Over the country to nashville each fall to be with the thousands of readers and writers from around the region. For those of us would enjoy being here, f were lucky that its a free event so thanks to a lot of the Community Support remember that the festival does depend on individual donations among other sources to remain free so please take the time to donate and what you can to help keepit free and any amount helps. Whatever amount you can spare. You can donate via the website, behalf or in person at the headquarters tends throughout the weekend and any amount is appreciated. Now let me introduce the authors, kendra allen who is the author of when you learn u that alphabet and jennine cap crucet who is the author of my time among the whites. So kendra, i think you said you want to go first. What were going to do is each of the authors is going to read from their book and we will have discussion back and forth and talk about the books and about their writing and their lives if they want to and we will have an informal discussion so kendra, let me give you an introduction. Kendra is the author of when you learn the alphabet, raised in dallas texas and is currently an mfa candidate at the university of alabama. Her work which has been described as raw and witty has been published in december magazine and in brevity magazine where i read she said she wants her art to tell the truth. Can you talk about thebook before you read and then read . Towe learn the alphabet is basically an essay collection that discusses race and gender while also family ties within intersections and things like that. And im going to read from this book but as previously mentioned im from dallas and if you know anybody from texas, they love to tell you how much they are from texas. Its like new yorkers, chicago and then texas so before i even get there you will hear some balance and then we have more time but because im from dallas, you probably heard about john oldham and i wouldnt be from dallas if i didnt talk about it so i want to read a piece i wrote about that and then read a few smaller sections from we learned the alphabet. On september 6 2018, amber geiger and offduty Dallas Police officer was somehow so distracted by nothing thatshe killed a man. She was somehow so distracted by nothing that she couldnt tell the difference between her apartment floor, let alone her apartment door. She was somehow so distracted by nothing that she didnt realize she was breaking and entering at the botham jean apartment. She was so distracted by nothing that when she propped open the door she couldnt evenelsummon the common sense to notice her surroundings, the furniture, the design, the layout. She was somehow so distracted by nothing that her seeing a big black man in her own living room eating a bowl of ice cream was the only catalyst needed in order for her to gain convenient laser focus. She pulled her weapon and before botham jean is ice cream could begin to melt shot him twice through the heart but she could. On october 1, 2019 amber geiger set her distracted badge in a courtroom and cried her white woman heres before, after and during being found guilty of murder but october 2 she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. As someone who wants to see prison abolished, i dont really care what happens to amber guyger at all and even though i want to see prison abolished i need her to suffer for all the times she should have been, for all the times white women have killed and sanctioned the killingsof black men and lovers , for gsthose years, ive got to keep bringing up those tears. I must keep bringing up the tears as a safety net, the sympathy she knows it brings and the messed up ways we been conditioned to save her no matter who takes the ball in her place. How we got black folks internalizing her tears, they are remorseful to their oppressors, abusers and murderers time and time again. Just imagine rsbotham jean running up in a white womans pot, gun knocked at the door, let alone having theaudacity to shoot. 50 rounds of diggers would be dead because they look like the person whomight have could have done it. Yet somehow for amber guyger has been accomplished has been deemed a mistake, a moment where she feared for her life after breaking into anothermans home. Three days later on october 4 2019, joshua brown , another black man and botham jean sole witness whose testimony is probably the only reason amber was found guilty in the first place was shot twice at close range in another apartment complex where he died at parsons hospital. The story thats been created in the papers of joshua brown demises three random black dudes drove from alexandria louisiana dallas to buy weed from brown and then his murder is just a drugdeal gone bad. It also alleged that a case was about to be opened against the epd so its safe to say thisis how they closed it. Im from dallas texas and buttered up real good, and i think better for it. Im born and raised in dallas texas and im pretty sure i can guarantee tyno figures driving across statelines for a weed that they can find at the corner store at home, no matter the amount. This story wouldnt betrue if they couldnt lie to us about it. We got a gang problem and got nothing to do with what you are from or what colors you bang. Our gang problem is White Supremacy. I gang problem that sentences amber guyger to 10 years for murder and adults to 25 for having dope on them. Our gang problem is White Supremacy and comes in the form of institutions, incidentals andinfluence. We see its mission executed throughacademia , every time a police force that comes up and protects their own , wondering will they ever protect anybody who looks like me . Our gang problem is a white supremacist system that bills itself on free labor and capitalist goals and call it the law, that changes the loss depending on your proximity to its bottom line so what im reading is in memory of those known and unknown murdered by cops, all the black women and men across intersections, trans, nonbinary etc. , murdered and set up by cops. Godless of your definition of innocence, we all know innocence is something black folks will never be guilty of. So what im reading is a premature memory of who is to go next, the most prevalent what im reading is in morning and in memory of botham jean and joshua brown and the three black men who will be charged with rounds murder so no one else on the dvd has to. The three black men n went on a 4 and a half hour road trip to rob a man for a weed no weed has been found but they will still be charged with capital murder, and who will r inevitably sentenced to longer than 10years. Whatever i read is for them because we all knew their faith before we knew their faith and we all know what its like to be a moving target, so please stop asking us what we need when we say fuck the police and dont trust the police. [applause] im going to read frommy book now. Im from dallas once again. Im going to read a poem and then nsa poem as well. This one is called boy is a white racist word. When i was small my mom used to have me wanting good times and michael, i just remember called michael was the youngest child and his mom alex was a boy, do this and he would say mama, boy, its a white racist word and it got stuck in my head. But anyways, boy is a white racist word. Black boy, blueblack boy bullied in your black boy, bullied in your head black boy. Arm around your neck black boy. Bullied through prison pipeline black boy. Fifth in your face black boy. Talk the police black boy. Please in your closet blackod boy. Always to blame black boy. Do rag with no wave black boy. You all all the same black boy. Nameless black boy. That lets black boy. Faceless black boy. Artificial thick skin black boy. Brainless black boy. The last shall be first black boy. One chance only black boy, dead black boy. Too many colors on your body over your body, lets pray for the black boy. Fathering a little boy, blackballed and gave boy. Nigger boy, corporate boy, unemployed and locked up boy, boy dont cry but i saw you boy, crying, news wrapped around your lips, dead boy. Last shall be first black boy , too scared to look afraid boy. Black boy, not bad boy, black boy, not bouncy but bruised but youve still got a name and bruised like every other nigger and bruised but mostly man. And the last thing im going to read from when we learned the alphabet is called citizens take out the trash and its after a ranking citizen which if you havent read is fire area when i think of hurricane katrina, when the levees broke comes to mind with ones that man of many sad people whose mama died while waiting on the bus that never showed up. America left her there to expire inreal time. Her son struggling to push her body to the back of the line, the bus and cover it with a blanket by using a piece of trashthat needed to be taken out. Fifth grade year we gave these transfers to the accents that sounded like jazz music or the dialects that felt like the bayou in our texas schools before and after the flood and we didnt care what they came through but we knew what they came from and we begged them tosay baby whenever they spoke. We still got it okay to read these young gg soul survivors that their reality, to remind them of why they were here instead of home. If youre looking for me, ill be on the block. No shoes, no socks trying to make it to the bus stop. If youre a writer i mean a katrina survivor ifand i could never distinguish how water is worse than abullet, especially in this motion. How is a breeze without making noise, learning to live without being seen with the use of these blueskies and its full of blueblack faces , no stars. Skwe are not in the country where the darkness is welcome. We are in the real world where you cant say goodbye when you dont know the exact time you are leaving. We will never forget you are named too many names. We know by heart. Trayvon, eric, orlando, jordan, freddie, too many names toname. Christian, dear christian you were 19. You lift up the street from our mamas house. You were too close to home. I didnt know you but i know you and i feel you holding on tome. Christian, you tweeted you didnt want to die too young and i know they were lyrics of a song but did you meet jordan later on . He was younger than you. They say they tried to warn you but you were already full oflead. You were taking me home going 90 in a 70. Cars on cop cars anymore, there are bling back black suburbans and chargers and you ran past the wrong one. The light started flashing from both sides. I say whats the fuck is this. When new city cops need this guys is . Both cops surround the car on both sides. And on their guns. Tell you to step out of the car. You say excuse me. Last night we had just heard about sandra land and you fit the description. I know you were scared. Black girl going too fast. I know nothing else mattered. You asked why did you haveto get out of the car for speeding. We were asked to hand over our ids. They do not know you have a heavy foot. Fast means slow to you. We were questioned about where we were going. We were asked have we been drinking. They had you out on the side of the texas road where confederate flags hung from corner store doors. We took out our phones ph because we wouldnt let you die even if we let you die. You wouldnt let you die. They gave you a warning like you didnt already haveone. When we get to where were going we eat shrimp for our rights and talk about how talked up we are and how we dont know how to fix it. Citizens said all liz living is listening for a drug to open and im too insecure to say sorry what you just went through so we laughed at everything. Im sorry in memory of you. I am sorry for what is next to happen to either of us. Im tired of taking out the trash just to bring it back intomorrow. Thank you. Thank you, im looking forward to hearing a little bit more about your work in a few minutes. Next we will talk with jennine cap crucet, her book of essays is my time among the whites notes from an unfinished education. Janine is the author of two previous books and an opinion editor for the New York Times and her novel was a New York Times review editors choice and the winner of the 2016 International Latino book awards and was cited as the best book of the year by nbc latino, the guardian and the miami herald. Its been adopted as an oncampus read at 25 american universities. Her short stories has been honored with the iowa short Fiction Award and other awards and she was raised in miami florida, an associate un professor at the department of english and institute for ethnic studies at the university of nebraska. Sowelcome and you talk a little bit about your book for you read. I feel maybe we should have a discussion about this. Im from miami, thats important to me. Specifically im fromhialeah. So thank you for coming and bringing a little piece of home here today but that is very important and ive been on this list, 305 is the area code. I feel ive got to have it with me all the time. That sounds like somethingwe will wind up talking about today. So this is my essay collection, my time among the whites, notes from an unfinished education and this came from a deep desire to have Difficult Conversations about race or concepts of race and concepts of citizenship, particularly since the 2016 election and i elhad a lot of friends, a lot of white friends were shocked by the Election Results weor the purported electionresults. And i think i went on record inthe New York Times in may that year being like a ,trump is going to win this. You need to talk to your people. Talk to your family, that ework has to happen. I know part of where this book came from was that i wanted to have these conversations with friends and longer ways and some of these are based on pieces i published in the New York Times and i would write these 6000 word pieces and then they would say all right, send us 1000 words or 800 words. Id send like 1500 and do this and my editor would be thats not what i asked for. So we worked together to get that one or two ideas and i would hear from readers and i was happy to hear from readers because it meant the conversation was happening but they would ask questions that those other 5000 words didnt make it addressed so i started to see that its hard , especially now that we traffic and soundbites and things cant be communicated that way when there vitally important as they are now and when actual peoples lives are at stake and they have been for a long time so im going to read a little bit from an essay in yourcold nothing is impossible in america , the second essay in the book and im going to read from the beginning for just a bit and talk with you today. So this is from nothing is impossible inamerica. When nonlatino americans meet me and learn my family is from cuba they often ask me one of two bizarre questions. The first is if ive ever been to cuba, a question so layered and brought for me that i learned to respond by asking why would i have ever been to cuba . Then just seeing what they say. I almost relish their awkward answers and the assumptions they revealt. I got this question a lot when i lived in minnesota, a place where many students brag about their scandinavian heritage and it never once occurred to me to ask within seconds of meeting them if theyd ever been to sweden. The second question less common though still fairly fraught isnt even a question. Thats weird, interesting or funny they say. Janine isnt a very cuban name. You are correct i say, itis not. I also want to y,feel that uncomfortable pause that follows with a story about the American Dream that goes like this. Two kids from cuba meet teenager in florida. I have names given to them by cuban parents who mistakenly assume they live in cuba cipretty much forever. They mark them as ethnic minorities in the united states. These names in their new home country impacts everything about their lives. Their educations and the premature end of those educations and what areas of the city they can look for ahome. They married young, start a family young and because they are lightskinned una reason theres a chance their americanborn offspring could avoid at least some of the elements of the systemic prejudice they encounter despite having worked hard to learn english as almost eradicating the accents, this is after all a story haabout the American Dream which means that many thingswill need to be unjustly eradicated. In this version of the American Dream they think that takes to change their destiny in this country is picking the right name for your child. They are not totally wrong. As john oliver on his show last week tonight pointed out when in his preelection efforts to make Donald Drumpf again he told an apocryphal story about the candidates grandfathers amy change the last name from drumpf to trump when heimmigrated from germany. He asked those voting for the man to take a moment to imagine how you would feel if you just met a guy named Donald Drumpf. The joke plays on scene ofthe and oliver is only pointing out a reality for Many Americans , the reality the couple had lived through and saw as an opportunity to alter what they hoped was better. Because of the experience of living with their own names, my parents thought giving their american child a distinctly ethnic name came with unfair quantifiable consequences. They sensed this long before Research Studies would show which names on similar remnant resumes to count as qualified for a job and how they weathered those consequences themselves, they felt an understandable reluctance to have me inherit them. This is how i came to benamed after the 1980 usa runnerup. Its not fiction. My parents had a loose plan to name me after the winter and they had settled in on a may evening to watch the pageant with that intention even though i wouldnt be borne up until july 1981. Theyve always been the type to plan ahead. I was not just their first kid but also the firstborn in America American in our family. Perhaps they saw a suitable american name was needed to complete the immigration from cuba to american. What better placeto find a name and an american beauty pageant . Bob barker was close back then, they must have liked the way the name sounded in his price is right draw. The man who made his living encouraging people to spend a wheel and asked them how much they got random crap was worth withoutoverestimating would determine the name that would identify me for the rest of my life. Imagine talking with that provoked black ball, janine. His pointy white teeth seething that last syllable like a cartoon cat. Inalthough my parents, my names are maria and evaristo were rooting for her ja