 Continue to hold, we are live. Are we starting the trailer now or am I introducing myself? Let's do the intro. Hi, my name is Tanya Pinkins and I'm excited to be here today in the third of a series of six conversations with brilliant black women. There's so many, six is not enough. But today we're delving into literature and my distinguished guests are Cynthia Bond who is a New York Times best-selling author of her novel, Ruby was an Oprah book club selection and the Barnes and Noble Discover Great Book selection. And she is working on the second in the trilogy. She's a native of East Texas and she lives in Los Angeles with her daughter. I also am pleased to be here with Tanya McKinnon who's the founder of McKinnon Literary where she represents New York Times best-selling authors award-winning nonfiction children books, graphic novels. She specializes in nonfiction that addresses cultural issues as well as gender and cultural boundaries. And she went to the city college of New York and also coming from Tennessee, we have Alice Randell who's also a New York Times best-selling novelist, award-winning songwriter, educator, food activist, graduate of Harvard University holds an honorary doctorate from Fisk universities on the faculty of Vanderbilt and credit to Ziggy Johnson's school of theater with being the most influential educational institution in her life. And then there's me, Tanya McKinnon who was inspired to have this conversation because I wrote, directed and produced my first feature film and learned about the power of building your own world. So we're gonna show a trailer from my feature Red Pill before we get into conversation with these brilliant women. We are a majority in this country and we're gonna win the election. Do you know what the Red Pill is? A Red Pill is someone who infiltrates a group and then destroys them from the inside. This place is spooky. Take it easy. You know what, guys? I'm gonna go back tomorrow. I think we should call the sheriff's office. What are we doing, Yanya? We die. But we take some of them with us. Yeah, that was a story I wrote that when I wrote it, people said it was pretty far-fetched and then it became reality. So you are authors and an agent who represent people who often see the world that the rest of us don't wanna see. What is it like to tell stories that the people around you don't wanna hear? Well, sometimes I say your movies do look amazing. Your tree, before we talk about it, we have to say, was that not trailer amazing? That's the story. Thank you. How did you get to see that and how does the audience get to see that? Is it available on which platforms right now? It will release in December from a court international, but you, I'll send a link. So what's it like to tell stories? Cause for me, the reason I made Red Pill is because in 2016, I knew how that was gonna go. And when I told people how that election was gonna go, they treated me with contempt. They treated me like I had two heads. And so when I had a sense of how this one was gonna go, I said, there's really no point in me talking about it. I'm gonna just make a story about it and I'll set it in horror, which I love and people can think it's a fantasy. And I'd love to know what it's like writing things that other people might think are fantasy, but you as authors know that there's a lot of truth to the stories that you tell. Because people are waiting to hear them. There are people who are waiting to hear their own story. And one of the things that kept me going when I was working on Ruby was thinking about the women who may have lived through human trafficking, the women who had been through really difficult and horrific situations. They needed to hear it. And when I couldn't write, I wrote for them. And there are a lot of women who are waiting and men who are waiting to hear these stories. So I picture that sometimes when I'm working. There was this Pew research study that showed that black women are the largest demographic of readers of anyone. So I'm writing for you. I'm writing for you. That's why I'm telling these stories. That's why I have to keep doing it even though it's incredibly hard. That's why. Now, Alice, my first introduction to your work was The Wind Done Gone, which is this telling of Tara from the point of view of the people who were enslaved there. And I know that that was a challenging story that there was obstacles to you even daring to take this sacred tale. Well, the people did see my publishers for $10 million and stopped the dresses on my book. But one of the things you have to tell these stories because the first judge that stopped the presses on my book, Keith referred to Margaret Mitchell's beloved characters in a judgment. And I said, beloved, that was beloved by who? My grandmother hated gone with the wind. She hated Scarlet. She hated the lie that there were no mulattoes on Tara. She was a very light-skinned black woman going to bed every night with her blue-eyed black husband whose father was a Confederate general. She did not believe there were no mulattoes on Tara. And she was 37, but she was born in 1898. So she was a grown woman when this book came out. She hated this book and they so didn't know that that this judge could talk about beloved characters. And Cynthia, I love what you're saying because it's we, we write these stories when not to say too much on this, but when I was growing up, I had that wonderful grandmother who knew enough to be outraged by gone with the wind. I wanted to tell that story. But myself, I had a very, I had an abusive mother and I looked for the literature when I was growing up that would tell me I would actually get through this. And those books weren't there. And Black Bottom Saints, all of my books have been some version of telling women you can move from trauma to transcendence. They've been writing the book I wanted to read. Yes. Not easy, but it can be done. I had women who came to me, you know, when I was doing readings and when I was on my tour and one woman in particular said, I am Ruby. I, this is, I live this life. You just told my story. And that had, there were so many people who would come up and they, I could just see and what they told me and I could see in their eyes just the level of pain they've been through. And that's why even though the second book has been so hard to write for me, that's what keeps me going. Now, we were talking about Simone Biles. And she, go ahead, Tanya, go ahead, Tanya. As a representative, I wanted to say, I think it's so, you know, it's so critical that these stories exist in the world. And the job of someone like me is to ensure that our voices actually get to mainstream publishers. Sort of circling back on what a number of you have said, you know, at the beginning January, you know, 2017, I went out with a book called How We, you know, How We Fight White Supremacy and I had a really hard time selling it because people didn't want to believe the story that was in front of them. And the story was the one that Ta-Nehisi Coates it just, you know, was just telling us we were eight years in power and we were facing a fall. Right. And so I think there was this real, they were, you know, everybody wanted to say, no, it's going to be okay. It's not as bad as we think. We just have to have this hope that, you know, that it seems bad at the moment, it'll turn out all right. So, you know, almost every publisher in town turned me down and then it ended up being published by, you know, by bull type and it did incredibly well because it was right there at the point when people began to be willing to, you know, because we're talking about stories and I'm going to use it sort of in a large frame at the point that people were ready to acknowledge that the story they were telling themselves wasn't the real story, right? That there was another story then that book was there to fill that void. And that's what's so incredibly important about what both you, Alice and Cynthia and you Ta-Nehisi do in your acting and in making your films is to shift perspective and to shift focus. I'd like to follow up on what Ta-Nehisi said before you get, is that when wind done gone, I didn't even get to an agent. The first agents that I reached out to, one of them said, there's no one interested in gone with the wind, no one cares about this, this is not a relevant subject. Literally, I was, I only went out to a few agents but they were all top agents and they not only said they didn't want to represent it, they said this book cannot possibly be sold and can, you know, I'd already written it. And so I decided the first publisher I sent it to, which was how Mifflin did take it. So I actually, and that book was six weeks in the top 10 of the New York Times bestseller list and people, black people did care about it. I had people, you know, one place, one of my most touching events I've ever gone to is that I showed up in South Louisiana for an event and it was, the people had taken out alone. They were almost all domestic servants had gone through my speaker period. Of course, I did not take any feet. They had taken out alone to bring me down to speak because they had seen me on the Today Show and they said that we work in women's houses, cleaning women's houses who still were veered this book. And one of them gave me one of the lines, they were more than one black woman said, it was the equivalent of Prissy slapping Scarlet back. And he said, this is a literary equivalent and they had taken out alone to bring me down. And the number or the woman who drove me home, I thought I'd been kidnapped after one other, a big speech in North Carolina thinking, where are we going? This is not the road from the speech to my hotel. And we finally pull up, I found this house at about 11 o'clock in the night because I've spoken, I've gone for dinner. And this woman said, I won't say what city. She said, I'm the head librarian of the city. I cannot tell you how much pleasure it was for me to buy a large number of these books because my mother worked as a domestic servant in this house until she died. And I had to come through the back door of this house. Wow. These people never recognized how intelligent I was or my mother was. And you wrote a story that said that Manny was more than Scarlett's mother, that she had a whole other life. And I needed that story told. And that was what, I couldn't even believe, the stories, I won't, but the story that everyone said was irrelevant. It was very relevant to people whose mothers and grandmothers and now. And when I would give that talk somewhere, I had a young black lady in San Francisco get all mad at me. She said, do you make it sound like that was 30 years ago? She said, my mother was a nanny now. My mother left me when I read this book, I was so thrilled that Manny didn't really love Scarlett in your book and she only loved Sinera because I used to worry if my mother, when she left me to go on vacation with a white family, so she could pay my school bills, if she really loved that little girl more than she loved me. These stories find their readers. I couldn't even imagine that specific thing until that woman told me her story. We were talking about Simone Biles and lifting her up in the support and her life is a story that hopefully now there will be many more books about mental health and putting self over country, over honor, over courage, over bravery. Have you been seeing these books, Tanya, that nobody's wanted, that now may be their moment? Well, I think that right now we're having, some people are calling it a renaissance, we're having a sort of surge in demand for books by women of color and about topics that previously were harder to sell. And that's been incredibly exciting. And I think we're also seeing books that are speaking more directly to what self-care means for black women and that we're entitled to self-care. And what we're still facing is the stereotypes that we've always faced that were strong, that were immune to pain, that we don't have the normal range of human feeling, that we are, I was talking with a close friend about Serena Williams and often the language used around her is that of a kind of incredibly high-end robotic or machine that doesn't really acknowledge even in basic ways her femininity. And I think we're still having that struggle as black women and one of the things that happens in literature because you get to be inside of a character in a particular way is that black women writers get to articulate our femininity. We get to articulate who we are in our vulnerability and in our lives. Claudia Rankin did a really wonderful examination of the life and what Serena Williams dealt with in Citizen. It's a really splendid book and I highly recommend reading that. But it was just interesting looking at all of the ins and outs and ways in which she has been discriminated against all of the things that you're talking about. And I wanna shout out to Simone right now that she has given us the most brave and the most patriotic and the most extraordinary and humane and universal performance with this performance because she has stood up for her own integrity, her own autonomy. She has said, I will value myself. I will not ignore these slights. I am not your pawn, I'm not your possession. I belong to myself. And so does my brilliance. And I think she has stepped up actually to the most brilliant moment of her entire career. Agreed. In this, I think it's performance art. I think she has left the world of athletics and entered the world of artistry and performance art. And I cannot wait to see what she does. And I think she should be the one who benefits from it and enjoys it. And she does not owe the world anything. She's already given so much. But she gave more with this gesture. I think she, as I tweeted yesterday, she will save lives with this performance. She will save hundreds of lives. Yeah, I have been incredibly inspired by these women. I'm coming to you all now from Panama. And it's very powerful to be in a country where the global majority are the majority in the country. It's very powerful to be in a country of people who are proud of their story and who tell the authentic stories of how America bombed them in 1988, 89. It's the second Hiroshima because of Noriega, who they put in power and wanted to remove from power and showing me the areas that were beautiful areas that people used to live in and that we bombed them. And then we sat on a hill and pointed guns down at the citizens and the students who walked up that hill and were shot and killed by the American military here in Panama. And I think about this CRT that's being banned that was never taught in schools. And I think someone posted a meme that said, "'What does it mean if your history is such "'that you've made it illegal to teach it to your children?'' The fact, Cynthia, I love your book. At first I wanna say that I have actually read a movie and I truly love the movie. And I love that all these stories that emphasize it, but at the same time illuminate and bring, there's so much beauty in your book that I love where the transcendence and the art that you create around the trauma, like Shakespeare that you take the moment where it's all falling apart and you are the connection. Thank you very much. Trauma is woven into the fabric of the founding and it has taken black women particularly to point this out. The vast majority of senators of the Declaration of Independence, including John Jay from New York, bought sold and owned slaves and the majority of them rape slaves. That trauma is woven into the fabric of the founding. America is a story of stolen land and stolen bodies. Black women and black people and black families have made love and meaning and joy in this country despite that, since the first slave ships arrived here. That is the weird and complicated irony. We have a something out of nothing at all, which does not mean that we do not feel pain, that we do not feel struggle, nuance, but actually that is one of the great black triumphs. And Franz Fanon talked about it, the ability to love these babies conceived in rape. I don't think any woman should have to do that, but many black women have done that. So how we talk about that, never minimizing the crimes, but maximizing our awareness of this extraordinary alchemy of love. That's so well said. I often have this image. I don't talk about it very often, but I just, I often have this image of a woman who is a slave who's in the field and poetry. There's poetry. She's putting words together and creating and weaving some sort of beauty out of the horror. And I don't know where that image comes from, but I see it often and I really believe that that's what we do. We take this pain and the ephemera of terror and trauma, and we do create, we do put it together in a way and we weave it in a way that can be beautiful. We have to, we have to to survive. And I feel like there's a link going all the way back to the bottom of the ocean in a sunken slave ship, which I'm writing about in this book. And all the way to just, we make stories to live. They are the ropes by which we climb out of the hell that is our past. And I deny the words critical race theory. I think it's ridiculous. It's called history. It's just history. Can we teach history? Can we tell our history? That's it. This is what happened. There was a red summer. There was, there are so many things that I learned about at such an old, old age. But my people and my mother and my folks, we tell stories and that's how we live. And Tom is shouting out to you songs, the other, because one of my favorite works of yours that I got to see was Jelly's Last Jam and the music in that, you know, black women sing songs to their children. I'm here at Music City, that's at Cumberland, which is named Music City for the fifth Jubilee singers, you know, who have been enslaved to Africans who came up and not only built physically the bricks for their university for Jubilee Hall, went to England and singing me for Queen Victoria, raised the money for it. But I want to think about all the black women songwriters that the only person who ever heard a performance of their song was their children and their grandchildren. I've been writing about that lately and my grandmother, no one thought of her as a songwriter, but I learned on her lap. I didn't learn that in a Hall of Harper. I learned that on her lap as she made up songs from tunes she had inherited. What are the stories you need right now? Go ahead, Tom, you say what you were gonna say. I represent a writer and an academic named Ty and Miles and she has a book that just came out, called All That She Carried, which is the story of an enslaved mother whose daughter is being sold away from her. And she gives her a linen sand with what she believes are the tools to survive or few dresses and pecans. And that sack has passed down through three generations and then it's written on. It was actually the African American History Museum for a long time on the bottom floor. She writes the story of the enslaved mother who passes it to her daughter who passes it to her daughter. And as you're talking in terms of narrative, what black women are constantly providing one another and the world is in fact the tools for survival. The tools for moving forward because we have already experienced the worst of what it is that people can dole out to other people. And so in the DNA of black women is actually the way to survive. Another writer that I represent, Jessica Marie Johnson writes so powerfully about this and her work Wicked Flesh. I mean, these concerns that you're both raising within your fiction are the concerns of living that impact black women every day. And why it's so critical, I think that your voices are heard. And the reason I think people come to your books and they have such passionate feelings about them is because in telling us about the past you are actually showing us how it is that we should be moving forward and how it is that black women will survive as they move forward. I have to say Taya Miles is one of my favorite writers and a writer to whom I owe a tremendous debt. She wrote one of her earlier books was The Dawn of Detroit. And she blurred me in this one in Black Bottom Saints but she inspires me so. I blurred one before I'd ever met her. I think Cherokee Rose, I loved Taya Miles's work. I think she's just extraordinary. So I want to shout out there. She tells these, that even that phrase stolen lands and stolen people, that is a concept to some degree that part of it I got from reading Dawn of Detroit. I also think we get a chance now to relocate into trauma to transcendence is a abiding theme but black joy and our radical ability to thrive coexistent with how precarious the thriving is. We don't get to thrive and it's just some constant easy thing. I don't know what can take this. I just put this in my new proposal from my book. I said, I make sane like you make a bed every day. Say that again. You make sane like you make a bed every day. Oh, you make sane. It's something I've got to get up and make every day. And the days I don't make it, I sleep in reality. I make sane. It doesn't, sane is not something I achieve one day and it's there for me every day. Yeah, I want to also say that what we're really doing, I mean, it is a recipe. We are giving a recipe for life for I love that you mentioned joy. And I'm going to just throw out this radical word hope. And when you talk about hope, a lot of times there can be eye rolling and as if you are just some Pollyanna but the truth is, is that hope comes, it is hard fought for. And my mother gave me a recipe for hope. We pass along a recipe for hope, for yes, something better. And I believe side by side with the horrible things that we are living with and they are horrible. I mean, it's ridiculous. But woven into that and side by side is this sense of hope. I mean, that's where the sanity has to, that has to be a part of that sanity is that there is something beyond this. There is a path out of a path to something. And Cynthia, do you see your writing as part of a technology of hope that you're passing on and you too, Alice? You know, I love that. I love the way that you put that. And yes, I mean, the one thing I know and I'm just at the Eve, and I'm really almost finished with this book. And that is the thing that just keeps coming up again and again. And I'm writing some things that are very difficult. There is white supremacy in that book. The KKK is in that book. My aunt's murder is explored more fully in that book. Little white children growing up within the KKK. What happens to young black men in this little town of Liberty? All of that is in this book, but there is also how do we survive and how do we find hope? And yes, it is, it is in there. And that is what keeps me going because I'm teaching it to myself again and again. When I write it, you know, I have to relearn it every single time I sit down to write. But absolutely, there is a technology of hope. I think that is beautifully, beautifully, but, Alice? I see my work counterpointing, I hope complimenting that. I focus on very specifically joy and love. I think having been myself in abuse, child hope is not something I connect to in the exact, I connect more to that idea, find a way and make a way. I don't hope in the absence of things. I see what is, I look for what is there that I can build upon step by step. So it's not, and I love that poem. I mean, when I was a little girl, I hope is a thing whose feathers that purchase on the soul, the Emily Dickinson poem meant a lot to me when I needed hope. But I love the black idea, make a way, find a way. But I see myself very much exactly at Cynthia creating recipes for joy. I hope that each of my novels is actually a pleasure for black women to read. And I think about that very specifically. And I am intrigued by ways I can make it a pleasure for black women and more challenging for maybe some other population. I believe that black women deserve this pleasure and joy. In Black Bottom Saints, because I was dealing with so much complex circumstance and abuse, each chapter ends with an actual, literal cocktail recipe, which is a five cents address to joy. The touch, the town, the touch, the taste, the sight, the scent, the sound of joy. And I was literally all about this because I am confronting with people with some of the ways that racism gets internalized into abusive mothers who do things that are so appalling. But you know my Mari, the character that was the most autobiographical I've ever written. She even has my literal first name. Mari is my actual birth first name, M-A-R-I. I've had more people tell me they were Mari. I've had people call me at the beginning when the book was first out and said, how did I know their story and to put this in here? And I said, she's an every woman or she's me, but I don't know your story, this part of your story. I'm sorry, we're sisters in that. But yes, I can see myself as writing recipes for joy. And it's not even hope because it's something, it's an immediate, and that's what I felt reading your book. The immediate pleasure of the witness of being seen, that your book provides witness. Your book provides the awareness in the moment that these atrocities are atrocities. That witness is some kind of immediate to meet joy. That's not a hope, that is the better moment there. When you have written that in the reading of it and the caring and the crying and the mattering, you're not in that place where nobody but the person who was the victim cared. And I think I'm more like you. I hope is not one of those words I love. I'm like, God makes a way out of no way. And the stories I tell are really, I feel like American Aristotle story structures all about some hero who makes choices and those choices lead him to find himself. And I'm like, no, actually the heroes are the people who life is throwing stuff at them and they're ducking and they're dodging and they survive it. And so I try to tell stories from that point of view which often gets criticized as if it's your character's so passive. And I'm like, because most people are passive, they don't have the agency to choose where they live, where they work, when they can be home, when they cannot, I think this pandemic has made people realize they actually have more choice than they did because the grind sort of stopped. And people went, oh, I've been working for money. Oh, maybe I don't need so much money if I don't have to be in that office every day with those people all the time. Maybe I can be a little poorer. Maybe I can just work and feed my children and keep a roof over our head. I have this image in connection with hope and it is this idea that where you're standing, the next step, why take that next step? Why take it? Why go there? Why, you know, it means- I wrestle with that every day. I wrestle with that every day. Why take the next step? Why live another day? So it's, you know, I love what you said, Alice, about the immediacy of someone bearing witness. And what, and I write for myself to go that next day, to go that next step. Why? Why when this is, why take that next step? And somewhere in that grass, somewhere on the little bush or there is something that I take that step for. And that thing I take that step for, I call hope. And that is what, and it can be something grand. It can be something small, but it's why take in the next breath. Why take that next step? And so that is, that's the fuel I need. You know, and I think it's interesting listening. It's a wonderful conversation and it's really wonderful hearing the different ways in which people write, really listening to you, Alice, writing what you need, right? You're writing what you need and you're also writing what black women need. You know, I love hearing about that. I was gonna add to this conversation about hope. I have thought a lot about whether or not I am a hopeful person and what that means. And what we're saying about acceptance, if we say that we're hopeful and things are imperfect or painful. And I think I've come at the point in my life where I am now that I really have braided hope with my sense of my own morality. And that is that I am living a truth and my hopefulness is connected to what I perceive to be my mission in life. So I, you know, in my case, I sell, you know, progressive work to publishers that I hope will reach thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people so that transformations can occur. But I don't feel that I think of hope as something that creates powerlessness. And I think there is a version of hope that does that because things don't change. So I'm constantly sort of figuring out how do I live with the conditions as it are in the moment? Well, at the same time, having both the temerity and the strength and the will to continue to advocate inside of myself for personal change and outside in the world for social change, right? And I think that that's one of the ways in which I've confronted because I've always been an activist in one way or another confronted what so many of us feel as a kind of burnout whether or not we're operating within the immediate social justice work as black women in particular, we're constantly taking in, you know, the pain of the culture and the backlash of the culture. We're constantly the recipients of, you know, forms of the worst forms the culture has to give us. And I think it's hard to maintain hope sometimes in that. And when I separate it from this grander notion of being hopeful, you know, it's not the audacity of my hope, right? It's the very personal nature of my hope that it is my act of both agency and defiance. Three things, agency, defiance and self love. It is my love of self that means that I am always invested in the ability for my betterment. And because I love myself and I struggle to love myself and a culture that devalues me, that love gets translated and transmuted out beyond me. I think that that must have been what was in the women who raised the women who ultimately brought me to this planet is that they had to hold that. I think it's what my grandmother had in her when she was sowing quilts, you know? And I come from very old black parents. So I'm only two generations away from slavery. So, you know, the quilts that those women made that carried their love and their hopefulness. They were wrapping us in something. You know, I wonder if it's hope or vision to go with time. I would actually parse that. I think what you described to me is more of a vision and when you said your authority because it's a vision of what the future should be. A vision of what they wanted for the future. It's hard to know. You know what you think they thought would happen. But we don't... I think there's a difference between a vision, a wish for the future and a belief because I think what's wild is this bravery of black women who know the future, they envision may not occur but they will still work towards it. They will work towards it or die trying that, oh, black, I'm gonna do it or die trying. I think that's a visionary because that allows you to act even in the possibility it won't come true. And I think that's incredibly mature. Does that make sense? And I think that Cynthia, you work a lot with kids. Is it true that you work with kids and... I did, at this exact moment, I'm not working at a... But at one time you worked a lot with kids. For about 20 years. Actually, I stopped at the beginning of the pandemic because, yeah, but it's been a part of my life for 20 plus years working with At-Rescue. And I think it's so important when you're working with young people and there being anyone under 25 is young to me, is hope because they have to believe that tomorrow will be better than today. But I think when you're grown, you've got to be able to work and you're not sure if tomorrow is gonna be better than today. Yeah. You've got to work for it even if you can't get it. Because to me, that is maturity. To work for things you don't know, including your book. You write a book, you don't know whether it will get published or it'll be successful. The mature writer can go all out not knowing. There are no guarantees. That's what I think. But... How many did you hear that? Where were your family quilting, Tanya, though I would love to know about that specific thing. And are you gonna write that story? I know you're an agent, but are you gonna write that story? My family's from North Carolina, from the Lumberton area. So, I mean, I think what they did was... What the women in my family did when they were quilting was they were keeping the children in their families alive. And I think they kept them alive because they had forms of faith in the power of humanity. And I think they thought if they could keep generation after generation alive, there could be transformation. And, you know, as a mother, I feel that I understand that kind of hope. I don't know that I could parent effectively if I didn't hold within myself hope. And I am not a Pollyanna in any way. And I really think that, you know, I understand how systemic racism works. I think I understand the way in which racist sexism comes to bear on us. I think I understand how neoliberalism works. I think I understand how imperialism works. And at the same time, even as I see these, what I'm going to call forces of mortar gathering global and arraying themselves against us with a surveillance technology right now that no one has ever had to live through or resist before. I mean, we certainly see what it's happening, how it's doing to Muslims in China. We're seeing things that are new, manifestations of, I think, fascist intent that will use that word. And I know people don't like it. They think it's extreme, but I don't think it's extreme. No one here thinks it's extreme. I feel that if I release my hopefulness and some of my family is German and Jewish and, you know, I think about people in the camps. I think about people living under slavery and Jim Crow. And I think what we have inside of ourselves that I call hope is the will to be unbroken by the forces that would lead us to forms of nihilism that are sometimes quite subtle, not even just sort of this grand nihilism. And I refuse it because that is the way in which I can never be bought and the way in which I am uncompromised in a world that seeks to compromise us, belittle us and buy us. And so for me, hope is maybe the container in which I place some of my most fundamental resistance. I want to, I agree with that. And I want to add that it also is in moments when I have let go of everything. I grew up with a great deal of abuse. My grandfather was born in 1866 and my grandfather. And he was 76, my mother was born. I just threw out my life and certainly as a child I've not only heard stories of great abuse but I lived through some pretty horrific things. And these moments when I really feel like I'm giving up, those moments of hopelessness, there's something always that sort of steps in. It literally could be, and again, this is gonna sound maybe a little odd, but it could be a feather floating down. It could be a rainbow that I didn't expect. It could be when I gave up the idea of my book being published, I was told by many people that it would never, I couldn't find an agent. And I thought that I would not have a home for my book. I gave up, I gave up. And I, in that moment, very shortly after that, something stepped in and it's the unexpected, the unexpected beauty and the unexpected moments that come to me again and again. And those things, that is part of what I call hope as well. But it's not born from, it certainly isn't born from any type of innocence. We are using the word hope clearly in different ways. As I will just say that the world is, it's too large a word that some of you, you're referring to interior hope. And that I completely, and there's also political hope though, will the external world be better or not? There's all kinds of, that there's, but I think that also there's the issue that I put my radicalism in my joy. I think joy is radical. I put more emphasis on joy and love and that as what is the location of optimism, which is a different even word, or self, because I don't know that we know whether events will get better. And I think that even when you think about the things like fascism, I think of literally we've just lived through more people have died of COVID than have died in all the wars of this country in a 15 month period, disproportionately black and brown people. Did, I personally am not concerned about being surveilled. Everyone's welcome to see anything that I'm doing. I think that's true. But I am very concerned that one in every four middle-aged black women has diabetes and how much research is going into that. And that we will actually know that between the pandemic and there's so many things assaulting us that are not getting discussed at all. And do I have, that actually the life expectancy compared to the majority of black women is going down now. That life expectancy of black women is going down in this country. I have every energy to make change turn that around. I just have no certainty that that and I plan on living well and helping as many people as possible. I will easily say that thing is I've never had I do not believe I'm 63 years old. I'm not sure I've ever had a moment where I thought I'd give up. I've wildly believed as weird and terrible as this is. Except for when I was really, when I was really little and believed in heaven that I did have a few moments thinking, would it be better just to go to heaven right now than to have this next strange thing happen? One of our listeners and then Garber says, are we talking about faith? It will be better tomorrow while having hope that tomorrow is just around the corner. I think that faith is a word there that's important. And by just saying that I do think I have never because I have that sense. That's how I actually knew that I believe that I have never felt that I want to give up life. That's how I feel the soul. I have never actually, I've never had a moment of thinking, living and having a soul and being present in the world to souls wasn't better than- And I'm exactly the opposite. I have always wondered, why am I here? There is really very few things here that are worth all of the terrible things here. And I've had some great stuff. I have a great life. But I'm always like, yeah, okay. And when it ends, I mean, a part of it, I think it's my super power that I'm willing to go at any moment. So I give everything. That's a wonderful- That's a pretty powerful time, yeah. That's really, I mean, really what each one of us is saying is we're right in this moment. And Tanya, you just did it too. That is your recipe for moving on, going on. I'm gonna give it all. I'm gonna give it all. And this is the last moment. I'm giving it all. Yeah. And we all, and all of this is needed. You know, all of this is needed. All of these voices are needed in concert with one another. That is the truth. All of these voices operating in concert because there are songs that everybody needs to hear. There's songs that people are waiting for. And just what you said, Tanya, that is somebody is gonna hear that and that's gonna resound within them. That's going to help them to give their all. It's going to help them to move forward. So you should say that more. I think that it's part of what allowed us to survive is that we had a sense that through slavery that the African cultures had a sense of a life beyond just this carnal one. That we understood that plants die and they come back and we have this sense of the eternalness of it all. I think that that is part of our strength that allowed us to survive the most brutal form of slavery is that we knew that we still go on, which is why there is ancestor honoring because our ancestors are still with us. I mean, I feel my ancestors, I feel them around me protecting me, some of them more than they were when they were carnage. I remember as a little girl when my first favorite thoughts was realizing that I had been dead. I was afraid of being dying. Then I realized I'd been dead before I was born in my little childhood. And I just know I have not been afraid since the day I was a little girl in my bed scared of dying. And I thought that I was dead for a few hundred years before I was born that was the same as being dead. Like when I get back to it, it'll be familiar. And so I do think that there are these wonderful, I wouldn't say a funny thing for all of us on a practical little other side of things. I hope that there's someone on this chat when we're talking about publishing before, that I hope there's some people who are young people who just graduated from college, maybe black women who are thinking not just of writing books and going into publishing and being agents or editors but also doing the other things such as getting involved in book marketing and book publicity. There are so many parts of the publishing business and editors where there is so little representation of black faces and of any sort. That it's shocking to me how hard it is to put together a team that is diverse, that actually represents the experience that is going to be contained in the books we write. So one piece of what, and Tanya that relates to your movies one piece of it is, it's not right now we've seen this tremendous number of new black editors and gatekeepers that are, but there's still so few black, there are very few black agents actually, but there are some, so few black publicists that the major companies in any kind of senior position, so few black book cover designers that, I mean, that is almost impossible to get. There are a few, there are artists, I have a Jimmy James Green artist did this work with the actual book designer, a cover designer is not the person of color and I'm not saying it should necessarily be, but what it should necessarily be is there are options of that, that all kinds of, not just white people, white people, Asian people, all kinds of people should be looking at a diverse number of makers when it comes to a book. Even the type designers, there are so few type designs that are being used right now that we have access to and they're created by people of color. And that, no one even gets into that discussion, which is whereas in the music film field where I spent a lot of time, they're a black engineer, there's every aspect of the making of an album. If you wanted to have a black person do it, you could do it. But it's hard to be in a major publisher today and have their whole job off parts of what goes into making a book that as far as I can tell, no, there are almost no black people who are participating in it. Well, I heard this statistic and maybe someone can tell me if I'm wrong that only 4% of books ever published are by black people period. Is that accurate? It could be. I don't know what the exact statistics are, but it's been historically low and there are a lot of different reasons for that. And one of the reasons is that, a lot of people don't know what publishers do. I think that for most of America, outside of Hollywood, they don't even really know what agents do, right? It's not something you don't grow up and say, hey, I wanna be a literary agent. Like for many people who are working class, they don't know what bankers do, right? It's, when you're in the top five publishing, it's pretty rarefied air. There are a lot of top 30 school graduates, Ivy League graduates, right? It's been a club for a very long time and opening that club up is as challenging as it always is to open up anything in America that has been exclusive and restricted, right? And restricted in subtle ways where a long time publishing was notoriously badly paid. Why? Because so many people in it had trust funds, right? So there are ways in which, as there is greater pay equity, as there's a concerted effort to recruit people, and specifically in something like marketing, to recruit people from places that they don't normally recruit them, right? That these moves are slowly opening things up, but it's slow, it would be nice if it were faster. But here we are trying our best. There aren't that many black agents, I'm one of a few. And then there may be even few of us who sell consistently at a certain level, you know? It's tough and it, you know, agenting, for instance, is a job that's done through connections, you know? It's not like you can just necessarily hang out a shingle and succeed, right? Because it's really about relationships and having access to relationships and being mentored by people who put you in the right place to have access to relationships. And then, you know, on top of things like good taste and luck and having been, you know, schooled in the right ways, I mean, there's all of that coming into play. So it's very tough. I sometimes, you know, a couple of months ago, my editorial director is also African-American, I was also black. You know, we were in a meeting with our client. So our clients were two black women. Our editor was a black woman. We were black and the marketing person was black. And we said, you know, it's a moment. You know, and this was a big five publisher. You know, we were like, this is a moment because we don't often get to see ourselves in all of these places in one meeting. So I agree. It's a different culture. We actually took a zoom shot. We did. That's how, Cynthia, thank you. You were there for the best, you know? But then also, and I'm gonna say this because I think it has to be said, you know, I was on a podcast where people asked me, well, do you think as a black agent you can get as much money as a white agent? We're still battling these perceptions of ourselves even within industries that have been historically white that maybe we can't conduct business at the same level. You know, and I laughed and I said to the women I was talking to, you know, you'd be surprised. Often I get more money because I don't undervalue my clients. I don't undervalue, you know, now things are changing and everybody's like, black, you know, books are hot. But, you know, I was looking at someone who's very, very famous and she was, you know, she had posted what her third book advance was. And I was like, I routinely start unknown writers at more money than what her third book was getting. And, you know, but I think that there were all these perceptions about who can do what, how you enter, you know, at every stage, you know, sometimes, you know, people don't want somebody who's black in marketing and ask for somebody who's not black. We know I have a friend as a doctor, you know, a black woman doctor and she has people who ask for a different doctor because they don't trust that a black woman doctor can deliver. I mean, we're also having, you know, we have to deal with all of these different complexities in the role that we're, you know, in the roles that we're in, particularly when we're integrating these spaces. And it's tough. It's funny, I am very thrilled that my agent is Marie Brown, who's sort of the brandom of black agents. And I am, and this, we've done this last book at Amistad, which is, you know, a very important historical black publisher that's with them. And so that was such a wonderful experience, but it's funny, I was thinking about my daughter when she, Caroline, I'm the mother of a 31, 33 year old. You guys are, have babies. I have a 33 year old who's quite an extraordinary writer in her own right. And, but when she went down out of Harvard to go teach in the Mississippi Delta, I will never forget, there was a mother, and I met this mother in the first grade class, a black mother who was bound and determined that she did not want her child to be in the class with the black teacher who went to the school she had never heard of called Harvard. She wanted her to go with the white teacher with the school she had heard of. I had never even heard of this college. It was not a commons college in Mississippi. It was some unknown to me college in Mississippi. And just, she just could not imagine that the black woman from the not, could be as good a teacher as this white teacher. Now, fortunately, this principal did not move the child and Caroline did a great job of teaching her, but we are up against a lot of things. And I am consistent that as I told you all, I'm a breast cancer survivor. My oncologist is a woman of color. She's not a, she's, and my team, my surgeon was a woman. And my main, my everyday doctor is a black woman trained at Duke, Emory and Baylor and she's amazing that I put and I didn't pick them because of their color. I picked them because they were the best. My position, I checked her. She graduated summa from undergraduate in biochemistry. She is a brilliant black woman and she is also empowered. And I love that team, but we've got to, so it's not, it's just recognizing and Tanya, I think you're the kind that realizes often the very best looks like us because if you achieve these things and you've had these liabilities against you, you are the ones who do it backwards and high heels. These are the best people that we can, that we had. So I don't pick black women because I'm just wanting to have be reflected. I pick them because often successful black women are the women who can find a way and make a way. And if you can possibly be done to save your life, they can achieve it. And I want the people I want on my team. Lamar McLean put the statistics up here for us. In 2019, 5% in the industry overall were black, Afro Caribbean and Afro American published. And that is the industry for 2019. And we are in the sort of question section. People want to know, this is a question that's always sort of hard for me to ask people. Go ahead. You ask, I just want to do a shout out for my amazing agent, Nicola Rashi. She's a woman of color. And just, I just, I had to get her name out there because she is such an amazing fighter and just, anyway, lover wanted to say her name. That's it. Go on with the questions. Folks want to know if you all have any rituals that you do to help you healing your own personal trauma? Well, I would say that one of the rituals, I was talking to a group of people a couple of weeks ago that asked a similar question. And so in my agency, I work with another black woman. And I think that one of the ways in which I enact a ritual of daily healing is that I am in communion with another black woman in the intimate sphere of my workplace. And that there's a way in which we have one another's backs that is really important and that is deeply sustaining for me. And I think it counters some of the weathering, which was what we as black women so often experience, through the daily microaggressions and pressures of white supremacy. I find that because we can laugh and look at each other and say, girl, because we're always on the same page in a way, it de-stresses the way in which working in predominantly white spaces can create stress. So I think being in meaningful work relationship with another black woman is an important way that I de-stress and that I remain centered. One of the things that I've done is I've created this collective of black women writers. And we write together every day on Zoom. We have a check-in time and sometimes there's two of us, sometimes there's six, but we are all at different levels of, you know, in our careers, some people are published, some people are not, Tonya and Johnson is one of the members and Tanya is as well. And we get together and we write and we write for an hour, we have five minute break. And sometimes one of us is stuck or having a hard time and we're there for one another. And sometimes I just take a Zoom photo of the faces, just all these different beautiful shades of black women and just that as a touchstone has been so amazing. And also writing itself, the act of writing through a painful feeling or experience and writing to the other end of that, that ritual, that act in and of itself is a healing act, coming to the end of a difficult story. I completely agree with both of those. I think centering yourself in some black space, reading some black spaces is very important and being in communion. I have loved on Sundays, I have a group of women that we text, we have black movie marathons that are available on Netflix. We've watched a tremendous amount of what are called Nollywood, The Nigerian Wild, but we don't wanna be in it. Old and new, we have and during COVID, I would jog along to watching the movies and we will create like on a long, we can attend a 10 movie hit list so you can watch it while you are cleaning and then we can talk about these movies. And I love supporting my black women sisters that are directing these wonderful African films and writing in them and starring in them. So that has been, and actually Netflix has been very good about putting a lot of that on air. So my black movie marathons that go way beyond their global have been wonderful. I believe in self-medicating with art. My- So I will say like, I will get songs that lift me up or chill me out. Self-medicating with art is very important. My weirdest one that I love is I get on, if you have your phone, you can get free from you to Tube or Audible, Tibetan singing bowls, get in and listen to them that art, get into the bathtub, turn out all the lights and listen, breathe to these Tibetan singing bowls. I challenge anyone to be stressed after that. So I think that it's great to share these things with our sisters. I think you can do something as weird, as simple as the movie marathons, as strange as the Tibetan singing bowls. I also wanna be real. I don't think I use writing for therapy. I feel I personally think they're very different things. I talked about writing the talking cure and talking the writing cure that to me, I think therapy is very important for some people is extremely important for me. And I've retired from therapy now, from having had a long, non-traditional, but real analysis. And it was one of those things they say, like being a parent or being a great therapist, that people leave and don't look back. So I don't ever think about my therapist anymore, but I owe a lot to the therapy that I did before. And I feel that when I'm writing now I'm writing from a space of what I figured out how that even that therapist at one point, and one of my therapists is a guy called Forest Talley, who wrote the actual textbook on the treatment of abused and neglected children. And he told me at one point afterward, he said, you're the happiest life and the happiest person I've ever seen from this serious kind of abuse. That the normal outcome of the kind of abuse you have is people end up in jail or dead. That that's what happens. And your hard one, happy is real. And I have felt like translating, for a long time never talked about it because I knew most people couldn't get to where I am from where they were. And I didn't want to minimize. And I figured I didn't start writing novels in my 40s when I really was at a point where I could take what I had distilled and put it into novels that could help some other people get there. And I have people tell me that happens. But so to me, the writing came, you know, the songwriting and the screenwriting and the living. And then once I sort of come to another place, the novel writing started in my 40s. And I love, Cynthia, I saw your workshop. You're never too old to write your first novel. Oh, these old ladies. I love, I hope you're never too long old to write your first memoir because I'm now trying, I wanna try that now and go into nonfiction in my 60s. And I think there's a lot of ageism. I wanted to talk about this outside of the academic. Everyone wants these baby, new young writers. But I, and not me or Cynthia, you know, I have had a career, but I think we need to be open to the 55 year old 65 in the middle of the country in Indiana, in Mississippi, who may have incredibly powerful story to tell. That she's not in New York and she's not in LA and she's not 25. And it's not to take anything away from the 25 year olds and the 33 year olds. Or the 30 under 30. And this take away from the 30 under 30, but I will never, could never be a 30 under 30. And I don't wanna take away any, I take, I just wanna invite everyone to the table. Sure. And that includes the 60 and the 70 and the 80 year olds. And I think that we are not invited. And I think those of us who are sort of in this club, one way or the other, we've gotten in the club. It is up to us to open the door. And when I was just publishing the Oxford American, I mean, I edited the food issue. One of the things I was most excited to do was give people a chance who had never been published and who were over 50. And there were a couple of people and some of them are already getting made that after their piece came out, they're starting to get offers. People are interested in them. And that was just, I was thrilled to do that, to open a door for somebody else. There was a workshop very quickly called Second Blooming that I was a part of at a writing conference. And it had, they did this every year and it had like the worst time slot, the littlest room. It was jam packed. And it was all older women who were writing and wanted to write their stories who are like treasure troves of stories. I mean, these stories that women are walking around with, they are, it is gold, diamonds, rubies, and absolutely the stories that older women have to tell myself as one of those women. I mean, I'm one of the stories that have never been told because stories that haven't been written by white men. Yes. And those, I love reading those stories. Ellen Norteal, who's the publisher of the Amsterdam News, she put a wonderful search tool for international film called telescopefilm.com forward slash welcome. She says you can filter by country or streaming service, et cetera, for those of you who love films. So we're almost at the end. People have been saying this is amazing and brilliant and I'm grateful to have the conversation with you. I always like to leave the last words with you guys. What is your, this is through a black woman's lens. And I just wanted to have this opportunity to let the brilliant black women, I know, say to the audience that I have available to me what they want and need. What do you want? And you shall receive. Well, I love that you invited us here. And both of the two women you invited us to be with are people I had wanted to meet. And I think that the ancestors were working and I'm thrilled that Tanya Pinkins, who's a person that I've admired, who's inspired me with her performances and now this directing. But Cynthia, you don't know I'm obsessed with East Texas. I'm writing a book on black country, but I've spent a lot of time in Texas and I was, I loved Ruby. And, you know, Tanya, you have brought some of the books that matter the most to me into the world. And so I think that this, I love that being in community with other women makers, being able to, that Talmud thing, we argue about what we love. I hope that everyone who heard this will argue that you can only argue when you have trust and you realize, and I only argue with people who I think are wonderful and I think are my equal, because I'm not a bullet. My equal are my superior. So you guys, it's wonderful to be in a discussion where everyone can hold their own corner so that we are doing things, we're taking what Barack Obama talked about, Odacity, Hope, and we parsed it and the audience came in and they added a layer of faith in it, that we actually parsed it with that love and joy. And that Tanya, you were so, I love being in community and I think we, I at least what I want is that connection. And I think that this, oddly on this day of Semem Biles, recognition that is centered through a black woman's lens. It will make me tear up. Nothing means more to me than the recognition of my peers. And you put that on here. And I certainly hope you all feel I give you that. Oh my gosh. Yeah, this has been a really, you know, when you're in that world and you're writing and you're on deadline and the world is, you know, it can get pretty tunnel visioned. I, putting on makeup, puts mirrorings on. I got a little fixed up, you know, I mean, which I would believe me is not something I'm doing every day, believe me. I did not come out in my bathroom, but the thing is this conversation has been really, really inspirational. And I think that knowing that you're not alone, you know, when you're in a room building a world and living in that world and swirling around in that world, even with a lovely community that I have created through Blackbird Collective, even with that, it's still lonely. And these conversations are important. It's important to know it's almost like we're all just holding up our torch and we're doing it to see our own world in a conversation like this. What it allows us to do is look over there. Oh yeah, she's got her torch. Oh, look at the world she's got. And you, Tanya, you're supporting all of these amazing writers to hold their torches and just hearing your process has been so important. And of course, Tanya, you always, the other Tanya always inspire me in your way of living. So just this conversation has really been satisfying in a wonderful way. There's nothing for me to add except to say that each one of you in your own right has made me feel seen and know to be seen and to be appreciated and to be heard and to be in communion. These things I experienced is profoundly healing and profoundly meaningful. So thank you for tonight. Thank you. I love how all of these women, they took it, they threw it back, they thanked everybody. And that is what black women do. When black women are taken care of, everybody's taken care of. But the question I asked was, what do you need? You all dodged the question. What do you want? What do you need? There's people out there listening that might be able to give it to you. What do you want or need? I asked this question of every one of my panel. Okay, we're going back around again. I want people to join, listen to the black, bottom saints podcast. It's free, it's on Audible, it's on Apple. I barely understand social media. I have two wonderful young women who put, decided I had to have a podcast and volunteer to do it. And we've had some interesting things happen with it. I was on another thing with Angela Davis related to podcasts and this, and it was that team that got me under that, that decided to do this. So the black, bottom saints podcast, I need some followers. That may be some of you all can come and help me do that. And it's definitely been filed. Okay. Oh my goodness. I don't know. Someone to magically make meals appear outside of my door when I'm on deadline. Just don't see you, don't know you, just, I mean, you're lovely. But sometimes just honestly, when I'm sort of closed off and my daughter's not with me and I'm just finishing just meals outside of the house. Okay, now we may not want anybody just coming to your house. You can have a place where people can send, if you tell us, we'll tweet it out that there's a place where they can send a meal, a fresh, I don't know, I think that those meals are a good thing. I think like when women have babies, people need to come over, cook, clean, rub their feet. I just, send me your address and I'll send you meals. You know, I do food, I do food. That's something I do. We're really good at that. And I know, I know. And even unless I can get food to your door. Oh my gosh, okay. Look at that, look at that, look at that. I can do that. Yeah, it is the cooking sometimes is like, oh my God, I don't wanna, I just wanna write, I don't wanna think about anything else. So my dog is dying to get out, but I'm gonna let him wait just a little longer. But you might hear him. Okay, McKinnon. I don't know, and I've been racking my brain. I also want magical fairies to appear and cook at night for the family, which always changed for me. What do I need? I want more, to be honest, I want more black women healthcare practitioners. In my life, I want, that's what I want. I would love for, I was thinking as Alice said, that all of her doctors are black women. I would love to have more really, amazing informed black women healthcare providers. I have a mild form of, I'm immunocompromised to have a mild form of lupus. And I think it as black women, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to be well. And so that I want more healing energy in my life. That's what I want in all kinds of ways. And I want people to read books. It's fascinating. There's one last question that I'm gonna have and I think it goes to you, Tanya, but today I just learned about a podcast of a woman who has lupus, not a podcast, I'm sorry, an Instagram account of a woman who has lupus talking about all of her different practices of healing and she just run a photo contest. So I'm gonna have to send that to you offline, Tanya, because it just literally came into my box today. And I started following this woman. So our last question, before we say, goodnight is also from- On that one, I have to tell you, Tanya, that's a weird thing we share. So many. And Sinira in Wendangon has lupus. I'm giving a grand rounds next Thursday. She has the butterfly rat. It's because of my experience with it in my very first novel, I gave that to Sinira. And it's also a disease at the time. It's disproportionately present in black women. So, why- So small world. So there's a connection right there. So some resources are gonna be shared because we asked. Our last question comes from Lamar McLean. What would you say to emerging storytellers who are being told by gatekeepers that their stories never sell? Do you think those gatekeepers in doing so confess their limitations and their fear that someone else will benefit from greater vision? I'm gonna say it again. What would you say to emerging storytellers who are being told by gatekeepers that their stories will never sell? Do you think these gatekeepers in doing so confess their limitations and their fear that someone else will benefit from greater vision? Oh, I just will jump in very quickly. And I was told point blank that my book would never sell, that no one would ever buy it, that it would never be published. I was, I mean, I have the email. I could share it, but I'd have to look for it. But, you know, I was told that directly and you can't, the thing that's most important is you cannot write thinking about the gate. You can't write thinking about who is standing. You have to write whatever the world is, that is that you are seeing, you have to write in a truthful, full way. And once you have finished your story, then you begin the next part of it. But obviously, there are so many people who've been told their books are never, I think everybody's been told their book is never gonna be, it's never gonna happen. It's good. So then next, you have to, that's where you have to say next. And you have to make sure it is the best book that you can write. You have to make sure that, you know, you've polished and done all of that. But once that is done, you move on to the next until you find a home. Writing well is the best revenge. I don't think it even is, sometimes people just don't see it. People have different tastes, but writing well is the best revenge. And there are audiences out there that people haven't even found yet. And now at least there are all kinds of options beyond the non-traditional publishers. So there is a way to connect your work to your audience. You absolutely can. Do not be dissuade. Don't, the simple old spiritual, not gonna let nobody turn me around. Cannot let anybody turn me around. The ancestors are talking because you'll see when you get the link. Yeah. Tanya, you got the last word. I'm gonna say that this is where it requires a certain kind of esteem, a kind of belief in yourself that you know that what you're doing has value and that you don't just take in what you're being told. And it's really important, I say this all the time, it's really important for aspiring writers to remember that this is an extremely subjective business. You know, I've had people come to me and they've been told all manner of crazy things about their work. I had somebody come to me recently who was pulled to upend a brilliant idea to make it more commercial. And when the writer came to me, I said, you have to restore what you've removed because I don't know who told you to do this, but you've vitiated your own work. You've violated what it is that you're doing. I believe what you originally were doing can sell. And then I went on to sell the book. You know what I mean? So that it's also, you know, it's again, it's that thing where you have to have faith. You have to keep working. You have to keep pushing. You have to keep believing in yourself. And this is the most important part. And I always say it to my daughter, you have to see failure as part of the process. So you don't stop at the first failure or the second failure. You say failure is my friend in a certain way. As an agent, if I couldn't handle failure, I couldn't work. I mean, my job is the negotiation of rejection, right? And so I have, you know, I joke, I say, you know, if you're a certain age or remember this jingle, weevils wobble, but they don't fall down, you know? You have to be over 50 to know that one. But it's this idea that, you know, sometimes, you know, I can get knocked about, but I generally really don't fall down because I have a sense of myself and my taste and a vision about what I wanna do. And you have to see failure as a teacher. If you don't see failure as a teacher, chances are you'll stop. So don't stop, no matter how many knows. Don't stop. Remember that old, remember the chicken soup for the soul people? Do you remember that from years ago? Yes. Right down by every single publisher in New York City. And then they went on to have a seventh-figure franchise, you know? Success is getting up one more time than you get knocked down, that's it. And failure is getting, is staying down one more time. We're gonna get knocked down. Success is just getting up one more time than you get knocked down. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, ladies, for taking time out of your very busy schedules to have this conversation with me. People have been moved and touched and are grateful and saying amazing things. We're gonna say goodbye to everyone in the chat. We'd like you all to stay on for a couple seconds beyond when we say goodbye to the live feed. Our next, through a Black Women's Gaze, is gonna be at the end of August, last Thursday in August, and we'll be looking at Miss Sajin war. So thank you all and stay blessed and wear a mask. And don't listen to what anybody tells you about not wearing a mask. Wear a mask always everywhere. They work.