 Welcome everyone. We'll get started in just a moment. As you do join us, we invite you to share where you're joining us from. If you do know the native land territory that you're joining us from that is encouraged if you can share that in the chat. Great. Thank you everyone for being here this evening. We're going to go ahead and get started and I know folks will be joining us. Thank you for being here tonight for this wonderful conversation. We're going to have between honey. And celebration of honey latest book, a little devil in America notes and praise of black performance. My name is Nia McAllister and I'm the public programs manager at the Museum of the African diaspora in San Francisco. As we gather here today it is essential to acknowledge the times we're living in and the current circumstances we're navigating. We honor the solidarity with black lives matter in recognizing and condemning white supremacy and the ongoing systemic violence against black people. We honor and mourn the census murders of George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Tony McDade. Casey Goodson Jr. Patrick Warren Sr. Andre Hill, Dante Wright, Anthony Thompson Jr. Makaya Bryant and so many others who've lost their lives in police brutality and racial injustice, including those whose names we do not know. We want to acknowledge that mods commitments racial justice is ongoing. And as such we will continue to say these names and to hold space and honor these victims. I also want to acknowledge the spaces that we're occupying. And though we're gathered virtually, many of us are settlers immigrants or descendants of those forcefully brought to this continent. And our institutions were founded upon the exclusions and erasures of the indigenous peoples whose lands were located on. It is with deep respect that mod acknowledges that even in virtual space, we hear and what we call San Francisco and Oakland reside on unseated Chicheno and Ramitas Shaloni lands. And we thank these indigenous communities of the Bay Area and beyond who've stewarded this land throughout the generations. And we do encourage everyone to learn about the native lands that you do occupy by visiting native land.ca. And with that again I want to thank everyone for joining us this evening and I want to give a special thank you to the San Francisco Public Library for co presenting this program with us. It is a pleasure now to introduce our two guests for this evening. This evening's conversation. This is the chief of Joe I keep and Tonga eyes and Martin. Honey, I've derby keep is a is a New York Times best selling poet essayist and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in pen American muzzle vinyl and other journals. His essays and criticism have been published in the New Yorker pitchfork, the New York Times and fader. He is the author of the poetry collections the crown eight worth much a fortune for your disaster and the essay collection they can't kill us until they kill us and go ahead in the rain notes to a tribe called quest. He was named the guest at curator at the Brooklyn Academy of Music beginning in January 2021, and is also the host of Sonos podcast object of sound. He is a graduate of Beachcroft High School. And originally from San Francisco Tonga eyes and Martin is a poet movement worker and educator. His latest curriculum on extra judicial killing of black people. We charge genocide again has been used as educational and organizing tools throughout the country. While someone's dead already was nominated for a California Book Award. And his latest book heaven is all goodbyes was published by the city lights pocket poet series. And was shortlisted for the Griffin's poetry prize and won a California Book Award and American Book Award. His forthcoming book blood on the fog is being released this fall in the city lights pocket poet series. He is San Francisco's eighth poet laureate. Yeah, thanks so much for that intro and hello everyone. I'm scattering or scrambling because I just changed my mind on what I wanted to read at the very last minute and while I located I will say that I appreciate Nia naming all the folks that we've lost and for those who don't know I'm from and living Columbus, Ohio, in three of those names. Casey gets engineer Andre Hill and most recently Makaia Bryant are folks who were also residents of this place and it has been difficult in the city. It's been a difficult winter, and it gave way to a difficult spring. And, you know, folks who know me well know that my work as a writer is is very different perhaps in my work as someone who's who does organizing movement work like I know tango does as well. So it's been a challenging week and so I really appreciate y'all having me and I am going to read a thing about blackface because I think it is one of the more playful things in the book, weirdly. I'm not going to read all this this is from the essay 16 ways of looking at blackface, and I'm going to just read a small handful of them. I don't really read this piece out loud a lot and so. Yeah. We'll see to since the election white people have been pretending to be black on the Internet though to be entirely fair I suppose there are white people pretending to be black on the Internet before the election to but now people are talking about it people are talking about it in part because the white people who are pretending to be black on the Internet are so bad at it. My friend wonders what it says about black people that we can so easily recognize a slang that is not leaping from the tongues and fingers of one of our own but I mean that it's the pictures they use the obvious stock photos of black men in suits with bad hairlines or black women with one raised eyebrow and a forced smirk affixed to their faces in the direction of both, no one and everyone sure. I do also keep the use of dated slang and the belabored nature of languages haphazard arrangements in the tweet or the photo caption anyone who speaks a language inside a language can see when that dialect is being a challenge for someone who perhaps had to Google the correct word to use in the placement of it or when it is coming from someone who watched a movie with a black person in it once and then never saw black person again. It would be humorous or fascinating. If it wasn't so suffocating. I would laugh if I was not being smothered by the violence of the imagination. There's that scene at the end of eight mile that everyone loves where Eminem's character is in the rap battle to end all rap battles against Papa Doc his long time foe in the scene. Eminem goes first in the battle and ticks off all the predicted insults he believes Papa Doc has stashed ready to unleash on him. When he's done, he tosses the mic the Papa Doc who stumbles over a few words before being buried under ways of applause and celebration of watching someone triumph by rendering their opponents immovable five. There are a lot of things people get wrong about blackface but the one I think about is the way they slather the makeup on their faces as if they've never seen a black person before usually pitch black and wildly uneven or smeared haphazardly I have thought before about how this feels like an additional insult position to top the obvious one how even an attempt to mimic cannot be done with enough care for the skin of the mimic because I cannot take off my skin. I asked my homies for a skincare routine in the group chat sprawls with the names of products and links to them. I'm looking to see what might be the fullest potential for my skin's immortality. I come from an ageless people. After all, at most black functions I've been to someone pulls me aside points at some alleged elder and asked me to guess how old the elder is. And when I guess too young. They throughout some age bordering on the absurd one that seems even more foolish as the sunlight gallops across the absence of wrinkles during a vigorous dance or a laugh that rattles the wind. I most love the mythology of the ageless blacks how it truly doesn't crack unless you give yourself over to do the bidding of some evil like we've all been blessed might have to sell ourselves to the devil who will surely want his and in return the aging process starts and accelerates Stacy dash didn't look a day over 25 when she was running in slow motion through the Chicago airport trail by Kanye West in the music video but one year working for Fox News and the people say she's looking every minute of her age and the decade she kept at arms length all that time is finally coming in Lord did it come to collect all I know is I'm going to be on the wrong side of 30 soon and I'm trying to keep my skin and my spirit clean and so I spend way too much money on way too many products that I've never seen and don't understand. I apply my own facial mask I will say I have a much better skincare routine now I wrote this like seven years ago. My own facial mask slathering on the white cream unevenly too aggressively on my cheeks and forehead but lightly around my eyes my hands guided by even more anxiety than usual and from underneath my coded eyelids. I scroll through social media black people on the internet are upset about a party at some school the theme was the hood or some iteration of what white people think the hood is none of the participants were black but most took measures to make themselves black. This was achieved by what seemed like all measures shoe polish makeup, even markers faces sloppily colored in the party goers were large fake gold chains and massive white tea swung to their kneecaps. They twisted up their fingers and homage to the gangs of their wildest imagination sunglasses and sneers adorn their white faces hiding poorly behind the splotches of brown and what a predicament. Me looking upon this with my face cake and some white substance which promises to keep my skin young and boys younger than I was in that moment throwing whatever they could on their young skin to make it darker and despite its history and its harm. The many echoes of violence it summons the thing about blackface that most clearly stung arrived in this moment, looking upon this scene of recklessly adorned white skin, while taking delicate care to help my own dark skin flourish. This, I whispered, is what they think we look like. I've had the dream where I hold Al Jolson wearing a dark coat of blackface under the water of an old bathtub. I do not know how I arrive in the scene but I arrive with my hands on his shoulders, pushing him down below the water which seems endless from any angle. In this dream, he's wearing the brown suit he wears while playing piano and the jazz singer. That movie wasn't black and white as is this dream, but I know the suit is brown, and I know the suit is brown because I have in my waking hours, stare at the poster from the film which is painted in color I know the suit is brown because on the poster Jolson's face is not brown. The suit is the only interruption of white on his whole body. Jolson does not struggle when I hold his head under the water, his eyes stay open. I scrub at his face with my hands until the scrubbing becomes clawing, trying to remove the layer of caked on dark skin to address the man underneath the dream. I don't know what I would say to Al Jolson if I could peel the mask from his face but I do keep peeling and Jolson does not fight, even as I swipe fingers across his eyes, eyes that surrounded by the darkness of his makeup gleam from underneath the water. When I push him down far enough his face vanishes entirely or at least I think it does in a dream. Nothing is tangible, even in a dream that arrives and arrives again, only the smallest details remain. I know the tub is old. It's one of those with the massive claw feet. In the background, a version of blue skies is probably playing, but in this dream, I have convinced myself that it isn't Jolson's version, because it is being sung by a woman, which means I tell myself it is Ella Fitzgerald who I imagine would also want me to scrub the black makeup off this white man's face. In the dream, I think I hold Al Jolson down because if I can't detach him from the skin that looks like my skin, I at least want his eyes to stop glowing from beneath it. But the further I push his face down into the deepest parts of the water, I am left only to search the water for my own reflection, which looks dark, darker than I've ever been so dark, that it creeps along the water surface like a rose dancing limbs and then as I lean closer to the water, I feel Al Jolson suit snap itself empty, and I am not holding a body anymore. And then I wake up in the darkness of my real life bedroom. I can't even see my own hands. 9. Most of the black people knew that woman was white from the moment we heard her stumbling her way through that interview. Can't say much about what the eyes know. There are many ways to look black and bleep and be black, so I just can't call it. But some of my skin folks sure did some of them, the ones from places that get no sun insisted they could tell a bad tan when they saw one. The black women I knew said they knew the whole time because if she was black, no one would let her go out the house with her hair looking a mess like it did. But hey, she was a president of the NAACP and that CP still stands for colored people last I checked but also it was the NAACP in Spokane, Washington. I was in Spokane once the black people were so invisible that everyone else would attempt to walk straight through us so it's tough to tell really but even given every benefit of the doubt in regards to aesthetics, I knew the woman claiming to be black was not black. When the interviewer asked her, are you actually African American and she replied, I don't, I don't understand the question 13. I'm away to her family reunion in Birmingham that I am invited to just by virtue of being in town with some free time. My pal tells me she notices the way she and her people dance differently when white folks on around or when they truly don't care if and how white people are watching she talks about our other pal, who dated a white man and had to teach him how to electric slide at one wedding some summer ago and so we laugh at the image her standing over him like she's coaching the final play of a high stakes game, laying out the moves herself while he looked down at his feet and tried to connect the dots. There's a difference between not being able to dance and the ability to fake being able to dance just well enough so that people won't notice. I participate most heavily in the latter which is why the traditional line dances are perfect for me. The kinds where the entire framework of the song relies on laying out instructions for what one should do with their feet I'm fine on any dance floor but I love best when a room folds together in unison. It is almost impossible for anyone with any semblance of rhythm to make a mistake if they just move in the direction the room is already carrying them in. And I suppose that is something like love or something like trust at the family reunion. There's one of those moments aunties, uncles grandbabies and so on and so on, filling up a hot backyard after the food and revelry had died down, playing a version of the Cupid shuffle so extended I was sure it had to be looped. And again, after a few rotations, there is everyone clicked together on beat until it appears there is one single body moving as one unit. I watched from afar and did not join in, even within the comforts of shared blackness there are deeper unshared comforts one that demands witnessing and not participation tell that to the world. There is some movement to golden, too precious to be interrupted 14 this is last one. 14. It is said that Al Jolson truly loved black people that he wanted in many ways to form a closeness with black people in every corner of him may influence from music to language to dance it is true that he gave black people places to perform even if they had to join him on stage. While his face was colored darker than any of their faces at his funeral, black performers lined up to pay respects tap dancers and background singers in jazz composers, it can be said that the very presence of a white person in the world of jazz fostered a type of closeness with black people in their lives in that era, when dependency and artistic exchange was a more high stakes game than it is today but the thing I find myself explaining most vigorously to people these days is that consumption and love are not equal parts of the same machine to consume is not to love really love is not rooted solely in consumption, and I've never seen Al Jolson cry while singing the song Mammy, but the black jazz composer noble Cecil says there was no site like it. What Jolson had was the palpable and physical presence of passion before being cool was what sold noble Cecil says Al Jolson cried while singing Mammy, and it was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen a single T here rolling slowly down Al Jolson's face while he crew in the old lyrics about black servitude, a woman who leaves her own family to care for another, the tear streaking through Jolson's black makeup and creating a clear border, who Al Jolson was and who he was dreaming himself to be and while we are here with our hands in the aesthetics of it all. I wish you would talk more about how frightening it all is. By you, I suppose I mean anyone but let's say I mean you non black reader or scholar of history. I wish we could get down to the bare bones of it all and talk about how blackface beyond anything else is such a horrifying look when done with careful precision, the way it was done in the old days and the black and whites black and white films interest me most when I think about how darkness is a currency and it is said that black is not a color, but the absence of color yet in a film with no color that absence is how one knows there's a potential for a shade. When white performers covered their faces of black paint and black and white films and when they don thick nappy black with wigs from behind the screen. All of you are can witness is the whites of their eyes and the brightness of their lips peeling back occasionally and giving way to a blade of white teeth is the kind of vision that stuck with me as a child, watching from a hallway floor, comparing into the room of my grandmother, who fell asleep with some classic movie channel network playing these black people were like, or unlike any I knew, all standing in a chorus of shadows but for the small bursts of white, leaping out from their mouths or their open eyes. I looked at myself in the mirror with the lights off the next morning, just to see if I vanish, I smiled and open my eyes as wide as I could, and yet I was still there. Thank you. Society's wander together. Like hopeful drops of a virus. Citizen testaments bent on offering me a nation of breadwinners to hold me back. Like I said, Brinks, I wrinkled a concrete sometimes like flesh. Martin Luther King per minutes turned away from a podium into the reeds like God is the dangerous twin. Black August to the mountain top balcony on my bedroom floor, you know, they steal you from the earth itself and suspends you and your broken neck from their foolish euphoria. From the loyalty oath of their great superstitions loyalty oath of their agrarian reform I returned to my mother completely disrespected for peeling the heat off of purgatory. They kill Polish like me. Walk me away from my poems never to be heard from again. In this final industrial complex or bloodlines picked over picked through a sporting spiritual death of your devil at least half made police become a pretty word I'm reading a lynch mob shoestrings like they were tea leaves teaching you how to write about cities it's the 25th century in the mirror people. You're running against your chump chives your chump to be mocked even with a gun in your car. A cubit of needlework spell tuned for the proletariat the relapse ministry talented people curled up in the fetal position next to a diamond. Dying just another service day in the theatrics of tea house fascism in a bouquet of surveillance cameras in the poverty of God newly. Courses of water newly potted presidency or one big shiny coin if you ask an animated capitalism another now literal voice killing his wife freedom. The deification of hyphens medicine bread and picture shows great protesters now lay guests of our ink drop kicking roses in a graveyard DC make like a stone torn and half the pen advances. Despite CIA guidepost despite non African passing futures and metaphorical but not surreal day in a horn written life horn player improvising King like a radio prize fight featuring shongo himself. A real hand sweep the land of racism now make progress with the gun now return to the ground our mother in manual you know they put on music that evening. A swinging type body language for you to drink with fermenting $5 bills for your body language some applause my past stomach lining either good thing or bad thing like being psychic on the way to a lethal injustice. It's a reflection it'll sit you down with Lady Day Lady Day leading you to surrender their souls to Africa too soon polity thought floating in a cup of water she saved me accessing my stomach accessing the love of the American lynched. Coast leaves wouldn't have a lancing to the wrist, or mother in manual avalanche into the to the sharp keys pain, the deal you make with pain a piano make sense for them. Land hands on the world gradually addressing the bending next on the streets of the north traveler sailing in pain addressing pain in the north, I mean 10 trigger fingers on that piano harmony would have me putting 100 fights on every direction often Lady day leaning on trees again recruiting the countryside itself lay your plan on this lightning. Make your poems a corner pocket of men upgraded the blues itself America may clean my dead body but will never include me there goes the poet killing without killing. Never mind this painting of your language now be a meaningful lynching across passing good and dead by the afternoon I talk facing away from the dead. They replace me with the change in my pocket a penny that's yet to be invented they say you have to know how to cut a throat on the way to cut in the throat. After sleeping on a mattress made from two garbage bags of clothes I became content with the small justice of plantation fires I mean playing with couch ashes I realized how weird the universe was. It exists in so many places so many random things that interrupts me while I'm trying to dream like your clay correspondence Lord. To be transparent I have 20 books next to a bullet like an old man giving advice at the beginning of a revolution I've really done it Lord. Explored the mumbles of my mind explored what's naturally there and I found no brainwashing I found Africa Lord I have a future. It takes place in the diaspora South I have morning possessions modern militancy I mean windows to the South I'll walk on a missile for food I guess you will not want flowers for a few years Lord. Well I'd be tired face to face with the country I'll murder merge with a slow. My old metal verse a new metal or old metal verse a pool of meandering and peerless faces and multiculturalism of sorts the dead replace me with a comedian's chest cavity instead of a chest cavity held tight. It takes a violent middleman for me to talk to myself stories that travel through other people's stories a song about a song hemisphere by the hemisphere stories that travel through a conquered poet and my mother remembers Africa Lord. She killed on behalf of you Lord I wore machete all winter and no one asked me what it meant I read 1000 books in front of the world you know what I do is fight poems. And sleepy deck in San Francisco prayer circles watch people play for post working class associative surfaces or recreations of a governor's desk ruling class art of utility plan finding sociopathic bureaucrat. A day some white people scare even easier. TV in a basket next to a ceramic baby wearing ceramic armor musket prize me fantasizing through the art of the poor that trendy latches like before God. Black or honey down like a dog and hand over my friends Lord. But I think I'm gonna die in a war. I'm elected white people in my small house like boo song with no spiritual effect or dollhouse age bomb upon the show near their bodies apartheid weddings to go right apartheid white people who give birth to mathematicians the spiritual continuity bears and police station. A chemical interpretation of a Sunday trip to church church smells in their pockets of river mistaken for talking river no autobiography outside of small personal victories of violence and drug use made in the image of God. Trinkets were white abolitionists confided in their children about chemical assurances that they will switch from black artists to white artists from black God to white God from black worker to white worker you know I think about you cautiously Lord. In the same way I think about my childhood Lord. Fox hold Friday night smoke so life is muted comedian points out a plan is filled to a priest King sugar can King cotton King Revolutionary the Bible is central containing all modes of shallow introduction introducing an unlisted planet class speaking about Fever's and balance sheets and reassuring the masses that we can figure out our fathers later a priest took my mother lightly Lord. Still in front of parishioners we rather than fantasies about black art priest reading confidently before I broke them and broke his parallel you know after the day I've never been a port before little brother watches his big brother's friends. And the rifles on shelter walls they agree with me and call it literature it's a simple matter this revolution thing to really lie to know to keep nothing God like to write a poem for God. Right on the end. Um, Yo, thank you for that. It's a thing where I love your work so much and I never get to hear it you know I never get to I get to read I spend time with it but to hear it is another thing and so you know that's why before I was like you know you got to read something because I never get to like hearing your own voice. Man, I'm beyond honored man. And, man, I you know so we're going to begin this conversation. But, you know, I just, you know, before you even say anything I just wanted to tell everybody that this is a book. It's a book that you actually read to your loved ones. As I have found myself doing. I mean, um, it's, it's, it's a genius of a whole will actually literally multiple dimensions. As you know, it's, it's, it's, it's just this, this 345 thread weave of, of, of history of poetry of social criticism of memoir, you know, that's that's really unparalleled. This is a, this is a life. This is a life changing book. But let me ask you some questions now. So, you know, I mean there's so many places to start. I am interested in how Columbus is looking right now. Yeah, on the ground. Yeah. What's going on. I mean on the ground is pretty tough. You know, folks have been following me at all I was out all weekend and I think that for us, you know, in December there were, you know, Andre Hill and Casey Goodson were murdered like nine days apart, 10 days apart. And it's hard. I think for a lot of folks here on the ground is there's a real understanding of the amount of grieving that one people can hold while trying to move forward, you know, and it's new. I mean, you know, Columbus, as people are, you know, I see it's funny also not funny, but of course it's interesting to be in a place and see the national media attention just catch on, you know, like the media, all the reports have been about how many people how many young folks Columbus police have murdered in the past few years and how like per capita Columbus is really hot but I mean we've known that here because we've been in it, you know, like we've been steeped in it for, you know, the entire Brian is not unique. Unfortunately, Casey Goodson, Andre Hill are not unique. This goes back to folks like Julius Tate, you know, folks who were murdered in the years before this one Henry Green and for me, I think, as someone who's organized for a lot of years there's like enough grief to last a lifetime, you know. So to come to terms with this is such a difficult thing. And also to struggle with you know and I've gotten better at this because I kind of shut out the outside world but to just struggle with like the public reactions to these things is hard because you know, a lot of people are here we're here we're here on the ground we're here, placing flowers on the site of the murder we're here checking in on families you know we're doing the work. And there's time to be heartbroken but not as much time to be cynical. And I'm trying to balance that. So how have have strategies, organizing strategies been evolving. What's what's what's been working what hasn't been working. I think one thing that we've done here that I think it's just going to be a slow moving thing hopefully around the country is just helping people in communities. Largely like marginalized communities poor communities to like not just not just black and brown communities also like poor white communities to learn how to divest from calling the police, and like learn how to divest from the actual institution of the actual feeling of meeting the police, which has been vital. I mean I think. I think we're also at a crossroads though because the police here, after this summer where we're so violent with protesters that they've almost stopped engaging with the actions that take place in the actual streets you know so like shutting down the street is nothing now which is, you know, in some ways good. But I'm sure if we walked up in the city hall it'll be a different thing you know I mean, if we like when we walked up to the marriage house was completely different vibe right. Today the mayor announced that he's gonna like have a probe into Columbus police but that doesn't really do anything. There was a probe into Columbus into CPD in like 1998. And that probe was like yeah she's wild you know I mean police fucking up in the city was kind of just like who we got you, you know I mean. And so I'm not really confident in these moves. This is perhaps where my cynicism comes in when I don't want it to, but I'm not really confident in these moves made by people in power, because they know deep down inside that the presence of police upholds their power. Right, it upholds the presence of police upholds the mayor's ability to function with impunity. And so I'm not really confident that the mayor himself is all that interested in dismantling the core of the police. You know, and so like, you know one thing my homie angel, the great poet Angel Nafi says is like, I might be cynical but I'm also not a fool, you know I mean and I try that's like a big organizing principle for me and so my, my, my organizing stance is what it's always been is that police and power are not going to save these people who are in the streets and the most marginalized of the people who are in the streets like the mayor is not not going to do that work and so we got to do it on our own. Pat panning out a little bit what do you make of the kind of broader or mass political reality and how things are playing out. I always worry about health and sustainability of movements. You know, which is that's always my big picture thing and that's in part why I've gotten so focused locally because I think in my younger organizing days I was so focused nationally like when I remember when, when things were popping off in Ferguson I was like I had your own plane and go to Ferguson, you know, and I don't regret those type of decisions, but I also think that, you know, I think sustainable movements are built when they're focused locally and led and organized by folks who are that who are like in the communities in these communities full time. And so I do worry about health and sustainability. I'm really hardened by young organizers, particularly in the Midwest. I'm hardened by the way that I see organizing principles kind of flood into every other aspect of cultures that I'm a part of the publishing or music or, you know, some of them not in good ways obviously like you know we all got to go into the way that like the idea of celebrity flaws, all kinds of process progress. But I think in some ways, it's, it's moving forward in in a way that makes me feel hopeful. I don't know how are you a hopeful person. I'm a multi headed hydrant. It comes to hope and despair in various gradations. My concern is in, well I got the same concerns as you. I would just add also just a kind of an anxiety about our ideological kind of clarity what exactly we're subscribing to because a lot of this kind of, you know, what would also undermine efforts is this kind of reformist tendency. And that that that I think is, you know, in a way walls a lot of people off actually from the mass reality or the or the mass imagination. You know, I'll spare you the bitter anecdotes. No, I'm with I mean, I mean, but I'm with yeah. Yeah, that's you know so but but you know actually the the the most enthusiastic head of mine actually was was was just you know I just saw a beautiful rally there was the I don't know if you heard of the Frisco five out here. Yeah, yeah, I went on the hunger strike so so it was the five year five year anniversary. And it was, you know, it was back back in front of the police station. And, you know, the police were out there and their full, you know, kind of Nazi science fiction, you know, pastures. And, but but man that the not only was, you know, our spirit, probably stronger than theirs. I did notice a kind of an improved politics, making his way through the making his way through the crowd and how people were actually organizing themselves and, and what people were saying gave gave me some gave me some hope. How have you found the dance between organizing in craft for you. I think for me honestly like genuinely for me they've always felt entirely separate in part because I was someone who organized before I wrote anything like not anything like quote unquote worthwhile like anything at all. You know I mean, and so, and I've lived here my whole life, you know, and so normally, like rarely things will pop off where someone who's asking me to perform something at an action is saying like will you read something. You know, like when Casey goes in junior family had his, you know, birthday thing they were kind of like will you read something or we speak, but normally it's on some shape where it's like, we need you on the ground to perform an action has nothing to do with your ability, or how the rest of the world sees you which is what I prefer you know it's like. Can you can you stock a medic tent. You got a car can you drive people can you extract people from the from the action right. And I think because i'm able to kind of keep those things somewhat separate i'm also able to stay grounded in like what I actually do. I understand that. No book I write is actually going to get anyone free nor nor do I write you know, there may be some ways that one could view my work. As political education, but I think broadly my investments are not i'm not trying to fool anyone you know like i'm a pop culture critic that's where my excitement slide that's where my investments in the work lie. And so I don't really think like when I go to political education. There are other books I go to like I don't really dive into my old notes and i'm like okay, this is the roadmap to the revolution but I also think that's fine. This is what I do in a part of who I am but i'm also like seven other things but not not seven other things and a writer i'm seven other things before i'm a writer. And I kind of got to be those things before I can effectively write, you know, and I need to be clear on what the work is doing where it's coming from and how to best fulfill the parts of me that need to serve that work, but also fill the parts of me that to not just organize it be a good friend a good sibling a good dog owner a good sports fan like these kind of things to that. Do not make me feel like I need to earn a moment of frivolous humanity in a violent time. Right on. How did you choose the, how did you choose the frame or frames for this book, or did the did the frame choose you. How do you how do you work. I think the frame kind of fell into place you know I was. The great story of this book is that I got when I was kind of working on making the first draft into the second draft and making a little bit more centered on celebration instead of trauma or pain. A homie has sent me this hard drive of every soul train episode from 1971 and 1989. I'm someone like I grew up watching soul train reruns, but the thing about watching reruns is you know like I grew up in the 90s and so like, it's one thing to watch an episode of soul train from the 70s while in the 90s. Because once the commercial hits you're kind of back in that 90s world you're in like a you know you get the Michael Jordan commercial or the whatever commercial to get this hard drive, where all the commercial intact all the Johnson brand stuff, all of that. It was like I'm really in the world I'm in the world Don Cornelius built you know what I mean. And that was the frame like that was a central frame was like how do I write every essay with the exuberance that I'm getting watching these soul train videos and that was when I kind of reformatted the book my whole thing was. I just want to write one good essay about soul train, and then whatever else will fall into place everything else will fall into place. Trust is a trust I hadn't had in any of my other projects before all my other projects I've had to like in my brain, map out what I believe them to be, which is a fool's errand right like we're never as we're never as great at almost anything as we believe ourselves to be even the work that we take to and that we map out. I'm just going to pursue this one essay with the most exuberance I can, and then the next one to open itself up to me. You know, it was kind of like every essay felt like I was, I was in a maze testing a door and the doors happen to work. What are some of your research strategies you have some like really you had some deep digs man you found. You found some gold man. What was your approach to research. So much stuff. You know, I don't count I mean I'm definitely a skeptic when it comes to great many things. But I think I'm a pretty that skepticism pays off right in the in the mode of research because the thing that I'm always thinking is there's something else other than what's offered on like a surface level look on fucking Wikipedia or whatever you know I And I'm always in search of the something else a perfect example of this is Ellen Armstrong, who I found out about Armstrong just by chance you know there was a moment where the phrase black girl magic was being commodified as these things do. And it just sent my brain kind of down a rabbit hole, where I was like, I bet though, I bet there's a black woman who was like the first black woman to do magic ever. And I found out about an Armstrong, and there's just not a lot about her online. And so it got to the point where I was calling I was like cold calling magic historians which I didn't even know that was a real thing. But I was just calling him a shout out to them because they were great I would call one is Syracuse and they would be like, Oh, I don't really know anything but my homie out in Dallas know something. I don't know if I know anything but you know, out in Sacramento I got a friend and that's kind of how I went down this road where it was like so much of so much of immense like black cultural production is consumed by America and see into the American nation. And what happens is the black performers who offered that production get left behind, like their fullness gets left behind so like folks like black Herman, or the Ben marine thing at the Reagan inauguration where they didn't show the whole, the whole shit. Right. These type of things where And so the questions I always bought to the table where, well, it's one thing to write about the production America knows the production because it's, it's well versed in the theft of that production. But what about the person behind the production who America has has somewhat left behind or placed in an easily digestible box, which is why I talked about Josephine Baker, doing work with the French resistance in her later career to in her later career. And why I dug for Alan Armstrong and why I returned to folks like black Herman and Bert Williams. Don't give up too much. Don't give up. Let them find out man. All of the all of the rooms you know, just all of the rooms of history you open. Now, you know, not not, you know, not not a kind of a, I'm not hoping for a certain kind of answer but just curious. How do you experience history. How does your mind engage in giving this kind of just this, this almost psychic double jointedness you display through the book and also just, you know, the kind of just the ability to bring everyone kind of in on to the same dance floor. No pun intended. This is the question I asked that I got to ask Gerald Horn before I'm really curious about how how how how history. Yeah, you. I mean I grew up, I grew up in a house where on one I was raised Muslim and so we didn't really like rock with any traditional quote unquote American holidays, but also, I grew up in a house with with a father who was like a self taught radical in some ways. I don't know if he would define himself as that but I think that my experience with him and is his commitment to self education felt radical to me and so like on Thanksgiving's. He would like have an encyclopedia on the table and have like places highlighted where me and my siblings have to read about the, you know, the genocides and in the, you know these type things. On these holidays, the work would be reading and researching. So my relationship with history has always been fascination and curiosity in a real excitement to feel like I'm getting to the bottom of something that was kept from me. Even if I am even and I mean this even in the most, I take that approach to even the most mundane bit of researching right. You know, even researching things like soul train which was inherently joyful. I still kind of took that approach, because I think that approach makes me somewhat relentless in my pursuits of things if I just keep saying. I'm returning to my skeptic nature, but if I kids if I just keep saying this can't be it. This got to be more I'm not satisfied, because so much of my time because of how I was raised in the house I was raised in so much of my time spent in school was spent doing that was spent saying this can't be it. Like what I'm learning in this framework cannot be it. And I don't have the tools you know to find out but I'm going to find something better out. When I think about the idea of abolition broadly to me is fighting for an imagining a world that I reasonably reasonably may not be alive for right, and still removing the ego enough to still fight for that world understanding that I might not be able to reap whatever benefits of it might exist. And I don't mean that in a morbid sense or even an abstract sense. Yes, in the very Ross gay sense I could die tonight. But also I could live, you know, inshallah live seven decades and still not see the fruits of that work, but that work will be the work. And I think that kind of imagination in that kind of and that imagination that fuels an endless pursuit is the same imagination I take to the research in the idea of history. It's like I'm not I wasn't there I didn't live through everything so I can't get to the full bottom of this, but I have to keep working because there's a bottom that I haven't seen yet. It was interesting to about the about the book. What what what what what you what what you make me think about. Now is is interestingly you have this. You know, just super kinetic. You know, excavation of a fact. At the same time, just really sitting still yourself with a lot of vulnerability the parts of the book that are that are about you it's like an almost an interesting dual posture of, you know, on the one hand you're like lightning moving. On the other hand, you're just, you're allowing yourself to be struck. How does how does that how does that play out of that play out. How did they did they, you know, do they compliment each other did it was or was there a conflict. Now I don't think there's a conflict because in some ways I don't really think about it mostly because I grew up, or I came of age listening to a lot of things but one of those things was the blues right delta blues specifically, you know, delta blues in the 90s, you know, like T Model 4 and junior Kimbrough and think about folks like that is I think one thing I love about the delta blues is that there's the great trick of you think something's moving at light speed but it's actually moving really slowly like junior Kimbrough songs be very danceable you dancing them joints all night, but with the mechanics of the lyric and the mechanics of the narratives happening within the songs are actually really slow and turning over a larger emotional curiosity, which delta blues is the only places happens I mean I think it just happens in a lot of musical forms. Fleetwood Max rumors has a lot of songs like that, but that's where my interest in investment is it's in tricking people into thinking that a lot of different things are happening like in the blackface piece where there's a lot of moving parts and then yet tricking people into movement, but actually not moving very far at all. We're actually going really slow and really orbiting around one central thing. The best example of that is that performance of softness piece at the end of the book that moves around timelines really fast. Really that that piece is just about a slow moving ache of not rising to the occasion of loving the men in my life, or being too immature to reckon with masculinity in a way that allowed me to love the men in my life when I was younger. That's all that piece is about. It's and it's just tricking people I mean you know that I think if there's a way that I am most a poet. It's that I'm mischievous, and I enjoy. Perhaps a bit from the Terrence Hayes school where I enjoy fooling people and I don't really mind if they know that it's being that it's happening or not. I derive satisfaction from the idea of mischief. But part of that is because that idea of mischief is protective for me. And so like the mischief isn't because I'm not like sitting at home like haha got you I'm smarter than you. I'm sitting at home being like, well if they fall for that they maybe won't see that I am being more vulnerable than I'd like to be. But then it prevents me from being like damn I can't believe this book is in the world and people are going to read me being this vulnerable. You know, I can't live with that. I'm too. I'm too sensitive. Probably. Right. What, what, what, you know, what, what, what, what, what evolved you, you know, towards this. Towards this ability to, you know, to provide us with, you know, to provide us with this human sacrifice. I think it's because I always wanted to be like a big dramatic. I wanted to be a musician. I mean, I know you play you play guitar right. And there's something that I wanted in that that I could never achieve, you know, like I try playing trumpet when I was a kid and I was bad at it. Realistically, I was bad at it because I didn't practice. And so, you know, it's one of those things where like, I saw Miles Davis on the cover of an album and I was like I want to do that. And then I got, I got the trumpet and it was like, I can't do that. Then I, you know, tried piano and I wasn't good, but I wanted the dramatics of songwriting because before anything before poetry before prose or any issue, I was the fan of music. Like I grew up in a musical household. I grew up in a very musical era. Like I grew up, you know, I'd feel like, I feel like we are it's interesting because I feel like we are of the same generation or a similar generation. I grew up in a very musical era is a very different musical era is because of our geographies. You know, I mean, which, of course, propels me to say rest in peace shock G. But because of that, and because I grew up in a visual music era, like I grew up watching rap videos, watching music videos, I wanted that I was I want to be a musician. I want to be able to express my emotions visually so I don't have to express them textually or simplistically or plainly. And as it turns out, I'm not actually good at what I want. I'm exceptionally perhaps good at what I don't what I don't want, which is the great dilemma of my life. But I do think that because I have gotten so good at very plainly expressing my emotions loudly. I had to figure out a way to dress that up. I had to figure out a way to make people think that the feelings are the side dish when they're actually like all three courses. I too was defeated by the trumpet. It's hard. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard. Like three vowels. Right, right, right. But it's, it's a man, it requires a whole different physical meditation. I want a marathon. I've been telling people like, like wind instruments. It's like, you got to be in a different type of shape almost. For real. And nothing necessarily prepare prepares you like normal life doesn't you know I mean like I already kind of twiddle my fingers around so laying it on a guitar at least has some kind of physiological precedent. We don't even yell the way that you know the way you're supposed is supposed to move. I apologize to our viewing audience who have questions. I will now defer to your questions now and I did see you earlier. Amy question. Can you talk about the choice of writing style. It's really interesting and liberating to read this prose. Oh, thank you. The reality is I don't really know what I'm doing. If I'm being real. I didn't, you know, like I don't have any quote unquote traditional. Right, you know, I didn't go to I don't have an MFA I didn't study, you know, I studied like marketing for a little bit in college. That's it, you know. And so I think, guided by folks like Zora Neil Hurston. All I know is is how to write as though I would speak, which is why I think reading out loud also comes easy to me. Because so much of my practice revolves around for folks who know me and I don't know if there's anyone in the room who knows me a bit but for folks who know me it's very much the way I speak very meandering. It's not linear short bursts that tried to encompass as much as possible. And it's I think because I'm the youngest of four, right, the youngest of four and that meant that almost by default, the amount of time that people are willing to give me attention was smaller. I grew up in a house where you're the youngest and they're older folks who are doing undoubtedly more important things than you are. I learned to speak. And I learned to put a lot of things in a small space at a very young age, because I knew that the amount of time I had to hold someone's attention was a fraction of what everyone else had. And I think when I think about my work now, I see that whenever people are like, tell me how you're the youngest and where it shows up and was like in the work it's in the work, entirely in the work. And I think maybe that affects my writing style more than any kind of ivory tower ever could. The question wants to get back to vulnerability. I mean, you spoke some on it already but is there something you would add? Yeah, I mean just that I, you know, I think the work of vulnerability makes me a more capable or the work of kind of mining my own vulnerability and my own capacity for vulnerability makes me a more capable person. And the face of just really horrendous circumstances. Like I think I need, I am almost required to unlock something other than rage or grief, you know. And vulnerability is the only bridge that I've ever known. And it also feels generous to me. It feels generous to me to not only offer my own vulnerability but to say that I am eager and always willing to ask others to do the same and be very specific in that I'm not going to ask anyone to do the work that I'm not willing to do. And when we're talking about like the emotional crafting of a relationship or the emotional work that goes into building an actual relationship in an actual community, I'm not going to task anyone with doing work that I'm not about myself. This next question my teenage my teenagers and my students seem to listen to a constant flow of other voices and inputs. How best do we teach them to discern and stand in and speak their own truth? Um, I think that I mean I probably have not a great answer to this but I also think that just like I work with a lot of Columbus State school students high school students. I just de-centering what I see often is that it's so freeing to de-center the idea of hierarchy. I mean in a lot of places obviously in a lot of modes, but when I walk into a classroom or every year and I guess this year I'll go back if they have it. I teach at Kenyon Young Writers. It's like two weeks with writers from all over the world, like 15 to 18 years old. And the thing that I always say the first day I walk into the room is that we're all writers. I don't really give a shit about this instructor student hierarchy. Like y'all have to push me as much as I am. I actually don't have to like we're required if we're going to be in community with each other as writers. You are required to push me just as much as I push you for two weeks. And that's it. Like that's all I'm trying to hear. I'm not trying to hear anything else. And I think that removal of hierarchy really empowers folks to make decisions around their own writing and their own voice and the immense capability that particularly our young folks have in the ability that our young folks have to articulate the world from their perspective. The best movements in Columbus at least have been led by high school students because of what they're capable of seeing that we're not. And I don't want to stifle that ever. How do you approach such a big project like a book of essays. It feels so overwhelming where do you start. I start by writing a lot of things that I tell myself from the beginning that no one's ever going to see. It's always like a little small project. You know, for this for this book, for example, I wrote a bunch of little vignettes that were about. Gosh, it was so long ago. What did I pick. Oh, it was about the the 1985 dunk contest. You know, I was like no one's gonna see these, but I need to get in a mode where I'm writing about something that I like. So I know what it is to feel good about something I'm writing without the hindrance of being like I got to turn this in or this has to be edited or whatever, whatever, whatever. That gets me in the mood to feel like I can tackle a larger project. If I can write like eight to 10,000 words that no one's going to see and walk myself through a big idea and come to a conclusion. That's also like a detaching of the ego, right? And a reminder that everything I write does not have to be a capital P product. And once I get into that headspace, I think I can take on anything. That's a bit confident. I mean, I really can't take on anything. But that's the whole thing about writing a book is that or in some of this is because I grew up playing sports. I played sports in high school and in college and so much of the function of playing sports in my life was just like convincing myself that I was greater at something than I actually was. You know, I mean, this is the whole game is just like lying to myself about what I'm actually capable of until I get to the end. And then I, I don't, you know, it's like, well, I'm probably not capable of something like this on a regular basis, but I did it for now. I did it for these 300 pages or whatever. And I'm satisfied with that. What propels you in your writing? How do you keep going in reiterating? I'm someone who just really believes in propulsion by way of ancestors, reminding myself that I'm not the only one who's done this work. And that I will never be the only one who's done this work and that I come from a lineage of writers. I never want, I'm so very, I'm the people who know me know I'm just a massive Tony Morrison disciple. Miss Morrison means the world to me. And more than any other part of her legacy, the part of her legacy that I love the most is how eagerly and aggressively she rejected the idea of genius. If someone tried to project genius on her, she would reject it pretty plainly because she knew that with black folks, particularly the idea of genius leads to scarcity and scarcity is the enemy of accountability. It's going to be enemy of growth. It's enemy of community building. It's important to me always be propelled through my work by the understanding that I am sitting in a lineage of writers, known and unknown, living and not, who I owe it to did not imagine that I'm the only one doing this work. And because of that, I can take to the work more freely and more eagerly, knowing that there's a path that I'm already on, and that I don't have to build my own path. That's the most generous thing for me and the most exciting thing for me. And that propels me more than anything else because it's a reminder that I'm not alone in the work. Inquiring minds would also like to know, will you write more pieces about being a sneakerhead? Probably not. It's weird because I feel like my relationship with sneakers is interesting because, you know, I don't know, being a person who collects sneakers is like not cool in some ways. Or like the ways that I think the ways that I think it's cool in the media are not the ways that I wanted that I wanted that to be projected like I don't want that to be projected on me. But I do think that I'm interested in writing a bit more about sneakers from a very real fascination standpoint. And I'm not someone who dwells a lot on material either, but you know, I'm fascinated. I have a pair of sneakers from 1996 that have just organically began to yellow. The like souls of them have began to yellow. And there's like an aging process that just happens because they're fucking old. And there's something about that that's kind of beautiful to me how a sneaker ages much like anything else or anyone else or anywhere else. The only writing is the only interest I'm writing about sneakers isn't that kind of like tactile, very real tactile sense, not like, I don't know. I am currently like rebuilding like drilling holes into my wall and putting shelves in my wall to hold my sneakers to get them out of the sunlight. And it's it's fucking terrible. I'm not I it's wild because I think I'm a handy person until I actually have to do some shit. You are mean, and then it's like, oh, I actually don't know what I'm doing at all. But you know that's that's part of the journey, I guess we're all growing. Right on. And last question, what is the most interesting thing you learned while writing a little devil in America? Oh, I mean, definitely, Ellen Armstrong was the one Ellen Armstrong was. It's just wild in my because I feel like I go down rabbit holes all the time we don't produce anything. And I don't even produce like capital P for the public. But I mean, sometimes I just spend a lot of time Googling and YouTubeing. And at the end I'm like well that was, you know, that was empty. It's kind of wild to just like have a thought about black girl magic and be like and then type in a Google first black woman magician and just find something, you know, and find like an abundance. Not an abundance of information, but a door that would lead to an abundance of information. You know, something that I'd never even thought about before Ellen Armstrong was something who the first black woman magician was I would never can have considered before. And unlocking that was just stunning for me. And I sat in all of that forever. Also, one thing I want to say is that Justin Baker. You can watch. I'm in all this still, you can watch 50 years of her career on YouTube, like her performances. Go back there's video footage of her performances from 19 the 1920s to the end of her career in the 1970s. And I just think that's to me that is so amazing, like it's so amazing that we have that living archive, you know, of someone's life and career over the course of five decades, which I just don't think we get with especially with black women performers, like specifically black women performers right. And so I'm immensely in all of that and remain in all of that. Right on. Well, unless somebody puts four more quarters in the the time is up. Yeah, great greatly appreciate you. Such a generous. You have just a super generous soul in mind and appreciate all that you share today and all that you are sharing in this book. You know, and just much, much love and respect and solidarity, of course, folks out there in Columbus. Thank you for your work and thank you for the way that you teaching in guide folks that I think is just invaluable and I learned a lot from you and I'm so much gratitude for you being here tonight. Right on there. Respect. Thank you both I feel like I have learned so much just getting to listen to both of you here. So thank you for your work for your organizing. I encourage everyone to get yourselves a copy of this book. It's an incredible read. Thank you. Please continue supporting your bookstores, your arts institutions. We did put information in the chat if you are able to quickly fill out a program survey we do appreciate any feedback about this program helps us best serve our communities. If you're able to financially support the museum, you can visit our website, which is Moad SF org again support the library support your libraries and all your communities. And I want to thank you all for being here and sharing this space and hope you have a good rest of your evening. Thank you, Nia. Thank you. Bye everybody.