Postponed new in depth programs. We are showing highlights from past programs. First from november of 2018, author imani perry, author of several books including a history of the black National Anthem and breeze which is written as a letter to her son. Heres a portion of that program. People here when you see i wonder if people are irredeemable they hear all white people and they hear white people as individuals as opposed to whiteness as an identity so that when i go into the second paragraph, what if we took this identity apart, those people would not have a different history or body, but it would be a different relationship to identity that i think would potentially have as a consequence a more humane relationship to each other. When i went into later in the first paragraph saying a person, an individual can be a heaven, certainly both as someone who was raised by a white man or as someone who thinks of so many figures like, take for example john brown or bob zellner, some of the most precious people in the world it is important to me to not have a formulation that removes them from my sense of the struggle that im engaged in. That is what i was thinking. One more question before i move on to other books, mothering black boys in america is a special call. A sentence my mother said to me and i think about it in a number of different ways. One is, a are all the risks, people talk incessantly, in some ways that are difficult and maybe not necessarily helpful about the challenges that black boys face in this world whether it is mass incarceration are inequality and schooling or High School Graduation rates of College Attendance rates for employment of those things. I think about it differently. I think about it, the simultaneity of wanting to raise my children who are identified as black boys that in a way that doesnt limit their imagination or sense of possibility, that allows them to understand the facts of racial inequality, keeps them from thinking they are superior to people because they are relatively privileged, not just black people but other people generally and also that keeps them away from seeking patriarchy or dominance in this society that values those things highly so that even though those things are more elusive for black men to obtain, for society that values that, part of the task is raising them to not values that but to value their character and sensitivity and complexity, other people around them a respectable of what walk of life they come from so that is a special calling because the lessons of what it means to be a man are across the board, often times entailed in things that are not so good and the essence of what black is is often times not so good unless you counter both of those things with a story that i think is more accurate but also more loving and gives a much better capacity to be fully human. In the last 19 minutes, all the things we talked about are they things you teach or at least in part in princeton . Guest in some ways this is a departure from the in the spirit with which i teach. Certainly a teach the work of Tommy Morrison and Richard Wright but i tend to teach much more fact driven as opposed to the kind of emotional register but i think of teaching itself as a kind of calling. It is important to bring to that values inhumanity and justice and love to the students even though we are supposed to be dispassionate. How does one get a phd and jd from harvard at the same time . Unwisely. It is not when i was graduated from college at 21 years old, i was completely in love with life and mind and ideas and didnt want to choose and i wanted to do everything and i will go to graduate school and law school and i did two years of graduate school, it was sort of a frenzied time but it was beautiful, amazing for me. I loved it. I learned so much and every day i was being nurtured by all these generations of people who came before me and helped me understand the world. We want to play a little music, a little video from 1999. Lift every voice and saying until heaven rings, ring with the heart on the knees of liberty rejoicing jesse norman singing at the rosa parks congressional Gold Medal Ceremony in 1999. What is that song . That song is lift every voice and sing, the song that was known, as the black national and that after the 1970s and it is a song i describe as black americas most precious song, gosh, and just that clip of rosa parks as an alabama woman and jesse norman is incredibly moving. You have written a biography of the song may we forever stand is the name of the book. James Weldon Johnson and John Rosemont johnson. The author and the composer, they were brothers who were born in jacksonville, florida, renaissance men and back in the day they were called race men. People who saw every achievement they had as being in service, johnson became the first secretarygeneral of the naacp, the first black man admitted to the bar in florida, really extraordinary but one of the signature accomplishments of their lives is the composition of this song. They were firstgeneration friedman born in the 1870s. Yes. There mothers family had been enslaved in virginia but of that generation that emerged from the slavery with all these hopes and dreams and aspirations that were so quickly dashed at the end of reconstruction. What was the reception in 1900 when the song was written . Guest what was extraordinary was the song caught on like wildfire. It was almost immediately embraced as an and some of black america. The United States did not have a National Anthem at this moment. Even so early on people were referring to it as an and some, the johnson brothers were educators at the time of the composition and they left florida and moved to new york to work on as songwriters because there had been a terrible fire in the city. They werent there when the song caught on and it caught on, black club women circulated it and reprinted it, it was reprinted in the back of hymnals and so it was sort of an and some of the communitys making. They did not describe it as an and the man didnt intend it as an and some. But it was an anthem. Host if we had continued playing the video we would have seen then president clinton singing. Guest he may be the only us president who knew all the firsts. From your book may we forever stand, hiphop uttered its farewell to the black panthers National Anthem. One of the things, i talk about this in my first book, there is something that happens in the 70s and 80s which is the transformation both of some norms, in black social and political life that have to do with the kind of Civic Engagement and associational life connected to deindustrialization and theres a piece or i quote the reverend Joseph Lowery on this where he said may he rest in peace, black people are the moral conscience of the nation, hiphop is a refusal of that position so it is bold, not formal, it is profane and not unwilling to perform a particular kind of politics. A reveling in out law which is commonplace in American Culture but is a different kind of public presence for africanamericans so that departure was significant but what i also talk about in the book is the song keeps coming back. Thereve been various moments, seemed to was going to peter out completely, keeps coming back even though the kind of institutions, the kind of communities in which it was sung on a weekly or even daily basis dont exist in the same way in black communities. Host can you draw a direct line from Langston Hughes to bigi. E. Small . Absolutely. Both of them took the beauty of vernacular language and crafted it and made decisions to tell stories that were appointed, that often had content and resonated deeply, were pleasurable to listen to, to engage with, they are different kinds of political subjects, Langston Hughes is very overtly an activist and organizer but their relationship to black language both in the us and throughout the diaspora and the desire to understand that as a foundation for the production of art, absolutely directly connected. Pr oph ips. Guest absolutely. What i talk about in the book is the process by which it became the most popular form of music in the country and had an audience that expanded beyond its initial core audience and produced the wealth that has been produced to hiphop but something i talked about that is prophetic about it because there was from the beginning and exposition and elucidation of what postindustrial life in urban centers in the United States was like and in all of its complexity. It is not just it is an exposition, and exploration of it. You used the term mc. What does that mean . The word for a wrapper that is a little more organic to hiphop. It initially it comes from master of ceremonies which is pretty common place but others spell is he in the ce e to make it somatic but this idea that there is a relationship between the wrapper and the dj and subsequently a producer was really important. It is a title. It is absolutely a title. Mcs our rappers, kind of internal to hiphop, a way of describing that role. I was interested really in what made in mc good, not just the reflection of a moment in history or conditions in certain communities but what was consistent . The mc became important because i was doing a literary analysis of it. From your book profits of the hood the historic construction of blackness and opposition to whiteness in which blackness is demonized has become part of the artforms consciousness. Right, so this, there is i should say before i go into this hiphop has changed since 2004 though there are aspects i still describe at present but there is a very overt play with the imagery of black people as thugs, embracing the idea of thug life, criminalization of black people, the sense of the very long history of americans stereotyping black people as prone to criminality and access and gangsterism and violence that hiphop has engaged that satirically, critically, played into it, has really played with that social reality. Lets hear from our viewers as we continue to talk about your books, charlie is in roslyn heights, new york, you are on booktv. I have been citing races my whole life and im very proud of that but i have seen the world is a very complex place. I dont support black nationalism because thats is that his wife nationalism and it is feeding trumps base, you know, theres good and bad in all groups, black people are just black people, they are not inferior, they are not superior, black nationalism is as wrong as White Nationalism and i cant understand why this area supporting black nationalism. I am not a black nationalist. I am far left, nationalism takes on many different faces, there are certainly conservative brands of black nationalism that politically are quite aligned in many ways to political conservatism. The nation of islam is politically conservative so advocates black nationalism and theres the version of black nationalism you would see an organization like the black Panther Party or the coordinating committee which are revolutionary socialism, third world politics, anticolonialism that identify and ally with colonized people across the world. The single term doesnt mean much without the larger concept. I will say they dont think, i disagree with the call that they are equivalent. People trying to find a way of developing a sense of control and autonomy over communities they live in after a long history of enslavement and domination is not the same as celebrating the history of colonialism and enslavement and domination but thats not a designation i would subscribe to. Host you say you are far left, what does that mean . Guest i believe in democracy. I am a socialist because i am against economic exploitation. I believe everybody should have access to safe environment, clean water, good schools, living wage, healthcare. I believe in this extraordinarily wealthy country we shouldnt have children who are poor, we shouldnt have People Living on the street, i dont think the narrative that the consequences of economic vulnerability are the consequences and we should be okay with them. That is not a decent way to organize society. I dont think people are poor because they are deficient overwhelmingly. They are poor because they are exploited or have black of opportunity. That is what i believe and the question in as much as i write and think about race it is never separate from the larger question of the distribution of suffering in our society. It is an example of how society has been organized, a way to distribute suffering and opportunity and wealth unjustly but i dont my objective is not for black people to become those who dominate. The idea is to become free of systems of domination, to have a real robust thorough democracy which is only possible if you have a decent quality of life for all people in society. This is booktv on cspan2 showing highlights from our in depth series. In 2018, booktv featured bestselling novelist jody jodi picoult who has sold 15 million copies of her books and she joined us in november to talk about them. Host you suggest that Brett Kavanaugh should read your newest book a spark of life. Why is that . It is one of the most balanced looks at abortion rights and reproductive rights i have found. I worked really hard to make it balanced and i think it would allow him to see other peoples point of view with compassion and empathy and perhaps protect roe versus wade a little longer. Host you say all points of view are represented. How so . The book is about a shooting in a productive rights clinic, some states have only one clinic left because over 280 laws at the state level have chipped away at reproductive rights since 2012 and in my book a gunman comes in with a grudge, starts shooting, kills the patients and hostages and some employees and take the rest hostage and one of the people he takes hostage is a 15yearold daughter of the Hostage Negotiator on the outside of the people in the clinic are a wide range of people who all believe very Different Things about reproductive rights, you will see individuals who are prochoice, individuals are prolife and all a points of view are evenly and accurately represented. Host how do you storyboard a complex story like that . There are all sorts of connections and things going on . That is a particularly ripe question. Theres a twist in this book that makes a difference from my others. It is told in reverse so the first thing you see is the standoff between the gunman in the Hostage Negotiator. Every chapter goes back in our in time until at the end of the book what you learn is what brought all these Diverse People to the clinic at that particular moment. That was much harder than i anticipated it being. I wound up writing a 48 page outline because i had to write it chronologically in reverse but also had to follow the storylines of 10 diverse characters. I have never written an outline, most are 3 pages long, a little synopsis. I know my characters, the plot, the twists because i want to leave a paper trail for the reader but in this case there was so much going on and it was so complex that i needed to map it out in the real magic to me was not in the outline but in the editing when i edited the book, i took little post it flags i made my husband get and marked the whole book by character and then edited in reversed we 10 times following each character spread to make sure every story was coherent and then i edited entirely going forward. Host how much time did you spend in mississippi . Guest a week between jackson and alabama working in particular with an amazing man named doctor willie parker. And africanamerican Abortion Provider who identifies as a devout christian and says he performs abortions not in spite of his religion but because of it. He heard a sermon one day in church about the Good Samaritan and thought whos going to provide for these women if not be. Went back and got trained and now he goes all over the United States to the most underserved areas performing abortions for women who needed the most and invited me to shadow him. Host are you a big enough seller with your bestselling books that you could determine whether title of your book is at what the cover looks like . They usually show me a cover and i will tell them if i like it or dont. It was not the original cover. The original one looked like small great things and i loved the cover a small great things but didnt want people confusing the two. Garrett director came back with that and that caught my eye and i loved it. Speaking of small great things that the next book we are going to talk about. What does that cover represent . I think of the color chips that artists use and if you look at the cover there are spots where color is missing, something not quite right about the color and it is about racism in america and metaphorically to me that was such a beautiful illustration of what i was trying to talk about. Host are you kennedy . Any white person is kennedy. That book actually looks, it is based off of a reallife incident that happened in flint, michigan. And African American nurses 25 Years Experience in a labor and delivery ward helped deliver a baby and in the aftermath the babys father said he didnt want her or anyone who looks like her to touch his kids, pushed up his sleeve to reveal a swastika tattoo. In their incident in this hospital a postit note in the babys file said no africanamerican is allowed to touch this baby. A bunch of personnel banded together and sued. I hope she got a great payout but made me wonder what if that nurse is the only one alone with the baby when something went wrong and as a result she wound up being brought on charges of murder and what if she was defended by a white public defender, like me, like many of my friends, never considered herself to be a racist and to tell the story in her voice, the voice of a white supremacist and the voice of the white public defender as they unpack their own feelings about race . To me small great things is for white people. It is meant to say open your eyes a little wider. It is easy for white people to point to a white supremacist