 So welcome everyone to the San Francisco Public Library, or our virtual library. My name is Natalie. I'm the librarian for the African-American Center here on the third floor of the main San Francisco Public Library. I'm joined here today with our panelists for Trauma, Tresses, and Truths, Untangling Our Hair through Personal Narrative. I will introduce them shortly. But before we get started, I do want to start with a land acknowledgement and then some announcements. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatouche Olani peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that the Ramatouche Olani understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia. We honor the Ramatouche Olani peoples for their enduring commitment to Wahra, Mother Earth. As the indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatouche Olani have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place as well as for all people who reside in their traditional territory. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramatouche community. We recognize to respectfully honor Ramatouche peoples, we must embrace and collaborate meaningfully to record indigenous knowledge in how we care for San Francisco and all its people. There is going to be a link in the chat for more information about indigenous peoples. And also if you know which land you occupy today, please share with us in the chat as well. This month is Filipino American History Month. Throughout the month of October, the public is invited to learn more about the unique history and contributions of this community and through interactive workshops, demonstrations, book readings, and more at the library. Additionally, you can check out some book lists that have been curated by our staff for all ages. Again, we'll put some links in the chat for all these announcements to our website for more information. And on the same page is the libraries by Monthly City-WideRead. For September and October on the same page, our on the same page author is Karla Cornejo-Villa-Vincila Vila Vencila, her name is pronounced that. She's a writer from New York City whose work explores complex to define themes of migration, mental illness, beauty, and intergenerational drama. Cornejo-Villa-Vincila and Jonathan Blitzer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, will be in conversation on October 26th at 6 p.m. in our virtual library. And we invite everyone to enjoy and join us for that. And this program was in partnership with the Museum of African Diaspora. And we'd like to thank them for partnering with us for this event. We'd also like to announce that they will be reopening to the public. And that will start this fall with five new exhibitions and a week of reopening events, a beginning October 20th with a member preview day, and then a public opening on the 21st and community day with free admission all day on the 23rd. And we'll put links to their websites. You can learn more details about those events. And then I'm happy to announce that the African-American Center has just opened our first exhibition for this year. It's an ode to us, a celebration of black hair. This exhibit is to honor black folk and the loveliness of our hair. It's an interactive exhibit with a selfie wall with vintage ebony magazine titles. There's a Spotify playlist with black artists who have lyrics about our natural hair and who have also rocked some of the most iconic natural hairstyles. The exhibit includes photos, poetry, and personal narratives. And so I encourage everyone to come to the third floor of the main library in the African-American Center to see our exhibit. That will run now through December 21st. And then on November 6th at 2pm, the African-American Center will have our first in-person event in the center for this year. And this is also a hybrid event. So you are welcome to watch it live on YouTube or join us in the center. And this is going to be an author talk with local author Keenan Norris in conversation about his recent book, The Confession of Copeland King. This book was described by Buzzfeed Books as a significant new voice in fiction. Norris has written what may be one of the defining novels of the era at the intersection between Black Lives Matter and COVID-19. After the reading, Norris will discuss the book with an audience Q and A. You can check out the title from our library and you can also purchase the book from the Museum of African Diaspora. Again, this is a hybrid event and so there will be a Zoom registration if you want to join us online. And then the next day in the CRET Auditorium at the main library is Making a Revolution will be joined by Kimberly Cox Marshall, the daughter of Field Marshall Don Cox and Steve Wasserman, Hayday's publisher and executive director as they discussed the legacy of Don Cox, the Black Panther Party and the new book, Making Revolution. This is on November 7th at 6 p.m. This is also a hybrid event and you can join us live in person in our CRET Auditorium at the main library or register for the event on Zoom. And then finally on November 10th at 7 p.m., please join us in our virtual library for a performance and author talk with Kevin Simmons. This is a partnership with the Hormel LGBTQ Center here at the library. Kevin Simmons will read from his new book, Monster I Am Today and he will also be joined by James Cagney, Deborah Major and Soprano Valletta Brinson will perform a special musical performance at that time. This is a virtual event and registration is required. We'll put links to all these and the previous announcements I made in the chat for you. And then for today's event, if you have questions you'd like to ask the panelists, I'd ask that you put them in the Q&A, the Q&A part of this Zoom webinar and at the end of the discussion, we'll have the panelists answer those questions. Okay, so we're still is Adrian here? I don't hear you, okay. I'm just gonna go into introducing the panel. We're still waiting on one more panelist. So again, the panel today is Lizette Wanzer, Barbara-with-Saunders, Katherine Sebran and Adrian Daniel Oliver. Lizette Wanzer is a San Francisco writer, editor and creative writing workshop instructor. Wanzer's work reflects the periracial, social and economic experiences of African-Americans and others. Wanzer's work has appeared in Kalulu, pardon me if I mispronounce these. Tampa Review, Natural Bridge and among others. Wanzer is a contributor to the Chalk Circle Intercultural Prize-winning essays, Wyatt McKenzie, Essay Daily, The Naked Truth and the San Francisco University High School Journal. Wanzer has been awarded writing residencies at the Headland Center for the Arts, Blue Mountain Center, Camel Harding Center for the Arts and others. And you can see the full bio on our website as well. Wanzer is the recipient of an Investing in Artists Grant for the Center for Cultural Innovation for Individual Art Commission Grants for San Francisco Art Commission for Professional Development Grants from the Creative Capacity Fund and California Humanities Grant. Thank you and welcome, Lizette. Barbara Ruth Sanders is Saunders, excuse me, is a writer, editor and writing coach. Saunders works as a technical writer, leads workshops on process and craft and writes poetry and memoir. Saunders is at work on dead dreams and account following the Grateful Dead. Saunders chopped off the relaxer in 1994 and hasn't had a haircut since Jerry Garcia died. That sounds like a really good spring. And Catherine Zebran is an activist and artist and performer who feels that black women are fighting for their humanity. Black women are demanding to be seen, heard, valued and respected. Zebran is the writer and performer of Angry Black Women. Zebran's solo show, Chronicling, Missage Noir, the patent hatred of black women that has compelled Zebran to shed light on the racism and sexism that infects our daily life. Like to thank our panelists for being here today. I'll go ahead and introduce Adrienne. So hopefully we'll be here shortly. Adrienne is a writer, hip hop scholar and educator living in Oakland. Oliver's natural hair journey began in 2004 while living in Little Rock, Arkansas where negative perceptions of natural hair were alive and well at the time. Oliver survived her early career as a scholar transitioning to twists, then a fro and ultimately arrived at dreadlocks. Oliver's academic work appears in storytelling, self and society and systematic collapse. Oliver uses creative writing to theorize about a more just education system that honors hip hop culture. Oliver's creative work has been published in digital paper and The Womanist. Oliver has been a Vona fellow and leads a virtual writing and healing circle for black women. Beyond her work as an interdisciplinary, Oliver mentors other educators as a Bay Area writing project teacher, consultant, training others to use hip hop sensibilities to cultivate imaginative and inclusive instructional practices. So we're going to start tonight's program with some readings from our panelists. Lizette, I'm going to stop sharing my screen if I haven't already and we'll start with a reading from you. Okay, awesome. Thank you. Thank you for those introductions and thank you everyone for attending tonight on a Sunday afternoon, late afternoon. One little side note, Natalie Adrian said she left you a voicemail. Oh, okay. Okay, so two of us on this panel are contributors to the upcoming book that's coming up next year by Chicago Review Press. Same title, Traumatresses and Truth Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narrative due out from Chicago Review Press in September of 2022. And then I believe all of us were involved in the Traumatresses and Truth Conference that I produced this past August. So I'm going to be reading from an excerpt that is slated for the book which is a collection of essays. And you'll just be hearing just a sliver of one of the essays I have in this one. It's called Twisted. It was just my third day on the job. I was still learning to use the fax machine. A coworker who'd been on PTO my first two days appeared in my office and introduced himself via nutcracking handshake. He made small talk, then business speak, back to small talk. Only so much to be said about the weather, the traffic and the mayor. A column of silence rose between us. His gaze alighted on my head. How did you braid your hair like that? He reached across my desk and ran his fingers through my braids, which I was wearing at that time. I seized his arm mid arc, gripped it just hard enough to signal my spirit and flung it away. If you want to touch my hair, you ask first. And when you do ask, I'll say no. Shock and puzzlement leaped through his features. He flushed several shades of red. Pivoted, exited. 1980s, braids and dreadlocks are prohibited in the workplace at Atlanta Urban League, Chicago Regency Hyatt, downtown DC Marriott Hotel, Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department. In the US Army, African-Americans could not wear braids until 2002. Do you wash those? She, a fellow strap hanger blonde on the Uptown Lexington Avenue Express. This is in New York City. Wash what? Your braids. These aren't braids. Yeah, they are. No, they're not. What do you call them? Dreads. Dreads? As in dreadlocks. Well, do you wash them? Of course I wash them. It's my hair. I didn't know you were Rosta. I didn't either. For over 400 years, black women's hair has been the target of erasure efforts, demarginalizing us both as African-Americans and as women. The various institutional modalities of policing black women's and men's as well, hair is a form of racist politics. Despite structural denials to the contrary, the fact is that our natural hair remains a heretical war zone. Policing of black bodies and our natural hair is a form of structural oppression. This is not such a surprising revelation when you consider that law is itself a form and site of politics. In her essay, Is Your Hairstyle Political? Audrey Lloyd explains how an immigration officer's objection to her dreadlocks nearly cost her a vacation in the British Virgin Islands. Natural hair, whether in the form of braids, afros, dreadlocks or other natural styles has always been political. Unfortunately, despite being well into the 21st century, the response to Lorde's question is a most disheartening definitive yes. Black women's natural hair remains political and persecuted. Our current twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racism have surfaced even more with the precarity of black lives. Writing about the many disquieting, execrable and prejudiced experiences vis-a-vis black women's hair illuminates two conundrums. First, the absurdity of trying to enforce white hair care grooming standards on African-American women. And second, the muted but invasive means by which society shames our natural hair from infancy through adulthood. I can't remember her name. I can't remember the year. I recall she was in Boston and I know it was the 1990s. She tended the front desk of a Tony hotel, the kind of place with pearly shampoo bottles in the bath, sumptuous pressed robes on the door hook, pillowed gold foil Godiva squares. She sported a new intricate pattern of braids. Guests traced her glimmering plates with their eyes. They complimented her. Management did not. Management was alarmed. Management, in fact, demanded that she remove the braids and return to her perm, a style befitting a post at her lacquered Mahogany station. Ms. Boston left her braids in. This missile followed. She sued under Title VII. I can't remember her name and she wouldn't know mine, but the night her story aired, I began growing at my relaxer. I chose Senegalese Casamont braids, standing in solidarity with her shoulder to shoulder, sister to sister, yulking the miles. From grammar in high schools to corporate boardrooms and military squadrons, black and Afro-Latina natural hair continues to confound, transfix and enrage members of white American society. Why in 2021 is this still the case? Why have we not moved beyond that perennial racist emblem? And why are women so disproportionately affected? Why does our hair become most palatable when it capitulates or has been subjugated? To resemble Caucasian features as closely as possible. Who in our society gets to offer the prevailing constitution of professional appearance? And how do we as black women encourage course correction and alter the prism through which our hair is interrogated? Which differences make a difference? And when? A 2016 Perception Institute survey of black and white women found that while the majority of both black and white respondents exhibited bias toward natural hair, white women showed explicit bias toward women who wear natural hairstyles. While one in five black women feel social pressures to straighten their hair for work, twice as many as white women. One concept to bear in mind when considering the questions I pose above is this. Hierarchies marked by race are ideologically inflected manners of enforcing the majority culture's status quo. It's essential to realize that white American society hasn't had to live as racialized beings, making it difficult for that sector to acknowledge race as an inherent part of systems. The white standard is implicitly considered the baseline against which all other standards are measured. This is precisely the type of lens which problematizes our natural hair. Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson says in slavery and social death, hair type rapidly became the real symbolic badge of slavery, although like many powerful symbols, it was disguised in this case by the linguistic device of using the term black, which nominally threw the emphasis to color. No one who has grown up in a multiracial society, however, is unaware of the fact that hair difference is what carries the real symbolic potency. For weeks, my coworker distanced himself from me until the day we boarded the same crowded elevator. Our eyes met across the grid of heads and hats and helmets. Neither of us blinked. He gave a small nod, small smile, touched the brim of his derby. I nodded back, sand smile. When we alighted, we walked single file in silence. As we passed the vending machine, he spoke. Nice day today. Yes, it is. It's supposed to rain tomorrow. Is it? What do you make of Giuliani's plan for Times Square? I think it sucks. I agree. It'll turn the place into six flags for tourists. I hope not. Worse than the Vegas Strip. I guess we'll find out soon enough. Well, here we are, another day, another dollar. He dashed ahead to open the door for me. Thanks, I appreciate it. You bet. Isn't today the building's ice cream social? Think so. You going? He spoke to my back as I hit it from my office. Maybe depends how much work I get done. I'm going. I slid the key into my door lock. Might be a good way for you to meet other tenants in the building. That's a thought. I turned the knob. Well, have a good one. You too. I shut up my door. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And it looks like Adrian has joined us. Thank you, Adrian, for being here. And if you're ready to go, we'd love for you to turn your mic on and share your reading as well. And you should be able to share your slides as well too. Thank you guys. I am actually in the library, the San Francisco Public Library. So I have to wear my mask. So it is what it is. And Natalie, do you have a copy of the slides? Yeah, give me a moment here and I can bring up your slides and then you can just tell me when to move them. Okay. Would you like me to take care of that, Natalie? Please, thank you, Anissa. Well, while they're getting the slides ready, I just want to thank everybody for being here and supporting this work. Thank you, Lisette, and all of my wonderful illustrious panelists. I'm excited to share this essay. And the title of the essay is Pro Fatigue and Other Four C Walls. And I am Dr. Adrian Daniel Oliver. Next slide. H&M's Fall 2019 Ad Campaign points to a clear need for them to consult somebody's black mama before they ever put together another ad featuring a black child. In January, 2018, the company came under fire for its quote, coolest monkey in the jungle sweatshirt advertisement, featuring a young black boy. Just shy of two years later, once again, H&M garnered backlash, this time for the way a black girl's hair was styled or not styled in this instance. With recovery from the last scandal still in diapers, the company was back to crawling itself out of an insensitivity fiasco. As black Twitter and social media flurried with commentary, I had some time to think about the attention given to my own choices. Though we're making great strides in some professional arenas, we are still coming to terms with accepting black women's natural hair. By we, I mean predominant American society. This America is not making the acceptance of varying hair dialects in easy process. In fact, in 2019, California became the first state to pass the Crown Act, create a respectful and open workplace for natural hair. A bill that Senator Holly J. Mitchell wrote, making it illegal to discriminate against natural hair and protective styles like braids, locks, twists and knots. I remember when I first got the natural bug, my longtime hairstyle is discouraged it. You'll never get a job, she said. We didn't have the Crown Act back then. And I was petrified to hear this as a recent college graduate in 2000. The prospect of the job search being any harder than it already was, with my one page creatively arranged resume was daunting. I was scared so shitless that it wasn't until 2005 that I decided to finally make the BC. Next slide, the big chop. Between 2000 and 2005, I made so many hair turns and shifts that BC was a fitting term for the moment. I cut my relaxed hair off to one inch worth of new growth. Before that moment, I had worn my hair in many styles, going from a long wrap to a short pixie cut from black to dye my hair blonde, then finally the BC. The AD, the after death, the relaxer me had evolved because my hair was so short, I had tiny twists that I didn't like when I first started growing them. When my hair got too long for the single strand twists, I graduated to two strand twists. I missed the single strand twists with their straw size Shirley Temple look. Still the two strand twists grew on me because I could take them out and wear a wavy fro. Then I discovered Curly Nikki, the primordial natural hair blog of the era. Next slide. And on this blog, I learned the ABCs of hair texture. I was delighted with myself when I figured out how to determine my hair type and discovered that I was a four C. Note that the model wearing this hair type is not smiling. I had the kinkiest hair type with four being the last number on the rung of a four step hair arc. I soon discovered more about what I already knew that neither blackness nor black hair shows up the same on all black women. In my own story, the racist undertones and colorism began to surface and led to my becoming a product junkie. I tried everything to get my kinky four C hair to look wavy. It was then that I found the twist out cure, a proliferation of vloggers and YouTubers offered precise, detailed steps on how to get the perfect twist out. The equation for all things pretty went like this. Victub of product plus wet hair plus twisting for an hour time set and dry overnight or blow drying equals the perfect twist out. This was the early 2000s and the natural hair products market began to feel oversaturated. I eat just five years earlier. I was hard pressed to find a co-wash product. Knowing what co-wash was made me feel like I was part of an insider's club. It was a conditioner wash. Co dropped the conditioner wash. It was brilliant. Though my excitement soon faded when I began to notice when other naturals asked me, how often do you co-wash? That the right answer was once per week which had to be said with well-defined curls bouncing. It became clear to me that the frequency of your co-wash indicated how good your hair was. If you're only co-washing once per week, it was because your hair had that naturally curly quality that required less water to keep. Here we are all grown up in past emancipation reverted back to the house negro versus the field negro. The question of the co-wash and curl buoyancy was always about race, miscegenation and what you were mixed with to give you that quote good hair look. It was where the term good hair came from for most black folks and mixed with the white man's blood and having looser curls because of it. Next slide. By the time I decided to lock my hair, I'd had enough. I had enough of playing the co-wash game of buying different products, of keeping up with the hair gospel according to YouTube for how to get my hair to act right. Wasn't it right enough because it existed and still grew from my head despite the dogged determination of the culture to make it feel less than. Today, wearing lots has brought about more commitment to a hairstyle than I ever imagined possible for me. Up until my 2005 BC, I'd worn a relaxer for as long as I could remember. Sometimes I would try a different style every week just because I could. Though it may sound like fun, the constant flux of my hair made myself image seem like a fleeting flower rather than being connected to the spiritual aspects of hair grooming that are so rooted in African culture, I was playing dress up. The impact of this play was costly as I gained awareness of objective self as a self whose job it was to prioritize your centric beauty standards. To go from wearing a natural to wearing dreadlocks was a huge step in my hair journey. Dreadlocks do not represent absolute freedom by any means. There is still a whole universe of aesthetics that I'll say for another essay. Let's just say that my fruity was so great that in comparison to any other hairstyle, it feels easy. It was a sunny summer day the month after I'd started my dreadlocks. I made plans to have brunch with a friend, a fellow naturalista who often wore protective styles such as braids. When I joined her on the passenger side of her car, I handed her a tow bag. Here, I exclaimed, you're giving me all of this, she asked. I told you, I am through. My friend peered into the bag and smiled, thank you. When my friend accepted my gift of $100 in hair promises, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was no longer going to be a slave to chasing the illusion of the quote, good hair twist out. I was going to regain the time I'd invested in my hair for many years. I would write and write essays like this on my hair journey next slide and even poems dedicated to the little girl in me which is published in the full version of this anthology. We don't have time to hear it today, but Trauma Tresses and Truths, Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narrative is where the full poem, The Little Girl Lives. And thank you so much for listening. Thank you. Thank you, Adrienne. And thank you for sharing those readings from the upcoming book. I found myself laughing and sighing and relating to a lot of it. So I appreciate your vulnerability in. And now we're gonna switch gears a little bit and I'd like to ask some questions to all of you. Again, for our attendees, if you have questions, please drop them in the Q&A part of this webinar and at the end we'll get them and direct them to the panelists. So my first question is to Lizette and Adrienne who are both contributing to the upcoming book, Trauma Tresses and Truths, Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narrative. And this includes personal stories while wearing natural hair. Lizette, on your blog, you talk about the idea of this book coming from suggestions from a few audience members following your panel at, I believe it's the 2020 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in San Antonio, Texas. Oh, why this topic for that conference? And also can you talk to us a little bit about that event? Yeah, so for people who don't know, AWP is kind of the annual MECA conference for creative writers of all genres and types. So it's the largest conference in the country for creative writers. And it's typically between 10 and 15,000 attendees. It's very difficult to have a proposal accepted there. I tried twice before over the past six or seven years, but considering last year's summer of racial reckoning, I thought that this topic could not have been more timely or more of a fit for a conference that is steeped in cultural conversations. So at our panel, we had an SRO crowd. And the book idea was catalyzed by several audience members who came up after our panel and they literally came up and said, where can we get the book? And of course, there wasn't a book. And at first I didn't think, I wasn't convinced that the idea had any legs as a book, but then following the Breonna Taylor and George Floyd murders, I changed my mind because that summer I spent a huge amount of it being extremely enraged. And I'm talking like unrelieved fury like day after day. And it was difficult to function, sometimes impossible to work. And then the coronavirus lockdown exacerbated the whole situation. So the one weapon that I felt like I could wail since because of the lockdown, we couldn't march and protest and all that. The one weapon I could wail with my pen. So I took that idea from these audience members and started writing the book proposal in late July. And then by the end of September, I had four offers. For the book. And I sold it ultimately to Chicago Review Press. And then for the rest of the panelists, and then no, not everyone is part of the book, but you were all part of the conference. How are you inspired to write about this subject and or share about it as panelists at the conference? How are you inspired to share your personal stories? I know, Lizette just talked about kind of the lockdown and those recent protests. And I wonder if that was the same for everyone else. So if there was different reasons that brought you to this project, maybe Barbara, we could start with you. I met Lizette on LinkedIn and was really fascinated and intrigued by the idea of this conference. I come from a little bit of a different perspective and that I'm a pretty unconventional person. So my hair journey was not so much about becoming, being more professional. And I just was, I'm just interested in people's stories. I've been working on a memoir of my own. And this made me think of how the hair journey or even my hair experience fit into my larger story. And Adrian, how about you and yeah, how did you join this project? And maybe can you share a little bit about what you chose to write? And you shared a little bit with the reading, but like how did you come to share those stories? What was that process? Yeah, so similar to Barbara, I met Lizette by just the call for submissions to work on the project, which I found out through network. And I decided to write about the H&M campaign because right when I was answering that call for submissions, it was still fresh. It was in the news. And I was on Twitter and Instagram and seeing the divisiveness of how, even within the black community, we couldn't agree on her hair and if it was good or bad. And I was just like, oh my gosh, it's like 2018 and we're still like debating about this stuff. And then the colorblindness of advertisers, which I go into more depth in the longer version of this and the anthology, the actual essay. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about why I'm on the side of, they could have combed her hair a little bit better and still had her look like she had been outside. And just being a little black girl myself, growing up, trying all these different styles like I wrote about. And just that journey of going from a relaxer to natural hair and then even within that still seeing divisiveness in our community because even though I now have dreadlocks, it's not like I look down on people who have a relaxer. But I see that kind of judgment happening. Like, oh, she has a weave and oh, she has natural. I still think there's so much community we can build. I think we can start to do that through telling these stories. I like that. And Catherine, how about you and your contribution to the conference? How I know that you on the second day of the conference we were all treated to a part of your theatrical show. Can you talk to us a little bit about that process and why using that instead of like an essay? Why theater? Well, I have a theater background. I'm degree in theater, but only as a technician. And as I'm sure most of you realize I had been dealing with a lot of madness due to my hair, which I always thought was like, wow. I mean, due to being a black woman, period. But there's always that section, there's always that your hair. I got rid of my permed hair when I was 18 years old just because I decided I should not have to spend $50 every three months. It was, it's a long time ago. So it was $50 then, $50 every three months to have an oil slick, Jericho y'all, to have an oil slick in my hair, right? So I decided that enough was enough and I bore the brunt of it, you know? Like I would get a lot of madness from white people and from black people because I didn't have a curl, I didn't have braids, I didn't do this, I didn't do that, didn't do the other. Back when I was young and beautiful, my hair was a lot like yours, Natalie, which is why I'm jealous as we see green with envy. So anyway, a producer friend of mine, Thomas Simpson knows Luzette and he recommended me to her as he enjoyed the hairpiece in my one woman show, Angry Black Woman. So that's how I met Luzette and that's why I'm here. Cool, cool. And then this is for all of you and you can kind of just jump in. But how does it make you feel to have non-black audiences read these personal narratives and even at the conference, I know that not everybody was black when we were at the conference and I remember even in some of the discussions, there were times that that came up, I think, Adrienne, when you had the tinion, am I pronouncing it correctly? And I remember there was like a part where you gave us like a writing prompt and there was a discussion about, you know, someone who was white and speaking about that. So I guess for all of you, how does that make you feel to be vulnerable like this and then have non-black people reading this or listening to this or watching these narratives? Well, I mean, I believe that they can get schooled by reading the book. As were many who attended the conference, even though the audience that I have in mind for this project is first African-American and Afro-Latino women, second, people of color in general, and then third are allies who come in all genders and colors. I also want to mention that when I was recruiting writers for the book, I heard on Twitter and Facebook that there were middle Eastern and biracial and East Indian women. And interestingly enough from Native American men, many asking whether there was room for them in the book or whether I would do a sequel that might include them. And they would share with me their own personal stories of struggle and family dynamics, especially in the case of Native American men, persecution, all because of the way they did or did not wear their hair. And so it was interesting for me. I hadn't thought about that. So I'm hoping a wide range of people do read it. So yeah. How about for the other panelists? Do you have any feelings about that? Well, when people, when white people would talk to me about my show in general, like particularly around the hair piece, they just don't get it. They just don't, they don't understand. I even talk about it in the show, like it's in their DNA. There's a time when we didn't have any body autonomy and they still live, like they just think they can just reach out and touch us. And they really do not understand what the big deal is. So a lot of them, excuse me a minute, Tiberius, cut it out. I'm sorry, I got a big old dog here. So a lot of, so they don't understand like, this is my body, this is mine. And the same way you wouldn't want someone randomly slapping you on the ass. I don't want your fingers in my hair or on me. I get my fist are clenching because it happens far too often and I always make me angry. So I think having to explain to them a little bit after the show, so I mean, they get the seed of it. And then, you know, after the show, I had to water the seeds so that they grow and then they can understand more. But so yeah, that's the feeling that I would get when people would see my show. I think they get it, but they don't want to honestly, non-black people I'm talking about specifically. They get it, they don't want to because they don't want us to block their privileges. I like the analogy of the watering the seed. Yeah. I like that. Adrienne or Barbara, any thoughts about that? I was going to say that there are so many topics that I talk about that people may or may not relate to or accept or be interested in that I don't necessarily feel more vulnerable about this one than about others. I think I might have 10 years ago or 15 years ago because I might have felt more sort of internalized shame about my hair. But the more I accept myself, it's just another one of those things that people either they want to hear it or they don't. And I was just asking that. That's an excellent question, Natalie. I think that's like the elephant in the room question for me because it is challenging to have non-black folks in the space for me. I just come from a different orientation being from the South where our communities are really insular as far as black folks being in community. And even when I was leading that workshop around the Ting Yang laws and there was a white participant who contributed to the conversation, in my head, I was thinking, I feel like I love that we have folks of all races here. However, I would appreciate it if the women of color were given the space to take up space. If that makes sense? Yes. So I would say that if somebody's white, somebody white is a part of this conversation or part of a conference to be mindful of how you're even taking up space in those spaces. Because we haven't had these spaces for so long that I'm overprotective of them. And I'm like, no, let that sister speak first. But I couldn't say that as a workshop facilitator. I just kind of leaned on my co-facilitator, Carla, who was so gracious in redirecting the conversation away from the white woman's experience to the women of color in the room. So it's definitely like a learning curve for me in sharing this very personal topic. But I do think it's something that we should start to have these conversations together and just be mindful of how we take up space within those conversations. I like that. And I thought that you and Carla both handled that very well. And I appreciate all of your responses, too. And I think that it shows that Black people were not a monolith. So even with a question like that, we're going to get different debate and different answers towards that. So now I want to switch it a little bit away from the conference and the book and talk just about the natural hair movement. So for everyone here, how has the narrative of natural hair evolved in the past five years, like in the public, in your personal life, in the media? And what do you predict will happen in the next five to 10 years? And I'll just, I won't pick on you guys. I'll let you guys just jump in. I'll go. I think in the next five to 10 years, and I know it's hit several blocks so far, but I think that in the US, we will have a federal Crown Act. It will not be this patchwork quilt of protection that we have right now in the country with states coming on one by one. And then I also expect to see some copycat legislation in other countries, especially places like the UK and France, where this is a huge issue, and maybe Australia, as far as predicting what might happen in the next five to 10 years. And I hope it's sooner than later for the national Crown Act. I know it's been reintroduced. It was reintroduced in March again this year, and it's having problems getting through the Senate, apparently. I can keep moving on if there's no more to that. And what do all of you think is the biggest challenge in the natural hair movement right now? Ms. Sajinwar, and shame. We're still taught to be ashamed of having our natural hair. We're still taught that straight, stringy hair is the epitome of beauty and femininity. Yeah, we have Viola Davis, yay, and we have Solange, yay. But I'm waiting for more women in the public eye to go ahead and take that leap. What happens when Beyonce wears her natural hair? What happens? What happens to the way we see that? Did you guys see that thing she did, Lion King? She's surrounded by all these beautiful, dark-skinned sisters with natural hair, and there she is with a blonde weave down to her butt. What happens? Y'all know I'm right. So yeah, I think it's going to take more public people that people look up to. Like what happens if Meg Dostallion and the other girl, what happens if they start wearing their natural hair? What happens if they just wear braids? You know, just wear some braids. So I'm looking for that. There was a Marla Negra, if you remember her. She was down for her bra, Afro Latina. And she would fight back when people would say, well, it would be more elegant if you could do updoing. She's like, why isn't my hair elegant? And I appreciated that. I'm sorry I have really strong feelings about this and Black women's natural beauty. So yeah, I think it's going to be a struggle, but as long as Massage Noir is strong within us, it's going to be the way it is. And no apologies needed, Catherine. I would hope to see less kind of commercialization of the natural hair movement. It's interesting when Adrienne was speaking, I was thinking, you know, when I cut my hair in 1995, there wasn't a YouTube and there wasn't a movement. And so there wasn't a whole idea of categorizing whether your hair was four C or two C or two B. And there weren't a whole, you know, array of products to buy. And it was just a matter of what an individual was able to do. And I think with things like the passage of the Crown Act and more of a mainstreaming, that it won't necessarily be so much a way to sell things to people. Yes, and I would just add to that, just building off of what both of my panelists, well, Catherine was saying about Hollywood and advertising, I would like to see there be, because even though there is a movement and commercialization of the products, you're still like the mainstream look of like the straight, you know, I don't know, lace front kind of hair look when you start watching shows on TV or advertising. It's still, we still have a long ways to go. The standard of beauty is still very much in advertising and product, how that straight, you know, panting, glossy kind of blow dry out main. And I'm seeing some of the comments in the chat educating me about like Asian sisters who struggle with that. Like I would love to see them just have, you know, curly hair and we could just unite and, you know, and standing against what's being propagated to us in advertising and Hollywood image. And I think, you know, it's gonna become a global conversation. Yeah, you know, I was gonna ask you all about the effect the internet has made on the discussion, but you've already spoke to that so nicely. And maybe kind of coming off of that question or the answers you gave is what do you think is the most interesting trend that is currently happening with natural hair, even given all, you know, the struggles and how far we still have to go? Well, I think in terms of the internet, I think the number of affinity groups has really grown, especially on Facebook. And many people are also just being loud and proud about their natural hair with their social media handles. And then you have the whole bunch of hashtags flying around, especially during the week leading up to the second national crown day this year, which is July 3rd for those two who don't know. You had hashtag past the crown, hashtag hair discrimination, hashtag the crown act, as well as hashtags around specific styles like, you know, box braids and bantu knots and et cetera. And then the trend that I find for me anyway, the most fascinating is hair salons that are being founded specifically and exclusively to work on natural hair for African-American and Afro-Latina women, which I never would have seen that when I was growing up. And now there are not a lot, but you know, there are more and more of those kinds of salons coming up. And that's what they're specializing in, 100% natural hair care and styling. And now I'm gonna- But I'm also noticing there's a backlash. If you've noticed this, there seems to be a backlash. Like I'm noticing I'm seeing so many more weave demos on Facebook and on social media. I'm noticing more wigs are being sold, you know, to women, to black women. I'm noticing that all those advertisements are black women, oftentimes hiding or changing their natural hair too. So it's subtle, but I definitely see a backlash to a new pride in our hair. I don't, I live in Berkeley- A part of my, go ahead, I'm sorry. I was just going to say, I live in Berkeley, California and I think that probably maybe employers are a little bit more loose here in general. So the trend that I see and that I love is that I just see young women wearing their hair natural in a way that I never would have. It's hard for me to count or quantify or see a backlash, but just the fact that I see it every day is a trend that I celebrate. So. I agree, I agree. Now I wanna ask kind of get more personal with your own hair journeys. Can each of you talk about what, like what has helped you get to where you are in your natural hair journey and like what advice would you have for others who are starting to go natural or returning to their natural hair? I think it's important to remember that once you've made the decision to go natural that you have to remember that it's a process. It's a journey, it's even maybe a pilgrimage and I would encourage you not to shrink from that odyssey. If you lean into that journey, I think that it will teach you things about yourself and you don't expect things to happen overnight. That's not quite how it happens. But also I wanna say, and I think Adrienne kind of alluded to this earlier, once you do go natural, don't peer down your nose at others who choose to wear weaves or perms, to each her own because you don't know why those women have made the choices they've made. Bear in mind, there's only 14 states that give us this protection right now. That means the vast majority of states you can still be fired or your kids can still be kicked out of school for wearing natural hair. Also, you don't know if women feel they have a choice or the time or the money or some other scarce resource. So it's not about being like blacker than thou type. That's all, I'll just stop there. I won't preach. No, I love that, Lezette. It's not about being blacker than thou. And it is really a pilgrimage. That's why I thought it was important to put that collage slide for our audience together so you can see that it's been like just so many configurations to get to this point. And it definitely takes having a community. I think I had to find the right community because when I was staring in my essay, the community of the collage and getting your curls right and all that, that was like four years of my life. I got frustrated with that community. So I think just having the right people around you, even at the very beginning of my journey, I was in a community still around people with straight hair discouraging me from going natural. So it's all about finding your tribe along the way once you decide to make that commitment. I was gonna say I had a little different experience. I'm gonna share a screen, share by screen. I have a photo of myself the very first time I cut my hair. This was 1995 and I was working in an office job, a tech job in Emeryville for a database company. This is my first niece and she was an infant. And as I said in my introduction, Jerry Garcia died. And so the big transition that I made was not so much about deciding to go natural as it was deciding my life has just got to be different. I just have to claim it. I love that photo. I love that photo. So I have a couple more questions for you and then there are some questions in the chat. So I wanna make sure we get to those people. I could talk to the four of you all night. So let me see here. I'll pose two questions and maybe you can decide which ones you wanna answer. My first one was what are some common misconceptions about going natural that people might not know about if they're just completely outside of the community or if they're starting to enter it? What are some common misconceptions? And then my other question is what's the question you're most tired of hearing on the subject and what would you like to say about it now so that you never have to answer it again? All right. The question that I'm most tired of hearing. Is that real? Is it yours? Do you mind if I touch it? Can I feel it? And especially as in the piece I read at the top of the program, do you wash it? Why would you ask me that? I don't see anyone going around asking wider Asian people whether they wash their hair. Ridiculous. And also people referring to this, my dreadlocks as braids and in arguing with me over the correct terminology. And as far as what can I say to keep them from asking me that again, I don't know. Probably nothing. I would add to what Lizette said is that real and will that come out? Could you kill that out? No, I couldn't. Well, what would you do? You wanted to change it. I'd have to cut it. And Natalie, what was your first question? There were two questions you asked. Yeah, I was just trying to pack it all in. What are some common misconceptions about going natural? That people might not know about that are outside of the community or who are trying to enter and start their natural hair journey. Okay, because I definitely know the question for me. I'm tired of the, can I touch your hair question? Some people don't ask though. They'll just reach out and touch it. And that's the worst. That's the worst, Catherine. And I'm just like, I'm tired of, I've been having the same conversation all of my life. I can't believe that there's people out there who don't know not to just touch our hair. So I hope that whoever sees this program, just spread the word, don't touch my hair. So definitely get in tired of that question. And I think the most common misconception is that it's an easy journey, maybe. I think, you know, because there's a lot of steps to your hair and styling it no matter if you have a relaxer all of it takes a commitment. So I think, if anybody's thinking about going natural and you're frustrated because it's not looking like, you know, like I was saying in my essay then there's a whole nother visual in our head for how it should look. So I would just say be patient with the process like Lizette said earlier and just, you know, let your hair be your hair. I think that's great. Catherine, did you have a question to add? For me, one of the questions, yeah, I'm by right now. For me, one of the questions that I get that I hear from sisters is that, oh, it's just gonna be too hard to take care of my natural hair. It's just easier if it's straight. And I reassure them like, no, it's not necessarily easier. You've got to put effort into your hair no matter what kind of hair you have. So if you just consider it different, not harder, because that's what we're taught. We're taught that our hair is so difficult, so kinky and this and that. And it's like, no, it's not any, it's just a different kind of work that you put in and that's all. For me, my hair journey was easy. I cut out the jerry curl and kept it moving. And so I would tell them just to relax into it. Maybe that's why. Maybe it was easy for me because I was like enough of this. I'm done, I'm tired. So having my natural hair was easier for me. The only thing that wasn't easy was people's outside perspective being told, oh my gosh, you must not take care of yourself because your hair is not braided, it's not permed. So you obviously don't take care of yourself. Stuff like that was difficult. But as far as the journey to be more my authentic self I'm saying this for myself, I'm not speaking for anyone else. It was easy and refreshing and relaxing. It was like, I don't have to do that BS anymore. So yeah, I hope I answered your question somewhere in there. Yes, yes, yes, definitely. Thank you. So now I'm gonna look at some of the questions from our audience. This one is from Letitia. Says, despite Gabby Douglas becoming the first black gymnast to win the 2012 Olympics all around competition, the only thing we as black folks concentrated on was her hair. I would like to know if anyone on the panel has an opinion on that subject or how or if it's method them, if so, in which way. Okay, I'll go. I think what happens a lot of times, particularly in the media, I think black people are given our opinion. I don't think it's necessarily our opinion. I think maybe one or two black people might have it. An example would be like Obama. What was in the media was black people said, Obama's not black enough. Everybody I know is black and we weren't saying that. That was an opinion that was given to us. Does that make sense? So I think Gabby's hair, maybe some people were complaining about it, but a lot of us are too damn busy being proud of her and proud of her accomplishments. So I think what happens a lot of times with black people is the white media will have an idea that they think we think and then give it to us and some of us will agree with it. That's what I honestly think. I might be wrong, but all the people I know were like, go Gabby. In fact, I'm really sad that her hair is so damn laid out now, but I'm still proud of her. And I'm very proud that she took care of herself when she needed to. I was very annoyed about the whole thing. I mean, here she is making history and nobody was really talking about that. And she was a kid. And I'm like, why are you piling on this kid and not talking about her absolutely extraordinary gymnastics. I was just annoyed. And then when the Olympics were over, she had changed her hair. And every talk show she went on, they were asking her, oh, did you change your hair because of all of the media attention? And she said, no, and I don't know if that was true or not, but it's just so ghost to even go there and ask that question of her. I mean, she's a kid and why aren't we talking about the amazing accomplishment? Instead, you didn't ask, I didn't see everybody else's hair looking perfect. That's a sport. You're in the middle of tumbling, you're on equipment, you're trying not to fall, you're running, you're leaping. You didn't ask anyone else? You're sweating. Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, I would agree with Catherine. I was personally very proud of her. And I think people in my circle, we were proud of her. There wasn't a conversation about hair with Gabby in my community, but it was definitely on like social media. And it's like social media creates the most, the narrative that's gonna sell. It's fire, bleed, bleed kind of thing. But either blackness isn't a monolith. I think that's what we see from this panel today is that there's one narrative, kind of a monolithic narrative that's in popular media that can be very mentally exhausting. Absolutely. And I agree with what Catherine said earlier that it's like an opinion that was given because I wasn't having that conversation and nobody I knew was having that conversation. I just read in the news that everybody was having this conversation. Okay, here's another question. And Catherine, you kind of spoke about this in when you talked about your own experience of going natural or in the relief of that. But this is from Tanish and she asks, for some is going natural like being more naked or shedding skin? What a beautifully formed question. I would say shedding skin for me. Like I said, I felt like it was, I felt like I stepped into being more authentic of me. And at 18 years old, there was more of that to come. But at that point in 1989, I think, even Michael Jackson had a curl, right? So that was a big deal for me to release all of that. So it felt like I was shedding. I felt like I was going all in. I think I was going all in. I always saw myself as a hippie, but then I had this thing where I straightened my hair. And this was kind of, I'm just gonna go all in. For me, it was just an embrace, kind of me just embracing myself but the original catalyst as I read in my piece was hearing this horrible story of the woman in Boston getting fired because she had grown her perm out and put these braids in. And I was just so outraged by that. Then I said, this is ridiculous. And that was back in the 90s. So, you know, not internet or anything like that but I felt that was the one thing I could do even though we would never meet. So it was partly an activist or an act of rebellion but also an act of solidarity. That's such a beautiful question. It's so poetic. And I just wanna kind of build on the poeticness of it by saying it for me is like a combination because it is like shedding a skin but every time you shed a skin you shed into a new nakedness of sorts. So it's like shedding into a new nakedness of yourself because for me, definitely shedding this idea of what it meant to be professional, you know, to have your straight, permed hair to have, you know, don't wear big earrings just wear little pearls, wear cardigans, all of that just shedding that idea of what it means to be professional and have a career in America. There's definitely this look that will come to mind for me as a young woman in the 90s, just graduating from college. So definitely I had to shed that and say whatever job I get, I get. So in no way I'll make it because I don't have that armor of that idea of what professional is. Okay, there's another question here said, this is from Valerie Lee. I had not heard of the term massage noir until recently. Catherine, you had great connection to pop culture and media where massage noir is rampant. Have you written on this topic and have any of you written on this topic? Yeah, my one woman show coming to a Zoom near you is all about that. So yeah, I've written an hour and 15 minutes about exactly that. Was there another part of the question that I'm missing? Nope, nope, you got it. Okay, cool. How about anyone else on the panel? No, I have another question from the audience. Okay, this one is from Sabrina Dooley. How can we mentor young people to let them know that natural hair is beautiful? Well, one thing, they need role models and they need them in the high places and then little places in every place in between which we're still not seeing. We need role models in the newsroom. For instance, in movies, there's also, and no one has mentioned this, but there's an intersectionality with colorism here as well which also doesn't get represented in these exact same places. And the colorism and the hair thing kind of have a, I don't wanna say it's a marriage, but there's an intersection there. Yes. So Catherine, do you, since I've seen your show, do you wanna go more into it or? Well, what you said, first of all, to answer the question, I can't help myself. And if I see hair that I love, I compliment it immediately. Ask Natalie. I've just wanted to jump into the screen with Natalie. Natalie's hair is absolutely gorgeous to me and I couldn't help but tell her. I think positive acknowledgement is good. I think it goes far. And I do think there's a certain thing with colorism and natural hair because how do I put this? I'll try to be gentle. Okay, my heart is pure. So just take it as I say it. If you are a fair-skinned black person, that is now the representation where you're seeing mostly a black people. We're not seeing different shades. We're seeing light-skinned women with hair that falls down. Where you have a Zoe Zaldana playing, gosh, what's her name? Come on, you guys, help me, help me, panel. Zoe Zaldana was going to play a famous singer who was known for her voice in my song. Thank you. Thank you. Where you have Zoe Zaldana who does not even claim black, playing somebody who was Uber black who was super proud to beat of her dark skin, right? You have a, for all you nerds out there, you have Halle Berry playing Storm. Now, you read X-Men, you know, Storm is an African goddess and she will tell you every chance she gets. She's a dark-skinned woman with like stark white hair. And that's the thing, we are seeing that. In fact, there's a light-skinned woman they're trying to get to play. It's an ex-slave who freed a lot of people. I can't think of her name right now, but it's not anyway. So people are screaming about that right now. So yeah, there is the intersection of like misogynoir where darker-skinned black women and then darker-skinned black women with some kind of natural hair are not being represented as much anymore. Is that what you were talking about, Lizette? Yep. Cause that's something that I've been noticing a lot of. Yes. No disrespect to our light-skinned sisters cause you still sisters and you still deal with the BS that everybody else deals with. I'm just noticing that there's not a lot of representation anymore. And compliment natural hair whenever you can. It also makes people happy. Who doesn't like a compliment? Is that a sincere compliment? There's, oh my goodness. Okay, so let me see. Here's another. Has anyone on the panel had an experience with white people who appreciate and respect your natural? And I apologize if this seems like a white-centric question, but I know that I, as a white woman, love when I see black people living the fullness of their DNA and cultural hair. Well, I have a funny story about that. I used to get my hair straightened at Vidalse soon all the time and I was on the quest for like the perfect hair. I really couldn't afford to get my hair done there and but I spent money all the time doing it there and I went to the same hairdresser all the time. And she was very diplomatic and very polite. She always supported what I wanted for my hair and I ran into her maybe a few years ago at, in a cafe in the mission. And she said, I am so glad you did this. Your hair looks so beautiful and healthy and thick. And I think people that were watching were kind of, you know, a little bit uncomfortable, but given our history, you know, she just appreciated my hair for what it was. And no pressure for anyone to have to think of stories there. But also some great, I'm trying to, I do have an answer to that question, but I'm trying not to talk too damn much cause, you know, now take up space. This is great. I, thank you. Cause I were like, I'm taking up all the space. Honestly, when it comes to white people, particularly anyone not non-black, but particularly white people, I worry about fetalization and eroticization. I always wonder where they are coming from. Am I just an exotic creature? Oh, you look so beautiful and magical. You know, I worry about things like that. So oftentimes, I worry about, I worry about sincerity and where it's coming from. Honestly, that's just my take. I have your attention library work. I'm sorry. What happened? I think the library is closing in probably 30 minutes. Oh, okay. Okay, it's closing time. Oh, it's closing time. Okay. Oh, wow, that went fast. Are we really at the end? Oh, wow. It's 531, sister. Okay. Natalie, were you going to say something else? I was, but I'm right under the speaker for the library announcement. So I had to mute myself. Oh, okay. But let me see. I think, okay, there's so many comments. I wish you guys would have time to look at the comments. There's people talking about, I mean, appreciating what all of you have said, really eager to read the book, thinking about their own personal connections with family and people in their own lives and their natural hair journeys. So again, I want to thank you all for just being a part of this discussion. This was, I mean, when I went to the conference, I was so inspired by it. And I want to see more of this conversation happening. So I appreciate that. There is one question. I'm just going to sneak it in here and then we can kind of wrap it up. And you guys can, or you ladies can, if you have any final comments, please share. But this, do you think location of country play a part, accepting hair more from people? Location or country? Yeah, like location of the country play a part in like accepting hair. I think they meant location in the country. Yeah, maybe I'm just reading it here. Maybe that person wants to elaborate more. Yeah, just as I think I understand the question. And I would say, yes, I live in Oakland, California. No one has anything to say about my hair. However, I am from Sacramento, California where many things were said about my hair. So I do think location, location, location. Yeah. I'm sure what do you tell them? Sorry. Yeah. I lived in Atlanta for six years and it was a non-issue there as well. But that's also a chocolate city, so. Right, right. Well, ladies, is there anything we're leaving out here that needs to be addressed or that you wanted to say? Oh, yeah, yeah, I wanted to read this quote. This quote from Harriet Cole. And this is from her book, Hair Story, which is excellent. And she says in it, it takes care and attention and time to handle natural hair. Something we have lost from our African culture are the rituals of health and beauty and taking time to anoint ourselves. And the first way we lost it was in our hair. And I agree like 200% with that. Absolutely. All right. Well, I guess we have to end because we have to end at some point. But I honestly could keep talking to you. You don't have keys? Aw. Yeah, they might lock me in here. We have keys at Natalie. I'm in here with you. I'm gonna sleep on my desk. But thank you. Thank you so much. Lizette, Catherine, Adrienne, Barbara, I appreciate so much your time and being here with us today. Thank you all of the attendees for being here and your wonderful questions. And I look forward to the book and all that each of you have upcoming. And that's a good one. Is there anything upcoming for each of you that we should all have on our radar? We have your handles, your social media handles that we've shared with everyone so they can follow you. Yeah, look for the Zoom meeting. Look for the Zoom show. Once I figure Zoom out. Now I was gonna add- Adrienne has something to announce. Yeah, I was gonna just say, folks can follow me at Dr. Adrienne Dengale. I have two chat books coming out. One is currently available for free sale. So you could just follow me on Dr. Adrienne Oliver or Dr. Adrienne Dengale to find out more info. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, again, thank you everyone. Be safe. And yeah, that's it. Thank you Natalie for being such a gracious host. Yes, thank you. No problem. And thank you, Liz, for having me. This was my first program and panel as a new librarian. And this was so much fun. Oh, great. Wow. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah, I really appreciate it.