 Thank you for joining us on this beautiful sunny afternoon. Can I get someone from the audience in the chat, let me know that they can see and hear me. That would be great. And we'll give it just a moment for the crowd. Thank you. Welcome everybody will get started. And I want to welcome you all for being here. My name is Anissa. I'm a librarian at San Francisco Public Library and am happy to be here and honored to have our guests today. We are here to speak on part of our one city one book and Chanel Miller's book. Know my name. And today's panel features some amazing women creators. We'll discuss the book and their art. This event will be is streamed on YouTube right now we welcome all of our YouTube viewers as well. We want to welcome you to the unceded land of the aloney tribal people and acknowledge the many Romeo tush aloney tribal groups and families as the rifle stewards and the lands on which we work and live in the Bay Area. We're committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations with whom we live together. We encourage you to learn more about land rights, indigenous communities, first person's culture. And I will put a link in the chat box as we get rolling with a link to all sorts of resources about indigenous culture reading list, but all sorts of other events and resources for today. San Francisco Public Library condemns the horrendous violence against Asian and Asian Americans in our communities, our state and nationwide, both the reported and the invisible crimes that have occurred. We stand in solidarity with our Asian communities neighbors colleagues, and those distressed and hurt by these attacks. We acknowledge that these events are complicated by the entanglement of anti black and anti Asian stereotypes in the reporting of these acts of violence. We acknowledge the reduction in humanity and harm done to the black community by the coverage of hateful commentary that has been deployed by our media. Anti black and anti Asian racism, both uphold white supremacy and we're all harmed by these racial structures. San Francisco Public Library has been deeply committed to working on our racial equity in our own house, and we have a racial equity commitment statement that I'll put a link to as well in the chat box for this. Don't forget to mask up for this event of through one city one book we're working closely with San Francisco women against rape. The book is very heavy. We have been partnering with SF or for the entire campaign they have extra staff and effort extra folks manning the phone lines so if you need help. I will put that link into the chat box to you can reach out to them 24 hours a day. And they are women of color led and volunteer based organization providing support resources advocacy and education to San Francisco's communities communities healing from sexual assault. We are having many events related to one city one book I'm really honored to have all these amazing people, as well as Chanel Miller. The San Francisco Public Library supports all of the events fiscally, and you know it's really amazing that we get to bring all these amazing people in. Every Monday we've been hosting a series called know your name, and this will last all the way through April so please come check out some of those events. Tomorrow we're going to be celebrating and honoring international transgender day of visibility. And then one other thing I want to point out was know the rape documentary and director talk coming up. Aisha Shahida Simmons is a pretty amazing and legendary filmmaker, the documentary has, you know, it's over a decade old but it was revolutionary and it's time and still is. And she's a 2020 co author of a Lambda award winning book. And events like I said these are Monday series. I should definitely come check that out. She's joining us from DC so some silver linings of pandemic world art and more art. The one and only Dr Carol Queen will be talking about healthy relationships. And then Mayor from memoir who is also doing the International Day of Transgender visibility will be back to have a virtual healing circle for survivors of childhood sexual assault. All of these people are partners. Including our sharp, which is the office for sexual harassment assault and response prevention who helps train first responders to be allies as they help survivors get through. And combined with the human rights and the Department of status women and SF or an SF safe house will be doing a panel on our unhoused communities and sexual assault. So some definite powerful events that are heavy and we understand that and the book is heavy. We understand that too but it is so vital and important and it needs a mind shift. And we are here to help you with that we're also here to help you with those resources like I said, SF or is on the line now, and I will put a bunch of stuff in the chat after I introduce our panel and we get rolling. So again, thank you all for being here. We are here today with this dynamic panel of fierce female artist and titled feel what I felt which is a post it quote from Miller that Chanel wrote as inspiration for her book. And this is referenced in the daily show, Trevor Noah's Daily Show. The panel will feature cultural creators CC Carpio Diana Camaros, Amara Tabor Smith, and moderated by Ellen Sebastian Chang. And we even have a surprise guest. So it's wonderful. Ellen Sebastian Chang is a legendary figure in Bay Area performing arts, a director and arts educator whose career spans 50 years. Current projects include an ongoing collaboration with Afrofuturist conjure artist, Amara Tabor Smith, and deep waters dance company companies, House full of black women. This year sites, specific dance theater work that addresses the displacement, sex trafficking, and creative well being of black women and girls in Oakland. Sebastian Chang is also the creative director of the world as it could be human rights, and the arts education program. He is the recipient of awards and grants from creative capital, map fund, a blade of grass fellowship and social engagement art matters, Kenneth Rainan Foundation, the NEA creative work fund, and California Arts Council and the Zeller Buck family fund. So without further ado, I would like to introduce you to Ellen Sebastian Chang. Hi. Thank you so much to the San Francisco Public Library for this event. I'd just like to start by honoring that I am currently on the land of the the Cowlitz and Clackamas First Nations tribe in Portland, Oregon. Let's all breathe. This is such a tender subject that we're all about to embark upon and and it's tender because it is so every woman in this room may have some story, or possibly the men in this room. I don't know who always in the room but assaults upon our body, even even when it's a perceived assault, a literal assault. It lives within us and and it's such a challenge to think about how to be your own exorcist sometimes to to have what might become a small demon that lives inside of you. And so the alchemy of this is not lost on any of the panelists is not lost on myself it's not lost on anyone in the room. And so I just want to start by saying that I've been playing the last three nights with the word shame, because I personally, I have a lot of shame, and being an artist. I took the word shame and I just broke it down to the, and the letter a and the final two letters of me. I began to rock that word. Like a very vulnerable baby. You know, innocent and vulnerable. A word that is born out of misdirected training misdirected. Just violence that gets put on the self and so I ask each and every one of you to just whatever shame you carry just swaddle it and hold it for a moment, and just say, just cradle it for a moment. And calm it down and say, I forgive you, let go, I forgive you, I forgive you. So I'm just going to start I'm just going to read. Just a short passage from Chanel Miller's book. That I speak, thanks speak so much to our feelings of coming forward, and then I'm going to introduce. Amara Tabours Smith. Whenever I hear a survivor say they wish they'd had the courage to come forward. I instinctively shake my head. It was never about your courage, fear of retaliation is real. Security is not free. It bothered me that coming forward should feel like heading toward a guillotine. I don't think most survivors want to live in hiding. We do because silence means safety openness means retaliation, which means it's not the telling of the stories that we fear. It's what people will do when we tell our stories. I remember thinking, if anyone finds out they'll think I'm dirty. They'll suffer from society's shallow understanding. Disclosing one's assault is not an admission of personal failure. Instead, the victim has done us the favor of alerting us to danger in the community. Openness should be embraced. And so with that, I am going to open up a beautiful panel. I'm going to open up to you in the audience that have joined us today and invite us all to be open and embrace each other and embrace each other's stories and that we are here together and that we are here to protect and embrace one another. So I'd like to turn it over to Amara Tabor-Smith and she'll do a brief introduction of herself and then we'll just go in order of our guests and then we're just going to have a free discussion amongst the four of us. So thank you, Amara. Helen, thank you for that. I'm so moved by those words, so moved. Yeah, breathing. Yeah, let us all just keep breathing throughout this really short time together to delve so deeply. And so, who am I? Who am I? I make, you know, what would be traditionally categorized as dance and performance work. I call it conjure art. I utilize Yoruba spiritual technologies to address issues of social and environmental justice and in order to shift the vibration from oppression to collective joy, liberation and well-being. It for me is, it is death doula work. It is grief doula work. It is joy doula work. I see myself and the folks I work with, which includes you, Ellen, as being part of work, a death doula being a very loving death doula for patriarchy. It's the grand system that even gets us to this topic today. So I just want to thank you for holding space for this conversation and I'm looking forward to everyone else and us delving deeper. And I'm going to leave it right there for now. And I'm going to pass it to Diana Gameros. Hello, everyone. Thanks, Ellen, for reminding us to breathe first and foremost for holding space for us as we become open and allow ourselves to feel the things that we need to feel. I make music, I sing, I play guitar, I write songs, mainly inspired by the immigrant journey, but also songs that hopefully will first uplift me and hopefully uplift others. And I think that's one of the reasons why I honor Chanel Miller's work so much and because I see the power in that I have experienced it. And so, yeah, I perform. I am originally from Mexico, now living in Oloni territory in Berkeley, California, and just couldn't be more happy to be sharing this space and this conversation with all of you. So much admiration for all of your work and all of your being. So I don't say that lightly. It's truly an honor. Thank you. And next, I'd like to introduce Cece Caprio. Hi. Thank you, everyone. And thank you, Ellen, for beautiful introduction. It's an honor to be here with all this beautiful, brilliant women that I have so much admiration for. And just to be able to speak and talk, I mean, we're, we're going really deep today, you know, we're getting all up in the fields, but I mean, beyond all of that is like such a high admiration on not just to craft that each of the women in this panel does, but also just to reach and intention of every word that Diana sings to every movement that Amara kind of compose and create. I'm such a big admirer. I'm such a big fan. So it's great to be here. So my name is Cece Carpio, and there's probably like roosters and motorcycles and everything else behind me that I can't really control. I'm currently in Dominican Republic right now. But I'm a visual artist. I paint big walls. And in so many, in so many ways, I kind of actually got me really thinking and reading Chanel's book and, and kind of really thinking about my craft made me really think about how I reclaim public spaces is kind of very similar on how we as women as we go through our resilience. To also reclaim our body is almost kind of a similar process and that's kind of the, the metaphor I see in connecting my work within this book. I've reread the book. I mean, maybe the second or third time now and, and just really impressed on the, the capacity of Chanel Miller to articulate emotions and feelings and ways that I feel like I felt it before just by reading her words and so I was highly impressed because it's not. And I don't take the session lightly because you know being able to even feel and being able to talk about our feeling is not necessarily a common cultural practice to a lot of people I know, including women in my life. I mean, unfortunately, and I think we are constantly growing to be more in touch and be open and, and, and I think that's why this panel like this are really important and relevant. I don't always have the right words express this. I communicate with colors and with lines. And so it's especially thrilling to be able to be in, in the space with amazing creators who kind of touches all of that. I mean, essentially, I believe one of, one of the role of an artist is to be able to get us to feel, you know, and with that comes intelligence of being able to connect. And hopefully then being able to create action to whatever extent that is, whether it's healing ourselves or whether it's, it's changing the world so. But I think that very seed and that very drop of being able to, to feel and have this notion of we are connected through the feelings that we have it's quite magic really and I'm excited to. To dig deep a little bit more into that as I feel like Chanel Miller kind of. Um, brilliantly did with her book and in a really kind of, I could empathize but I could also find myself halfway laughing in the way she described things and, and, and I think that is kind of just the complexity of feelings it goes from one pendulum swing to another within within seconds and. So, and I feel like my metaphor to that is just the variations of color palettes that can be used in painting up a wall is kind of very similar in ways of like we can feel all this different things as and and be able to learn how to hold space for all of those so I'm excited to talk more about that. I think, I think this is for right now and and I'm excited to to to hear more of Ellen's leeway on where this come conversations going to take all of us. Thank you that that was an excellent segue CC. We're also going to just introduce a little bit later as a surprise author, who's born and raised in San Francisco, and we'll bring her in near the end named Natalie golly, who wrote an incredible book called the girl who said no about Vila Franca who wrote the entire thousands of years tradition in Sicily in the early 60s. That was part of if a man saw a woman that he decided he wanted if he raped her then she had to marry him. And so with that. Natalie golly so at the last minute agreed to to join us at the panel at the end. So I'm going to lead us off CC you you opened a great gateway here which is the gateway of feelings and also talking about being a death do of patriarchy, and which to me. I think one of the things that we're up against right now is that we're at this I believe at this crossroads of language ideas. What is the body, you know what is the body in relationship to technology what is the body in relationship to gender, and all of these things are rooted in the elements of our feelings and under, I believe a very industrialized capitalized system. We're trained to suppress our feelings, especially if we're women, we're, we're told we're so emotional and, and you know, we're so this and yet, when I think of rape as an act. It is an act of unbridled uncontrollable surge of feelings of feelings that are rooted in violence in anger in power and all of those are rooted in feelings. Those feelings becoming ideas ideas that we are taught that we are taught, and that's why I think we're in a very important moment in the 21st century to identify something becoming a culture, a rape culture. And because we are creatives, we part of our drive is to reframe rethink and reshape culture because when culture changes, legislation changes, laws change, and so I would like each of you to express in your own ways. You can write a music song, throw up a mural, whatever it is that you feel that as Amara talked about earlier is how are we shifting this vibrational moment right now, and Chanel Miller's book has been such a catalyst of that and inspiration to feel what I feel. And whoever wants to dive into that but thank you CC. Wow. Yeah, I, you know, I, I reread her book. A second time and also got the audible version so that I could because she narrates her own book, and there are these moments I don't know if anyone listened also to the audio version but she, you know, the emotion in her voice, you know, which in some books that I've listened to, you know, is void of was so present and and the power of that and the power of retelling the story is about, you know, there's, I feel like, you know, something you were saying Ellen like that, yes, we live in a rape culture. We live in a society that actually was founded on the ownership of women's bodies of bodies and primarily, you know, wound bodies, wound bodies, right. So, and so what it means, like, to, to tell your story of violence in a way like the power in that book is not just about the retelling of what happened, but the evocation around, you know, there's a way in which it's even articulate but there, but there is an energy inside of it that is transformative of that, of that violence. And it's, to me, it's an, it's an evocation, because as I'm reading it, you know, there's ways in which she is repeating some things again and again and again and that's what we do in ritual in, in my tradition, you sing a song, you do a movement over and over again till you shift until something else happens. And I feel like she did that in the telling of the stories like, I'm telling it and I'm telling it and 50 pages later, I am telling it again, because it keeps bringing you back. It's like, we live in a culture that says, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Yes, I want to hear it, but then I want to move on. But then I want to move on, you know, and she's like, she keeps you there. And it's, you know, and there's a power in that because if we're going to transform something, we have to go in. And we have to keep going in and tell something else happens. And that, that was really, that was what was so powerful for me is that in the telling of our stories, it's about what is the ritual, just like the young woman who carried the mattress on her back, you know, on the college campus, it's like, and you're going to see me and me again, and you're going to see me again, and you're going to see what this represents, because when you feel like, okay, enough, but it's not enough until we collectively shift it until we collectively make the decision to lay down, you know, the, the, the spirit of rape culture, the spirit of patriarchy that makes it okay, you know, that all these ways that we come to normalize this behavior that we don't even, you know, it's internalized that even, you know, in, and I'll just say this last thing and turn it over, but like the thing that I kept thinking about when she was telling the story of like how she was making everyone else okay, or how her sister in the party, you know, is laughing often, and, and, and our instinctual as them body people to not make a scene to laugh it off okay let me just let me just move myself that we are not conditioned to fight back, we are not that is not part of our socialization as them body people, you know, and that what does that mean, and for some reason before we came on I was having this memory. I was having this memory of a car campaign. Ellen you might remember in the 70s their use and I think it was Volkswagen and it was the car and it said yes, and the car and it says, if this car were a woman you would pinch its bottom. It was a huge campaign and I was a child, you know, seeing this I am a young femme body person who's seeing this campaign that is okay. Right. And I remember that there was a someone did some graffiti in response and I used to have the card but it said if this woman were a car she would run you down. But the important thing that I that came to me was like, right, if this car were a woman you would pinch its bottom, but you wouldn't even pinch the bottom of a car. So that a car gets more consideration and care than the, the, the femme body. And I was like, wow, you know, like, these days are numbered. No more. No more seriously. And I'll stop there for now. Yeah, maybe I'll, I'll add to what you said Amara about how, you know how Chanel keeps coming back to remind us to remind us to tell it again she is going deeper and deeper she, you know, we wish for her to take us out. Out of that place of grief and she doesn't you know she's also I feel like there's just so much there because you know we're also seeing and we're you know through her writing. She's allowing everybody to see the spectrum like the big spectrum of healing from grief and how there is a, there is a, you know, there's a healthy spectrum of suffering. And yet, even us we want her to be out right because we we're starting to feel like we love her and because we can relate to her story. And yet, no, there is a process to this. And I actually wanted to read a line that one of the lawyers told her one of the ones that was helping her, you know, gets down for to be accountable. The lawyer Michelle when she says the social change is a marathon. And it's not a sprint that you do all you can in the time that you have. And so, you know, many times I think, no, we do have to, you know, gear up and hit the accelerator. And yet, you know, here we are here we are again there's there's this is also a reminder that there's still so much work to do. And also I acknowledge you Amara by saying, or by amplifying that wish to yes, we can to say yes, it's not a sprint, you know, we do what we can in the time we have. And I almost want to say, well, and yes, let's step it up and keep, you know, hitting that gas pedal a little bit because I think collectively, we can potentialize that growth and that getting us out of this, you know, normalization and of this, and of this pain together. And Chanel is doing it and I think she is, she is doing it exponentially. She is offering this healing and I think that's the beauty and the power of art that we can reach to people that we don't even know we are reaching out to and especially now with the platforms, you know, with the digital world at her feet. Now more than ever, we can do that. And so for me, that's where my hope lies that yeah I acknowledge that social change is a marathon. And I also acknowledge the fact that we do need to put our foot on the, on the gas pedal and that we have all these, you know, all these, all these tools Chanel also said, you know that she bought a small red notebook and she wrote it feels better when the story is outside myself so for me as an artist and for anybody who wants to become an artist and who thinks they have a story to tell a mural. I think we may be lost Diana is frozen there. And for a moment CC, can you just join in and speak to the the power of color and images. Yeah, no it's. I mean so much what everyone have said I feel like we can talk about each particular part of that for the whole hour, you know, because it's so packed with so much stuff but I actually wanted to bring it back to two feelings because as I'm rereading this book, and especially within the different incident that has been happening the last week or two, it's been such. It's, it has allowed a different type of intensity of the feelings and emotion and feeling as I'm rereading it again and also just, you know, triggering certain memories and and just different thoughts and different analysis and, you know, and, and, and, and just ideas on how we heal and how we move forward. Incidences and times like this because as you mentioned earlier at some capacity about almost every woman I know who have had a chance to talk about this topic have had some sort of, you know, capacity of experiences within this and it's, it's always been. I believe a Samara had mentioned earlier sometimes become almost expected and normalized to some degree, like as, as a women's like, well, that's the role that, you know, that you just have to kind of get through it. You know, there's not like necessarily always a black book to like guide us through the process of and just also knowing that different folks have different timeline and healing. But, but before I go to that part and kind of like a little bit more. And that part of the process and wanted to bring it back to feelings because one thing that really caught me with Chanel's writing is she's able to talk about the intensity of what had happened to her in a way that's very fluid. Sometimes, you know, I mean she takes us all to the feelings the anger, the empathy, the, the, the relating, but even the moments in between. They feel the numbness, she like describes that and, and I think it's kind of really powerful and magical to like acknowledge those time because those are not normally connected, or we don't normally consider that part of the healing that is part of the stuff of the awakening. And one of the one of the line I actually have the book right in front of me and this is one of the book, one of the part that I've highlighted and I've gotten back to over and over because I feel like in so many different struggles in my life and the different intensity. She kind of really broke down and articulated this feeling. Which is, she describes it as the end and then clipping from the world where up was up and down was down. This moment is not pain. It's not hysteria. It's not crying. It is your inside turning to cold, to cold stone. It is utter confusion, paired with knowing. One is the luxury of growing up slowly, so begins the brutal awakening. And I think this is kind of like that moment of almost from numbness to acceptance and just that idea of like confused but like, oh, I know this I've been here before or I've known this before. And I think why I wanted to bring it back there is, is also such a big part of the process and how I create. Where there's moments of like just real clarity of like what it is the story I want to tell. But then there's those in between us to go through the process or just like, well, I actually don't know. You know, I'm actually don't know where this is going or how to get through this hurdle. And, and, and what I really appreciated with what Amar already mentioned and I think is very true is we just kind of keep diving deep and diving deep and diving deep. So we kind of could figure out what the next move is and I don't feel like we focus enough on just kind of the various trajectory and timeline on like people say, oh, she's in the path of healing as if there's a timeline that it happens and that you're going to get triggered again and it's, is this kind of ongoing quantum leaping serious event that happens through our life. Like, I mean as part, you know, as part of also it becomes part of like the body memories and how then do we heal that beyond the mental and the spirit and the emotional memories that different experiences have gone and printed in our bodies, you know. So, so I think through my craft, which I'm really fortunate and in ways that I could pace myself in the level of how small and how big I can go. I can create a small drawing in my journal at home in the buzz and take that in my backpack and take it with me or use my whole body and paint the whole wall and it becomes truly then physical. And, and it does have a different impact on on how it's received, and also like the energy applied physically and mentally. But in some ways, I think that what Diana was starting to get into you about how. Art has that power of not only being able to communicate to the world and what it is that we want to communicate but also the power to actually go with our mental and spiritual and physical process of releasing some of those things that we want to let go of. And, and, and fortunately, I, I mean I could only imagine it with dance where it is like literally pouring out of your skin and how much releasing that can do for one's body in order for us to kind of recuperate and rejuvenate and create something new, you know, create a whole new chapter, even as we're repeating similar parts of the story is still becomes different each time we repeat it. So, yeah, like I've never painted the same thing twice, even I could paint the same portrait, but there's always a difference in colors there's always a different and kind of the streets there's always a different. So, I think the more that we do repeat, whatever ritual and whatever process that it is that we go through, it looks different each time, and the more we can have the opportunity to create something totally new. That's, that's beautiful CC. I think it, what it speaks to. I'm going to respond to the word new, not as a criticism but as an understanding in relationship to capitalism's thirst for the new the new the new, as opposed to the depth, the depth, the depth. And I think that what is brilliant about Chanel's book, what is brilliant about what you just said CC of like I can paint the same portrait over and over but I'll use a different color it might be on a wall it might be in a notebook is because part of this process that we're going through is the depth of understanding and like, yes. What's that expression you never step in the same in the same river twice. You know, because the river is flowing, we are cellularly evolving and ourselves are dying and we being reborn and recreated inside our bodies every day, you know, every day and so is our understanding and it's actually through the creative process of repetition that we create depth is how can I really, really understand the depth of a life. And I just even mean my own life or your life or Diana's like that we can sing a song, and then come back to that same song 20 years later only to discover. I really did not understand that song. The first time I sung it because now I'm seeing it with more life experience and the whole purpose of life is living is really living it because there are things that I returned to books, films, music, you know, watching a particular dance piece or recently Amara start talking about the value of shaking, just shaking and why we shake. And so I have added shaking into my morning meditation where I just go out in the yard and I just shake and I just shake and all of a sudden I go. I feel so good. And when we look at American culture and particularly what is the first thing that has gotten ripped from the schools. In the beginning of the starting and the 70s, the arts, the arts because if you strip us from creativity and this isn't about professionalizing the arts. Yes, we can identify ourselves as professionals but every human being that is born sings and dances and plays and imagines and uses different voices there's not a child on earth that hasn't done that so that is born into us in the systems of industry and imperialism and colonialism has been determined to rip that from us as human beings. And I think the commodification and professionalizing of the arts is one of the ways that it is actually and I'll use the words siloing, ghetto icing commodifying. What we know is the most dangerous thing that human being has and that's our ability to play to imagine and to feel because once you strip us of that of our feelings and our ability to play and sing together. Because when we're singing together, we're not fighting when we're dancing together, we're not fighting. And we see that throughout all indigenous. I call Earth cultures where the interconnectivity of dance and music is global. Diana, you got cut off. Can you please finish what what you had started. Thank you. I sort of lost the train of thought trying to get back but I did I was able to to hear some of the last thing you said and I am actually I'm actually curious if when you started talking about remembering and and acknowledging that that that that you sort of you know we sort of have this cellular memory I don't know if you read I wanted to to share something that for me was very, very touching and something that a teacher told Chanel and forgive me if you already maybe even read it because I you were talking about that specific thing that made me think of this line when the teacher once explained to Chanel that we possess an invisible blueprint in the womb to build ourselves from the from the Mesoderm ones bones and connective tissues and heart emerged. We know how to form our being. We still have that information. It's still informs us. And so, you know, hearing your a little bit of the conversation right when I came back in. You know, for me, it's a, it's a reminder that that it is through art and through through through movement and and not the professionalize it's not the mainstream art not the, you know, not the art as an only an artist could do it but just as as beings who because that's really what an artist is of being who recreates himself herself themselves and so it's just, it's just so beautiful how this book is, it's just full of these reminders and and how we can, you know, me personally as an artist can go back to them to say, yes, all this information is in here, all this ability for us to heal and to remember that if we need to stay in the pain we will, but also the remembrance of, of what's beyond that and through through art is right. I mean, she on and on will say, you know, she pulled out a notebook or she wrote or she went to that comedy club and, or even through reading the letters, right, that that people were writing to her so keeping the story outside of ourselves. It heals us and it heals others. So, yeah, thank you for touching on that, you know, cellular memory cellular intelligence because I think it helps us it helps me to stay in the truth or to remember our truth the very deep one that are the one that comes from our essence and from our from where we really are from, you know, and sort of trying to get rid of all the labels and all the things that identify us as things that we are not. And to remember that we are powerful and free that that's how we were born. So, then we become oppressed and and not liberated through other systems but that's really our essence and so thanks to Chanel Miller for reminding us of that on this book. I'm just checking the time real quick, and we're doing so I'd like to introduce our little bit surprise local author, Natalie golly to just join us for a moment to kind of intersect the work that she did with the girl who said no, along with her understanding of the Chanel Miller book so Natalie golly if you could just introduce yourself really thank you and then do that so thank you so much for being willing to come in at the last minute. You're welcome. I'm actually very honored to join this group. I wrote a book about a woman I had read about when I was 13 years old, and the circumstance was. It was, it was serendipitous, I guess because a tiny article in the San Francisco Chronicle in the spring of 1966 galvanized my attention and riveted me in a way that had stayed with me has stayed with me for the duration of my life. And so I thought I'd read very quickly the article that I saw in the Chronicle so that you know what I'm talking about. This was a filler this was a little article about three inches long when they needed to fill in gaps in the in their larger articles they put these human interest stories in. So, this is what I read raped Sicilian girl refuses to marry, and this was from Trapani in Sicily the island of Sicily. A young woman has shocked her countrymen by refusing to marry a man who raped her. Donca Viola 18 years of age has defied more than 1000 years of Sicilian tradition by rejecting napshills with Filippo Melodia 25 years of age. The tradition is still part of Italian law which provides that all charges be dropped when a one way kidnap and carnally violated her. The girl has publicly avowed that she has no intention of changing her mind, despite the forceful opinions of many of her townspeople. She has not left her family's modest white home for several weeks. They have endured repeated vandalism and threats of violence. The fact that this had on my 13 year old seem to be or just on the edge of adolescence mind. I can't tell you and I am of Sicilian and Italian background, and I've asked myself a number of times would it have made any difference if this girl had been from Africa, or China or South America or the United States. And my answer is it would not have made any difference because here is a girl who stands up to an entire patriarchal system. And secondarily, the patriarchal system always, but I don't know what's right, and it will not agree to this arrangement. She seated, am I still with you? I hope so. You've got a very challenging audio connection. Okay. All right. Well, I hope you can hear me now. So, so I've written a book about my search for this woman, a number of years later, because I wanted to know did she survive? Who did she become? What, where did she go? What was the outcome? And that is the nature of my book. I hope that I hope you got enough to get a sense of one girl who represents thousands of girls. And what that meant for the culture position completely changed Italian culture in the long run. The, the custom does not exist anymore and it's no longer legal, but it was legal then. How are you? Are you getting me? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I hope you're getting me. We're getting you, but it is gargled, but I think we got to do it. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. No, it's nobody's fault. Let's see. Here we go. Oh my God. I'm unable to start video. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. So thank, okay, sorry. Thank you. Thank you, Natalie for that. And thank you for, for, for joining this conversation. Just, just from to remind us that in Chanel Miller's work, there is a embodiment of thousands of years. And in the spirit that we, we are, we are the cellular memories. We carry the epigenetics of the women from around the world. And at some point, someone is able to alchemize that in such clarity that it feels like a singular person. And yet when I read Chanel Miller's book, I felt centuries of women in her body. Saying, sorry, saying, speak for me. And what is so powerful is when, when there it be it someone like a Tarana Burke, who says, Oh, I am trying to work with these young women. And I need to say, me too. And so just even a simple vocalizing of me too, that it, even in that, what feels like something so small, because it is not small when someone is able to raise their hand, even when it's shaking and saying, this is also me, because where we're also at this moment in the world is that this healing. It needs to be intergenerational and intercultural and global. And so much of the time in this American experiment. We have gotten so good at other ring of like saying, Oh, well, you get over it because you're so privileged in this way and that and I thought it was so beautiful that Chanel Miller actually was in her own privilege. You know that if she, there's another book that's out right now by Sadiah Hartman and wayward lives. I'm forgetting that the title I'm clumsy with the title but Sadiah Hartman was able to address that there are so many women that are marginalized that are footnotes in history that are just named photographs, you know, and that these women might have been considered unruly and wild and sexual and therefore not worth protecting not worth much of anything. And we're in this moment right now to say, I have value, not because I'm an artist. I have value, because I'm alive. I stand in this body, and I stand in this world, and I, and you have a body and you. We must change this moment in time of the say that we are interdependent but we're also autonomous with autonomous desires and ideas. And that is the beauty of each and every woman in this moment here that we are interdependent and we share this moment together. And each one of us is a is a beautiful detail. A beautiful detail of humanity. And so I would just like to before we open it up to Q&A I want to read one one more thing that Chanel Miller talked about with her mother, and she said that she said, today the blessing finally came and this is what her mother said her mother said, if you want to break yourself to be bigger to help other women do that pain always gives you more power to go forward. It all depends on who you want to be. And so I applaud each and every one of us because I know that we have all felt incredible pain. And we choose to go forward we choose to keep breaking ourselves open and having the courage to be vulnerable and the courage to be soft to be soft and see the power of soft. So with that, I would ask if our audience has questions for the panelists. If you could put them in the chat and then I'm on the chat and I can read those because we have about 12 more minutes. And if not if there is no questions then I will turn it over to my panel is to add whatever final, not final but continued thoughts that they have before we close out. You know what I keep coming back to to is that, like, even as you were talking, and, you know, Ellen and you were speaking about like Saidiah Hartman's book and, and how, you know marginalized women are invisible lives and, you know, I think one of the biggest myths is that in this culture is that and by this culture and in patriarchal misogynist culture. No, no femme body person is valued. There's the illusion of it. There's the illusion, like even, you know, Natalie reading the story. That's a little girl who was probably, you know, seen, you know, in a general sense is like, Oh, you know, a precious daughter, except for when she betrayed misogyny. You know, that, and how that's, you know, that's the thing like this, this culture, you know, again, I, I always want to turn it back and that's the other beauty of Chanel's book is like she's revealing over and over again. And how his, you know, that man's actions, his violence was sanctioned, sanctioned, absolutely sanctioned by this culture. Absolutely. It's so ingrained in our universities that you know, the boys will be boys, and that you cannot win. There is no winning. There is no winning. There is no perfect scenario that a woman is going to get out of or a girl is going to, there is no winning. Misogyny and patriarchy have one role, which is to hold power by any means necessary. And that's always includes, you know, the violence on our bodies. It always does. It always does. Natalie, your mic is off. I can see your lips moving. But if you could. I wanted to say, when I began this long project of writing this book, my immediate goal was to reach to reach the patriarchs and to bring them to tears with a story about humanity to bring them to consciousness about what it was like for someone unlike themselves. I know that I've achieved that lofty goal, but I do think that the dark side, that dark dark side of patriarchy that doesn't know its own self needs to be somehow considered in all of this. Because I do think that finding the humanity somehow within that very closed off mindset will be helpful. I don't know how to do it, except for these stories to become common and frequent and part of a very large conversation, a very animated conversation. I've been amazed by some of the responses of men who I've spoken before who have cried and wiped away tears and gasped when they hear the details of what happened to Franca Viola. They identify with her. That was a surprise to me and a beautiful one, honestly, because it's our common humanity that we we're all a part of this and we all need to speak to each other and listen. I hope you could hear that. CC or Diana, any, any other thoughts or sharing this, whatever you want. I think one of the things that I really actually enjoyed and reading this book also, I mean, along with so many different things, but it's just like she left this sharing kind of what had happened to her over and over again, but she also left this with hope. And this, yeah, and just kind of the pathway to what I understood to be here healing and I think there's a question on the chat that says, do you see the change the flip coming can we flip the patriarchy of sexual violence. And I think that I do, I do see the change and I think that we actually have because we won't survive. If he keeps going the way it is. Yeah, just this this this last week and a half alone and just what had happened in Atlanta with the six Asian women and just the intensity of happen is specifically the six Asian women but how that was felt collectively by like Asian population and all the allies, knowing that Asians like was 60 70% of the world at this point but, but I think, you know, just really thinking a lot about how that actually I mean I kind of went back and that connects and relate to what Amar had mentioned just this whole system of patriarchy and this whole system of war but also just like, even connecting that back to our land where the history of war and military and the colonizing of our land is directly directly connected to the rape of the woman's body that's in it. But we are still here. And we are moving forward and acknowledging it and, you know, kind of going back to remember certain things and remember the lessons but moving forward to go and create that change. And I think in order for us to survive the current state in which we're at right now, which I'd mentioned, you know, you see a change coming I mean I don't really think we have a choice I think we need to change it in order for us to survive So, and, and, you know, I think there's a second part of the questions. Even when talking of sexual violence it is ingrained female violence the male is taken out I don't necessarily always see it as something kind of genderized in that way, like in terms of there's many males who also have gone through the same kind of pain and struggle and healing that that is is is is necessary for us to create those change I think we need our male allies if anything they actually are the work where the place that the change needs to start, because most of this violence had been kind of perpetuated by what they've been taught they should be and what their role in society is. And in order for things to change I mean, to be honest, I don't, I don't think women alone should be the sole responsible per, you know, part of it. But it takes all of us as Natalie was saying it takes all humanity to change this culture and I think as artists we have that capacity to imagine to feel and to imagine what that change should be. And I think, I think we're getting there I mean I think at the very least we started. So, I'm really helpful for that. And I do think that that is that work is beginning because the language is shifting where we. We're always turning to talk about asked the woman, but what was she wearing or why were you in the situation or this and that language is starting to change just say let's not talk about women who are raped. Let's start to talk about the men who rape. Let's bring men front and center. Let's not talk about violence against women, let's start to talk more about the men who perpetrate violence against women and I think by shining a light on that, not to say that again to circle back where I started to promote shame to promote further dehumanization but to actually promote real depth of healing and humanity and humanity. What is it, you know, and to circle back to a marzene, the death doula of patriarchy, it's like, yes, it is time for this cultural shift. It is time and I do believe that we're witnessing right now in the 21st century, the, the birth of that the articulation of that, and that it is, it begins with me to it begins with the girl who said no it begins with. I can feel what I felt, and it is coming forth, and it is here and this genius this genie this feeling is out of the bottle and therefore it's out of our bodies. We're singing about it and we're carrying mattresses on our backs, and we're wearing, you know, we're holding our hands up we're tattooing that we are, we, we are saying, we are here, this is our body and it's not about just saying no it's about saying. Yes, to our bodies, yes to life and you will not confuse our desire, we are sexual beings, and you will not pervert our desires of sexuality into a perverted culture of rape a perverted culture of violence a perverted culture of control. And a perverted culture of fear, because that is that truly is I'm emphasizing that word perversion that is the real perversion. It is the perversion of the very essence that we've been born with which is sensuality that becomes whatever form of sexuality we choose to have that we feel inside of us and that could be a sexuality, I have feelings but I don't feel that. You know, and so this is, thank you. I, I don't, I don't know where we're at I'm going to ask our host of the San Francisco public library to jump in because I'm here, thank you feeling clumsy. It was a very emotional talk and just I love that we're ending it on this hope and it is so important and we're really proud to be part of bringing you know this conversation and I feel like so connected just that we've all read this book now several times and it has been you know, we can see the humor and Chanel provided in just living and writing. And so I really it was like a really done about 10 book clubs on the book. And I felt like I was in this very private and like just a wonderful glimpse into your private book club of the book. Thank you for that Chanel has art you can see at the Asian Art Museum right now on hide street. It's a triptych called I was I am I will be along the main library you can also see a mini exhibition of Chanel's outtakes from the work and some little explanation. And I see Ellen Amara Diana guest Natalie SFPL is so honored to have you have spent this time with us and share your, your, your thoughts and your, your knowledge and your talent. Everyone the doc, I will put the link in one more time right now and they also gave us a reading list which I love librarian in me loves. And you can find all of their information their sites their talents in this doc. My email is also in there if you want to get a touch with me. Thank you. Thank you. And have a wonderful afternoon. And everyone on mute and let's be messy everybody on mute. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.