasing water in 2013 described by bob holman, the voice of a new america, you can just imagine that visually, he exploded on to the poetry scene in the late 1990s, largely self-taught, struggling with mental ellis and homelessness, he wrote about the back alleys and tenement rooms in the margins of immigrant culture. his first collection the truth in rented rooms included in this volume won a ten poetry prize and earned praise from garrison killer, water chasing water is his second collection and continues his exploration of loneliness and memory with essays that seek out this lake without which existence is not detectable. koon woon according to steve tan, director of a gathering of tribes, like bob kaufman is a writer of solitude but like walt whitman his solitudes contain multitudes, join him in his imaginings and enter into his room. russell leon says like the angel island poems carved on the wall of detention barracks by early asian immigrants like inner city graffiti sprayed or chilled longwall san and buildings these poems possess a moral intention that is part of a consciousness of struggling people everywhere. i would like to bring up here ko koon woon. [applause] .. .. >> i think the greatest things i can give to all the ordinary people of this planet they just live and try to ensure that future generations live. i grew up in a village without running water. i spent nine years. we collected dog dung, also dung, anything that we could use as fertilizer, so we discover organic farming 100 years before you guys. [laughter] >> however my book has -- came out of a lot of terrible times but in -- but terrible times will give you strength. told i told myself if you can bare your feelings just a little bit longer, you will live. you do not have to commit suicide. the morning is always the next day. and a lot of people help me with this book. i cannot get in of thanks to the people in china, in hong kong, in this country, people who are homeless people who are in universities. -that people who graduated from harvard i went to the fenced institute of princeton. i find that in some ways they're no different from anybody else but their singular minded and they want to achieve the best achievement is for helping humanity, even one iota. so this is this is a very great gratification for me. and i especially like to thank eddie brady who is not here anymore and the person the person i like to think most is sun myung lee editor and publisher. she has known me and worked with me for almost 20 years. if not for her optimism and encouragement these books would have never out and the world may not have ever known me, even though i'm the cousin of gary locke, the ambassador to china. thank you very much. [applause] >> that was strong medicine and we need it. there's nothing new in the united states for race to be re- presented in popular culture of some kind of ideological urgent ice for people to use to stick out political positions to oppose each other or to misinterpret their own relationship with each other. journalists filmmakers, television, radio, record companies have been doing this from the very beginning or even from before the beginning. but more recently in the last 10 years or so the last four especially, hollywood and its cultural products have turned itself to the issue of slavery. in its attempt to sort of turn us into infants. now, to go along with that is the same extent to which one is either ignorant, a child, or insane, or maybe some combination of those three. armand white, one of the most innovative critics writing today wasn't going for the okey-doke when it came to these slavery film products. and as a result of that through a group conspiring midtown manhattan to write a hit piece which was later proven to be wrong in new york magazine, that somehow armand had heckled the people who foisted this product on to his ear he was removed from his position as the head of the new york film critics circle. so in recognizing that but it also recognize of one of her most innovative writers, the before columbus foundation has chosen to award armand white this year the anti-censorship award. now, armand very much wanted to be with us today. he wasn't able to come out and in a moment ishmael reed is going to come to accept armand's award for him as well as armand's we should. but before bringing ishmael back to the stage i would like to read you what armand would like to share. i am extremely gratified by this tribute from the before columbus foundation, and the american book awards. for me it recognizes the work i've done as a cultural critic and against the odds of mainstream ostracism and disrespect. there is now an overwhelming tendency in the mainstream media to make writers conform and to stop in the independent meaningful expression. this is done through methods sidle, as suppression and overt as defamation of character. but it won't work. i am emboldened by the support of many and still believe in "speaking truth to power," and ethic that i learned from the examples of pioneer strugglers, from ida b. wells and george schuyler, to harold cruise and pauline kale. i thank god that justin and ishmael understood the essence of my own struggle even from as far away as the west coast. and reached out to me. it makes up for all the small minded slander and indifference and i am enormously encouraged. i salute your own courage and insight in standing up against censorship. armand white. in accepting armand's award, ishmael reed. [applause] >> i really messed up when i have jet lag. so robert anderson was right the first time. [laughter] "nation" magazine asked me to write an essay commemorating their 150th anniversary. i wrote the essay, and they said they weren't expecting it. the title of the essay was when black guys mess up everybody gets paid. so we black men in hands the cotton industry, which made more profit than all of the and industries at the time railroads, banks put together. we even enhanced cable, the cable industry. i wrote an essay some years ago called the black mythology business. 's everybody is getting paid. cnn, they miss oj. [laughter] i wrote a novel with oj in the background called juice. got my best review in china. pretty much misunderstood here. and one of the critics said that everybody is over that. you got to tell that to the espn crew that came to my house a couple weeks ago for five hours. they are doing five hours of oj next year, a series. so some of the critics who don't get paid, like armand white challenge this big shaming black business shaming. like, for example, just this morning i saw melissa harris show and they were talking about the scandal at north carolina university the cheating scandal. one black football players picture was up there. i was surprised to learn that 52% of those were fraternity people and i said it can see the pictures. there's been a big role since the color purple which has been duplicated by precious, the sequel. as a matter fact one of our comedians had expected a color purple on the ice. people are making so much money. now you knew i was going to get to that because i've been going back and forth with critics but finally people didn't realize that alice walker also objected to the film interpretation of her novel. that's in stepping in the same river twice. all dividends were brought in and the checks were cashed, she was against it. thank you. so there has to be someone to take charge and to mention as george bernard shaw said if you do not tell your own stories others will tell them for you and they will both rise and degrade you. so armand white objected to precious the worst film ever made about black life is about the ronald reagan could descriptor may be did it maybe came back had a lucid moment and wrote the script for "precious," because in that the black mythology business is extended to black women. before it was black men, now black women. not only is blackmail a problem in the the the black woman is also accused of laying around eating bad food and all the stereotypes that we have begun from the republican party and the tea party for the last two decades. armand white objected to 12 years a slave. when i coined the term i did anybody was going to make money but me. we had a whole proliferation of movies about slavery book slavery. he called torture. i agree. and he also mentioned that the roles that were designated for african-americans were played by africans. i asked woody king how african-american -- he said they are scared to hollywood about it. isn't it ironic that maybe the descendents of people who solis into slavery to deploy african-american actors or people who are enslaved. for his courage and his ability to criticize this movie, he was cast out of what's it called from the new york critics circle? i think he was the only black person there. he was the chair. all, i see. so they cast them out. very proud to accept this award for a very courageous critic and cultural critic and personality armand white. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. michael parenti is one of the greatest writers that this country has ever produced. as a historian he is preeminent interpreter of our times. and like the greatest historians, he is able to eliminate our present moment with a very very -- eliminate with a very fine weaving in of the past the press and come into with tremendous momentum toward the future. he has an undeniable sense of reality and he speaks with tremendous authority of feeling. with nearly two dozen books what is offered on world is absolutely beautiful and extraordinary. we are very, very proud at before columbus to offer michael parenti with the american book award for lifetime achievement. [applause] >> he could have kept going on. [laughter] that was such a beautiful introduction. i got these massive anti-climax here. [laughter] okay. so i did prepare a few words here. as you come well actually i'm an enduring a sciatica attack right now and so if i start climbing up on this thing, you know it's not because of all that passion. and it's a wonderful, wonderful thing to get this award and i really appreciate it. i had interesting reactions of people come e-mails coming in saying, it's about time or you are more deserving, you know and all that stuff. and i've actually gotten a number of awards along the way. i think but it's it up lately and i think what happened and it got out that i'm 81 years old so everyone is saying, oh oh 81? that's hard to believe, 81. and i'm reminded of studs terkel remember when he was being interviewed on the radio one time and he was 94, and he is just get rid to check out and he said, he said there's three stages you know studs terkel, he worked out of chicago but he was a new york boy, i want you to know. he said there's three stages in a man's life. youth middle age, and you're looking great. [laughter] so that's me. i'm looking great. yeah, yeah, yeah. oh 78? you think 78? okay. well, in my life i ran into a lot of problems when i was writing a lot of years where i was ma i mean i've been kicked out of some of the best universities in america because of my politics and my political activism. and when i meet people now and ask me what i do i say i'm a recovering academic. what i did in my writing and in my speaking is often crossed forbidden lines. i went all the way with my political analysis, often to appreciative readers and listeners, but also to mainstream notables who would take umbrage at what i would say, and even many who claim to the left of the mainstream. it's surprising how mainstream they really are. speaking of mainstream notables when i was coming, i remembered and it didn't come it's not action against that came up in my mind, an interview i heard with daniel boorstin. remember daniel? american historian. mr. super picture out. any issue they came along, the supreme court that this, the constitutional convention, and he would come out and say is that disagrees in the world? art which is wonderful to be america's? is this is wonderful? everything is so great, you know? i heard on the radio talk about apropos. i heard on the radio and the remembered the interview. he was talking about columbus and the work i hope the foundation appreciates my time in this. east talking about columbus and the remarkable work that columbus did and how it opened up a whole civilization saved western civilization and give it a new dimension, get this, and columbus, you know? [laughter] so summit at the end in the q&a someone said, oh, you know columbus, he was he was a plunderer and a sleeper. he put people in slavery. and daniel answered saying well yes i want to remind you that columbus, christopher columbus did not have the naacp or the civil liberties union, civil rights union to elevate him. to know what i'm saying? what a response to what our response to the truth is columbus was a slave or and a plunderer among other things, and that should be mentioned while you're waiting the flag in treating -- and beating the drums here. the truth is there was an naacp and a civil rights critique then they could have elevated him. his name was -- spanish, spanish dominican, wasn't he? dominican who wrote those credible, you to read this stuff, it's so powerful and moving about the murder and the slaughter and the wretched horror that these explorers were doing every time they came into the new world. new world, this is older than the other world on the planet, into the new world. and they always denounced the massacres and such. now, slavery you know that brings up the whole issue of slavery. we were taught, slavery was a way of life a peculiar institution they called it. what a cute little name a peculiar institution. don't judge it by modern standards. that's supposed to be say, what daniel was slashing at this question was what historians called the sin of presentism. you're imposing your present values in such on this time three centuries away. well, i'd like to say that these values but our values that transcend time and place. i wrote a book called the coaches struggle which really deals with the. it's not about culture wars in america. it's about how to think about culture because culture is a field of struggle. it's constant struggle in constant flux in what we see as culture, and it's presented that way in the anthropological and sociological books. it's these mores these languages, this bad, that boundary in these groups and they have these values. that's not the way it operates all the time. culture, it's true that culture permeates every aspect of life and every value in the social system. but it's not the sum total of life. it's not the sum total. you can have ended ended we have the universal declaration of human rights. that's signed by 125 130 different countries all of which have different histories different cultures different notions about what's going on different languages. and yet they all understand that there are things in that declaration that has to do with what? with women having rights and protections. women having rights and protections. with all people having a fair share of on the values that is produced by labor and such. i mean, how else do you think you can read dante or aristophanes or shakespeare even? we read people from different cultures, different centuries different worlds, different languages even, and we understand them. there's some things are going to miss a little bit of that. that's what you those posts with a little footnote at the bottom but it keeps them busy makes them feel worthwhile. [laughter] but meanwhile, you know we understand we understand with our hearts what is going on. we understand what insights and powers that transcend culture. so when i hear about slavery saying it was a way of life i talk passed my notes. and i can't find where, because i've got over there where, and my notes are down here. when somebody says don't judge it by modern standards, do you know what i said about slavery? i say, oh yes judged by the highest and most current standard you can muster up because it stinks, it's rotten and every slave society, and incidentally in every slave society i studied from ancient rome, which i wrote a book about, i wrote a book about julius caesar but i don't my whole chapter on slavery in every slave society i came across a group of people who were in a in the society, everyone. no one has every report this but i've seen a group of people in every one of those societies who denounced slavery, opposed it, who understood its injustices and its wars and to a today. they were called slaves. they never got they never got their word in very well, you know? they weren't many interviews not too many of them were interviewed or anything. well so that's what i would tell daniel how shallow and how, to that question. questioner. i've tried to teach that we should relate, another thing more general statement that we should relate immediate social expenses to larger social structures and to larger social relations. if things are always as they appear if appearance was the sum total of reality we would need no investigation and no analysis and no social science. furthermore, much of politics is the rational use of the irrational symbols. much of politics is still with russia is filled with deception and hypocrisy. when your good ideas and good questions raised and they're dismissed as conspiracy theory, you have a conspiracy theory? you know that you should always remember that a good conspiracy theory is not always the theory. to our real conspiracies. there's secretive planning, constant deception. people come up to me and say so you think there are people, you think there's a group of people get together in a room and they plot these things? i say oh no not in the room, no. they go skydiving and they hold their hands and they say, what other going to do but this and that? or they need on carousels. a plan that way. bohemian grove in california the knickerbocker club in new york. they are always meeting the council on foreign relations. we know who they are. they have think tanks all over. they produce these things. lewis powell, that famous memo he wrote a while back which he sent to the chair of the education committee of the chamber of commerce. he said this is what we've got to do to roll back the social democracy that's been developing in america and get us back to a free market capitalism. they know what they're talking about the they know what they're defending the they own it. when you look at these people and to say they're innocent, they don't really know. don't they get things mixed up and make mistakes? they do sometimes. they do, everybody does. but they are pretty much, you don't call them stupid and foolish. you don't call the people who own the world stupid and foolish. they're doing something right. and my book the face of imperialism, made that point and criticizing johnson. he used to talk about how foolish he was foreign policy is. how we get ourselves in quagmires the famous word. how we get all mixed up and that we become overweening and overdone. no no. it's not overweening to they know what they're doing. u.s. foreign policy, the empire is not falling apart. it's doing very well. they are opening more basis than it ever has. they're destroying and killing more people. any leader, any movement, any country that shows any kind of independence, that tries to use the land, the labor the capital and the natural resources of a society, any leader who does that will be targeted and he will be demonized, and he is demonized to the american people noriega milosevic putin, whatever, they will demonize them and tell the people this guy is an enemy of us. he is opposed to us. watch out for that. once the people are convinced that this leader is a threat then they will go a long with the, they feel our country has licensed to go bond is people's are attacked or invaded. so i would give, i would urge readers to give critical perception -- i'll stop right here -- give critical perception not only to what we think, but to how we think. we should as this weekend be inventively critical and not let conventionality keep us skating along the surfaces. is something i wanted to say about services and about -- oh i can't find it. what are you going to do? it was about, well, it was about this. you can never judge these things by services. i was thinking of fascism. italian fascism and german nazism. you can't judge them by there was something else there that doesn't often get grabbed. you see it as sick child, who's stepping brutalizing religious minorities -- goose-stepping. military aggressions of the we had to beat it and that was a good war. what i tried to show is that in fact, there's a whole other thing to fascism was a very rational system. is the essence of politics. the rational use the rational use of irrational symbols. the tortures, the drums, the goose-stepping, the swastikas, the incantations and all that. all of that all of that is is a using of irrational symbols but for rational reasons. do you know what the nazis did in germany? do you know what the fascists did in italy? i'll tell you what they did. they cut wages by 50%. nobody ever tells you that. you can read 100 books on who supported hitler but you never did anything about who it was aborted after he in and paid off. they abolished, they abolished corporation taxes for big corporations. they gave huge subsidies to the corporations. they abolished and wiped out the human services. and wiped them out. they got rid of protections for work and that sort of stuff. so that's what fascism is. it has a rational component to it which has to do with class. okay, i'm going to stop there because once again into the subjects i get carried away a little, i know. .. let conventionality keep us, as i say skidding along the surfaces. ... [applause] >> well, that must've really kicked in because that was impassioned air. thank you. may you live a long and prolific life and keep ready those books because the world needs you, michael parenti and what you have to say. speaking truth to power and the only way you do it. how many of us are still waiting for a credible 9/11 investigation report by x probably the cows will come home before that ever happens. i would like to bring up here wonderful poet friend, tennessee read. she is the author of five books of poetry. could you imagine at her tender age, a memoir and a mouth full. has read about all around the cotton in the u.s.a., alaska, hawaii netherlands germany, israel and japan and i believe she is going to be accompanied by her father, ishmael reid. i guess so. i'm drafting you. ishmael reid and tennessee reid. [applause] ♪ >> how high the mood. dgc that the strawberry superfood in june. for the orange september harvest moon rising over the open health on a fog last night. what about the august moon that looked blue? the move is 4.5 billion euros debris after impact between earth and mars. the apollo 11 landed there in the teen 68. i wonder what the view of the earth looks like 238900 miles for one light year away. it's crass mantle and core changing colors each month. from earth i can see if maria were lunar plains. in some of its 300000 craters when i zoom in with my nikon cool pix p5 10. there is a face on the crescent moon in october. it was looking down at me at the doubletree by hilton hotels before the fog rolled in. maybe where sean key the chinese and mortal moon goddess who swallowed the pill of immortality. her husband thought the queen mother of the west too bad immortality punishment cursed on him by jade emperor for killing his nine sounds. sean key words up into the habit can tell she landed on the mood. the full hunters are about toper are the greek goddesses. shall we goddess of the mood and the goddess of the hunt. they remind us we have had the island of patmos after it had sunk into the sea. in december, the ear of a moon goddess of the ocean motherhood and children rises during last over the pine trees at the strawberry canyon fire trail in the hills above you see berkeley before she reaches her fall list point. to the west and jupiter rises to the east. a few days later e. mañana dressed in a fine evening gown, a turquoise orange and black beard in brazil, people dress in white and flock to the copacabana beach in rio de janeiro and offer virtually perfume, poems lipstick, white flowers and mirrors. on the second of january the new wolf moon shines against the purple dusk sky and it begins to wane on january 23rd and makes a silver half circle in the morning sky. the february snow moon is my favorite. i sunset a rises in white mp and the darkness that pieces of black clouds and shines in gold by the time my birthday comes around, it has completely waned. is daylight savings time arrives in march, the program lingers over downtown berkeley at 4:15 in the afternoon, signaling the end of winter is near and the crows will make their last cause of the season. when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore. i will take the mood anyway it presents itself to me, whether it be the old double mood the shine harvest moon, the moon over miami, the blue moon or many moons ago for joy hard shows what moon drove me to bias moon what would we do without you, decide that spices up the sky. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> how many of your new victory in four could play like that? is it a surprise to some of you? well, he has been added in waiting for his next about to come out with a companion cd. 12 bar blues for slaves. it'll be great. not to his teacher, the fantastic premier jazz pianist composer librettist mary watkins. you can hear a little of that. okay, here we go home base. homebase brings to the forefront of myriad of folks that inhabit the pop-up -- the upsell streets of chicago or the unaltered roads of mississippi arkansas, georgia and other pockets inhabited throughout the south. sterling bond has lived with these folks. misplaced men and women. he has been in their houses, has died at their table, has drunk at the bars on the corners. he's not a stranger to their articulation voices that call to him from the outskirts from the mississippi delta time or settle on maxwell street in chicago through the observant and omnipresent lands of blues ideas, willie kent plump is always mindful of the slow steady rhythms of the blues not as a backdrop, but as a foundation and framework from which he structures the component of this book. with the publication of homebase, plumpp has once again captured the essence of language and blues from the inside out with great pleasure present to you, stuart plumpp [applause] congratulations. here you go. >> i can assure you that i will not jump from the stage. [laughter] it is indeed a great honor to receive this award. most importantly, because it is written about blues, for those of you who do not know they tag his new and degeneres african-american music that was not suppressed by educated african-americans. negro spirituals would not have existed had it not been for the jubilee singers at the et and 87 around the world and one african-american back here in the states heard they had been well-received of course as our negro spirituals. isn't it wonderful? was banned later because the origins of the day didn't want their sons and daughters playing that music. start to write about jazz. the music in an interview that appeared in negro digest says he would pay the award to stand on corners to try to sell sheet music. he would go to church is enough the minister for five minutes to try to sell sheet music and its 2015 and they have not called him up yet. he says that they found the gospel convention and once these ministers saw how many people were attracted to their music that their music can immediately into the church. now, blues becomes the vernacular important to me because i was the first one in my family. he was so educated. they say i got book learning. i don't know the difference. what happens is i will move from agrarian to the city. got enough literacy to qualify for a scholarship to college. but they said disjunct between the way i see my brothers and sisters. you don't know how to understand it. when i came to this city you name 1061 i was fortunate enough to see the muddy waters almost every weekend. in this book, there was willie kent. at the time i was a professor at the university of illinois. i don't want to go into that. but what happens to you if you are at a big university they've got all kinds of categories. but if you are an artist she could be a professor of bactine at the university of america. that's ridiculous. these things are made at. willie kent was a musician and i saw him for 18 years. i don't want to say that. you could sub language. i'm proud to accept the award reach my premature death because i am passionate about my daughter, harriet. [applause] and the wonderfully disciplined grandson, duncan. [applause] they came. i came to accept the award for one reason. contrary to keep what people might say about waned, i don't put on an meal board that ishmael reed has done as much to develop the ceiling of american letters as anybody in this country. [applause] and i know him through contour mumbo-jumbo broke down freelance a long long history of being an individual and not be win. the final thing i followed them through the 1960s. talking about every night out. this particular blues thing in 1876 and i followed him about 25 years ago a crew from france today filled and a thousand times more sophisticated than americans when it comes to culture. because they wanted to do the film and a side that i was writing a poem. so they immediately asked someone to translate it. i would read and then someone would read it in french. at that point i said willie, this is the book that i did about you. i told him that all he needed to know was that he was singing the blues and singing the blues well. i am not a reporter and i never crossed the line of saying anything in print about his life. if i disagree with this life, i would tell him. too many women to the face. i actually i actually wrote it. most people don't know what a persona is. how do you write the poem down? very interested for john african-americans. you listen to hip-hop. you know what i say? i come up with the most important to musicians. believe me when i tell you that there's nobody that is close to be and not class. i'm talking about musically. knowing classical music and all of that, the way these two were within the music back today with african-americans you have lyrics without music. and i'm trying to understand. you can't convey that because i actually believe every generation has the right to speak for south. i actually believe that. icann in a lot of trouble sometimes with euro-americans because they are telling you about barack obama. what do you think about them? what are you talking about? they want me to comment on him as a potential leader. i try to be polite and a break down and tell them it's a i feel the same way about barack obama that i would feel about someone jewish if they became president. i don't confuse him with moses. do you get my drift? i need to make a statement. one of my former students became a brilliant jazz musician, billy brandt. he traveled all over the world with winn-dixie. in order for him to play the harmonica while, willie takes in hired him one year and told him not to play. so i want you to watch this man a man by the name of kerry bell. what you do is you watch and and then you play. he became very brilliant on the harmonica. but what he did he made it possible for me to go into all the blues clubs without paying. in the yuppie atmosphere, it would only charge you a dollar drink. so you'd not only go one without paying, but they will only charge you a dollar a drink. i actually took notes. at a certain point, i decided to write maybe march 1st 1936. and he died march the second, 2006. i will just read one short old called my name. i memorized doors shut in my face. because getting fired is my multiplication table. i gargle my losses here worry about goes from silences. i heard my daddy surrender. all my talk is song. all my conversation, a song. i own this discourse. inside, my eyes are miniature aerial ground by serge. two white horses. but as highways. this is my father's story i see. this is my grandfather's story i see. i lease out caps between my stories. a guitar player wants to play there. a singer wants to go ballot. a preacher wants to grow sermons there. i inhale and exhale. this time and this place where my blues refinances spirits without credit. thank you. [applause] >> you know here in the united states one is always hearing about freedom. it's always compulsories we attack about freedom thus, freedom that. free speech, free country. it is not free. definitely not free. we all know that we have the largest percentage of incarcerated people from our own population in the world. it is not free. freedom certainly is in a decision that you make one day. i am going to be free now. do this now. does the work that. it takes precision. it takes discipline and one rediscovers one's freedom through the crack is a discipline and choice. personal choice to revive and resuscitate one's own freedom through discovery and others in discovering oneself. one of the most unique looks to come along in a very, very long time, searching for zion emily raboteau searching for home and the african be asked for a simple chronicling such a unique yuri as spiritual biography. so we are very deeply honored to present the american book award to an all atrium to for searching for zion. [applause] >> thank you justin. i was born in oakland in 1976. so a lot of what the honor of receiving the american book award from the before columbus book foundation, it's been a particular joy to return to the bay area. the place i know of as home and move to the east coast with my family when i was six. but i feel especially grateful that that my mother, to whom this book is dedicated accompanied me on this journey back to the west coast. with me are sincere family friend who live in oakland and they were the reason why oakland felt like home. i mention that because the feeling of home is the subject of this book. i spent a decade of my 20s wandering across five nations to seek out black utopian communities who had left home out of disparate and discussed and disenfranchisement as second-class citizens who were themselves in search of a promised land elsewhere. people inspired by the book of exodus and the israelites in the hebrew bible after the promised land. in those years were jamaican roster far i in ethiopia african american ex-pat in some ethiopian jewish and israel in hurricane katrina transplant. my question for all of them was the same. have you found what you're looking for. their answers were really complex and sometimes surprising. when i asked at the african seas grew israeli community which been squatting in israel's desert since the late 1960s when we thought he arrived in zion. he said to me if i was the year i would be dead. when i type to another man who is a jamaican american act list an author, you said something very smart, which i'm going to share with you. i asked thomas was zion look like in his imagination. zion is a myth, emily. feeling childish. of couriers. i would take a total view. freedom and total respect for everybody across class. not this on democracy where people can read and make choices about government. i'm not just speaking of gay people's issues. ms island would really be paradise. that is what i envision. that sounds beautiful i said. listen, emily the search for blessedness has to start with a roster told me before he said to kill the gay. take the part that accords with your sense of what is right he advised. you make your own gospel. that's all any of us can do. we have to ask ourselves what i'm doing to make zion possible. with the rest of the world carried out each other's throats of the island asylum is no zion at all. thanks. [applause] >> never has a fictionalized window into the relationship between slave and master open onto such believable territory. wash unfolds like a dreamy impressionistic landscape. that is the atlantic journal-constitution. achieve something extraordinary come a full-fledged confrontation with one of the most difficult aspects of our nations history. wrinkle has given us an honest and important expression of hope, a firm foothold that leads in the direction of truth and reconciliation. we would do well to take this step. the charleston post and courier. the great pleasure, margaret wrinkle. graduations. >> good afternoon. thank you. i am so happy to be here and so honored. i want to thank the before columbus foundation for existing and think transport reed for founding it in for your auto spidering example. for recognizing auschwitz has this incredible honor. it is deeply hard mean to see this company. i always think the ancestors for hot demand to unearth are in their stories and within them together into one especially wash. i am so pleased to be able to thank jeannie carrigan and ally gray who are both here today for teaching me how to hold right on when working with the spirit world. when people ask me how in the world did you come to write the strange and challenging the i always say i feel the story's been headed for me all along. i was born in birmingham alabama during the summer of 1963 right after king's campaign in right before the bombing of 16th street that this church that september. so i came into a very racially charged lance gave been grew up in one. like a lot of white children in that era many of my strong early bonzo at the black people being paid to take care of me. one person in particular was ms. ida melas in 10 came to work for my parents when i was seven years old here chien thomas jefferson goodwin who goes by todd for the aristocrats of my childhood. they saw me and taught me how to see them. in the still segregated world these profound relationships are not supposed to be fully acknowledged. so i grew up crossing racial boundaries carrying divided loyalties. i found it confusing answer rail. i was also struggling with the legacy of having slaveholding ancestors. a lot of white southerners with slaveholding ancestors tend to either lionize them come and demonize them or leave home and forget all about them. back then i didn't understand how untenable it is to have disconnected from your ancestors and your story. sigh to a third option and try to leave home as soon as i could hear that was back when i thought alabama was the only place they have any racial problem. so i lived as an exile for years. i was living in california tried to act like i was in southern, trying to drop out of the phd program both of which taken some doing. she wasn't always at work at my parents house when i went to visit. so i started going to her house to visit her in knots when everything changed. on her tears she told me more about her remarkable life and her remarkable family. i remember being so pleased about the way a relationship is going but i was still going and i thought i had a lot of time. when she died to me while i was still in california and laid me out and i realized i hadn't dealt with my story. i moved home, bought a map and croissant at boundaries had been schooled to respect. crazy, i still get so nervous. i spent much of my time with miss washington's family and they taught me how to hear them. either way they told me their stories, many of which inspired the book. their incredible generosity allowed me to cross the color line and begin chatting what i call my white innocence. after realizing the children i was getting a phd to teach for making it to college i started teaching using painting, drives, photography and videos to develop the voices that can tell the stories they wanted to hear. this work led me to make a documentary about race relations in birmingham called broken ground. the years i spent crafting vacuum or if what the wider black community, finance stories. and both sides of the divide i started to get the haunting feeling that our current racial landscapes and dynamic spam all the way back to slavery and i was going to have to trace them back to the roots. one of the many things that happened was the traditional african-american indigenous reality forced into a collision with modernizing western european descended reality which is a long way of saying white. i also knew these two very different worldviews came to create a new country, especially the american south. that was just starting to understand with this original coming together, this original clash of contesting views is still reverberating, still unfolding still happening even now. to sum up a much bigger picture very quickly, traditional west african velocity and nondigital spot is inherently spiritual lives in a more mystical, non-in your worldview. everything is interconnected and inanimate and everything has happened is here all the time and the eternal present moment is that is accessible through ceremony and ritual. the modernizing west has become more secular and lanier, on chronological time. and we are supposed to keep everything in you can see how misunderstandings would arise especially given the collision between the two world views have input in the crucible of slavery. with the traditional west african paradigm the patterns over hundreds of years of slavery are still with us. they are still shaping our behavior beliefs, myths and vision. capacity to see one another. too often what you see is what you expect to see. it feels important to remember the entire institution of slavery depends upon the enslaved stranger and remaining one and sharing stories with one another across the racial divide breaks the dynamic down. this is precisely why the sharing stories has been taboo for so long. making the documentary was a breakthrough because filmmaking allowed me to bring together people speaking from very different perspectives and editing allowed me to bring voices on equal footing and create a conversation between people not talking together had people not in the same rumor same part of town. the documentary was well-received at it got people talking. i also learned people of a hard time being truthful about race on camera so i knew i would have to for a complexity of what it wanted to get out. by the time we were done i was in despair. overwhelmed by the enormity of what has never been told are heard across racial lines. at the right time i heard a member of south africa's truth and reconciliation commission speak in birmingham. i was bowled over by what he was telling us about how they're dealing with their shared painful history about the traditional african concept that we are all want and we all move together into ceiling or none of us do. in south africa, people of all different backgrounds speaking aloud in different languages were gathered together telling their very truth. i know it's a far from perfect solution but i had to witness it because they are dirty start to feel we needed hearings in alabama in birmingham is known as the johannesburg of the south. i spent a month traveling around south africa witnessing several different hearings in which all these voices from all these different. it came together in one room equal footing without ever knowing i was preparing myself to write this book. as soon as i got home i stumbled across a rumor though one slaveholding ancestors may have been involved in the breeding of slave people. i was never able to find any allegation are very much prefer the practice at all but once it happened i felt it needed to be explored. slave breeding has been hotly debated. like historians say it happened while white historians protest there is no proof. no ledger has been found that one in which richardson blogs children. but what white family would ever donate such a ledger to the local archives. what white slaveholder of her road to truth. finally i decided to ask myself about the sasser. what would that mean for everybody involved i wrote to answer all the questions is that you may knew would be imported to write about slaveholder is if your relatives so i started entering the story around the slaveholder richards and his inspired by an ancestor of mine but also the other white van on the tennessee frontier that i'm trying to build ancestors. richardson is a war veteran in the 70s, roulette and slaveholder with big guy trying to make a success out of memphis i started centering the story about him because he's the one i thought i had the right to write about. i found a three line quote of the survivors asked directly about the breeding and he said yeah, there was a guy named joe. he was tall. he got to sit under the shade of the willow. he got the extra bacon and he was sent away to a distant place for nine months later all these children were born. when i started thinking about the man as he's about to be sent away on the day that is when the boy started to emerge and it was so clear and so psychologically sophisticated, i knew i had to find out or about him and his life who had raised him and weave his story together with richardson story of the story of palace who is an enslaved healer on enabling place. i had the sense they were altogether somewhere. kind of an underground place. they were all talking and they had all heard each other but they had been heard outside their shared reality eniwetok and how they were heard and they would talk to me. it is every writer's streambed in actual actual fact it's pretty overwhelming and they were so close and so potent and nothing in my racing had prepared me for this experience. i remember i lit candles to say i was available and was available include them not to say i'm not available anymore for today. i'm going to go out, see my friends, act normal. you're not going to be involved. that only works involved. so the whole experience was haunting and overwhelming and i knew i needed help from us went to a west african teacher and healer. mala domain is from the tribe and his name is friend of the stranger a friend of the enemy. and it was in the west awareness ways that we could teach them to survive. ironically witty sadness teach the ways to the west so we can survive. he lives nearby and i went to him and he helped me. he took me into ceremony and taught me how to make and keep a traditional altar. he tied me about west african traditional spirituality and philosophy about the energetic architecture of a world where everything is connected and animate, everything happened here all the time accessible to ceremony and ritual. in this paradigm, this paradigm ancestors of insight that no agency and a living have agency but not enough insight. so the living and the dead are designed to coexist in a reciprocal relationship, helping and supporting one another. in this paradigm what was happening to me started to make sense. sure it was a second-generation descendent of slave holders with strong early bonds to those whose ancestors had been owned by mine. and so somehow it became my job to be together these two different stories into one book to put these different voices coming from different experiences on equal footing. washington richardson didn't always want to be in the same book. to each one of their own book. so that was a struggle because competing never stand too close to each other. growing up in a segregated place made me into a person always working to bring together what has been kept separate. so that is what i try to do. that might make it sound tidy but it was a long and painful journey which turned into a blessing. the way is to get through it. and some incredible guys. i listen closely to storytellers, mainly the people in washington family and their funerals and all the gatherings in between. they are master storytellers. but it took years before they stopped watching amounts around me. i should live to be 100 or about being a teenager during slavery stepping up on the auction block to be sold in picking out a white man who seemed reasonable and flirting with him to get him to buy her. those of you who have read wachtel recognize they give that experience to the mother me now. i told from but i told that story from richardson's point of view. i was lucky enough to find this passage in a letter from another ancestor of mine will make red others grandfather who was lionized for his bravery as a young man serving in the calvary and losing an arm when he was 29. here he is writing in 1905 to a man he served with. had all the soldiers spent my? , we would have had her independent but a beach all it is well that we did not. after 40 years of peace the south has prospered so much that we are worse as a whole. that curse slavery uni did not then understand that are willing to acknowledge that it is no longer we are united prosperous and happy people and we propose to welcome its whole hearts and open arms in a few days the visit of the president of the united states and this too in the face of the fact he gets 10 hours to a school by two to birmingham, the metropolis of the south. board how we have changed in how differently we look at things now than the way we did 40 years ago. is it the hand of providence and faith? what the devil is that? i think i will stop there. there's a lot of people who held the light for me among all those pc errors. such i want to call their names but i'm not going to do that. i was compelled to write this pass in order to better understand our shared president. the stories just as much now about the early 1800s. this will serve as a catalyst for not going unessential the bullet readies to have. thank you. [applause] should >> jill? i wasn't sure if you were here. one of the collections of poetry are honored the theater but before columbus who is boyishly from tanya olson. tonya couldn't be with us this afternoon, so in lieu of her presents jill has come to accept the award for tanya olson. [applause] is >> hi, everyone. my name is jill: now see. i'm the managing editor i guess yes folks. unfortunately, tonya had previous engagements in new york city, but she's very sad she can't be here with us today. however i am honored to be here accepting this award on her behalf and i am so grateful. i remember the joy of forget the proof for this manuscript and i'm so excited others have loved the book as much as we have. tonya sent along a few words. i will start by reading those and then i will try to do justice from one of the poems of this wonderful collection. to write poetry in this age can fairly continually shouting into in the best. language is treated more as a toy for obfuscation and irony that a tool for resistant and poetry becomes more punchline than a punch. a poet, but what you really do? to read poetry at such a kind then becomes a generosity. to publish it cannot compare with them and to recognize poetry to notice the work it does in the knowledge the work is meaningful practically becomes an act of rebellion. that makes the work of the before columbus foundation for poets, writers readers, america. i think them today for that where, for saying that language and words and literature and i think them for recognizing boyishly to recognize the book of poetry by a 47-year-old first-time mom her on a smalltime price is to say unusual and make several different. i think this while two yes, yes, but, a book that finds out thursday going to going to readings and keeping it ear to the ground. yes, yes produces beautiful books and supports authors in a way that reflects the real love of and respect for the art. i've been proud since the day it came out, but to receive the award from a group within our prohibition is especially all at go to have them back from the abyss. i am going to read a poem called notes from jonas lecture series. so please forgive me for not doing as great of a job is say no tonya would have. nostrum jonah lecture series. inside the whale it is as if you have always been inside a whale, as if there's only inside the whale. it is as it usb for the whale and now and now you will always be inside a whale. inside the whale you do not understand why you are inside the whale. it is even difficult to determine it is a whale. you may recall the cm the ship and going over the side, that the whale you never saw. question what is sorry to say go the whale? is there, from inside the whale. from inside the whale, you cannot guide the whale. a whale will do as the whale will do. you may throw from one side or another. you may attempt to use the power of your mind to influence. your mind is in the greater capacity, but again a whale will do what a whale will do. when inside the whale it is best to be inside the whale. do what you are in side the whale to do. of course you may use only what was with you but grown overboard. no one packs to go inside the whale. however, you should not try to agitate the whale. it doesn't help if it ejects you to fire from shore. unfortunately, you have forgotten offshore and think there is only inside the whale. when you find yourself inside a whale, meditate and pride his journeys outside the whale. these are skills that must be rare her speefour needed. here's the pitch and his tenuous rumble tasty acid of his gentle work. consider the feel brushing against skin in the way his routes to reopens their atrophied, unremembered eyes. thank you. [applause] >> okay. how is everybody doing? declaimed author alex espinoza is called fresh magical beautiful and evocative returns with a captivating unforgettable novel set in the hollywood golden age as a gifted and determine down and leaves mexico and everything he's ever known to follow his streams. growing up in a rural village at the height of the mexican revolution, is many first love sitting in dancing and hearing the stories everything is testers yeah but when tragedy strikes coming out of diego is sent to the city to live with his aristocratic grandparents who insists he groomed to take over the family business. under pressure to enter a profession for which he cares nothing am haunted by the violence once again erupting all around him, diego flees his war-torn country to forge his own destiny. diego arrives in the hollywood inmate team 27 when silent films are giving way to rotation in full swing and latin lover types are side out even as they are looked down upon. working his way in the movie business with talent and ingenuity diego figures out getting one space on the silver screen has as much to do with what goes on behind the camera as what goes on unabated. but the closer he diego comes to stardom, the more he finds that the past is not so easily escaped as he has drawn a cad and again to the painful legacy of history and the wounds of his homeland a sweeping, sensual novel of love ambition and identity come in the five acts have diego leon bear saw the remarks of a classic hollywood story. romance, betrayal glamour and an underdog hero to root for until the end. of the book not only an elegant startling vision of a mexican in america, the five backs at diego leon claims the ascendancy of a new unique talent. alex espinoza, h., when america assert to surpass the fame of his novel silent hollywood heroes. espinoza takes our literature from a mute lacquered white area to a national stage with full spectrum color and high-tech surroundsound. even as we mourn the loss at diego's innocence, alex espinoza's david storytelling leaves us that those fragmented and multifaceted as identity itself. alex espinoza. [applause] >> thank you so much. it is such an honor to be here with everyone. mr. ishmael reed i have been a big fan of yours for as long time and i am just tumbled. my good friend, one delgadillo. he came to my community college years and years ago when i was a student and he read a poem where he described the freeway overpasses as looking like a snake eating itself. and i still remember that image. so i am very honored to be here with all of you. a tough act to follow. you are all making me teary-eyed when i'm sitting there. i first would like to thank the before columbus foundation justin thomas and the before columbus foundation for my second novel of an american book award. it's an honor to be recognized such illustrious artists. the before columbus website states the american book awards are not he stood right industry organization but rather a writer's award. for me, this very special significant because we primarily do what we do in isolation. removed more or less removed more or less military world around us and this is ironic and in our riding what we try to do is enter into a conversation of other writers and artists. sometimes they can feel like we're simply talking to ourselves or shouting at no one in reticular while inside a very crowded room. this award reminds me that someone out there is listening and for that i greatly humbled. i started with the idea to write a book about a fictional actor of color who comes to hollywood from mexico in the nascent days of the talking pictures. what ended up past been in his own family. while others writing about the experience is at a fictional studio, my mother passed away and i suddenly realized that i was alone in the world that i had no one connecting me to the past anymore and i had to become the chronicler of my own past experiences. i wanted to explore more than anything the muddled histories of two nations, the u.s. and mexico. two nations that are always an uneasy alliance. through this book the history of my own family emerged. my mother passed away and with her passing, she left a void and i became the keeper of those stories. i'm the youngest of 11 children whose space was always an issue in our three-bedroom house in suburban los angeles. as you can imagine, my home was very noisy. people coming or going at all hours, siblings relatives friends of friends of my brothers and sisters. in short my home was anything she wary and i had no room of my own. i bedroom was a living room couch and i fell asleep to the sound of arguing or the television or sometimes both. .. i remember you're a vested house overlooking the courtyard with a fountain. some nights after everyone had gone to bat and i was able to enjoy the seller to dennis silent i would stare at the picture lit up by streetlights outside and if i watch long enough, i could see the water moving. i can see the trees rustling in the wind. i can imagine the lives led behind the windows of the house. i could envision goes and life and adventure in the forest just beyond the pictures borders. .. i almost dropped out of high school. i wasn't the worst the students but i wasn't the best either. my physical disability made the usual route, football and basketball and woodworking an auto shop virtually impassable. and during p/e my teachers not knowing what to do with me often provided me with a whistle and clipboard and it was my job to stand on the sidelines, on the periphery, at the border if he will, and to keep score. i got really good at doing that. but i also good at watching. and then there they were, books books and writing. and suddenly this board disabled poor next convoy and he found his voice. he found his power and to literature and writing them i was suddenly able to right wrongs to make sense of the world around me to question it to critique it. and acknowledge its intrinsic faults, and also its subtle beauties. i have to thank my teachers, both formal and informal, jeffrey wolf at uc irvine. my good friend and my first teacher that you see riverside the great california writer susan straight, who taught me to look who taught me to listen, who taught me all the lessons that she learned from her mentor, a great writer james baldwin. thank you to my editors, kate millicent and lindy at random house. and my literary agent. and my family and all my friends and colleagues and everyone throughout the years. and a very special thanks to you, my partner kyle, who can't be here today because he just lost his father. for your support and your faith in me and my work all of this i do because of you. because you pushed me, because you never doubt my abilities even when i do. because you were there with me during the triumphs and you're there with me during the failures. and because of you come on not only a better writer i'm a better human being at heart. thank you very much. [applause] >> now before inviting joshua bloom and wallet the martin to the stage to close this happens program, i just want to say -- waldo martin. first want to thank lili schwartz for her support and sf jazz for the altar and sponsorship of this happens program. i also would like to invite all of the awardees this afternoon to join us on stage at the end of the program where we would like to take a group photo. and again, thank you all participating in this afternoons program. the cultural revolution of the 1960s and '70s, which has become fiercely contested, its history and very very, very closely almost into a political revolution. that didn't happen and the sponsors of the kind of sitcom characters of aging hippies holding onto the dream which are pushed so hard from conservatives, and you liberals, would like to help you forget that the possibility of real political revolution in the united states existed at that time, and it also existed in the 1930s and from before. but at the very center of all of that during the 1960s and '70s, of course was huey p. newton bobby seale and the black panther party. again, fiercely contested by humors historians and whidbey writers. but now we are finally at a stage where we have what i feel and can't agree with many of my colleagues as the definitive history of the black panther party, "black against empire," which i have a very strong personal connection with. when i was a child i was here in san francisco attending a preschool that was run by the black panther party, at the time that a coalition with the peace and freedom party. so even as a youngster i was there, too. >> so again please join me in welcoming joshua bloom and waldo martin authors of like against empire. -- "black against empire." [applause] >> good afternoon. the telling of history is consequential in recognition of consequential also. so i'm deeply honored and appreciative to receive the american book award today. i'm also very honored to share it with other recipients today who represented such raw and real engagement with social life. not the least, it's also quite an honor to share the award with previous recipients, some of the people who really shaped my intellectual development, toni morrison gary snyder isabel. i want to thank first of all waldo martin, my co-author. we spent many years together working on this book appear to want to thank my friends and family who were in the audience, and my many comrades and colleagues who helped make this book a reality along the way. there are too many to thank individually, but you know, who you are and i never could of have dreamed of getting here without you. so thank you. the recognition is nice, but writing a history of black panther party, let alone the 12 years that it took, the sacrifices and commitment and the costs were quite significant. i won't go into those today but i didn't spend those years and i didn't pay those costs for the accolades. so in the few minutes that i have here today i want to say a few words about why the history of the black panther party is consequential today. it wasn't just that the federal government working with the chicago police assassinated fred hampton, the 21 year old illinois panther leader in his bed. the repression and the cointelpro, the federal program of repression that targeted black panther party was very much about the repression of the political possibility that the party represented. it was not just the organization. it was about destroying the political possibility that represented. i'm going to read you a quote from j. edgar hoover. one of our primary aims of counterintelligence is as it concerns the black panther party to keep this group isolated from a moderate black and white community which may support. this is most emphatically pointed out in the breakfast for children program where the actively solicit and are receiving support from uninformed whites and moderate black. you state, and this is a letter to the san francisco, special agent in charge, you state that the beer under the counterintelligence program should not attack programs opportunity inches such as a black party panther breakfast show that many prominent humanitarians both white and black are interested in the program as well as churches which are actively supporting it. you obviously missed the point. the program with the program aimed at dividing the party from its supporters and vilifying it but the actions of william o'neil, one of the highest members of the staff of the fbi, on the payroll of the federal government working in chicago who helped orchestrate and organize the assassination of mark -- mark clarkin fred upton. losey publishing and black panther newspapers? called on local panther chapters to torture other members. to torture other members. this is what the fbi was thing and these are the ideas fbi was thing to have circulated that the black panther party membership torture other members. why? because this is the criminalization. so why does the history of the black panther party matter today? because if we let hoover get the last word and accept the common wisdom the black panther party was not a political organization but a criminal one, then those who stand up to unjust authority, everywhere are criminals. why does the black panther party history matter today? in 1966, there was a schism and they split and black freedom struggle to younger generations stepped forward to try to figure out new ways of challenging and fighting for freedom. and if you look at the history of the sovereignty movement during its heyday if you look at organizations like core that so successfully dismantled or more racial segregation in the united states, and ended jim crow, they never made inroads into poverty. so you read the history of core in the north, and years of campaigns and the best organized under this strategy and nonviolent civil disobedience that claims for full incorporation and american democracy, and at the end of these long drawnout campaigns you get a job on one job integrating a formally completely white woolworth's or another store. there are many similar examples. civil rights and nonviolent civil dispute is never made inroads never made inroads into the middle class, never made inroads into the fact that police departments were all white and the fact it was very little elect will representation in. political machines were exclusionary. elite higher education was exclusionary. so in 1966, young blacks around the country trying to figure out how to rebuild a movement that can address that. so the history of the black panther party is important because it's crucial because you can't fit in -- sit in against poverty. you can't sit in against poverty. michael brown is not an exception. and i don't of peoplesoft the news in the last couple of days but the fact the "st. louis dispatch" published a whole series of false quotations which suggested that the experts supported the interpretation of the forensic evidence that, in fact michael brown had been struggling aggressively with the police officer who killed him that does quotations were, in fact, distorted fabrications, according to those very forensic experts were quoted that's not exceptional. it's not exceptional because today in the united states young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by a police officer then young white men. it's not exceptional because there are more black people under incarceration in the united states today than were slaves at the height of slavery in 1860. it's not exceptional because while the median family income among whites in the united states is a little bit over $100,000, the median family income among blacks is less than $5000. the expansion the vast expansion, the tripling of the prison system in recent decades the reverse of the gains made in higher education, look at the university of california system, by blacks, the great expansion of inequality in this country show that these trends, not only for blacks, but any quality and incarceration for americans generally are not getting better but have gotten much worse. in recent decades. so the history of the black panther party is crucial today because you cannot also sit in against the jim crow. cannot sit in against the new jim crow. you can sit in against jim crow. the civil rights movement dismantle jim crow using nonviolent direct civil disobedience against formal racial subordination. but you can't sit in against a mass incarceration a black. it doesn't work. we need other politics. and so the history of the black panther party is crucial. we cannot afford it to be criminalized. from 1968-1970 for three years the black panther party was at the center of black freedom struggle. when fred hampton was killed in chicago, it wasn't just radicals that turned out. it was the naacp. it was the urban league. it was a moderate black political organizations that turned out because while the black panther party had a politics that they might not support, the party also had a politic that they saw as necessary for the interest. they could not afford for the black panther party to be killed, to be beaten to be repressed while it was not access to higher education, while there was not continued exclusion from mainstream politics. over the course of those three years the black panther party had chapters in 70 cities in the country with dozens, in some cases hundred and 50 cases thousands of young members who dedicated their lives to revolution. people don't remember, but the premier of china in 71 as the chinese government sponsored a festival on national day in china in support of the black panther party with thousands of dancers and jugglers and performers in the streets. a big steak dinner and signs that said down with yankee imperialism. algeria a center for international mobilizing and resistance to colonialism and other forms of revolutionary mobilization did not have an embassy for the united states in the late 1960s in 69-70 but they had an embassy and an embassy building for the black panther party. students for a democratic society, the largest antiwar organization that mobilize a good part of the draft resistance, declared the panthers vanguard of the common struggle. but often today the party is criminalized, and commentators strip it of its political practice. you can't sit in against economic inequality or the new jim crow. we cannot let j. edgar hoover get the last word, criminalizing freedom struggle. and erasing the possibility that represents. democracy is made from below and it is never given from above. so if we were to have any chance of challenging the growing social inequalities that face our children, we need to learn from the sweet successes and also the bitter failures of the people who lay their lives on the line for our freedom. so that is why i wrote this book. thank you. [applause] >> now you know why i teach at berkeley. i think was in the late '90s i was sitting in my office and josh walked in and we started having, over several weeks, a series of conversations, and this book in some ways came out of the. it was not a book that i set out to right at all. i was writing another book, but the urgency come and as you can see the passion, forced me to understand that this was is a book that had to be written. this whole experience on some level has been awesome. jonathan, graduate student. robert my dissertation committee. i sat in your home several times. it's all sort of surreal, it's all sort of coming back to me in a way that it could not begin to really fathom. but i want to thank all those who helped make this event possible. this is a truly auguste roster of writers and josh and i are thrilled and honored to be a part of it. like josh i could go on and on about all the people but i grew up in late jim crow in greensboro, north carolina. and in my personal life i experienced a lot of black politics but the group that electric light me was the black panther party. there was a chapter in winston north carolina. i was groomed to be a good negro, and i think i fulfilled that promise somewhat but and so even though i was deeply attracted, i decided i would go to duke and do whatever they're going to do with me there. and so that whole period for me is one other right about and study come but it's also about a deep invested in because it's deeply autobiographical. and the other thing that i will have to say is that i understood why people joined the black panther party. and one of the problems i confronted a nation he was people try to figure out, you know, why would anybody in their right mind joined the black panther party. my answer was, why would anybody in the right mind not join the black panther party? so for me this is not only sort of a scholarly adventure but it's also sort of a deeply personal adventure trying to figure out the relationship between life in politics and scholarship. all these comments about the academic world are right on. it's a strange world and i often feel like i'm on a surreal island somewhere. but meeting and having experienced this extraordinary individual becoming fast friends and writing this book takes it all worthwhile. i must pay homage to the brave and inspiring freedom fighters of the black panther party, the unsung and the well known, the soldiers, the fellow travelers, the rank-and-file as well as the leadership, their times and hard work to help realize african-american liberation, african-american freedom is ultimately what we honor with this award. second i want to pay homage to the enduring tradition of radical. i want to underline radical. indeed revolutionary to underline revolutionary freedom struggle. especially the radical and revolutionary traditions of african-american freedom struggle that the black panther party epitomize. i was recent on a panel with a neighbor and he was bemoaning the fact that at berkeley you could not get conservatives opinion. and i so had to raise my hand but i sickened when was the last time you heard real radical? radical? when was the last time you heard real revolutionary? especially progressive. i mean i think we have enough conservative voices your some particular. [laughter] in our current conservative and neoliberal moment it is doubtful the vital that we understand the enduring significance of the traditions of radical indeed revolutionary freedom struggle. these are things that are not taught. these are things that are not valorized. these are things that are not understood but they are essential. you can't begin to understand the party unless you have some sense of this. it is equally important, from my point of view and this is my political statement, that today we revitalize radical and revolutionary, progressive traditions. all too often in my reading today these are unacknowledged and trivialized traditions come especially among the students that i teach what some of the best and the brightest. a crucial aspect of the parties historical significance is the fact that they helped spearhead what josh talked about and audacious moment in time when the possibility of revolutionary change a. to be everywhere, when revolution seemed possible when revolution was in the air, when revolution appeared to be just around the corner. a key issue was not and i repeat was not that the revolution did not come. but that those like the black panther party believed and acted upon and fought for a progressive revolution. that they did so tuesday meal. that the revolution -- to send mail. it is far less important, far less revealing than the very fact that the black panther party existed, and that their comrades dared to attempt to make it happen. last, i want to highlight another aspect of the parties enduring importance. the party deep into mice the tradition of radical youth and the importance of radical youth activism in this country. and i tried to work this with my students who can't believe me that these kinds of things ever happened i think you have to have beliefs, you have to be audacious, and you have to be committed. i want to conclude, as i often conclude, by invoking the enduring african-american freedom struggle that the party came out of helped to advance and still profoundly speaks to. i do so to make clear the spirit of affirmation and resistance, the proud and committed consciousness, and the militant action that have propelled forward african-american freedom struggle. as frederick douglass once said, if there is no struggle, there is no progress. those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. they want rain without thunder and lightning. they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. this may be a moral one the struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. men may not be -- manhood. men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they most certainly pay for all they get. if we ever get free from the oppression and wrong keep upon us we must pay for the removal. we must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice and if need be by our lives and the lives of others. thank you. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations] >> one of the giants of american literature has most recently been excluded from its mainstream because of the unhappiness of critics about her most recent novel, see them now. of speaking of course about jamaica kincaid has been on which american book award this year. and so before inviting my colleague on the board of directors, jack foley to the stage to accept the macbook award for jerome rothenberg this year, i would like to read this data regarding jamaica kincaid enter award-winning novel, and reading this statement on behalf of the before club is foundation dirksen senate in '70s there's been a proliferation of books, films and television products that entice of revenue stream by promoting what one critic calls a black bogeyman approved and extreme misogyny to praise upon saintly do no wrong women. some of this picture is financed by men which is the right they don't reveal how members of the cultural elite, treat women and blacks. it was left to jamaica kincaid to offer us a glance into attitudes of the new your cultural elite toward women blacks and immigrants. through this novel, though this novel was dismissed as angry, i wouldn't call it that the novel was written with a brilliant be controlled fury. it was the response of the good old boys and girls who have the power to influence the direction of american literature. and jamaica kincaid was correct in describing some of that reaction to this book as racist. one critic even use the term bipolar in his description of the book. jamaica kincaid has written a courageous and compelling and rare glimpse into spaces that are considered off limits for writers. she also exposes politics of american literary criticism. which is very venal and politics by the way. seriously. you know, it's all about people paying up. i do mean paying dues as good writers. i mean writing those checks. so in conclusion to today's ceremony, again i want to welcome the winners of the book award to the stage immediately following mr. foley's statement, and acceptance of jerome rothenbergcollection, jack foley. [applause] >> thank you justin. it's an honor for me to accept this. jerome rothenberg is traveling, and those of you who know him know how much he travels and this is part of unfortunately his inability to be here today. i know how excited he was to receive this award, because throughout his life his entire project has been to be multiple. it is one of the great extraordinary things about this organization. i think you can tell from the just diversity of voices, opinions, all of that, that we heard today, which you can find even more as you explore more about the other authors that before columbus foundation has already honored. rothenberg entire project begins with that impulse not to be the same as everyone else and in his attempt not to be the same as everyone else but what he discovers is all kinds of people that are in his head. all kinds of multiple positions, understandings, et cetera. he is one of the great reclaim earth of native american poetry and one of the things he did was to find people who could redo that poetry. he found experiment a poet, for example, to reduce native american poetry. there have been many many, many anthologies in which is presented all sorts of people from all sorts of countries, from all sorts of historical periods. i won't name all of them. they are out there. well, i have witnessed, it's a book, which we get the personal history of jerome rothenberg. is the source of the diverse anthologies. you know there's so many of those things that it's very difficult to sort of even name a few. what we did here is a consciousness that is open to the world as it is. a consciousness that allows itself to become the other, in allowing himself to move away from what he understood to be conventional behavior, he opened himself up to a world and that as a gesture is what i think we all have to do. i think you can feel that in the energy of what people were saying today. on all levels. opening yourself up to the other, you find that is a mode of yourself that you are others. that consciousness itself, our minds, our multiple. just as politically we are multiple. the reason we can experience multiplicity in the political sense is because we have it within us, and this particular book i of witness is a terrific and wonderful example of someone who is able to do that. so it's a real pleasure for me to be able to accept this award for jerome rothenberg. thank you to the before columbus foundation. [applause] >> this has been a monumental event, and i want to thank all of you for coming and staying and listening to these profound statements. you can see the quality, the caliber and the integrity of the officers that the authors and their books is rare. and we don't accept checks for awards, but we do accept checks for donations which before columbus will greatly cruciate to keep us going, to keep this book awards -- we will take cash yes. you know you can even donate you know, a certain sum on a yearly basis annual basis or monthly basis. we will accept it all. we don't have that telethons we don't have that kind of outreach, but if you believe that this is an important institution, before columbus, and the american book awards must continue is a necessary vehicle for it to keep our writers marginalized -- the other riders, not just in our heads but a literal flesh and blood other riders to keep writing, please support us. okay. up front. we have a donation basket, and the ishmael reed would like to make a closing remark it might -- see ishmael out front, yes. take you very much. thank all are brilliant brilliant writers this afternoon. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching tv television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org. >> and now joining us on

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