 Welcome. I hope everyone can hear me if I could get a yes from an audience member that would be cool. In the chat box. Hello everybody it's so good to see you thank you, Marie, appreciate it. Oh, and KM look at that all right. Thank you all you beautiful people and I know you're beautiful even though I can't see you. You're joining us on this wonderful wonderful Sunday afternoon. Thank you so much for being in this outside which we thank you for. Welcome to the unceded land of the aloney tribal people. We acknowledge the many raw mutish aloney tribal groups and families as the rightful steward in the lands on which we reside. The public library encourages you to learn more about native culture land rights, and we are and land rights we're committed to hosting events and providing educational resources on topics such as land rights, various tribal communities and first person culture. We're sending out a document of follow up after this it has a bunch of links about this about other great resources the library has and notes that when ever we have author talks great resources pop up so I'll be taking note of those and linking them and seeing how we can get you some great material. I don't want you to forget it is summer strike 2020. And it's not just for you. So make sure you sign up for your iconic San Francisco Public Library tote bag 20 hours get you the tote bag. And I'm sure you've already done the 20 hours already. And in the chat box you can see a link to summer strike 2020. Also linked to the dock I was talking about it's linked to a website so it updates as I go, but I will be taking notes and I'm very bad Speller so I'll fix that later. We also one of my favorite things about working at the library is that we're not a neutral institution. So I want to. Well at everybody SFPL wants to acknowledge the painful and divisive situation our countries in and the library stands behind Black Lives Matter, and we work and hope to further collective action and in systemic racism and work towards equity in our community. As a library we're here to help our community by providing useful and factual information. So we have a really great resource list on this. That is about race, politics, history, becoming anti racist about the Black Panther movement about black art black artists black interest black joy. And we really want to celebrate that and educate about it. So please take a look at our doc, and we'll get you all those great books, two more things before we couple more things before we get into it I know it's a lot library a lot of library news. COVID testing, you can get free COVID testing in our city, go do it. Also, if you haven't taken the census and super passionate about taking the census. We have not lost a seat in the House of Representatives for 170 years, but we could be in threat if you don't take the census so please do that it's very important for our community. The census brings in $20,000 to our community to protect voting rights provide senior health care health care for many food programs childcare programs. I just cannot. It's super passionate about it if you need help. My emails also in that doc chat box, you can always get with me. Last other things. It's, we're calling a call for nominations for the eighth annual eighth poet laureate of San Francisco. So pretty big deal. It's really fun you get to work with us throughout however many years you're a poet laureate do amazing programs. Connect with amazing poets, and that is open until July 31. So the end is coming. Please nominate your favorite poet. We have a lot of events, including a book club for home baked that's happening on July 21, Tuesday, July 21 at 7pm. Definitely come to that it's book clubs have been really fun online. Definitely a connection with our community that I miss and I'm sure people who go to book clubs have been missing as well. So come see us, come talk to us. Chris Carlson will be here on Tuesday so come check that out and you do have to register. And I think we're going to go ahead and get on with today's event already already ready. Take it here and we talk yet. All right. Today's event. Alya is our on the same page author are on the same page is we try to get the entire city to read the same book. And often it is based in San Francisco. We were fortunate to have Alvin Orloff disaster Rama and I just love that home bake followed that it's just such a good companion. And we're fortunate today that Alia brought along Bridget Davis and her book the world according to Fannie Davis my mother's life in the Detroit numbers. These books home baked and my mom's marijuana, my mom marijuana and the stoning of San Francisco. Also, just two great books to read together. And I encourage you if you have not read them read them both. Very exciting. And during the 70s in San Francisco, Alia's mother ran the underground sticky fingers brownies, delivering upward of 10,000 illegal marijuana edibles per month throughout the city, which was in the throes of major change. Today's mom exchange psychic readings with Alia's future father, and thereafter, had a partner in business and life. Alia is a homegrown San Francisco for San Francisco. Her writing appears in the best American estates 2017, the New York Times, 10 house, three penny review, book me reader, New England review, and the recent anthologies dig if you will the picture right is reflect on She is a runner up for the moths grand slam championship in 2014 and has been nominated for a push cart prize. Beth M. Davis is the author and memoir of the world according to Fannie Davis, my mother's life in the Detroit numbers. A New York's time, a New York Times editor choice, a 2020 Michigan notable book, and named best book of 2019 by Kirkus review. Buzzfeed NBC news and parade magazine. She's writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of the book, which will be produced by plan B and released by searchlight pictures. How awesome is that that's so cool. Bridgette is the author of two novels and to go slow and shifting through neutral short listed for the Hurston writing award. She's the writer and director of the award winning feature film naked acts and creative writing and journalist professor at Baruch College of New York. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, the millions real simple, the LA Times salon and Oh, Oprah's magazine, of course, the graduate of a graduate of Spelman College and Columbia University graduate of journalism. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, and all of alia and Bridgette's websites and social media contacts will be in this document that I send you and that is linked. And I am finally done talking and it is on to our wonderful wonderful authors. I'm going to stop sharing my screen now. Hi, I see now. All right. Alia, on to you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Anissa. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. I started I was, I was saying how I spent just endless hours in the history center researching this book it's a huge part of my process, and even more time in the Chronicle archives which are available to everybody online. I'm really excited to be part of the San Francisco Public Library so it's just it's just a huge and tremendously helpful resource and so I'm extremely honored to be able to be part of this program this is really exciting for me and to have Bridgette here, who is a personal hero of mine, I'm so really happy to be here as you know I've been wanting to have this chance for so long for us to really be in conversation. Ever since I've heard about your book, I've been excited to just see, you know, I feel like, you know, you're kind of a soul sister here right. Yeah, someone who gets it. And then after I of course after I read the book and saw how beautiful it was I then I couldn't I really couldn't wait to chat with you so. Yeah, I heard you for the first time on fresh air. It was a, it was a rerun. I missed the original go round, and I was driving out to the ucross residency to do my last edit and hearing that interview hearing you talk about your mother's business and the subculture that you grew up in and how much of a part of the community, your territory community that underground business and underground world was and I just I drove with my jaw hanging down to my chest the whole time I thought this is we're from such different places and such different communities. And, and yet the stories and the, the, the stories are very similar in a weird way. And I just thought wow she accomplished what I'm trying to do for my community. I felt that you had accomplished that for your community in Detroit so I've just, I'm just thrilled to finally be able to do this. Thank you you accomplished it too. Thank you. So many questions for you but maybe we should do a little reading in case, in case some of the folks here aren't familiar. Yeah, that sounds great. Why don't you start. Or should I start, I'm going to let you choose this is your hometown event so. If you're ready to go you go first because I'm looking at I'll go first out it's brief. So, I'm just going to read a brief excerpt that gives a quick sense of that moment when I realized something really important about my mom's work and about my relationship to it. This takes place when I'm about 10 years old. One day I decided to organize mama's number running materials and went through the house gathering everything together into one shallow cardboard box. I was enamored of my own organizational skills and decided to add one final touch. On the side of the box, using bright pink nail polish, I carefully painted in boxy letters mama's numbers. I proudly showed this to my mother impressed with myself for remembering the possessive apostrophe. She took one look and said, you can't put my business out in the street like that. Looking back. This was the moment when I became consciously aware that I must keep my admiration for my mother's work of private experience. I had known to keep her livelihood a secret, but hadn't yet formed an opinion of felt any pride in what mama actually did for a living. Now, I understood that my pride for her also had to be kept secret, as did all the evidence of her work. I took my black magic marker and scratched out what I had painted onto the box. And after that episode, I began shoving things into drawers away from visitors view. To my delight, mama continued to keep all her paraphernalia in that box, which ended up permanently perched atop a Louis the 15 style chair in her bedroom. If I looked closely, I could still see the pink letters I had painted beneath the blackout marker. And whenever I passed by, I would chant to myself, incantation style, mama's numbers, mama's numbers, mama's numbers. That's so wonderful. So wonderful. And I relate to it to such an a degree. Okay, I'm going to read a little piece that's kind of from later in my story. I think it'll also share how I am peripherally involved. And can you see this screen sharing. Yes, look at that. That's a slide show that I like to read. December 1981. My mom was making her way up Castro Street on a pre Christmas brownie run when she saw a small crowd studying a poster outside the star pharmacy. She leaned in to check it out. Gay cancer, it said across the top. Below that was a series of graphic Polaroid photos of sores on a man's leg feet and arms. The backs, the back of my mom's neck prickled. Hadn't she seen one of those little spots on Roger's wrist that afternoon. Weird, she thought, as she continued on to do the next deal. But later, she found out that the flyers were the work of Bobby Campbell, a handsome 29 year old nurse who specialized in gay men's health. My mom had occasionally sold brownie Bobby's had occasionally sold Bobby brownies. I'm going to thank Bobby Brown for that. Now he was among the first young San Francisco's diagnosed with Kaposi sarcoma, a rare skin cancer almost never seen among people his age. He was also one of the first people in the country to sense the enormity of the danger. As a public health nurse, he wasn't about to sit back and watch. Declaring himself the Kaposi sarcoma poster boy, Bobby began a column in the San Francisco Sentinel, a gay newspaper detailing his experiences. His first piece, I will survive ran that month. The tone of the column was buoyant and witty but it dispensed crucial information. Although Bobby would not, in fact, survive. He died within four years. He would become a hero of the AIDS epidemic. Until that point, there had been a few AP articles, buried with other low priority news, rare skin cancer seen in young homosexuals fatal pneumonia caused by a common fungus. Not enough to interest a couple of journalists and concern some doctors, but there were still fewer than 300 identified cases nationwide. It started in that small way whispers rumors, something going around, people feeling fatigued and vaguely ill, a recurring flu, a stomach bug that wouldn't quit. The painless purple spots showing up out of nowhere. It was still business as usual in the Castro and business was good enough. With my mom coming down once a month in those days, customers stocked up on larger quantities of brownies. Bex motor lodge could be rowdy on weekends, popular among Castro boys both for cruising and tricking for money. On the plus side, that meant people came and went for various reasons, which my mom thought gave her cover. Safe to say, Bex's personnel didn't want to know what people did in their rooms. Sunshine, a photographer who'd been a customer for years, usually bought five or six dozen. She'd sell some to friends and keep the rest in her freezer to last through to the next visit. Sunshine remembers approaching Bex and seeing a buck naked man standing in the picture window overlooking Market Street. She thought it was weird. So she mentioned it to my mom who shrugged it off. Apparently it was this guy's deal to hang out nude in the front window so he could cruise without ever having to put clothes on or walk down to the street. His tricks could come up and find him. Sunshine also remembers there always being a child when she visited my mom at Bex. Sunshine would enter the motel room and my mom would whisper, Sh, Ollie is sleeping. It's not true that I was there every time but I adored coming to the city with my mom. We sailed through Puff's a fog crossing the bridge we belt out San Francisco here we come to write back where we started from. I love the sound of traffic below the motel windows. I left customers waltzing through the door with a sing song hello darlings how the damp night air would trail them clinging to their leather jackets and smelling of the street and the ocean. How their hair was never shaggy like up north but spiked and dyed bright colors are coiffed into artful shapes. I love that everyone told me how tall I'd gotten since the last time. I loved shrill city laughter, the boldness of it, the magic of carelessly caring so much about everything. I loved visiting Sylvester's house that sumptuous wonderland of fabric and antiques and music. The singer would be draped languidly on a velvet divan like the stone caterpillar from Alice's adventures in wonderland. But I especially loved the barge, which became our pet name for the big motel bed, just floating along on that squeaky raft with the grown ups. I remember the whisper of money in my mom's hands, the dry snap of rubber bands when she counted at the end of the weekend. If that environment was too much for a girl of four and five. I didn't notice. My mom was there. I was safe. Beautiful. So gorgeous. You capture such a world, you know, that I understand and yet I feel like I learned so much just sort of reading your book about a kind of proximity that I think even I didn't understand you were right there with your mom through it all. And what I loved was that sense of joy that you felt as a child people always associated always associate this illegality with something they think is dangerous and lewd and sort of kind of creepy in a way and yet you really made a point of showing that for you just being cared for by your mom and being with her. That was one of those beautiful things about the book. Thank you. I feel like I mean I've always felt that I was very fortunate to grow up in that world, although there are. I don't know there are things that were perhaps there was certainly an element of danger I mean my mom and your mom could have gotten busted at any time and there could have been significant loss and a dramatic change in lifestyle. But the the subculture itself day I loved growing up around these creative vibrant people and it didn't feel like an untoward or dirty or scary world, the normies, the norm. Yeah, the normies. That was scary. Yeah. But I felt so at home where I was and I was really struck by that in your book as well these are both illegal underground worlds that were maligned in the press and maligned by politicians the powers that be painted as painted as a dangerous and dark and scary place and yet from the inside it was all about community. I was really struck by scenes in your book of the whole neighborhood coming over, not just to buy their, their numbers tickets for the week. But yeah, to hang out to be part of that world and to be around Fanny. I think we have that in common right we had mothers who were personalities, and people were drawn to them and they were like the center right of this world. And so it's nice to watch people like being around your mom. It's nice to really see that community firsthand. And I guess that's the way it is when you're part of a community that the outside world judges, it brings you together in a really special way right, and I also love the way. In both cases, people were sort of buying these marijuana brownies and playing these lotteries, because they enjoyed it it was pleasurable. And also at the same time it was serving a purpose, it was actually providing a service. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the role that the numbers played in your community in Detroit because I think that a lot of people out in California and San Francisco might not be familiar with it. I was. Yeah, I mean, listen, I grew up around it and it was only in doing the research that I came to really understand. You know, what it meant to to everyone who participated in it. I learned the history of this particular culture, but basically, the lottery, the numbers was an underground lottery, it was an illegal lottery system that was started by black folks in Harlem and it moved across the country pretty rapidly throughout the 20th century. And what it was doing essentially was creating this underground economy. It was exactly based on the same principles that today's legal lotteries are, you know, folks decided they wanted to play a number. In this case, three digits, and if they won they won 500 to one pay you play a dollar you win 500. So, in that sense it's like any lottery, but imagine that all the folks involved, all the players all the bookies all the bankers as we call them the people who paid out the money, if anyone one. They were all people within the community. They were all black folks, and they were helping those dollars to generate and circulate through the community over and over. So the other issue is that you know black folks have lived up under discrimination since the beginning of this country. So, even as late as the 60s 70s and 80s there were services that black folks didn't have weren't provided by, you know, the mainstream society so the numbers economy provided services that they needed. So it was doing all these things at once. Yeah, yeah. And you discovered that through your research. I did what I knew, like, Alia you you knew that your mom was helping people. Right. You knew on some level that she was. That's how I felt growing up I could tell I could see that people who played with my mom for instance and one we're able to go out and do special things for their family. You can see it on a hyper local level. I was seeing a really hyper one on one level right so the socio political context that for me it came later as well I you know when you grow up in a secretive world and eventually the statute of limitations expires and culture changes and grows up a little bit. You come to understand okay it's safe for me to reveal these secrets that I've been holding my whole life and you know that the world was was colorful and you know that it's misunderstood from outside and there's all kinds of reasons to tell about it. And then digging into the research I had the experience, very rewarding experience of discovering really how influential, and how much of a trailblazer. My mom was in, in the context of the work she was doing that there really wasn't anything else in San Francisco operating on that scale, and the way she transitioned with marijuana from party drug to palliative medicine when the AIDS crisis hit. So, and, and really understanding how much that her work and her colleagues work of people who are no longer with us like Dennis Perone and brownie Mary Rathbun. And her work in in as AIDS activists who were also cannabis activists, led to the legal cannabis world that we have today. I mean really understanding the importance of that role that didn't come until I was years into the research and I, and I got to discover a while my mom was really a pioneer. You saw her as your mom, you know, and the same thing happened to me, it was a scholar who said to me I'm doing a dissertation on the numbers in Detroit. And I'd really like to talk to you about your mother and I was like, okay, sure. She said because you know after all, she was a trailblazer and I said well she was definitely unique she said no I said she's a trailblazer. You know, don't you this scholar said to me that your mom was the only woman in Detroit operating at that level. Wow. And I said well I knew there was no other mothers like my mom. And I was growing up, I could feel that she was really unique, but I didn't know her sort of historical import, right and that's what I think you're saying to do the research and you put your parent into context you realize oh wow like she shifted things. And I love so much about you, your book that I also tried to do in mind was create not just it's not you know it's not just a memoir it's the portrait of this one family in a couple of people, a couple of specific people, but it becomes a gateway to explore social movements Exactly. Such a beautiful job with putting not just the numbers in context but really exploring the civil rights movement in Detroit, and digging you know unearthing that history I'm packing that and then placing the family in, in its social context which I think is something that I I know my mother at least wasn't able to do like she was a surprise to find out that she was a pioneer as, as I was. You're just decisions on a daily basis. Another connection that just was draw jaw dropping to me when I got to this part in your book was about the dream books. Yes. Our mothers operated these elaborate dangerous very cleverly run illegal enterprises using magic. How about that. Yeah. I definitely thought that we were alone with this one. For you was the each team for my mom it was literally the power of the dream. Yeah, and what it was saying to her and what was what you know it was speaking to her and how it was guiding her and how everyone who played the numbers pretty much believed in the power of these dreams, which is why all these dream books proliferated to help people interpret what they had dreamed by translating it into a three digit number that they could play. You know it's pretty incredible. I love that part of growing up the magical mystical part. There were always candles burning in the house because candles attracted good luck. And because literally once the candle burned down at the bottom, you would find a three digit number. Yeah. And that number for the week. There's your number for the day or the week. Yeah, so, so I really connected to your book in that way to and the cultural context. I mean, look, I love it when people say, I read your book and I learned so much about the numbers I knew nothing about that whole industry. So that's always true when something is a secret. Who was really documenting it. I understood that it was great to tell my mom's story I was very happy to do that but then it became important to document this ephemeral, but vital industry that had not been recorded from the inside. That's how I like to talk about it. People have written about the numbers but I was going to write about it from the inside. And when I read home baked, I was like, who knew. I kept feeling that way as I was reading like, we didn't really understand the role, a very deliberate role that the government played in, you know, making marijuana this like, incredibly, you know, categorized as a narcotic right. I mean, like all of that was really not accidental what people thought about marijuana, how people were prosecuted. And of course, just as in my case to you see the link from then to now. Right. Absolutely. You see that trajectory. So I just love it when I'm reading something and I'm learning and I'm dropped into a world, and I'm getting a personal story but you know I'm getting this cultural story as well. I felt like I knew San Francisco at that time. I mean, it was really just incredible, really beautiful work. And I know it took you years because I know what it took me. How long, how long. Oh my God is hard to count but I will just say I did my first interview for this book in 2010. Okay. And the book came out nine years later. Yeah, right now a lot of living and different things happened I even published a novel in between there. I mean life happened. So just in terms of the, the responsibility I felt to really dig into this story and learn as much as I could. It was a real fact finding journey, you know. Did did your mom use the numbers to. So my mom, my mom used the ching to make business decisions. I know I know Fannie was using the numbers or was using the dream books to pick out her numbers. Right. But was there a way in which she also used it to decide what was safe. So, I think our moms are different in that regard, because the stakes of work so high, right. I believe that she was always conscious of being a black woman doing this to, and that has she been arrested, you know, judgment would have been swift and harsh. I'm always aware of that. The fact that we were living in Detroit in particular, you know, all those things I'm sure affected her sense of responsibility to be really, really cautious. And I always say that my mother was just smart about it. She was deliberate. Nothing was rash. She made sure that she put as many safeguards and places possible. And one of the most important things she did was her business at a certain size so that she could manage it. It wasn't about getting as big as possible and making as much money as possible. It was about providing the kind of life she felt we deserve but staying small enough so she wasn't so vulnerable. You know, the larger you get, right, the, the more, you know, risk you invite. So, those are some of the methods she used in that way. She didn't depend on luck. She depended on her own smarts really and her sense of deliberate careful planning and ensuring that she didn't invite any unnecessary risk. You know, she didn't live wildly. She didn't draw attention to herself. You know, there were all these things she was really trying to be conscious of. I always felt, I feel like it was a combination. In our case, my parents would consult the Oracle the chain before making any changes but there's also a way in which the, how the each thing is worded, and the questions you ask are more revealing of things that you maybe already know. It's what you're already thinking about. It's a confirmation. It'll confirm what you're looking to what you're looking for. My mom was obviously also very street smart. Right, you would have to be. Get away with it. Absolutely. But I, but I feel, you know, back on it, I no question. Yeah. I'm sorry. I think we're talking. Oh, okay. I don't know what to say there. But I feel, I think that the, the, the element of magic in it was part of what as a child helped me feel safe. Because my mom was confident. And she trusted it. She trusted the Oracle and because she wasn't afraid. I wasn't afraid. And I was also struck by a moment in, in your book where through your research. And I think that whatever that the housing situation you were in was less secure than you understood as a child, it's this like that. Our mothers, even though we had to know about the business in order to protect it, we had to know their mothers were doing illegal work and that it was an underground world, because otherwise, you know, and you know, and it all crumbles. So you have to know that but at the same time, this assuredness, the feeling that mom is, is, is a rock, you know, and you can depend on her to make the right call so that you don't grow up in fear. And I think that's where our mothers were ingenious, you know, that I don't know that anyone who hasn't experienced it understands the incredible balancing act that that involves because truth be told, do we know in those quiet moments how fearful or worried our mothers were. I mean, but what they projected to us, for the most part, was a sense of control I've got this, or I have a plan, you know, it's where we're, this is going to work out one way or another. I always say that my mom was like this domestic magician, because she had a real sleight of hand that whole time that she was up under myriad different sort of risky situations. She projected this sense that all was well in the world. And thank goodness, because I didn't grow up the way I could have, which would have been anxious and nervous and worried all the time. Like my mother went into a risky business so she could create a safe and stable environment for us. No, and that seems ironic, but it isn't. For her, the risky, uncertain world would have been poverty. Right. And so her whole goal was to ensure that we didn't have that experience. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah, so. But I have such a question for you I've been dying to ask. I get to, I get this question all the time. People will say to me, what do you think your mom would think about the book. And I don't really know I speculate I wonder, I hope she'd be proud I say things like that. But I really, I think so yeah. But I really want to know what was that experience like both writing this book with your mom right there was she like a partner in the process, and also now. Now that this book has been out in the world for some weeks right. What months months when did it launch it launched April 20, April 20. Okay, so here we are it's still a new me in the world but what's that now new experience been like, you know with your mom and with you being out there with the book. It's been my mom is actually on this zoom conference I think hi mom. I feel like I know you mom. She's, she's been so supportive and I want to also acknowledge how supportive my dad has been and my godmother and really, really this book was a community project I felt like I was documenting a community and I did a huge amount of just hundreds and hundreds of hours of from people throughout from really all walks of life in San Francisco who are some way involved or some way affected. And so there were times where I was more concerned about documenting the community than that than the family and all of that. My mom and, and my dad both opened up their their boxes their archives we went through things together. We got to know each other. Hey, do you remember or you know what I just thought of. And, and, and as well as all these other more peripheral people in the story. I just thought of something and I'd get a phone call. So everyone got into it and if there was anyone who was really reticent about being involved. I, they, they weren't, you know I wanted this to be a good experience for everyone. That's great. So yeah I think my mom loves the book. She is hearing, you know she feels exposed I will say there's she's been concerned she's an art teacher, and she has at different times been concerned that it might affect her, her teaching she works without risk kids, but really people have responded so well to it. Did you get, I think you must have God did you get emails from every corner of the universe of with people telling you about their secret, their secret childhoods. Absolutely. Parents illegal my my parents. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in my case. The box is just consistently filled up with these testimonies that actually are all around the numbers. Wow, which stunned me. I mean I knew that many people were involved in the numbers I knew that for instance organized crime had a part to play in the numbers and certainly there were, you know there's a history of Jews and Italians who've been involved in the numbers but I got emails from people from, I'm not kidding, so many different ethnicities, all of whom, most of whom were family from parents who were saying that their, you know, immigrant parents and grandparents use the numbers as a way to actually get a foothold in the country. And that in many cases they were saying I've never told anyone this or you brought back these memories. Yeah, and you could see the. I feel even in in the words, the way they were telling the story, a kind of relief and a kind of joy really to be able to finally share what for many people are actually good memories. They had to, they felt they had to keep them secret. And that's the that was really the, the sort of, for me I came to understand the sadness of it all that we all carried this feeling. Not so much in my case of guilt, but certainly the sense that I can't let anyone know, which means you were holding in the good stuff too. I've thought about that a lot in relation to my childhood. I think this is sort of standard issue for writers but I had a very awkward childhood. Yeah, yeah. And socially, and such a hard time making friends and it's only, it's only recently through writing and talking about this book that I've come to wonder how much of that had to do with keeping so much in as a child. And if it might have made me difficult to relate to or, as you said, keeping the good stuff in to a little guarded in a way and if that might have had something to do with it. But yeah, I have the, I of course get all the emails about drugs. Of course, the confessions. Yeah, I do I get all these kids. I get a lot of confessional emails. A lot of emails about that one time I went to a grateful dead God's road. I really want to hear this. But there was, there've been some great ones or somebody emailed somebody told me that their parent sold pot out of an ice cream truck. That's great. That's my favorite. Yeah, I got a lot of that a lot of confessional emails and I just, there's this impulse to to share and it really gives the an impression that people have been bottled up. Yeah, it's like you realize that your book has done a lot of things right. And one of them is you have given people permission. Your writing this story has given many, many people permission to actually talk about their own stories. And hopefully to think about the also the context, the cultural moment that whatever, you know, whatever they're holding on to happened in because the secret doesn't really secret doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's not a secret if larger society was not in some way legally or otherwise incriminating. Exactly, whatever it is, you know, if it weren't taboo it's only a taboo because society agrees that it's a taboo. You have these moments now when you're looking everywhere is seeing all the dispensaries and, you know, the sort of movement toward legalization state by state and do you sometimes think, Wow, really. Oh, all the time. Yeah, going into a modern dispensary in California is it's surreal for me I can't just to be there I'm there and I'm also in my memories, because it was such a different world, and in some ways, it is is better I mean people people, especially people who use it medicinally should not have to sneak around. That's ridiculous. So, exactly, people can go and you know not feel ashamed and work with a knowledgeable bud tender who can tell them what products to get for what they have. It's starting to become easier for the scientific community to research although there's still a lot. The fact that it's a schedule one narcotics still makes that difficult and is ridiculous. But in this like mad green rush the mad dash for the money you know enter venture capitalism it's like when the state lotteries took over the numbers. It, what has drained out of it is community. Yes, there's you go into dispensary and you have this very sanitized experience with, you know, professionals who know what they're doing but it. That's how your, how your day is going nobody cares what you need it for really right so that experience where people would come over and hang out on what we called the barge my mom's bed which where she did her deals also. People would come and hang out for hours. And there was there was an unburdening there unburdening there therapy session was part of it like your mom's dining room table or kitchen. Exactly. Yeah, it was like people would come for solace and people would come, you know, to work out whatever was on their mind, as well as purchase this product that gave them some relief. You know, when we can, when we can use an app to summon with a landlord to our house with our with our weed products. You know, it's, it's, it's great that it's convenient and legal in places where it is, you know, but, but we have so few. We have so few examples of real community left, right, that is associated with an economic, you know, component, right. That that is the biggest loss. I noticed I people ask me all the time is there any equivalent today to that community that existed around the numbers and I always say I wish I could tell you there, there is but I don't see one. Maybe it's too far underground. Yeah, you know, and where is it because I don't see the equivalent. Right, right. So there is, there is a sense of loss associated with it definitely, and which is part of why it felt so important to document document this community. The work of the LGBTQ activists to get legal access and, and those, those stories and the political struggle it felt so important to document that while the people who lived those stories firsthand are alive to share them. You know, and to be able to record it now. Because the the underground will die with the people who are part of it. You know the memories are gone the underground is gone. Exactly. And so it that that wasn't. Yeah, that was certainly an important part of it for me. I'm noticing that we're always out of time I knew this was gonna. How did that happen. If, if anybody has questions out there, please type them into the chat. And we have a few minutes where we could do a Q&A. I know we had talked about doing another reading but I think we're maybe out of time. Yeah, it's okay. And also again, so I'm curious. At what point, at what point did you realize that you were going to have to go deep with the research. Yeah, I started out with an understanding that if I could fulfill this mission I was going to have to do some serious research. Yeah. And what was my my mission. Initially it was to make sure whoever read the book. Maybe didn't agree with what my mom chose to do. I can't control what people think about her choices right, but I was going to make damn sure that people understood why she made the choice she did. So the only way to really ensure that was to make make it clear the world my mother found herself in. What was happening culturally politically socially racially economically all those things and locally in Detroit itself, and also like alongside that you needed to know what the numbers came out of you needed to know the country's history with lotteries. You know you need to know all of that so that you could then have a sense of sort of where it came from this choice by mother made and why. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, no that makes a lot that makes a lot of sense to me. I came at it. I think a little bit backwards because I had started out doing the interviews before I wanted to write this book which to answer Missy's question took me 12 years. Oh I don't feel so we're a similar again. Yeah. You know it was a lot of stopping and starting it took a long time to figure out the right way to tell the story. And I realized pretty early on that I wanted to document the community. But figuring out the balance between the memoir the personal story, the socio political stuff the historical archival work. Um, that that was that was I think what took me the longest was finding the balance and I had to step away and come back and step away and come back. And Carl asked hi Carl, what the biggest surprise was in writing the book. And for me, I already kind of said this but it was, it was really, I was really surprised to put all the pieces together and see where my mom, how much of a pioneer she was and where she fit in the context that that, you know, I knew a lot of the family secrets but I didn't, I didn't see how the pieces fit together until I did the work and it just blew me away. It really did. Yeah. I know people are asking questions. Okay. There's always time to answer the questions. Okay. What was your biggest surprise. I was stunned when I learned how my mother bought her house because as you said she didn't tell us that it was, you know, because of red lining that she could buy a house the typical way she couldn't just go to a bank and get a mortgage almost no black person could do that. My mother never, never talked about it that way was always about the joy and excitement of having this beautiful home. That surprised me, but another really small thing surprised me. I discovered that my mother. She was writing a book. Well, Ramana Clef like a fictionalized account of a story she had heard growing up. And it just, I knew about that book but I didn't really really understand until I had a chance to really read what she'd written. And it was just a reminder to me that my mother did this incredible thing with her life, but she had other dreams. And I think that there was very little I'd never thought about that when I was growing up that do we do we do that as children do we think about other options or lives are mothers might have wanted to live. It was a really, I guess because I'm now, you know, a mom with two children and so it struck me, I felt a closeness to her that was different from even what we had, you know, when she was alive, we were very close but I felt I got to know her in a new way. That makes sense. Yeah, it does and I really experienced that process with my dad because I didn't know him as well, and, and was reluctant to know him in some ways, so scary relationship. Yeah, try and put yourself inside your parent's head and really understand their motivations but there was a came a time and in the writing process when the book was going to, it wasn't going to work if I didn't do that. Yeah. And so, you know, you do it for the art. Sure. I bite the bullet and do it for the for your baby. I mean, truthfully, just as someone from the outside reading the book your father's story is incredibly fascinating and compelling. Yeah, I mean, turns out he's a good character. I got to know him so much better through as a character really than I than I had and now coming out of it, we're very close friends and we hadn't, we really weren't before but, but going through this process together and the research we did together to try and understand the story that was then gave us a new commonality that that I'm able to enjoy and a lot of people I think a lot of memoirs are reluctant to write about their family or, you know, your mother had passed by the time you started doing the writing and I feel like you can't do it while they're alive. And, and I think that might, I see how that's true, you know, for some people but in, in my case it was so healing to, that's great to go in to go into those questions. While he was here I'm really glad I did it. You know, let's see, we, I know we're over time. Let's get into the last couple of questions from Marie Spark. You mentioned that you wanted the book to reflect the community perspective and that came across some things must have been very different than your perspective as a child. Were there tough choices where these two things came into conflict. That's a good question. That is. Hmm. I mean, I don't know if there were tough, tough choices. You know, as far as revealing contradictions between my understanding as a child and how it is now I start there were certainly, you know, worlds that I wasn't aware of as a kid, I didn't hesitate to include them. I don't have a lot of shame around it. But it was always hard to figure out the balance and I, you know, I ended up having to cut things rather ruthlessly to keep the book on track and come up with methods like I can only write about it if and I had a set of rules for myself by the end. Right. Otherwise, I don't know. So it's already 400 pages. Yeah, yeah. I can understand that actually. I mean, it must have been. Oh yeah. I mean you're always thinking what, what lends itself to the narrative. Not what happened because a lot of things happened but what lends itself to the narrative that you're telling the story you're telling and you do have to make some really tough choices. And I think for me about the whole idea of sort of seeing my mother through grown up eyes as opposed to the child's eyes that I saw her through. There were moments when my heart was just breaking. And it's because I came to really, really understand how hard she worked and how much she was up against. And just that she worked hard, which she took pride in, and she was good at what she did. She was really quite a mathematical whiz, you know, but some of those were arbitrary obstacles that just being black in America, quite frankly, had put in her in in her way. And that really gets to me because I just, I'm just hurt for her on her behalf that she had to work as hard as she had to do for what she wanted and what does she want she just wanted a piece of the American dream. That was it. Hmm. You know. That feels like a beautiful place to end up people are saying such lovely things in the comments. And I really appreciate it. I'm so grateful for to everyone for coming to this. Yeah, to see friends. There are some really lovely comments so definitely check those out Bridget and Ali. Oh yeah I see some great questions. Yeah, I appreciate everyone for being here today. And I just also want you to know that you can buy Aliah's book and Bridget's book from our friends at Green Apple Books, of course, that is Aliah's bookstore of choice today and while the library is still a little bit closed. We support our local bookstores and we love our local bookstores and encourage you to shop from there. And we are closing out today. We appreciate, can you all hear the closing music. If you haven't read Bridget's book, both of these books have an amazing soundtrack to them. So it's full of history, both of these books, and they really do a placement of that time and space and I encourage you both to read them. Check them out electronically from the library. You don't have to buy them but support your local bookstores too. They're both great. Yeah. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you, thank you.