Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On In The Country We

Libraries. I like to own t they might loan me a book or Something Like that. I do go to bookstores and just browse like everybody else. I read reviews. And you know, i just see something or hear something, there is no particularly systematic way. Or i decide i want to, you know, i want to read something on fillintheblank. You just go to the internet and pop up something about this and there you go. And then i try, if i am going to have an opportunity to meet an author, the other night at the library of congress, we had this president ial series that they are doing and i didnt have a chance to meet him but i was an admirer of evan thomas who wrote a book i friend of mine got me that was autographed from him. So i wanted to make sure i read being nixon which is one of the best and sympathetic portraits of Richard Nixon i have ever read. One of the nice things in this business is you have those opportunities more than others do. Host on the night evan thomas was at the library of congress how many members . Guest quite a few and very bipartisan. Probably at least 50 i would say there. A lot of couples. But it got a big turnout. And again, it is just a terrific book. I was sitting next to ken calvert who had, i think, he was like chairman of california youth for nixon and knew nixon very well. He was talking about the call he got from nixon the night he won his congressional seat in 72. He was talking about a wonderful guy, ken kichen, who was a nixon speechwriter in california and he said i was talking to ken earlier and ken is all through the book but i dont think he had read it yet. So he said, ken told me, you go listen and you make sure he is fair. And at the end of the evening, ken concluded he was very fair and told me i am going to call back and let him know it is okay, nixon got a fair treatment here. Host have you read president ial biographies on most president s . Guest quite a few. They are interesting. I dont have any my place is about the same as everybody else. Maybe not. Nixon is a niche taste i will grant you. A lot of him and eisenhower. And again you get wonderful privileges when you serve. Susan eisenhower i have met on several occasions and she was kind enough to invite me, and my chief of staff to come out to gettysberg of the post president homestead. It was one memory after another. Here is where i met jeff of the house and i said i got close to his plane in 59. I will never forget going out there to look at the plane that brought him to the cruise ship. He was the Master Sergeant on the base and a viewing area that he could get pretty close. My brother and i. It was wonderful. But she just, you know, what a treat. She is, you know, sitting there listening to stories about her grand father and grandmother and what they were like and see the things in the home but have a personal touch with this was this and this is where i used to sit while my grandmother was doing this and that. Host i dont know if you picked up Peter Carlson of the Washington Post about chris jeffs trip. Guest i have not read that. It was a big deal. I am old enough at the time it was 59 so i was like 910 years old. And i remember it. You know, very very well and follow it on television and all of those sorts of things. But you know, again, she has one story after another. Churchill, montgomery and walking the battlefield with her dad. And i would run off and the secret service would try to catch me or follow me. She is a wonderful person. But what a treat. Host the importance of William Shakespeare to our culture and our politics in your view. Guest pretty profound. Next to the bible shakespeare has probably had more influence on the way we think, talk and literature than any other person certainly in the history of our language. So you know, it is wonderful, obviously. It is great art and plays but it is great history, too. It a reminder that character and history really matter. History is not jus a matter of demographic forces. That is a big part of it. Individuals count and matter. Motivati motivations are complex. I am no shakespearean sculler but anyone who says he hasnt been the most influential writer in english history and maybe around the world because he is studied in so many languages i think you have make him an important guy. Host lets say after congress you go back to teaching and you have to teach a class and give your students one book to read. Guest that is the most unfair questions. Host it is an obnoxious question. Guest it would depend on what i was teaching. If i was just giving them a great book on American History i would probably pick i love Steven Ambrose and he used to say his Favorite Book to write and he had a thrlehree volume o nixon, and he wrote a book that is called, if i remember, crazy horse and custard, the dual lives of two american warriors. I found a copy of it when where was going to little big horne battlefield out on an expedition and always wanted to see that place which is haunting and there was inbook. I bought the book at the park, you know, the little place where you get trinkets and books. It is a fabulous book about these two very different warriors with very different traditions. If you live on the plains, and oklahoma is part of that, the first massacre is in oklahoma, it is in western oklahoma. I worked with frank lucas years ago when he was in congress and i was secretary of state in private hands to get it into the National Park system which is now thank goodness. But, you know, he described perfectly everything from weather to how this mass battlefield shakes regionally the obviously shaped the sioux and the other great plains tribes that were involved. But the major warfare and the weather and how they interacted. It is a great book and you know when you are in it sheer a guy that has been pulled into the character of custer and pulled into the character of crazy horse and you know, it is just understands and was so good. You know, i could pick out a bunch of other books and tell you. But i would pick this one or this one. It would not necessarily be a history book even. But again, colony again has a wonderful first rome series and that book on politics and entry is probably better than any history written at the time. There is wonderful histories. Boy, what a tremendous historical novel. You learn a lot from it. Congressman tom cole thank you for joining us. Watching the non fiction authors on booktv is the best television for serious readers. On cspan they can have a longer con patiencesation and dwelve into subjects. Booktv brings you author after author that spotlight the work of fascinating people. I love booktv and i am a cspan fan. Booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. I plan to do four things. The first is bully pulpit which is of course about Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard taft. As an old history teacher i want to go into the that because it is a fascinating era. I should take from the title they will talk a lot about journalism. So the author did go a lot about into the journalist at the period of the time and shorted the history i wanted but it wet my appetite for it. Last year i read a book about speaker cannon, the relationship cannon had with Teddy Roosevelt because something where thought would be fascinating. Barely mentioned at all. I am through it. Taft has been elected and lets see what happens from here on end. That is the first one. And then since i love baseball i am going to pickup a baseball book called the bullpen gospels. Bullpen gospels which i have read before but i want to reread it. It is about a kid who becomes a relief pitcher on the major leagues after a long way coming. It is written in such a funny style i have to admit in the three three chapters i was laughing at loud which is embarrass on the plane when kwlm i am sitting next to him. But it is wellwritten and cool and has insight. The fourth and last year one of my staffers gave me a book about joe cannon. He is going to continue on with that trend. That gaves me two of the four with great speakers in the history of the house. What to me is fascinating is not only was he the longest speaker server of the house and speaker when the seniority system was in place. He could not reward or punish anyone. He said when i meet the chairman of the committee i bow at the waste. He got his way but had to do it through persuasion and whatever he did and that is what i hope to find out. What was his secret of being such a powerful force in the house without having the overt tools other speakers had to force compliance. He had to do it by the force of his personality. And the last one is an another reread. When i was teaching history it will always be 1776 and giving people a concept of what it was like during the signing of the declaration. Realizing full hand it is close history but not history. Since it was written basically in the end of the 60s before it was produced there is a lot of 1960s concepts thrown in and the characters are a compilation. So john adams in the play is compilation of sam and john adams but i think the authors did a good job capturing the personalitys of the people involved. The other thing i liked was the actual language and writings of these individuals is used. After doing the play several times, i read through it, and you read other stuff by these individuals and you are like i remember that. It is kind of cool the way the authors have done a brilliant job in weaving an actual history. The language style is different in the 1700s than it is today. They were able to weave it into something that was enterta enteg and enjoyable. When i was Teaching School i had a kid debate on if this was realisic it. I said it is close to history. And he said you mean they sang back then and i said no this is a musical. One time we were watching a movie and he turned around saying what were they talking about and i said the revolutionary war and he said did we win it. I realized i had a lot of work to do with this kid. Booktv wants to know what you reading. Tweet us booktv or on facebook facebook. Com booktv. Janes new book, in the country we love is a moving memior that has received praise in the community. She israel volunteers with a Legal Resource Center and an organization that promotes civil involvement. She has also been named an ambassador for citizenship and natur naturalization by the white house. Tonight she is joined by the Baltimore Suns Award Winning Education Report winner liz buoy and liz, we thank you for being here and moderating this conversation with diane. Please welcome diane and liz to the Pratt Library. Hello. Good evening. Can you all hear us . Well, i just wanted to start the con versation by having diane tell you. You probably know her as an actress but probably dont know her back story. I wanted to ask you to give a brief introduction about the story and structure. Thank you, liz, judy, Pratt Library and all of you for being here. I feel honored you came out to hear me speak. I will try my best. My parents are columbian immigrants. I was born in new jersey but raised in boston . My parents came here with a visa in hopes i mean this story changes. Sometimes they say, you know, we were just going to see how, you know, check out the states or, you know, my mother had hopes of staying and making a family here and making her dreams come true, of course. And eventually their visa expired and they wanted to try to figure out a way to become citizens. So that was their journey and their quest. So they were undocuments for as long as i can remember. Undocumented. My childhood was shaped by that fact. My parents were very honest with me as a young girl. I knew what their status was and i knew clearly what my status was. I was an american citizen and they were not. I had something they wanted desperately and they made it clear they needed that so we could stay together. So i remember every prayer, every wish was that my parents got these papers that they needed so that we could stay together. We managed to live our lives but it was scary and i know anybody who has been through this experience knows how intense it is and how interesting your life can become when you are living in the shadows. So i grew up with this dream but i always had another dream. I had the dream of maybe one day becoming an entertainer, performer, an artist, and my parents were deported because of their lock of documents, i decided to stay and pursue my dream which is to stay here and finish my education and try to live out my own dreams in the country we love. I know it is corny but i always put that in there. Yesterday, right, i was making this video for this event and, you know, i put that in there, i said in the country we love and i winked because i felt embarrassed. And my friend is like own it. It is the country you love so own it. Now i am not winking it. I am saying so i could say in the country we love and pursue my dreams and form my own life. And then so here we are. I think 1415 years passed and i wasnt dealing with the cloud over my life which is ill immigration. I started seeing the topic come up in the news and day to day conversations and the word immigration would come up and my ears were ringing and i would want to talk about it but i couldnt because i felt you know all sorts of stuff, you know, i had a lot of issues because my parents were deported. I didnt want to deal with that. But then i saw there was a need to use my voice in this way and so it started little by little. I wrote an opted feeling out the water. I didnt think anybody would read the opted. I thought i will do this and no one is going to read it and it is odd and how i lived my life by trying things out and telling people and i tried and people read it and it got attention and i realized it was an important issue and i had to talk about it. And i had to talk about it because i had been through this experience and i knew millions of people were going through the same thing and our country needed voices like mine, people who had been through it first hand and could share a human story. And kind of be part of the conversation. And then, you know, lalala lots of stuff happened and then i wrote this book and now i am here. Was that too long . No, that was great. I think one of the interesting things about the book and i have worked a lot of on storeies abot immigration in the last year. We hear so much about the journeys to america from people all over the world but we dont always hear what happens once they are here. We dont always hear the voice of the child whose parents are deported. We dont hear how is it if you are an iraqi girl and arrive in baltimore . What happens after you get here. And so i think those voices are really important to be heard more. I wanted to ask dianne to read sort of a crucial moment in the book, her book, when i will set it up a little. Once her parents were taken out of the house they were detained for a while in prison so she could go visit them. She went to sort of say goodbye to her mom and i will let you start from there. This is in the prison, yeah. Guest okay. Excuse me if i slub or something i have some learning disabilities. It is not funny but true. I know not the best profession. Always challenging myself. Here it goes. You ready . Amelia asked. I stood and pif pivoted so i could avoid mommys face. As much as i longed to see her i always didsant want to remember her like this. Not with her wrists chained up, not in an orange jump suit. The person behind that barrier wasnt my mother. She was a stranger to me. With hardly a sound the group shuffled down the corridor, amelia held my hand while we walked. This isnt the end for you, she said as she tried to reassure me. As devastated as i was for my mom i was more scared for myself. Outside amelia peered out over the lot trying to recall where she parked her camery. A few hundred feet away a white police man pulls occupy. Amelia and i exchanged a look. Seconds later two guards herded some inmates out in the curb. My mother was among them. Just as my mother was stepping into the paddy wagon she turned around and caught a glimpse of me. She froze. I could tell she wanted to Say Something, to run to me, but before she could make a move a guard rushed her into the van, lets go, he snapped. The engine rumbled on. From her seat in the rear, mommy twisted herself around so she could see me through the bars on the windows. She was trying to tell me something but i couldnt figure out what it was. Then all at once, i understood. I love you. She was mouthing. I love you. I love you. I love you. She repeated the three words until the van turned from the lot and disappeared. I smiled and that was the only thing i could be sure of that my mother loved me. Fukk anyone who tried to come between us. That was me in my teenage years. The summer i lost my parents it was the strangest heartache. No flowers sent, no Memorial Service planned, and yet the two people i cherished the most were gone. Not from the world itself but gone from me. We would find a way to move forward and carry on. Just not with the promise of one anothers presence. Thank you. [applause] sorry if there were any children in the audience for the fword. One of the things that i think is not well understood among the latino immigrant community is the extent of the divisions that the immigration experience has on families. In my work as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun i spent 68 months at Paterson High School in east baltimore and wrote a series about those profiling of three students. One was a latino boy. Again and again during the reporting experience i heard particularly the boys, the undocuments boys, who made it kroos the border told stories about their mothers or fathers disappearing from them. Usually their parents didnt tell them they were going to leave honduras or el salvadore. They left in the middle of the night or while they were at school and couldnt bear to say goodbye to their children so they left. In one case, one of the boys came home from school and realized his mother was gone and everyone was crying and he could not figure it out. In another case, a boy told me he was told his mother was going to just take a bus to another town but he knew something was wrong and he ran with all of his might to see her before she got on the bus and he did just barely glimpse her leaving and she was crying and he was crying and he didnt see her for eight years. That happens so