Los Angeles Times festival of books. On your screen the campus of the university of Southern California, home of this 20th annual festival. Yesterday we covered programs on journalism publishing, World Leaders and more, and today we continue our live festival coverage with author panels on u. S. History, california history and crime. Youll also be able to talk with authors such Azzam Quinones and ben shapiro. Theyll sit down with us on our outdoor set to answer your questions via twitter and by phone. Check booktv. Org for a complete schedule of todays events, and you can see schedule updates all day long at the bottom of your television screen. All right. We kick off todays l. A. Times festival inside newman hall on the usc campus. Youre going to hear from Claudia Rankin author of a book called citizen, which was a finalist for the National Book award. Live coverage of the 20th annual los Angeles Times festival of books starts now on booktv. [inaudible conversations] hi everyone welcome. Im bridget mullins, im a essohet the professor here andof professional writing program andhrille im so thrilled to be here. I want to think thank the la times festival of books curators for asking me to be here because there are so many qualified people at the moment. I need to make a couple of announcements before we start. Please silence your cell phone and theres a book signing for within the session. The book signing is located at the signing area one and personal recording is not allowed. Im so delighted to be here with Claudia Rankine. How many of you have read citizen . Great for this will be a conversation. As you know it when the festival of times book poetry award. And they won the National Book critics circle award and also was nominated for the criticism which is a first speaks to the hybrid nature. The other titles are going to let me be lonely and nothing in nature is private. She also writes plays and collaborates on videos and is also a chancellor chancellor of the academy of american poets so this book has captured americas attention and i mentioned i wanted to start with the book the empty space. It is an asset test of the performances over powerful emotion disappears and good arguments lose their threat when they are harnessed what she would have from the audience the amendment has an outline or picture someone that is harnessed with a wish from the audience to see clearly. Its a desire to see more deeply into your self and shes accomplished this so we are going to start with claudia reading from the book. Thank you for coming today. Im full of gratitude. I feel like i have one shot. [laughter] i wrote this because i was curious to know if and the light bodied there were moments where it inside there were moments where it was behaving because it was white. I said can you tell me the time when you are doing this because you are white and she said well you know not so much about when im in a dork i know when i enter Public Transportation and i see that seat when you think about it thats something i do myself so then there is a discussion to step into a breach to step into places where as ordinary citizens we know there is a problem and we do what we can. On the train the women standing woman standing makes you understand that there are no Seats Available and there is one. Is the woman getting off at the next stop . Now its the pause in the conversation that you are rushing to fill. Used up quickly over the fear that she shares and you let her have it. The man knows more about the unoccupied seat venue. You imagine it is more like a breath and wonder. When another passenger leaves the seat and the standing woman sets you glance over at the man gazing into what looks like darkness and the plane is waiting anywhere he could be forsaken. It is adjacent and you dont speak unless spoken to and or body speaks to the space you fill. Where he goes, the space follows him. If he left his seat before this stationed you would see the seat and the struggle against the unoccupied seat land, where why imagine if they spoke to you he would say its okay im okay you dont need to sit here and look past him to the train going through the darkness. Does he feel you looking at him you suspect so. What does suspicion me nor do . You touch of a us leave of him into our shoulder to shoulder. It might be too late. Too late or too early early the train moves too fast for your eyes to adjust to anything beyond the man at the window the tunnel and its darkness occasionally the white light flickers by like a displaced sound. From across the tracks a woman asks a man in the rows ahead of humor to switch seats she wishes to speak with her daughter but you cant hear or see. The man next to you turns to you and ask if from inside his head you agree if anyone asks you to move you will tell them we are traveling as a family. [applause] one thing about hearing you read the word is to hear this voice. Its your voice but there is a dissolve in that theres such identification with the speakers and the man in the subway so its almost as if identity dissolves. I realized how there is a huge deal of empathy which happens. This might be a good time for the use of the second person because we look at the book and go that you wrote it and you asked the group mind to come into the conversation. So i guess that choice of the second person and that self identity is very striking to start reading the book and see these micro aggressions. Could you talk about that . It wasnt a choice initially. I started working in the first or third and then i realized the struggle of the text was how do you get a reader to think you dont already know because these are old ones and theyve stayed with us now we can say for centuries so how do we reenter in a way that allows us to interrogate again . And the second person allowed to because i wont do it because it meant the reader had to say this person is doing this and this person is doing that and i perhaps see myself standing here but i dont see race. I only see human beings. They say that person must be the black person or thats probably a white guy. Then suddenly race enters the space and someone has to take a position around whether or not one is capable of holding the actions so that was the thinking behind the second person but another part of me loves this idea that if youre talking about minorities youre talking about the second person and the position of the other is the second person so any sort of language level there was that deliciousness behind it the way that second person meant the use of the word other. Theres also a multiplicity of voices in the book and generosity. James baldwin, so many come and ralph ellison. I thought of that line in an invisible man who knows that on some level i speak for you so that idea that the role of the citizen or citizen or the responsibility is to notice things and to speak about them and thats the role since the publication of the book. Theres been a change on one of the pages. The edition that i have on 133 i think it is coming yes it is 134 and 135 and as you know since most of you read the book on micro aggression we have a gorgeous essay that moves forward and then we have these macro aggressions that almost are almost at a signage. There is now john crawford, michael brown. On that page can you talk about what youve done in the recent printings of the book . After i was thinking about Darren Wilson and you might remember it is as if the daemon is coming and i saw him and i saw paul kogan so i began to think whats going on inside of the head of his. I think its important and so i was thinking about those statements and i wrote down because white men cant show their appreciation and i thought it was the first line to something i that i would continue to think about this and think about the statement but then everything i wrote seemed to fall back into because white men can police their imagination and do you remember the other policemen asked to get his license and demand shoots him. They said it because he reached into the car but you asked me to get the license and in the voice you also hear a kind of compounded this. We dont know why this happened and you can hear it and so thats a different kind of body and the like policemen who shot walter lamar. We can see that so im not saying that there is one body in terms of this interrogation. But that lead me to want to think about what is happening inside of the white imagination relative to the black and brown body. But that moment is itself into so i ended up moving it into a very loose haiku and replacing that in a later edition of the book. Its a very strong haiku moment. It takes you deeper into the book but you also took out the Justice System. His back initially ascribed in memory of russell and on the other side it had the date of the Justice System. That case if you remember they saw him in the music so he claimed that he was afraid and thats why he called him. And actually he got up and i dont remember how it went but now hes in jail and it seemed like the Justice System had actually shown up on that one so it didnt seem correct to leave it there so that lead to the designer to be more accurate when you are being a First Responder you kind of want to respond with as much information as you have in the sense we have more information i thought we could change it. The book brought in a lot of techniques that may be more available from 100 years ago or even 20 years ago. There is a conversation that seems to be happening and you know the book. It contains illustrations it requires interaction almost in the same way they play script requires interaction and part of me wonder because i thought this book three times now and every time i have been amazed at the subtlety that also the appropriateness of the placement and resonance of the images and i wondered if you could talk about that process of finding the images or having the images folded into the text as an aperture into another conversation. A very powerful images throughout and at the end you have these scripts of situation videos which we can watch online and they are also powerful in the techniques of slowing down the action. So theres a lot of visual theatrical energy in the book and so i wondered if you could talk about the images and is this different from your other work . Doesnt expand on a process that you had before or is it a natural progression for this project . I love saying that im a visionary but i think that blake also had these images and maybe a little bit more illustrated so there has been a kind of client coming down. What is different about the images here has to do with the generosity of the visual arts community. Many of them i had to get permission to use. It opens up the space of the page so that it is a conversation between the many minds that supplied the stories and the sort of amazing pieces, so i love that the conclusion of the images meant opening a conversation that one couldnt control. That also is exciting because i have absolutely no idea what bridget took from the images that she saw. I know why i use them but that doesnt account for what will happened when somebody else interacts so it makes the space much more alive in the sense one cannot control the reader. In terms of how its different from the other work i think that for me the stakes are a little higher. I was very concerned with having the images into the work authentically so i was interested in what it generated the work itself. So i used a piece of his work. I dont remember if this is the piece they are actual garments a squeeze between main and he calls them sound suits and i was interested in why he made them and it took me a long time to track down the interviews and there wasnt a love of writing around it but i found an interview where after he said the beating of rodney king well if it is only about the colors of peoples skin why dont we create garments that would cover that out and we can start again . We will just start over so he made these suits and they literally cover you from head to foot and that was supposed to sort of clear up the space. Why is that interesting to me . There is a fantastic theorist called robin kelly and he wrote a book called freedom dreams. The last chapter talks about the only way out of this kind of systemic racism that is equal to what it means to be american is to make some kind of a jump that we cant seem to work outside us we have to jump. So i was interested in the back story. One of them he used a text so there was a real historical conversation going on with the use of the different pieces. This pic i think thats part of what i meant that there is an interdependent or in other ability with collective memory and questions in a way that wasnt available before so the book becomes a large conversation people are having over the country. One question i also had about the images in a way that a lot of the book sends you looking at says Research Published curiosity. I am curious about the choice in some ways it seems perfect as does the closing text. I can hear the breathing. Maybe you could read that for us and then talk a bit about the choice of the turner painting at the end of the book because i think the book must have been really challenging to end this book to come to some sort of there is no finality because it seems like you are folding back into it like a theatrical production but for now this is the end and maybe you could talk about the painting. Thats true it was impossible to end the buck. I was talking constantly like how do you get out of here but i had another friend who kept saying just write more of those. I am not just going to keep riding those. So i would literally be thinking and thinking how do you end this because you dont want to suggest artificially that there is an ending or any way we can reconcile these happening daytoday. I can hear that passages to dreams and yes i want case i want to enter up to kill him her, you me told me a story he says in his arms around me. Yesterday i began, i was reading in the car for time to pass. A woman pulled in and started to put her car facing line. Our eyes met and passed passed as quickly as the local way if she backed up and parked on the other side of the lot. I could have followed her but i had to go. I was expected in court. The sun rises slowly and cloudy drinking the light and barely. Did you win he asked . It wasnt a match i said it was a lesson. And thats one of those moments where i wrote down exactly what happened. I went to have my tennis lesson sitting in my car eating a banana thinking how do i end the book [laughter] and this woman drove up and looked at me and then backed up. This is kind of silly but i jumped out of the car in this thing going to ask her why she did that and i started walking towards her car which probably freaked her out even more white big black lady is coming after me. [laughter] better than i thought im going to be late and ross who i take lessons from what would have been happy. I cant do those things, then what is she going to say to me you are right i am a racist im sorry . So the book ends with this image by turner. Ive always loved turner. They felt like there was anything you could be a constable person or turner person and ive always been a turner person because turner is movie and everything is so cloudy. So i was thinking about this image because it seems to me that it embodied what it meant to move through a landscape or seascape in this case you think that you see a what you see and it looks nice and there is something beautiful about this image of you just glance at it so it holds a kind of normalcy and even beauty better than when you are pulled in to examine what is happening you see in this case they have been thrown overboard which was engaged for two reasons if you had to stick and dying on the ship and you arrived nobody would buy them obviously so it would just be property that literally. But if you toss him overboard you could say the insurance would have to pay for them. It would be lost property so there was a practice of tossing anybody that was failing in any way overboard. There was a storm coming and he felt people were ill on the boat and so he dumped all of the black bodies and when he arrived, the owner of the property, the black bodies was like what happened to my property and the other shipmates said it was his decision to throw them out so he was put on trial for that. But turner was upset that they were killing the black bodies so you have to like him to move out of the realm of commodity and into the human realm where it started and should stay. When i went to purchase the image you can purchase it with the detail and it seemed to impact this idea of what happens when you start to become conscious and look in to interrogate whats going on. Because all of this is happening across the visual triggers come its visual and i wanted to end in a visual moment and thats why they are important to this book because it is not a source of the bias and racism. Hispanics i thought i was a close reader but im beginning to think im not because its this last piece the only time you write in first person . Is. It was a moment of owning it because i wanted to do Something Different so in that sense i thought in this moment i will own it in terms of my own. Toni morrison talks a lot about not being interested and many of her few books have white people in them. As much as i love Toni Morrison there is no way that this work is possible without her critical work playing in the dark. I think it is a false construction to act as if im not interacting all the time including my husband so that would be problematic. [laughter] but one can own the eye and one does relative to ones self so i wanted to do kind of a corrective around that. Thats fascinating and i read an interview with loren berlin and her work on trauma and while i think the subject of the book is grace and trauma and that traumatic experience in both the Species Committee is deeply unconsciously hold behaviors that are connected on a dalia basis and early in the book i think it is the last section is going to visit. The image facing it is the striking image of the hybrid girl dear and selfless animal and i wonder if you could talk about your study of trauma or relationship and i was also thinking about the book that had a lot of Virginia Woolf on ptsd. I think that its to bring trauma and racism together in this way and it must be if it is an ongoing trauma. So if you could talk about that a little bit. Thats a great question. [inaudible] [laughter] there it is. While ive always been intereste