Of you may know the Coleman Center with those preeminent scholars where they receive an office while they make their own work. So then gerald wrote the Coleman Center gave me the freedom to read that was nothing immediately clear to me to do with what i thought i was doing. One day i would read history of 19th century paris that i try to decipher the gothic script i kept reading wild things. In a new exhibition you will find add why pl the products of 34 writers and you will see the new and lasting book they made through their research displayed alongside some of those Collection Items that informed them including the 2016 novel alongside the 19 sixties era and that will stay up through june of next year. We welcome you on the occasion of the new collection of busted in new york. Where we have that questioning mind of recent history of the million man march to katrina to ferguson and always informed by the readers steeped in history and scholarship to bring centuries of the past on today the book is available for purchase after this program and darrell will sign books all proceeds go to benefit the new york public library. Would like to draw attention to your printed programs. You noticed is recommended reading all you need is your library card the organizers have asked me to shame you if you do not have a library card. Very good. On the back you will find our upcoming events. On december 10 we will have a night of readings from the archives and collections featuring crime writer and Keith Morrison from dateline nbc and then well talk about the new book with author talk dont be evil. Tonight jefferson is a longtime critic for newsweek and New York Times the winner of the National Book critics circle award for her book negro land. Jefferson mp one pick me will speak for about 45 minutes after which they will take if you questions from the audience please welcome me to join our guests. [applause] i know everyone has Something Better to do. They dont think so. I dont either. Hello. Good evening. There with me. One of the first things that interested me about this book everyone talks about the rage the pessimism you notice the James Baldwin back then you are in berlin. You move across generations and as a young man in certain ways but this book deliberately joins the cultural criticism that i think many of us that know you first and best for with the sustained political reportage and scholarship. So you have two novels of black literature and tradition and in 2014 came the black vote so what led you so fully and richly from literally in cultural writing to very political scholarship . I think it was mostly my surprise that a body of material existed. I had forgotten i had done some of these things or had written about them in this way. And also the passage of time i wanted to mark the passing of a world that i grew up in and also a work of farewell. Say more about that world because there seems there are many aspects of it. You write your history but there are so many points of historical and cultural entry here. Which world are you saying farewell to . Growing up in the fifties and sixties with the optimism having the movement around you or as part of a daily conversation or the description of how everyone lived, no matter how bad the time got come and i got very bad rethink the outcome or of the inevitability. We forget how dangerous and tentative things felt at the time and how relentless the opposition was and the Voting Rights act was overturned. I remember the opposition had begun as soon as it was passed and never stopped. Even then you felt justice was on our side and truth was on our side in history was on our side. American society would move forward its problems no matter how violently and then suddenly a sense of destiny. What do you mean suddenly . [laughter] and then to realize maybe something was happening all along i had that feeling that night i also had the feeling maybe i didnt know the country anymore at all. Not only that there was some sorrow watching everything that had happened because we came this far for it all to fall apart. Not everything is falling apart or if it is just this administration. I cant tell but it seems to ruin everything we touch so looking back on some of these pieces its hard to think of the giuliani as mayor day to be innocent in the pre 9 11 world but it does sort of look like that. Summit was thinking about time going by. The answer is we always had and i still believe but it just seems more impossible. Yes. I believe that the vote there is no such thing as not voting. Which reminds me of a passage in the book where you speak about the pole and the attention between american individualism and how much of ones life has given over to consideration of ourselves. They will always tell you. [laughter] i didnt mind that because other people were doing this stuff for me. Here is my constant and i will be over here in the meantime. Suddenly there you are. You are in britain and oxford. I am from the midwest im from indianapolis which is a nice place to be from. I remember once i was taken to the opera i couldnt have been more excited and the dean said would you like to walk her backstage . This is amazing Jenna Flanders and i said i am from indianapolis also. She looked at me so i was rebelling i was wearing a brown suit and platform shoes. [laughter] she looked me up and down and says i havent back on been back since 1921 and i would advise you to do the same. [laughter] but first i wanted to go on stage. For Leslie Howard and James Baldwin . No. I never got that far. Anything liza minnelli. [laughter] i had a very embarrassing adolescence. Im the last one you wanted to know. [laughter] that could have gone both ways. I was a cheerleader. [laughter] nasa. When being weird was fine. 1971. So it was okay to be weird for quite looked around. Was a mostly White High School . Yes. Yes. What percentage . Maybe two or three others and in the next year a little more so i was in a real transitional period. And you came to columbia. Thats only way my parents would let me to come if i applied to another school and didnt get in that i thought im not going to school and abandon politics for poetry. I got deeply involved in that. The renaissance choir. Kind of thing. Student in which poets review immersed in. Select a can of koch, there was don ashbury, mike ohair, but had Elisabeth Harper as a teacher. Already done that sort of class thing obsessively. So i was ready for that. But then he sort of discovered much larger world and so reading Wallace Stevens and dorian moore and the bishop, but the thing it really got me was the beacon poets, i still why it still makes me tremble. Sometimes they may see. Lol. So true. So that was quite an experience he was a place we could really be free. Im sort sorry that universities have become a spices work that has been forgotten. I dont believe in safe spaces and all that kind of thing. You go to university to step outside yourself and to learn things that have no utilitarian value but somehow make you a better citizen the neither. I felt. Attention and pressure whatever those days between your letter see, quite literary cultural interest in the black ones. The black ones came from his parents. Sort of representing and straightline, that sort of, black folk was a very straight and fierce kind of place. And, it wasnt so much the white world because it wasnt that. It was the card that became interested in. So my women professors mean, represented a guard more than anything else even though now looking back, is because over women professors used to sneak across the street to read and things of that. And i had this writing class with Elisabeth Harbert that change my life. She said, you are the worst poet i have ever read [laughter] and it sent me you should read poetry before you write. But dont writing more that [laughter] is true. She would make dinner and she would see you write a lot of policies perhaps you should try not writing any. [laughter] and understood what she meant but always had this thing for poet so sooner so what was it that led you to these two books about the lack black literary turbine tradition. Can be the ones i wrote. Indeed. Those are the ones in which i speak yes. Is something that i had in school because i was just a bit ahead of the rediscovery renaissance. So join i began to write criticism and i had a sort of trying write fiction but once again, they said you stories all seem to be about one thing. This yearning from some abstract boy. Im here to tell you is going. You should sort of write reviews. I was really insulted. She said young writers should write reviews. You see your name in print right away. Lizzie got very offended that i was offended about reviewing many lesser thing and she said im not talking about that. I mean, criticism. And she shoveled a lot of Edward Wilson at me and said bring them back because i still use them. She had me read others. Blackmore was a bit harsh for me i can do that one. Just a sort of see in all those you read in high school, read that again. This is the Great American language. He is very adamant that they essay was a massive approach. So once i then found the harlem renaissance writers, because it was not a subject i studied, i began to study it im my own and found these writers. It started in a white reconnected me with my family. Hughes was always my fathers favorite poet. I didnt sorta say it was enough difficulty may been a take my feeling and then i sort of my parents casually mentioned that having spoken to sterling brown and turns out to be a relative. I didnt know. I would see him and he really disliked me. [laughter] he really hated alan make allen tate and he associated with allen tate which was sort of much invented for. Sort of reminded me that this is a human problem. Every generation has its voice and people do identify with it. And that is a leaving thing. Remains a tradition of literary critics and chronic gross and keepers of various languages. I took it as another thing forgetting at the ambition for all these writers. To let them be successful etc. So that may be an another motive for the book as black culture becomes mainstream. You are staying goodbye to it as this other thing. People worry about black culture being less pure and authentic if it is mainstream yet thats always been the whole. To make it known and to have all americans share it and feel part of it. It turns out millicent was is much as we made fun of him. Language by which we claim is for the young quite different. Is true. If any of that made any sense. One of the figures the keys appearing, appears in different mosey each time a different stage in his life and viewers, is baldwin. I like that he has brought hispanic. Theres the bold one who becomes join you are young and kind of glaringly naive. And theres sexy and exciting. Then theres the bald one who was humiliated. All of the masculine nest boom bravado of black powder. You revisit. That time of humiliation. Iran response, excoriating, photic. It never got published. He could never actually during his life, come back at it. And you examine that. We see him again, as a kind of triumphantly moving from paradox to paradox as you put it. The triumphantly allied character. Im not your negro but also in dragons. That essay were finally as you see, almost joyously and widely, he writes personally in the voice that is the voice about being gay. He keeps changing positions in your relationship to them changes. Join i first read i didnt really get it. And why was sent im to it. I say i was interested in first because my grandfather really hated it. As antichurch as far as he was concerned. He was a preacher. And also baldwin was so famous the drama grandfather crazy with jealousy. Existed grandfather who wrote his own elaborate details, the autobiography. My grandfather was a preacher and he wrote the Church PublishedFamily History that was used loose useless. It was mostly false. And a brother who was told he couldnt be a concert pianist so i became a jazz musician in the family stopped speaking to him. He wrote his out of biography. 400 pages all capital letters single space letters and using initials for everybody see cant figure out that that was actually serve people. I say he had an affair with john cashew myself. My grandfather hid it in his vacuum cleaner and we didnt find it until after he died. So he hated the fire next time. Yes. Then i was reading spanish room before he understood what was i found it kind of looking at me thinking, and then finally the university i discover the essays that was quite a revelation. Our member stopping in the middle of campus and leaning im the ledge to finish title and it still kind of sends shivers through me. Its one of the great things ever to sort of discover. Somehow, i dont know how one knew these things. Somehow one new about baldwin. I maybe must have read another country and then figured out what the room was about somehow prayed is the only one. One spread, their friend, would sometimes see, he is so brilliant, his little live im his feet. Something like that. My elderly relatives used to see, i was never afraid to leave my wife alone with him dont you know. Dont you know. I keep also was our only. In mass culture and high culture. And they were proud. Someone new, he had very been attacked. By the time of essays, knew about the attack im solar and eyes that i hadnt read it. But if leroy joines had sort of attacked in the same language, people knew him. And that kind of. And i remember once walking by window and i saw him. All i had was the journals with me and held them out trembling. He signed them. He is very sweet and gracious weve god. A couple of times i ran into him. But more importantly, baldwin and angeli davis were the first writers the first black writers that for my generation said it was all right to be bookish. Because of black militancy at such a kind of anti intellectual speak with doctor neri that you could be could read certain authors. That stuff intended to read. But Angela Davison and James Baldwin sort of made it all right to be bookish. I remember an essay about sitting im a jury with James Baldwin in her things very surprised that he was sent literary and have read so much. I was james, hes not a natural. He worked hard to. [laughter] he was a very liberating in that way. He has brought bohemian. It was rather anti bohemian. He denounced the other text that i have time was really into like carol good baylor, that kind of thing. He was very much against the beast that way. Hes already made of so many Different Things for one thing, reading has always meant for me is sort of free and liberation. I hate that were diversity but people are made up of so many Different Things and dont understand. This range. I noticed that the books the book is from women. In the lines appointments that everybody goes these days, is i contain multitudes. You pick a live i didnt know now. Every existence has for each existence has its idiom. Its from a notebook badly kept so i cant find the live in himself anymore. I have to read it all again. Preparation. It is very haunting. I thought again the range, in obsessions, figures, the you keep moving amongst that that is it. And also each part of you that encounters that. Is hard to remember that first reading. And almost that whitman is almost insane as optimism. That quote isnt. But the court is more modest. Stop for something so uncertain in his conclusion that maybe whitman was a bit reassuring is at least to me. I do say of him as a this rather determined to find, the best is because of this idea of transcendent. This human possibility and community and adhesiveness. Athletic democracy. Which is totally not what you are about or after an end terms of the range, i see the connection. There is plenty of milling cocky melancholy. The promises always im the other side of the mountain. And you keep going maybe. The melancholy because these are not pieces that are about literary figures more social. You want to be truthful about what you see or your limitations as an observer. And since as these events, Marcia Ferguson selection, the town is going to be melancholy. In the life of the figures, these valiant and elegant. To composer who puts the french revolution and turn hillside. Much more than just black. I find myself identifying with him a bit. Just because he did well on a system that was unfair to everyone else. To put it mildly. Since the black codes and french slavery were worse than anything. But this 18th century composer bribed in the paris of the louis the 15th. To another loophole he took it. And then we sort of trying to join up, its is it too late. He was marked for his past association. [inaudible conversation] so its linked to the patriot tradition. Blacks rejecting and being rejected by america but also looking for other kinds of adventures. There is a tradition of black culture and youre up in particular as an individual solution im a mask and the reason i say it was resented for so long is it was like passing and that way that he was just removing yourself from this particular jurisdiction it could do something that for me, it got me a notion between me if my family. Which is what i wanted. In the book i, i remember them at their best. But actually my family had a sort of terrible story. My parents and resented. Couldnt sort of keep my distance. Time would stay on still. But it doesnt. This white Richard Wrights voice, sort of frozen because it is his ex patriotism and we try to write about the new themes, he was is it too out of date in a way that he found and in own sort of terms. The is the danger of being away that certainly back then before communications or constant. Your voice kind of fell behind. Helen date. With these trends or friends who lived in italy for years there were british. I found it so 1950s, and they spoke english because that was join they left. There was a lot of that. Baltimore is different away because his written voice never raged. No matter how old he got. And elisabeth are like was the same way. Her voice never raged. They sort of found this tone very early. But the responses to baldwin as he got older, definitely indicated in terms of ideas, both from the black power contingent but also from many white critics. A