After 93 years the sole survivor. With the Third Generation owner. Think all of you for your support the authors like morgan would not be here today. Tonight im beyond thrilled to head him with us. To celebrate the release of her new book wandering in strain places. Morgan juergens jerkins i thoroughly recommend this. Also a visiting professor at columbia university. The short form work. Has been featured in the New York Times the atlantic Rolling Stone esquire in the guardian among many others. Based in harlem. Joining morgan in conversation. Born and raised in jackson mississippi that chilling professor. The author of the Long Division author. How to slowly kill yourself and others in america. Its also the author of the men were heavy. Named one of the best books. By the undefeated. The publishers weekly. In the library journal. The washington post. And Entertainment Weekly the San Francisco chronicle. In the New York Times critics. Without further ado. Please join me in welcoming him to the stage. The hi everyone. Im so excited to talk to you about this book. I wish that we could we could of done this down south. This is full for me. Two years ago i was in a conversation with you at the brooklyn public library. You helped me. I am mississippi through and through. I lived in new york for 16 years. Every time i went to the city it was always like the first time. I get shaken. I dont feel right. Lets talk about wandering in strange lands. This is such a departure from what you did before can you talk to me not just how you pulled it off. I think a lot of times we dont talk about that gumption. What gave you that gumption or audacity to even think about this. I think its just wonderful. Let me say something. There was many times throughout this book when i i was thought i was in a make it. I sat here right here on this couch. They have not given me any kind of conclusion that i can work with. I thought they were gonna cancel my book deal. When i first read this. For you that are not familiar with my career i graduated at a Top University and i was trying to become an Editorial Assistant and a Publishing House and i was not getting a job. I was not even making it from the first and second round. This summer of 2014. I saw some so many people and been paid for it. I thought maybe that was my influence. But then most women of color often time personal essays are devalued as an art form im not trying to shame them. I look at the first book to give shane back. And as a black woman. Because people like that show the world that you can be a blessing. Thats saved the way. I have always been a curious person and very close to my family. There was all these different omissions and gaps. I was so curious about them. I wanted to investigate that. So even though i dont show that so much. I have always been interested in history. I go down 70 different radicals. We both are work people. I love how the book is wandering in strange lands in there is so much wondering in it. Its like a wondering about ultimately your people and your father. They led you to this journey were you come down south. You try to find it there. Did you feel like you are going to look at a part of you. Im in a keep it real. I was very insecure about where i fit. My mother and my father werent together anymore. I didnt know i had three other sisters until i was like seven or eight years old. Now where do i fit in these family trees. When i wrote this book. And i wrote the louisiana section of the book. It was so healing for me. It brought me closer. I went walking through the woods. In places he did not even go. It was definitely a journey not only trying to find out the expanses of africanAmerican History. But also to find a bit of myself. Two recognize down there and i was. It was very healing for me. One thing i want to say before i keep going. Make sure to put them in the chat. We will try to get through them along the way. Will get to talk much. I want to ask the hard questions. What was your biggest what people say preconceived notion about the south generally. Before you came down here did you make the distinction between North Carolina kentucky deep south louisiana mississippi. Or was it all to you. For me it was like everything from maryland on down to the south. The big expanse of land that i knew very little about. I have never been to the deep south. But i went back to florida in georgia. Florida for leisure. Not necessarily for this type of work. The south to me as a rich cultural reason that even though it really didnt have much. It was like a shadow of what i should have known or what was passed on to me. One of the things after reading the book you know what i really want to ask you. I wanted to know why you came back why you went back up north. If you see a white person looks presumably black what made you come back up north. It was a good example. It does not sell the mothers home. That was the last piece of home. In the south. There are things that are happening right now. Not only for myself and the children i hope to have but also for the artist. For the black people. They are curious just like i was. You talk about it. Could you talk to us a bit more about how coming down south to ask where families are from in the south, guaranteed theyre from mississippi because of the migratory patterns. For me its like, ask me the south everywhere. Even if we are not there, we dont know its theres remnants, whether its in the food, the dialect or whatever. It is still there, and i still like there was a quote that stuck out for me that i think maya angelou said. Its bringing people back like other siren call. This whole journey felt like siren call. One thing you do is you mystify and then demystify water and land, and you did it like i think great writers do, you let the characters the people characters you interact with help demystify water and hand. What did you found but water and land specifically during this . Im so excited. So, so much was me unpacking a lot of my assumptions out black american outside and why i say identity i didnt know there were identities under the black american experience. I know. So, i assumed that all black people were afraid of water because thats what i drew up grew up with. Death and water have been intertwined. My mother almost suffered a near fatal drowning accident. And we were taught it was because of our hair, kinky, coily hair. That wasnt it because even the men who had their hair shaved done wouldnt swimming mitchell mother grew up in Atlantic City and its a Barrier Island and nobody knew how to swim. So for me i wanted to take its step further and wonder why. But i made a mistake. Spoke to a woman in low country georgia, testify any young, and i said 0 black people afraid of water and she said thats not true. She says in a documentary, water this bloodline so if thats the case, if the water is the bloodine for this ethnic group of africanamericans to whom we owe so much where did the separation otour and the separation occurred from many different ways. The separation occurred men africanamerican people were great swimmers but when the Transatlantic Slave Trade happened a lot of them wouldnt let their children good near the water because they were afraid they would be taken. So the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We dent now how many enslaved africanamerican are at the bottom of the ocean. Some historians say its a floating graveyard. And you think about the plantations, crocodiles and whatever, can kill you while your building levees and dikes. Even more than that, if we think thought those who me gritted north. Before black people started migrating in droves white people when the black people started coming in droves everybody had to be white to protect themselves from these interlopers, but again, going down to the south, you good to the island, one of the larger Barrier Islands in georgia which used to be their water is poison. The water they have is full of lead and made me think of flint, michigan, and newark, new jersey, and other black currents where is happening. So the water can constitute freedom, the river jordan, the ohio river separated slave territory from free territory. Baptisms, take me to the water. Transformation. It can represent freedom and transformation, also heaven, because people bury their people based in water because they believe in the afterlife you good back to africa. So it represents all of these things and also represent death and disappearance. It runs the gamut so i wanted to make sure this was a chapter i was most worried about. Told myself you better nail it because it brings up so many strong emotions and i wanted to show the complexity of what water means to africanamericans and their enslaved people and its a centuries old leg guess, stemming from institutional forces like segregation. And what water can do to our lives. Growing up down here, again, like lot of us have grandparents and parents who either died or almost died and n lakes and rivers, but the fear of like all of those bodies we know at the bottom of the laings is one of the things that just terrified us growing up. When i got to that part in the book one thing love about what just did. I you want to experience what she just did, thats what the become is. Its walking with Morgan Jerkins as she fucking and researches and finds the majesty, what i call the abundance in you in us. The internet sometimes makes these kinds of books less likely, because Research People think its like pushing click and a google but you wrote a book about researching you, and in me. You wrote a book but researching me, and thank you for doing that shit. I want to make sure we get to just for people who might not have actually read the book, can we talk but the tension. Because there wasnt just im going down and this is going to be a tensefree exploration, narrate his journey. There were some tense moments. Can you talk about those a bit. So many. Where do i start . The history of our ancestors in being alone in certain parts in the deep south. I can take it wherever you want me to take it. I feel like you flipped the isolation portion. Can we talk beaut the about the tension and the terror you feel and how the terror unveiled in ways you did not expect. For example, like, when you talk about books that may not be made like this, its interesting because im a millenial, and i know how the internet can be a great place for conversation and terrible place, and i know and ive said this before. I know what its like to have my work taken out of context, mangled, maimed for only for public humiliation not conversation. One thing want to say is we say all the time im not my ancestors ancestors and its done in im stronger than them. But its interesting for me bus when i hear the phrase i am not my ancestors what does that mean . We say that black people are not a monolith. What does that mean for black people trying to survive in ways we may not deem successful or comfortable in the present day; and so i tell people all the time im proud of the Public School system. It was the Transatlantic Slave Trade, it was slavery, emancipation, the hall of renaissance, Civil Rights Movement and obama. Thats it. I was never taught that there were free people of color, free black people prior to lincoln, never taught that there were black slave openers. Thousands of them. Now, granted, there were black slave owners who brought their family members bought their family members to freedom but we dont like to talk about those things, talk but that because then it complicate otherwise notion of whiteness and blankness if were trying to get the financial and cultural path forward. That was hard because i was taught that black people just on the farther end of the spectrum in regards to white people in order to access the capital. Completely disenfranchised from it. Why that very uncomfortable for in and i want to eewrappate. You think this makes you mad. This makes me mad, too. Right. Yeah. There are lot of portions in the book where i didnt feel mad but i felt like you were complicating history that even some of us know and live. Im from mississippi, deep, dierks deep. About i just felt like you wering she my different ways, dirt portals of entry into what i consider myself. Want to talk but the interpersonal. We talk bit the north and south and interpersonal relationships. When i came up north, one of the difficultied i had was because i have what we call down here home training. I say, hey, to everybody. Most people look at me, i look you become in the eye, i nod at everybody. And then that shit is not what everybody does, lets say that in new york city. Can you talk how just the folk ways and interpanel interpersonal folk ways were different than when you came south. I knew that black people looked out for me in a way im not sure what happened in the north. It was like once you learn this person, okay, i want you to meet this person. And did you get back to the hotel safely . I was looked out for and ill say this, the places i went to were very seriously heavy. Even when i was making that drive back from hiltonhead to savannah at night and i usually didnt i usually tried to make sure i finished all my field work before sundown bus i was a woman in the deep south, but i felt like i was protected. In a way thats hard to describe if you dont believe in the disvine or dont believe in spirits but i felt it. Every time i got in my car, every time i finished with another person, and i even had people say, the reason why i spoke to you about this, i opened up but this is because either the ancestors told me or i saw something about you, that what you were doing was genuine. Some people had already been taken advantage of. Other scholars gone down and mined their lives for stories and didnt give them proper acknowledgment. I was already in a very precarious position. I am glad we get to that. Talk about how what you did necessitates ethics and i would say love of black people. You come into communities that have been mind for resources and mined for i think personal resources. Not just communal resources. You talk but the rules you set for yourself and i think theyre love ruled but the ethics you set for yourself going into places that were mined. I told myself, start doing preliminary research knives. Good the new york public lie prayer system and research the communities before you talk to them. Dont just waste their team and ask them rudimentary questions. You dont know these people and youre going to the south. So its like, reach out to them first before you travel. Reach out to them months before you travel and say, hi, im so and so, this who is i am, this is my website. This is my publisher and this is the book deal so you know this isnt a reduce a reus. And i spoke to them on the phone. Anytime record them i showed the recorder right in front of me. Put it right on the table so they know its recording and they would see me when i turn it off and when i shut it off. The thing is, but the ethics is that you have to be very careful with black people, especially the themes i cover. Its traumatic to talk about. So anytime i had a conversation with them, or that we were at a restaurant, near the water, and somebody pulled up issue always made sure i go to the back door of the conversation. I may not ask you head on how many acres did you lose . What happened to this cousin what was lynched . I start by asking them their name. State your nail. Where theyre from. Their parents, tell me what life was like here, and maybe how its changed and then thats when the stories start to really manifest themselves on their on. If you go portals of entry. I always tell my students many ways through which to enter a story. The architecture of memory. Go through in door or window that can open and you can see an interior life you wouldnt get otherwise. So take multiple steps before these people Start Talking to you. Make sure they know who you are, and i also say, that even though i am black i can be seen as part to the establishment, i live in new york, work with a traditional publisher and i could be seen thats enemy. And i also think what happened is that im a young woman. Im a woman. So im a woman, im bossy, tall, and i have a people tell me i dont have a good face. Have a disarming smile and put a people at ease because i didnt come with a whole team and camera crew. I had people with me when i was talking to people, liaisons who knew people in the communities but when youre a tall, young with women a charming smile and all she has is a recorder and a small little purse, what can i do . I know what youre saying. Do you feel like any people you met some of this is leading questions. Do you see that people you met were actually still a bit not sure of how close to let you in . Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All the time. I mean, there were older black men, you know what im saying, want to know what is this information going to be used for. Will say this, not a Single Person i spoke to that is in my book wanted to have a pseudonym. Let them know. I thought that was incredible. So any of you who buy my book, i urge you to look in the acknowledgment section because anybody that i spoke to did not say do not put my name. In some people risked their live to show me certain things. If they put a pseudonym how would their deskin dents find them . Descendents find them. I was thankful. Interviewing people and i was interviewing people who had done all sorts of abusive shit but they were make sure when you describe me let them know i use to wear guests. I just want to let people hear these people speak as much as possible. I tell you how i feel. I will explain the best i can about the stuff. Thats a hard part for me. I realized how detached i was front the land when i couldnt name simple things. We drive past acre and i couldnt tell you species of trees. So often times when i would get back holm i would look um pictures and do facial work because i would roach out to people or google illinoiss to say what is the name of this tree so i can describe it. You havent been able to sit in what it means for this book and this version of Morgan Jerkins to be out in world yes. Talk about the anxiety of releasing this book in this moment very the anxiety creating a book precovid. For me, im just glad i got the book done. Ive said that was so much to fear my book would get canceled because