Transcripts For CSPAN3 The 20240703 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN3 The July 3, 2024

Writers conference. It is such a pleasure to be today. This afternoon, in conversation with Patricia Spears Jones merida, golden and kevin powell, we can give them a round of applause, please. I am just going to briefly read each of our authors bios and these are condensed kind of in the effort for us to have enough time, a very brief word about each writer. And then, as you know as you will do there is room that contains their wonderful books and i hope you will spend time picking up their books and spending with all of their words. As i have done for many, many years. So to begin we have Marita Golden. She is the Award Winning author over 20 works of fiction and nonfiction. Her most book is the new black woman herself has boundaries heals every day. She cofounder and present president emerita of the Hurston Wright foundation and teaches workshops and is a literary consult tim Patricia Spears Jones is an arkansas born and raised playwright cultural and author of the beloved community and other collections of poetry. Her work is widely anthologized raised and she teaches at barnard. She is the current new state poet and recipient of the 2017 jackson poetry prize, she lives on a magical street embed style brooklyn and kevin powell who is a 2024 Grammy Nominated poet. Human and civil rights activist, journalist, author of 16 books, including the kevin powell reader, his collected writings, filmmaker, former two time candidate for u. S. Congress and new york city hip hop historian and shakur biographer. If we could give all of the authors a roundup of one. And i am now going to migrate to the table and, begin to as we are here to talk our panel today is the power of healing and so in our conversation today the writers will be talking about the in relationship to topic of healing and what we hope for today is engage this space landscape of healing within the black Literary Community and elsewhere and then what we hope to do is to have you participate meet with a question and answer i will lead and we can kind of have a real conversation each other so that were not just up on the stage talking at you but that were talking with you together, healing because we really, truly are in a time where feel like im saying the word healing. Healing every day. And so im really looking forward for us to. Be together and hold space together in the name of healing. And i cannot think of a better place than to be here. The legacy of medgar evers. So thank you very much. Okay. Now im at another microphone, but thats just fine. So what id like to do, as i just mentioned, begin the conversation with patricia merida and kevin these who i deeply admire. I have to tell them im really grateful for all the things you do in our community and your own gifts as writers, cultural workers, mentors, you. I see you as good trouble you know that youre out there in the world, not only writing and the imagination that youve offered our community but also i know that i am not alone as a younger writer who turns often my Community Think about healing. And so what id like to do now is start our conversation about healing, right which is so fluid. Its so shape shifting. It is studded with ancestors. The natural world, the diaspora, everything. But id like us to really focus on your own understanding of healing as have it. How you came to it at this time. I shared some questions in advance. You, because i wanted us to kind of try to focus somewhere inside the word healing and where we might journey to today in the time that we have. And so i thought i might you each to begin to just briefly think about this idea of healing and how in writing or another writers. How the idea healing has deeply influenced you and your journey as as as a writer and. If youd like to share with us that there was a writer, a movement that really set you on your path. And the notion healing and you may be here and think well my work isnt really healing explicitly but it might be near healing. And i thought now that ive said more than enough, i want to hear your voices. We could begin and lets open it up. I mean, you can go and order or engage however you want, whoever it like to go first. I wish we had of a ring shout so i know that were looking at you, marie to be clear, because youre like yes. And the Marita Golden the Marita Golden use you as well. Im in the process now of writing a very long essay called how to become a black writer. And im looking back at my my beginnings and at my writing and all the people who influenced me and when i think about healing, i this essay starts with me in my bedroom at nine years old and my father is beside my bed. And as on many nights he is telling me stories and hes telling me stories about the sphinx and he takes my finger and puts it on the globe and says, thats egypt. And then he pulls out a photograph and points to the sphinx and says, see that nose at your nose or tells me about frederick douglass. And these were stories that only looking back did i realize were teaching me how to write, but they were also healing me healing me in advance, so they were actually arming me for, i think, the world that my father knew i would be going into. And then i had this mother. One day were standing in the kitchen dating myself, making biscuits by hand, and he she had seen me reading voraciously, writing poetry, going up into the attic where i had pasted pictures from, life in look magazine and my books and solace in being alone and finding solace in writing stories. And she said to me, one day, youre going to write book and only back of was did i realize it in the kitchen that day i was baptize, but now i realize i was healed. And so there are many writers. Of course, you know who feel me. I love, for example, alice courage, you know, the thing i learned from her about writing was your point person. Youre an advance person for the hard, difficult. But my parents, they me. My first lessons about the power of stories to heal and the necessity to tell. And i think the necessity to make your life a powerful story. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for that. And yeah, i had the opposite. I grew up in a family that didnt tell stories and we were not where i grew up. I grew up in a poor family. And i still remember when roots out and i went to one of my gradients and said, well, can you tell me anything about mississippi . And she just said, i dont want to talk about so. For me, healing is often really a topic in my poetry. But i think resilience is an empathy. And so. But there are in incredible number of wonderful poets who i think really are sort of actively using that topic. I think for us and for most. Marilyn nelson, who not only is just a extruded airy poet, but she also writes lot of why a an illustrated books that in verse and and dealing with history and dealing community in ways that i wish i had the genius to do. She really does incredibly well and and and into zaki especially when she about her family. Theres a great form of her i mean i, i old school i carry paper. Sorry. We love to see it as this is corny. Yeah. Yeah. Is this corny its almost classic. All right. So im a classic person for this. Theres a great of her is called mood indigo, which opens the lines it hasnt always been this way was not a street robes and no mere memory dubois walked up my stairs humming some tune over me, sleeping in the company of men who changed the world. And thats the first stanza. And its so. But then i thought about where you were saying and then i started to think my own work. And then a few years ago i was commissioned to write a poem, the Jacob Lawrence migration series at the museum of modern art, which you can see on me read online is really a long one. Yeah, it was longest poem in the whole thing. I had no idea it was. The longest poem until they told me it. And i was like, this is like, could you cut a few of these lines . Okay, but here. But its it is about power that is seven, which is the only female figure lone figure that jacob morris painted and and what i said near the end and this is about healing last is to arrive north the first is see the way home to make a home puts her skills on hotplate shelves for a mason jars full of peach pickles taste of home chanels on the lumpy mattress. The chicago defender on a Kitchen Table biscuits. Hey rising before sunrise greens found the market run by italians she stands in this painting a cruciform of desire for it a center of beauty dressed in white. The stick her cudgel, her sword, the laundry, her step on the ladder to the future. We are people who seek beauty. Thats where i think healing starts. Well. Just just an honor to be here is to three legendary writers. Thank you all for having me. I was listening closely. I my mother is a storyteller. My mother was a storyteller. I come from a family proud geechee, gullah folks from South Carolina and lowcountry folks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you two things can exist at the same time as my wife. Angela always says my mother, my family told amazing stories, which is why im a writer. Im very clear about that. Listening to my mother, her sisters, my grandmother, their stories, mostly black women in my life shaping me when i was growing up. But also, i come from a family just like what i heard a moment ago where we cant talk about, that we cant talk about it. And so what i think about the word healing, i knew as a child that something was profoundly wrong in my home in my community, in the black church, everywhere i went with people who are my people. And i love african people. I love african people. I love african. Im a product of postcivil rights america. So i didnt have no memory of the civil rights movement. Black a black liberation movement, which means i also went to schools where they conveniently start teaching about history after world war two, which means i grew up a selfhating black person was ashamed of who i was. My, my nose, my lips, everything. Yall know what im about. I think its incredible blessing. If you happen to have had a parent or parents told you that youre beautiful as black person because they knew they were beautiful. And so when i think of oh yeah. And when i think about healing, i think about, well, if we to talk about healing, that must mean we must be wounded, we must be we must be hurt. And i simply did not have the vocabulary until i got to college and only went to college in new jersey, where im born and raised because of a program that was created by folks who were activists, who were fighters during the civil era. Its called Educational Opportunity fund, new york. We call here. Yall know what im talking about you know me and i got to college. I was introduced to someone named x. I was told i needed to read this book called the autobiography of malcolm x. And im a voracious reader. I Read Everything i can. I love reading. Ive always loved reading since i was a child. I was just reading the wrong stuff because of stuff i was reading. I was i didnt exist in it and when you talk about healing and what we may have read, i think its a profound question. You asked sister rachel when i read the autobiography of malcolm x, it literally transformed my life. One book because i saw myself in his story, i didnt even know he was dead until i got to the end of the book. I had no idea that he had been killed any of it. But what i took from the book and grew up without a father figure, i know there Great Fathers out there. There are black men in our communities as role models, as mentors. I do my best to show up as a black man, but unfortunate i didnt have that. So malcolm, a series of healings for me that there are powerful black men out there, you know heres a heres a formula that you could use for manhood. You could reinvent yourself over and over again. Part of healing means that you have to be honest. Malcolm was honest about everything, you know what i mean . Because not only did i read his autobiography after i finished the autobiography, i started listening to his speeches. I would listen to audio of speeches. I would watch Television Programs that he was on. And i was like, i want to be like him. I want to Read Everything. I want to know history because malcolm x who said history is a peoples memory. What i realize if dont understand how history has us, youre never going to hear. Youre never going to hear this society, this country was founded on racism and sexism and classism and enslave people, kidnap people from, africa, us, build the economic infrastructure of this country period. I didnt know any of that until i stumbled into malcolm and malcolm led me to other stuff. So i believe you cant heal black people or any people if you dont even know who you are. You have idea where you came from. You know, you dont understand the trauma. As we used words like trauma a lot in these times. We use words like trigger a lot. Youre right, rachel. We use the word healing a lot. But what i began to realize my mama, who i love dearly to this was just with her the other day. You know, i loved my mother. My mother has been damaged by racism because shes black shes damaged by sexism because shes a woman and she was damaged by classism because she was poor. Yeah. With me out there and because my mother, there was no there was no panels like this for mother. There was no a jamar van zandt, no oprah. There was no bell hooks. There was no walker, there was no Toni Morrison. She was like many black folks who just had to suck it up and keep going. Yall with me and being raised in this environment and literally what she was taught was passed on to me, yall with me. And it wasnt until i got to college and started going to therapy at the end of my College Years because i had to that i began to unpack. Wait a minute youve been damaged your entire by this system of oppression. Just call it what it is, you know. Bell always taught us me, including in peace bell hooks, you know you have to name the oppression. So we cant just say healing if were not willing to name what has happened to us. Why dont black folks want to talk about mississippi or South Carolina . You know what i mean . Why do we say that . You know, thats thats in past. Lets just get over it. Why do we black families or any family, jewish families, families. Yall know, im talking about . Well, one minute they cursed each other out. The next minute, which i want to eat. Yall with me. And so for me, ive wanted to be a writer. I was a child because my momma took me the library when i was eight years old and. I fell in love with reading and by 11 im like, i want to be a writer, but think about the damage. I didnt know that black writers exist until i got to college. You know, they existed because. The wonderful educational of a school that i went to a all these black writers we have sitting, they didnt exist. Nikki giovanni never heard of alice walker, never heard of mary brock and never heard of them. Quincy troupe never of them. You know, the damage that does to you. And so literally had to figure out okay ive been taught to hate myself the first 18 years of my life i now have to unpack all that stuff ive got to do a deep dive into, my own history, my own culture. Ive to move from selfhatred, self love and the way im acting. All the damage that has happened to me. Yall with me out there and some of us are violent physically. Some of us are violent. Some of us are violent verbally. Some of us are violent always. There are. People sitting in this audience right now who i know, who are stalwarts in the community, new york city, including brooklyn, who do wonderful work in the community, but are some of the most after people ive ever met in my life. Yall who im talking about. Oh, because you think that can hide behind an african or islamic name some african clothes, veganism, me, all that kind of stuff and actually deal with what really has to be talked about when talk about healing, what has happened us internally, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually that has allowed us to hurt ourselves and, each other. And this is the last im going to say because. Ive been going to writers conferences all around the world, black writers for 30 plus years. Some of us have written some of the most incredible stuff about the journey of our people. But also well say many of the folks that we talk about have been have had some of the worst eating habits, have been alcoholics and drug addicts and otherwise abused themselves. Because at this stage in my life, in my fifties, being a since i was a kid, im like black people, black writers. If were going to talk about healing, we better have courage now to look in the mirror. Because how you gonna write all this stuff, but you dont even practice it yourself. Thats all i got to say. Wow. I want to use them. I want to pick up on two things that you said. You and patricia both talked about the things that in families are not talked about and im glad mentioned therapy because healing the two primary tools my perpetua lifelong day to day healing have been a couple of stints therapy. Yes, maam. And then my writing and my writing forced me to my history, examine my past and plot out my future. And, yes, had this father who was afrocentric before, we use the words he was black, black as night, and he wore his blackness like beautiful flag unfurling. Yeah. And that same mother who told me that one day i was going to write a book also told me one day that i was going to have to get a light skinned husband for the sake of my children. Wow. And she had grown up in North Carolina and the toxic belief in colorism was part of she was right so she told me two things get a light skinned husband for you think of child and the math the cruel of the world we live in. That math was that equation that made sense. Wow. So she tells me these two things. Im going to write a book, so i must be something. But then i got to get a light skinned husband for the sake my children. So these two things are warring. So when india rewrites song, video and brown, one day im at home and my my step daughter called merida. Merida, i know you hate beat videos but please on theres a video you kind of like and its endearing yeah and im sitting there absolutely spelled out and in 4 minutes she has unlocked in me. Mm. The courage i needed and im something to confront what. My mother told me wow. So then i write a book called, dont blame the sun. One womans journey through the car comes. And i think i know. Okay. I think because ive written all these books and im Marita Golden i know everything about colorism. So going to be hon

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