 Hello and welcome everyone. Thanks for coming to this one's poem jam. I'm John Somalia, librarian here at the Main Library, General Collections and Humanities Department on the third floor. While we're waiting for a couple more people to join us, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about an upcoming event. So on behalf of the San Francisco Public Library, we wish to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Haloni who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatush Haloni have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place. As guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatush community and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. So in this very room on Thursday February 23rd, I hope you will come back because we have a special author reading. Kim Shock is going to be reading from her recently published book of essays, Noodle Rant Tangent, which is a gorgeous book. As you can see, it's also wonderful on the inside. So please do come back here. On February 23rd, there's flyers for the event on the table. There's also library newsletters and other flyers. So that's one way to find out about events. Another way is to go to our website sfpl.org and go to the online events calendar and help yourself to coffee and cookies. So that's all I really have to say for announcements. I'm going to turn the microphone over to our host Kim Shock. Please give a warm welcome to Kim. Hey, folks. Thank you for being here tonight. This is going to be amazing. Shizue Siegel puts together regular and spectacular anthologies and it's been my pleasure to be in three of them, I think. I think it's three. I totally love them. They're always really good and they always feature voices you might not find otherwise because of the way things are. In this moment when we're losing, we're losing a major publishing house and other publishing houses have decided that it is not practical to publish certain people, even though that's not the way they say it. If you look at the lists, you can tell that is what they're saying. We hear you publishing people. It's really lovely to have people who are consistently representing a broader community. Our first reader tonight is a ray of sunshine in human form. I love working with him. I've worked with him on a number of projects. He's absolutely a delightful painter, a spectacular poet, an excellent performer with sort of a wicked sense of humor if you get to be close enough to it. If you would please come to this microphone. Welcome, Adriana Arias. Thank you for those words. Here and there, my parents. I will put this here, watching me in two directions, like behind and here, and it looks like a dance. I can imagine their eyes. They used to have beautiful eyes, incredible eyes. I was totally in love when I saw this couple just dancing. It's so amazing to watch your parents dancing. In my last book, I wrote a couple of definitions because this book is kind of dictionary. The definition of madre, first I will read in Spanish, is madre, hola que no se cansa de acariciar la orilla y el recuerdo de mis mejillas. Mother, the way that never gets exhausted to caress the shore and the memory in my cheeks. And also for father, padre, padre, padre, carpintero de cosquillas. Father, the carpenters of tickles, or tickles carpenters. Well, those guys are very, very incredible influence in my life. And I saw these questions like what inspired you to pursue art, creative writing and activism? And the other question is what are culturally spiritual community values? And the other one is what sustained my creative practice in turbulent times? Well, I can answer that improvising a poem for my parents. I remember when I get lost in that forest and I was very little. I have a piece of paper that you give me, mother, and I have that pencil that I stole from your studio, father. And when I get lost, and I saw all these beautiful trees that excurs me, I just put out the paper and the pencil and start writing. I don't know what I'll write with some kind of passion for my fear. And later, when my mom, my mom found me, hey, ¿dónde estabas? ¿Qué pasó contigo? Where are you? It's like I was crying. And I say, mom, look at this paper. ¿Qué es eso? What is that? I don't know. And she tells me, oh, that's un poema, un poema. What is a poem? That is one of my answers for all those questions connecting, being connected with all your fear, emotions, with your family, your roots. When I came here to the Bay Area, I remember, close to the mic, I remember that I go to the roof of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts and suddenly my father visited me. And we were just watching the city. And he was telling me that he was there a long time ago, like in the late 60s, early 70s. It's like, oh, wow. Yeah. And this building was founded in 1977. Yeah. And he told me that we need to come back because you are, you were alone with your grandmother in Lima, in Peru. Oh, I noticed in his words, it's kind of guilty of being apart for several years. And I was growing with my grandmother because I really miss all my experience with my mother and father when I was a child. But I miss these three years that give me another perspective. And we started talking about the abuela, the grandmother that take care of me and two of my siblings. Yeah. She told me so beautiful things when we go to the beach or just go around to the city. But I remember in one of those beaches in the coast of Peru, all these beautiful stars. And I was asking about stars to my grandmother about what is that all this beautiful light on the sky. And she told me that's joy. You know, that's happiness in the universe. Oh, yeah. I don't know if she was trying to comfort me, but for sure that was a poem. And I feel wow. This is like a very special time in my life that I start capturing words, experiences. My response is related with my childhood. That give me most that I have now. If I am happy because it's my purpose in life, it's because I really learn how to be happy in my childhood. And one other response is how we can try to make happy to our communities, to our children. What about to use poems or kind words and maybe we will have a happy in our communities. And colors also were very important, especially for my father. There was a pop art painting. He used to paint huge envelopes and stamps, but huge. Imagine a man with a huge stamp walking on the street. Yeah, there is a picture that somebody take in the 80s or late 70s. And it's like, wow, if the stamp is that size, what is the size of the envelope? Okay. This thing about imagination and stretch your brain, that also give me a lot ideas. You know, work with your fantasy. Enlarge the little things. That was part of my happiness. What about if in our communities we try to enlarge the little things that we have? Just the little things, the little taco that is so beautiful but small. Enlarge a taco. We have a huge, beautiful taco full of colors and smells amazing. It's not only a fantasy. It's not only a painting. It's a poem too. It could be a dance. Now I am hungry. Thank you very much. I say it frequently, but tonight is actually a really serious self-indulgence to me because I love these people. Our next poet is Avacha, who is an absolute legend in the Bay Area and both musically and poetically and in all manner of ways. I think we've been, I think we've read together in three separate decades. We share a publisher and I love her madly. Please welcome to the microphone Avacha. Thank you. Can you hear me? Okay. Wow. He's a walking poem so I'm not going to do that. I'm going to read mine. The answer to all those questions hopefully will show up in these things here. This is not in the book. I'll read the things from the book or pieces of things from the book in a minute, but this is probably the answer to all those questions. It's called the we of us when I write. I dress yesterday's visions in today's rhythms and I tap dance all over the page with every poem and with every single word I write. I am reliving everything these culturalist cultures have tried their best to bury and replace with the sadness of their emptiness and I continue to sing keeping the ancestors alive by singing their songs expanding tradition with new words and strange lands. I am the recognition of all the traditions the solace have tried to erase but with a giant thank you in our hearts we joyfully climb up out of the acceptable respectability of their passionless graveyards and are reborn in every poem we write. We sing to you through the rhythmic fire of Samba every rumba reinstates your presence in our DNA. We cry the unashamed truth through the bluest of blues exploding like la rumba in the face of colonial insanity and boldly fight the power with doo-wop hip-hop and jazz. I refuse to silently accept the unacceptable suicidal demise of our existence when every single day I can taste the we of us striving. We are more than just surviving we are cultural alchemists an undeniable force of creativity and motion and through our creativity we decolonize our legacy and free our minds and spirits we are a whole lot more than you and me. It's all about the you in me the me in you the we of us writing our way out of the delusion of manifest destiny's self-righteous madness and reinvigorating the dreams our ancestors died for. This thank you from the book uh I've got two things in the book uh I was constantly reminded as a child and it was interesting when I was talking both of my parents were dancers and so I was surrounded by dancers all dancing the theater stuff all my life and I didn't choose to be a writer or a musician it chose me I knew that's what I was supposed to do when I was real little and it made me a very strange child so this is about something about that uh I never belonged I was born and raised in New York and couldn't wait to get out of it I was a city country girl I was constantly told that by relatives and what have you so this is a poem is in Spanish and English I'm going to read a little bit of both the Spanish and English it's called con una palma en el alma with a palm tree in my soul. La si ahogando en un lago de lágrima encasalada en la locura de la ciudad de nuevo york nació una puerta enojada frustrada una chiquitita nadando por el cemento hibarito de la ciudad vagabodéando por la calle duras detenida una grandísima maldición nacida por falta de la belleza de la La Datora de esa era una chamaquita de atrevida. Mi vida pedida en un mundo encementado, despedada, pero optimista, una enigma metafórica, con una palma en el alma y una pluma en la mano. Los ancianos me dijeron cuando era un sueño, mi vida fue acrito en un pueblo ancestral. Y como una flor rompiendo el cemento, nací una fuerza irrefrenable, floriciendo con un rayo de la esperanza, adentro de miles de los desmoralizados venía un sueño. Un sueño llena de picardía volando una bomba de palabras y una tenura poética llegué con una palma llamándome y una pluma cantando mi nombre. A piece of it in English, if you want to get the whole thing, in English or Spanish, please buy the book. This is with a palm tree in my soul. I was born drowning in a lake of tears, imprisoned in the madness of New York City. I was born an angry poet, frustrated, just another baby girl child swimming through the concrete. A city country girl, a hick stuck, a colossal curse brought on by the lack of nature's beauty. I was an oil up in your face, little girl, life lost in a world covered with concrete, hopeless but hopeful. A metaphoric puzzle with a palm tree in my soul and a pen in my hand. The old folks told me when I was just a dream, my life was written in an ancient poem and like a flower breaking through the concrete, I was born an unrestrainable force blossoming like a ray of hope among the thousands of demoralized folks I came. Full of unabashed lofty idealism exploding, a bomba of words and a poetic tenderness. I arrived with a palm tree calling me and a pen singing my name in bomba. In Spanish means bomb, but it's also the name of the oldest African tradition in Puerto Rico of music and dance, so it's a play on words. Also in the book, a piece of this, when I left New York, I came to LA and I wound up with a series of musicians, a group of musicians. It happened all across the country when the music unions were so like all the rest of the unions until they decided it was the expedient and they were losing money by not having us, they were unbelievably racist and so they were like, there was a surrogate union started all across the country. Chicago was probably the most famous one, the AACM. There was a Detroit Free Jazz, there was a law society in New York and in Los Angeles, this was UGMA, the Underground Musicians Association and I became part of that. So this is called In Linda's House and this is just a piece of it. So let me start the pieces of this here. Okay, okay, okay. Linda was a strikingly beautiful big bone dashiki wearing headed as bald as a baby's behind, example of African American pride. I always remember her wearing the biggest hoop earrings I had ever seen. Linda scared most folks to death but she introduced us to the true interdependence of life. Linda was a for real Amazon. She was also a no nonsense straight shooter and unassuming motivator. It all began in her apartment, her small apartment, her place with so full of music and big dreams that we never thought of it just as an apartment. It was the center of existence. It was our umbilical cord. Home was Lena's pad and it was her house and her dedicated quiet brilliance. There was the true glue that hold us all together. And when I tell you, she was no ordinary glue. She was a one of a kind type of sister. She was a professional nurse and a full time mother and that background manifested itself in every move she made. Linda was stronger than metal. And as soft as was necessary, whenever it was necessary to be soft, the woman was tough, she had to be or we would have never survived because we were one strange unlikely group of characters, a whole lot of anything you wanna. We came to LA from everywhere and everything. We were high class, middle class and a whole lot of no class. Music, the word, the dance, our art was our religion and the sacredness of sound was our only common denominator and music, our music was everywhere. Music bounced off of every thought and action. We played music before we ate while we were eating and then to have some more music for dessert. Music was our one and only reason for being alive. It crawled all over the ceiling and was the floor we walked on. It lived in between every board of the floor, came in out of every corner, rolled in melodically off the rooftop and drifted like a magical spell out of every window. Linda's house was alive with our music and we lived to immerse ourself in its beauty, a beauty full of the mysterious unfolding enchantment of the rebirth of ourselves. And for more, as I say, you have to get the book. But in my book, I have another book called With Every Step I Take Two. Everything, say I'm a daughter of dancers. I've been surrounded by music and dance all my life and this is called Obligão in Argentina. I have another book coming out soon, hopefully, it's called the Apollonegra Black Diaspora and it's basically about the African presence. It started out as simply the African presence in the Americas. But when I started getting further and further in the Americas, I realized that Spanish and English were not the only two languages and I met this wonderful Garifuna from Honduras. No, he was from Uruguay, I think. Anyway, let me make that clear. Anyway, he spoke not only Garifuna and Spanish, but several of the native languages including Quechua and what have you. And he introduced me to folks all over the place. By the time I got to Argentina, it was very scary. Very scary, especially if you look like me. At one point in Argentina, the major population outside of the natives were people that looked like me and darker than me. And you can hardly find a few of them left. It's a very strange story. But after slavery, there was a big major music and dance craze, tango. Mostly we call it tango. There's no such word as tango, which comes from the Congolese Delta region. And it was a major dance craze. It was against the laws, considered pornographic. Some people even got killed for dancing it, but people still danced it. And after getting rid of most of the black folks and most of the native folks in Argentina, guess what's the national music in dance? Tango. So this side, when I got there, I had what do you call it an epiphany? And I wrote this poem, it's in my book. It's called Obligado in Argentina. And it was like black slang. Obligado is what do you call it? Black slang, Obligado is the correct way you say that word means navel to navel, which was used as an insult to say what the dancing was, which of course was considered a sin by people who refused to believe that taking a bath was unholy because you weren't supposed to touch yourself anyway. Well, we were sinners. And so this is called Obligado in Argentina. In my book, it's all in Spanish and all in English. I'm gonna do a mashup in part in Spanish, part in English. And so it goes like this. Obligado in Argentina or navel to navel in Argentina. Remembering the majesty of Tango. Yo recuerdo la danza mística en la música sensual y el sabor a cuerpo suroroso. El ambiente de nuestro orgullo arrogante, creatividad completa, desfrenada. Fuimos guapachosos, bailadores negros, celebrándonos en templos del sol a yo. Recordando los días estaticos, bailando contigo, libra la gente que una esclavitud de nadie, tú y yo. Una pareja conectada eternamente, bailando obligado a un excesismo de pesar de una sombra de la esclavitud colmada, de una libertad inconquitada, bailando a dueñarse de fiebre apasionada, frenéticamente y pero suave, y sin vergüenza. Remembering those far-away days, like a flood of memories and a waterfall of life memories. Tearing up the silence of historical lives, unforgettable days that haunt me, echoes of painful sadnesses. I remember those bloody days in our Africanizing nights and secret sanctuaries, undercover happiness, forbidden joy, navel to navel. I say we're dancing navel to navel, dancing in safe havens covered with tears. I remember the dusty muddy dirt of our dance floors and the price we paid for the right to dance. I remember the magic of those nights full of stars, nights completely drunk on dance, sacred memories of an unforgettable legacy. You and I too, rhythmic volcanoes, two dark rebels, two black spirits older than time. Dancing navel to navel, our holy ritual against the divine law of the lawless. And I remember, I remember, I remember you and those days dancing like we were out of our minds and allies, proud disciples of the church of dancing navel to navel, right in the face of the evil ghost of slavery, dancing with you and your bigger-than-life spirit, you and I, you and I, we were one, one body, one heart, one inseparable soul, you and I, bathing in the moonlight, one unconquered couple together forever and ever dancing, dancing, dancing navel to navel in Argentina. I remember you and those days dancing like we were out of our minds and allies, proud disciples of the church of dancing navel, despite the ghost of slavery, despite the ghost of slavery, despite the ghost of slavery, dancing with you and your immortal spirit, you and I, we were one, one body, one heart, one inseparable soul, you and I, you and I, purifying us in the moonlight, one unconquered couple, you and I, you and I, you and I, purifying us in the moonlight, together in the spirit forever and ever dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing navel in Argentina. And did I run out of time? I do have a second to do one more. Okay, okay, I've run out of time, but thank you for listening to my words. So, I guess the reason I have to do what I do, why I do is because if I don't, I'm definitely a person who believes in ancestral memory and cultural memory. And my ancestors would get real pissed off. It's a wonderful, each of the Opio Dicho says, your most formidable adversary is an ancestor ignored. I want to make sure they know I don't forget. So anyway, thank you. And so you can help me with this. Thank you for listening to my words. We can do better than that. Excuse me. What are you doing? Excuse me. Can I have that? Thank you. Okay. As it turns out, our next reader occurs right before me in the book. And so I've been reading pieces of it consistently, every time I open it up to read my own work or remind myself what I said or whatever. I think that all writers are a bit heroic, but our next reader is literally a hero, a doctor, and a writer, and a creative and an activist. So please welcome up to the microphone, Shree Shamassunder. Big noise. I'm Shree, and I am a doctor at UCSF and work globally, kind of in Navajo Nation and a lot of parts around the world. And the piece I was going to read is about my relationship when I was an undergrad at Berkeley with Professor June Jordan, who is, you know, as oftentimes I have to introduce June to people, but this room of poets probably knows who she was, but she was an incredible mentor of mine, and so I have a lot of physician mentors or nurse mentors, but June's relationship with me when I was an undergrad, I think impacted as much or more than what I'm doing in my life than anybody else. So here's a piece on June Jordan. As the child of immigrants, I was a kid with shaky confidence. I came into UC Berkeley with my head down, taking science classes. To fill a humanities requirement, I meandered into poetry for the people, the course June Jordan conceived of and taught. After taking the course and fulfilling the requirement, I stayed in the class for two years. Not so much because I thought I was a poet, but because the class made me feel that even as a young person, like me, I might have something to say. I liked the encouragement to craft something that might matter to someone. I became a teaching assistant during my final undergraduate years, running one of the small groups of about 15 students. June was our professor, both tender and fierce, but mostly someone I admired from a distance. This changed in my last few weeks at UC Berkeley, when we studied Arab and Arab American poetry. A disagreement between Jewish students defending Zionism and those supporting Palestinian liberation grew from a murmur to a rumble throughout the semester. In one of our last classes, a teaching assistant publicly accused June in front of a class of about 250 or 300, of failing to stand up on behalf of the Palestinian people. June didn't show up for a class the next week without a word. On the weekend, I went to her house in North Berkeley. We all knew she had breast cancer, but not the extent of her struggle. She was surprised to see me, but let me in. About 20 bottles of medications were laid out on the kitchen counter to treat cancer and fight nausea and pain. We sat at her kitchen table. I tried to find the words of encouragement for her to come back to class. I stumbled as I tried to convey that the whole class knew her commitment to the Palestinian struggle. June remained unmoved. She was warned that endless stream of medical appointments and chemotherapy and array of medications on her countertop had blurred into questions about her legacy and impact. She said that day that her entire career had been brought to a halt by 1982 by the political stance she took in the paper Village Voice when she wrote Apologies to the People of Lebanon about the Israeli military massacre in the refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila. That same year she wrote the poem Moving Towards Home with the iconic words that pushed so many of us to make common cause with the most vulnerable, the most persecuted. I was born a black woman and now I am become a Palestinian. She said she paid significantly for taking that stand. In some ways she received backlash similar to what Congresswoman Omar gets when she stands up for Palestinians except June didn't, at that time didn't have a social media platform to fight back with. Her bibliography shows a significant gap between the mid-80s and mid-90s. Publishers refused to work with her. That afternoon in her sunlit kitchen I listened. June was 65 and tired and sick. I was 23. She had already paid a huge price for her solidarity with the people of Palestine. Her willingness to risk stature for solidarity had been questioned by a woman from a younger generation who seemed to be unaware of her personal sacrifice. All of it was too hard for June to stomach. That afternoon as June got up and moved about the house cleaning up and doing some chores we continued to talk. When I played with her beautiful black puppy he climbed on me and left a muddy paw prints all over my white Indian kortha. The next week when she came to class she had a new poem called It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean about the challenge of keeping a commitment to certain values and visions when inevitably the original idea the ideal is sullied by the messiness of life. To be in the world rather than an observer of it requires a pact with the not perfect the profound wedded to the practical even when we clean ourselves off none of us are the same or can claim purity. Soon after June wrote that poem I moved to New York for med school. 2001 and 2002 were the last years of June's life they were the first years in med school for me. We somehow ended up taking a couple talking a couple times a week across coasts June navigating the world of oncologists and chemotherapy and MRI scans and I started slowly waiting in that world as a medical student as a medical student it was bewildering to both of us during our conversations she recounted her life I asked questions and as she expanded seemingly grateful to reflect on her experiences she recalled sitting next to Malcomax in Harlem as a young woman she spoke about her friendship with Fannie Lou Hamer the great civil rights leader who put her body on the line to register black folks to vote throughout the south she advised June ain't no way know how you can hate anyone and hope to see the face of God that bedrock belief enabled Fannie Lou Hamer to face vicious threats and murderous hate and return love first and foremost for her own salvation. June encountered her experience with thereof Alson when she was in her 20s each conversation unveiled a different time of her life and the arc of a purpose and love that lives at the center of a life worth living what struck me was the quality of her listening and her capacity to be loving or indignant or vulnerable as June got sicker the conversations became less frequent until she passed as I entered my second year of medical school now when I reflect on what June showed me in that year of conversations I realized it was the revealing of a committed life as well as the passing of a torch she did that for so many of her students we look at our elders to demonstrate another way of being in this broken world another way of extending our circle of commitment to the person in front of us or to a group like Palestinian people and and both June gave us that those quiet conversations with June many years ago shaped my own life I had a daughter seven years ago whose middle name is June a non-traditional name for an Indian girl the name reminds me constantly of life with enough personal risk to grow the circle of who I might stand up for and bring the next generation and the next into that commitment thank you so much for that it's amazing listening to these stories how the arcs intersect and our next reader and I met in 2005 and have worked on some pretty serious acting together literally shoulder to shoulder sometimes in things we've known each other long enough to have floated apart once or twice and come back together in the way that the world does to you please please welcome with great joy to our microphone Carla Brundage thank you Shree that piece was just so incredibly moving I'm still recovering I never had June Jordan as a teacher but that poetry for the people book has been my bible through like 20 years of teaching and that was just a beautiful piece so thank you so I'll start in the Ivy leagues why not I started writing when I was at Vassar College it was a 1980s hip hop was still called rap by some and in New York it was everything Madonna was wearing a bra in public Mark Robin Williams was saying nono nono and we were overalls and truly believe that nuclear war was imminent South Africa had not been fully divested the war on drugs and the crack epidemic were in full swing I mostly started writing because when I arrived at Vassar College I thought I was black or I thought I was half black and half white I had never really been forced to choose my race all my life I had been choosing not to choose my race one parent or set of relatives over another earlier in the piece I said grew up in Hawaii so to contextualize that all of my life I had been choosing not to choose my race one parent or set of relatives over another some part of the decision was easy like choosing my maternal grandma and grandpa over strangers who had refused to acknowledge my existence so my black family had raised me but my white family had disowned us but at Vassar the stakes seemed to increase to say I was black meant entering a geographic territory I had little lived experience in black America being black meant some kind of behavior or way of being that maybe I had not learned to emulate just as I had not spoken Pigeon English I had not spoken black English or attended black churches I'd known only two other black students in my high school and one in my elementary school choosing black to me felt naturally that felt natural carnally as I had always embodied my black body and historically as I understood my place in the world as my mother and father had both shared their own in their own ways I certainly felt legally into the category of black by blood quantum but to choose black what did that mean to my day to day to choose white however felt completely impossible I definitively and concretely have always known that I'm not white that was the impossible choice all my poems in college were about rainbows I loved green and purple girls in my short stories cut themselves with razor blades and slam doors on the faces of the people they loved college professors called my writing cliche but I kept scribbling down notes I'm so depressed why don't you love me who will ever love me blue and black blue and black never black and white so then I go on and on to talk about my relationship with my black Barbie doll so I had planned to read a little bit more I think I'll go to this other page here if you want to hear about how my encounter with my black Barbie doll at Vassar college got me ostracized from both the black and white community you can check that out in the book still processing but I'll just read one more paragraph and then I have something else I want to share so before I was born however my parents divorce began to take shape and my mother and only child attended the historic shambles children's house located on the campus of diskegee institute along with Carol Lawrence, Lionel Richie Kathleen Neal who would soon be the wife of Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers like Booker T. Washington my mother's family had always favored working for change from the inside but this approach would change when she was abroad in France that year her first cousin Sammy Young Jr who was more like a brother to her was shot in the head and killed by an elderly gas station attendant for using a whites only bathroom in Macon, Alabama late one Monday night Sammy a US Navy veteran and Tuskegee student joined SNCC the student nonviolent coordinating committee to help with voter registration he was confronted by the attendant outside the gas station who after a brief scuttle shot him in an effort to protect the family from further harm this violent death was something we never spoke of in our family much like the murder of my great-grandmother Maude sometimes I wonder if this desire I have to write comes from a desire to understand the truth of the world around me and to uncover painful secrets so I'm in this process of life now of wondering how with the legacy of the family I have I was so to use the cliche confused about my identity for so long so forgive me I will say my daughter said to me once well she didn't say to me she said to someone else she said I don't have identity issues like my mom does I was like okay well I did something right right so the last thing I want to say is I have I think why I write is connected to the 90s and just not just about identity but about voice and about violence those all those things kind of converge so I'm gonna raise the names of Tyree Nichols and Keenan Anderson Keenan being a teacher which I am now and it made me want to read a small excerpt from this piece I wrote called A Knife in My Hand it reminds me of Jacob Blake I don't know if you all remember him but he had a knife in his hand so which brings me to Jacob Blake whom the Wisconsin police shot in the back seven times in front of his three small children he was entering his automobile I find myself carrying a knife around the house sometimes for example I could be breaking down boxes and then the phone rings I go inside that I notice the laundry needs to be put in the dryer maybe 20 minutes later I realize I'm still carrying a knife around or maybe I'm outside at the grill and I'm using the knife to turn the meat and somebody knocks at the gate and I walk the gate knife in hand blood and barbecue sauce staining my apron we all do it but to be shot seven times in back in front of my kids those same kids waiting to eat the meat I just cooked I'm trying to understand I've spoken to many friends about this I keep saying I often find myself walking around with a knife in my hand and they say well I'm a woman which brings me to my final connection point and the story of the fatal night in Attitania when Atah Tiana Jefferson was shot through the window of her own home when police were doing a safety check I want to honor Breonna Taylor shot in her bed for loving a man and sleeping but it's Atah Tiana's story her life and mine. As a single mother, a single black mother, I cannot count for you the number of times I have felt vulnerable, but I would have thought that the few hot summer nights sleepless, maybe having some kind of internal crisis, a breakup, money, problems, a fight with my ex, that I would be lying on my floor, stomach down, maybe the door is open, maybe I forgot it, or maybe I left it open for some personal or private reason. I think we all have reasons for leaving the door open and for closing them. Maybe it was just damn hot. Anyway, for some reason, on this hot troublesome night, maybe my daughter has a nightmare and it is the last straw. It could happen that we decide to play some games in my neighbor with whom I normally have a good relationship, but who, having witnessed a fight recently, decides to check up on me in my life. All the contributing factors, all the variables make me think that it could have been my life as easily as it was hers. A neighbor, a daughter, the heat, the stress, the late night, the unusual circumstances. All of this could have happened to me, but unlike a Tatiana who, when the police came to present their safety check, instead of calling or knocking, as they did in times past when there was a lockdown on the street, peeked in her window and shot a Tatiana in front of her nephew as the two played a board game. Will I ever leave my door open again? Thank you. There is a certain sharp pain in being witnessed, as well as witnessing for other people, when whatever the standard narrative has been declared to be and it's not you. And one of the things that I've always admired about Shizue Siegel is her capacity to witness for other people. And it's consistent and relentless and exhausting. And I know that because we talk on the phone periodically when we can figure out how to get a hold of each other, which is not always because we're both very busy women. I would love to welcome Shizue up to the microphone and because she is also the reason that we're all getting together tonight, please make that an enormous applause for Shizue Siegel. I can't tell you how moved I am by that introduction. Anyway, I feel so honored to be here tonight and to have coerced 22 brilliant, established BIPOC writers and artists to be in this book, including Tamina Khan. I wish we had room for you on the schedule. It's so great to see. Oh my God, this is what keeps me going when I see the headlines or when I see those blank face stares by people who go, oh, it has nothing to do with me. It's like this community and the audience that appreciates it is what keeps me going. So I have to say though, you know, the thing about the Cobbler's children, not having any shoes. So I wrote my chapter after I edited everybody else's after I twisted everybody's arm blah, blah, blah. So it's a mess. I tried to fit my entire life into 10 pages. Obviously it didn't work. So then today I tried to salvage some of it. So, but I want to say not only are tonight's readers brilliant and inspiring writers, you each bring something that's beyond words. You bring the power of music, visual art, and performance, medicine, organizing, advocacy, teaching. Your live show that the sustainable change we need in the world right now is more than words on paper. It means we are showing by how we live and what we do every day that we are a part of something greater than ourselves. And part of our mission is to encourage others to tap into that source because it's available to all of us and everybody has a role to play in this and every role is important. So, and it's about encouraging others to tap into that source and step away from the me of the small mind into the collective wisdom of the we. So my Japanese American ancestors taught me that and so do the ordinary people in my neighborhood, the Yemeni grocery man, you know, the Iranian couple, the Jewish Armenians that have the big store that has fresh pita bread. There's so much kindness and hope in the acts of real people and there's so little of it in the commercialized realities that have taken over virtual public space. So thank you all for being here, for being physically in the space together, for being thoughtful and inventive leaders in returning power to the people. I grew up with resourcefulness, resilience, and faith. My grandparents left Japan in 1905 to seek a wide new destiny in America. When denied equal rights, they created parallel worlds, their own churches, language schools, businesses, and loan clubs. By 1940, Japanese farmers grew 40% of California's produce. They showed Americans there was more to life than meat and potatoes. It could be a celebration of tomatoes and celery, strawberries and pears, chrysanthemums, and peonies. But I also grew up on stories of grandfathers arrested in the dead of night by the FBI. My grandmother forced off her farm, house set ablaze, $80,000 worth of real estate sold for $2,000 cash. My relatives limped home to California from concentration camps in Arkansas and Arizona across a hostile white America. 18 family members crammed in three jalapes that kept breaking down as they camped by the side of the road and lived on peanut butter sandwiches. I was born into a state of homeland insecurity, an exile in my own country from the night I was born in the segregated border town of Baltimore. My father was half a world away in military intelligence, witnessing the aftermath of firebombing in Tokyo and nuclear holocaust in his parents' hometown of Hiroshima. He was not allowed by the military to speak of his experiences for 50 years, not even to his own family. When I was born, my mother was oblivious in twilight sleep. She didn't know she'd given birth until I'd been alone in the world for 12 hours. I must have been welcomed into the world by some kind Hakujin nurse. Why else would I have an absurd faith in the kindness of strangers and an equal conviction that they'll disappear when their shift is over? In the face of either or, win or take all, my family raised me to embrace contradiction and paradox, both and, meant American first names and Japanese middle names, Buddhist and Shinto shrines, New Year's Day and Christmas trees, Obon dances, and Fourth of July. We stood with American ideals of justice and equality, even though they were denied to us, and we honored the spiritual and cultural values of our heritage. We understood life as giving, not getting. My grandparents' minister used to say human existence was jigoku, a self-created hell born of desire, rage, and fear. Nirvana meant liberating the mind from the duality of good and bad into gratitude for eternal oneness. Reverend Osso was kicked out of the church by our own bishops for heresy because he favored prayer over discipline. To him, it didn't matter whether prayers worked or not. What mattered was entrusting ourselves to something beyond our own self-power. But, you know, what did I know as a kid? Reverend Osso preached in Japanese when he said Amida is calling you, come, come, just as you are. Sono mama, sono mama, come into Amida's love. I responded not to his words, but the tone of his voice and the tears pouring down the faces of immigrants who had suffered for a lifetime. In tight knit enclaves of Stockton's Skid Row and Santa Clara Valley farm labor camps, I felt embraced and sustained by temple bell, incense, and sutra. Spring berries and summer corn, autumn persimmon and winter frost, sunrise and moonset, birds roosting together each night before wheeling skyward towards a new day. I loved the work stooped shoulders, sun-creased eyes of every day, and the lacquer boxes and silk kimono of holidays. I couldn't understand my parents in Nihongo, but their deeds and their eyes spoke volumes. Their values were golden threads woven into the fiber of my being. Ganbate, go for it, come on, never give up. Shikata kanai, except what you can't change. Shinjin, abiding faith and kokoro, heart. Compared to their quiet strength, I felt hopelessly baka, stupid. But maybe true wisdom lies in embracing human limitation. I'm going to end with a poem that's not in the book that was inspired by Kim Shuck. Come home. True North is calling us, but we closed our ears with ceiling wax, threw away the compass, forgot how to gauge the wind, read the moss on the trees, read the sky like a highway. Now we interpret the darkness as terror, flood our minds with second-hand fear, clutch at grief like a tattered blanket, chased thirsts we didn't know we had. Did we forget how to staunch the bleeding, how to stand up, how to reach out? Somewhere within us we know. Why measure ourselves by the metallic approval of the self regarding? They'll never give up what they grab by force. Those who count life by winds have lost their souls. Take care to treasure yours. There was some threat that I was going to read. I want to leave time for if people here want to buy copies of the book. So what I'm going to do, put your hand up. There are copies right there. So I'm going to be brief, but I'll say this. Very much as in my piece in the book, which you will have to buy the book to hear or read, I have answered the question of why I'm an activist and a poet multiple times. I've written three distinct essays about it that have been published. They're all different, and as I say in the book, they're all true. And today what I want to say about that is that my father's people and my people are Ani and Wea. We're native from the east coast. And my mother's people are Polish, Góral from the mountains in Poland, the southern, the Alpine Carpathians. And both sides of the family have had their space used as a war zone. And I grew up on this land pace. And whenever people talk about being in the relocation camps in Arkansas, I think about the fact that that relocation camp was put on a sacred place. In fact, I have several poems about it actually. One of them starts out, I hope the land treated you well. And I'm pretty sure it didn't. And a lot of people who've come here have been treated really poorly. And it leaves a hole in me because I feel very responsible for parts of this land mass. It makes me sad, and it pisses me off. And because of that, I think I spend a lot of my time trying to make community, sometimes making community, having been a mother to a number of children. Sometimes that activity is angry mom. And sometimes that activity is kind mom. And I like doing kind mom better, but there are occasionally a couple of people who just really need to be on the naughty step for a while. So I have no compunction about writing them a naughty step and placing them on it. Please thank, first of all, all of our readers applause, please, for our readers. For Shizue Siegel, the San Francisco, please. More applause for Shizue Siegel for the San Francisco Public Library in the form of The Room, which I've been calling the poem Dungeon lately, which kind of sounds a little sexier than what I used to call it, which was basically the poetry bingo lounge. Because it reminds me of those spaces around the country. Thank you for the space. Thank you, John Smalley, for making this possible and for providing the cookies and the coffee. And thank you to the AV guys, Kenny and Mike, for being just generous with your energy. Now, for those of you who don't already have a copy of the book, consider buying one. It's really incredible. I haven't opened it once without finding great things. And finally, and applause for yourself for being here. Thank you.