 and all quiet on the set, five, four, three, two. Hello everyone and welcome to the before Columbus Foundation's 43rd Annual American Book Awards hosted virtually today in partnership with us, the San Francisco Public Library. I'm Shawna Sherman, manager of the library's African American. You're on mute. You got muted, Shawna. Sorry. Hi, everyone. Hello. Hello and welcome to the before Columbus Foundation's 43rd Annual American Book Awards hosted virtually today in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library. I'm Shawna Sherman, manager for the African American Center. And like you, I am excited to hear from the esteemed group of literary awardees today. We'll get started with the awards program in just a few moments after some brief announcements. The San Francisco Public Library is broadcasting from the area now known as San Francisco, which is on the unseeded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Aloni peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the original peoples of this land, the Ramaytush Aloni have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. And that we benefit from living, working and learning on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramaytush community. This weekend at the main library is the sixth Filipino American International Book Festival, which is taking place on October 15 and 16 to the Saturday and Sunday. Come celebrate our Filipino, Filipino, Philippinex authors at the main library, as I mentioned. And this program is presented in partnership with Pawa, the Philippine American writers and artists in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library. Find more information on sfpl.org, the events page, or go to philwithanfbookfestival.org. Later this month for our on the same book selection, journalists, activists, and author Roberto Lovato will be here to discuss his book, Unforgetting a Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas. He'll be at the library on October 22 in conversation with Vanessa Hua. Our longtime partner right now SF Bay Area presents 22 established San Francisco Bay Area writers and artists who trace their journeys as creative activists from a BIPOC, meaning black, brown, indigenous or people of color perspective. Join us in the caret on Sunday, October 23 at 1pm for that program. And the San Francisco Public Library is honored that our 17th One City One Book selection this year is This Is Ear Hustle by Nigel Poor and Errolan Woods, the co-creators and co-hosts of the Peabody and Pulitzer nominated podcast that illuminates views of prison life, as told by presently and formally incarcerated people. On November 3, a not to miss evening with the authors in celebration of their book and in conversation moderated by Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black, My Year in a Woman's Prison. And on November 13, the African American Center co-presents a screening and discussion of Belly of the Beast with the activists who fought against coerced sterilization in California women's prisons. They'll discuss their work after a screening of the movie and be in conversation with Wanda Sabir that Cynthia Chandler and Kelly Dillon in conversation with Wanda Sabir. And now what we've all been waiting for on to our show. As I mentioned, we are so grateful to be partnering with the Before Columbus Foundation to host the American Book Awards. Please welcome Justin DeMongos, chairman of the Before Columbus Foundation, administrator of the American Book Award and host of the radio broadcast New Day Jazz, now in its 20th year, who will be our moderated today. Thank you. Please welcome Justin. Oh, good afternoon, Shawna. Thank you so much for your lovely introduction. And once again, I want to thank the San Francisco Public Library and particularly the African American Center. Our partnership with the San Francisco Public Library and the African American Center dates back now 18 years. And it is indeed a very fertile and rich collaboration that the Before Columbus Foundation has had over almost two decades. I'd like to welcome our distinguished guests. As Shawna said, we are gathered for the 43rd annual American Book Awards this afternoon. But before we get into it, I want to also extend my gratitude to the American Academy of Poets and the Poetry Foundation for their generous support of this year's American Book Awards. And also welcome to our board of directors. Three of our newest members, the writer and culture critic Mitch Berman, the novelist, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and the poet, Carolyn for Shay. They join us along with some of the most illustrious writers in the United States today, including our founder Ishmael Reed, Joy Harjo, novelist Marlon James, and Layla Lalameen. We'll be hearing more from other members of the Before Columbus Foundation as we progress through this afternoon's program. And shortly the board of directors president, Wahaja Ali. The United States of America is often regarded as a country without rituals. One of the rituals surely at the axes, not only of the United States, but of the New World has been the murder of blacks with impunity. 1619, 1719, 1819, 1919, red summer, 2019. Any advancement on the part of the socially degraded economically exploited has always been met with maximum retaliation from the most backward and criminal elements. Not only within the government, but within its state and corporate apparatus and today is certainly no exception to that. I bring that up because as all works of art oscillate between the unexpressed, but intended, and the unintentionally expressed. All of the works of art that we celebrate today with the 43rd annual American Book Award, all the individuals have answered to this situation in one way or another, whether asymmetrically from different angles, or confrontationally and directly all have spoken with depth and with nuance and with conscience. Conscience, a word rarely heard today. The first time the word America appears on a map. Now what is known as Brazil, California, where I stand today was named for a fictional black, lesbian, Amazon queen of the Islamic faith. And as Shauna pointed out, where we are today has been many nations and many peoples, and the before Columbus Foundation, above and beyond any literary organization has recognized this from the beginning from our inception in the year of 1976. And one of the writers, the many writers who have been recognized first and foremost by the before Columbus Foundation with the American Book Award include the great bell hooks who most recently moved on to the ancestors who received the American Book Award for yearning for its gender and cultural politics in the year of 1991. I should point out that her very first book, more than a decade earlier was distributed by the before Columbus Foundation and our earliest incarnations as a book distributor, as well as a presenter of the award and seminars and such. Other Lord also would be included in that group going back to the year of 1989 as I understand it, before Columbus Foundation and the American Book Award was one of the only organizations to honor her work when she was still with us and so that's, but one facet of the equation, which is emerging today. And with that in mind, it's a great pleasure to welcome the before Columbus Foundation president, Wahajad Ali and I would be remiss not to remind all of us that in addition to being a regular contributor to the New York Times as well as the daily beast, Wahajad Ali is a playwright and most recently the author of go back to where you came from and other helpful recommendations on how to become an American. And so to begin the formal ceremonies this afternoon, Wahajad Ali. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. I owe you money via Venmo because you promote my book without me asking. For those of you are asking why does it seem like I'm selling insurance is because I'm in a hotel I have to give a talk in about two hours is the only room that was available and on their any suggestion on my part that we're playing Queens we are the champion sometimes life is utterly appropriate and on the nose. I appreciate all the people have joined us all the respected winners their family members I wish we could be in person hopefully next year inshallah as we say, we will meet in person in San Francisco and afterwards we will have to take a little bit of advice and vegetables and tasty treats. It's an honor to be introduced by Justin who by the way without giving too much this man has gone through hell and back the last few months. Thanks to some physical elements and yet he managed to pull off this program so thank you Justin for your dedication. This guy was literally on his back, literally, as of just a couple of days ago and we'd also like to thank Mr. Rods and Ishmael Reed for all their work in keeping the American Book Awards alive and well this is the 43rd annual American Book Awards put on by the before Columbus Foundation for Columbus Foundation is a multicultural coalition of the willing. I read comic books so let's call it the ethnic Avengers if you like DC let's call it the ethnic Justice League. Formed because there is a realization that America's stories include the rest of us those of us who are seen as sidekicks as punchlines as villains or completely invisible. The only way this country achieves it's a rough draft of a dream. And so what we do in the multiracial democracy is by expanding and spread and stretching the tent to include the rest of us who are oftentimes never given an invite, or we're asked to be comfortable with merely eating the appetizers or we were asked to row the boat but never rock the boat. So we rocked the boat here a little bit and we and we were on to this thing called multiculturalism and diversity way back when it wasn't popular and a lot of corporate entities weren't getting enough seen amount of money to do kind of mediocre work on this issue too soon or not soon enough. And yet here we are 43 years later, and we're living in an interesting time where many of the warnings of many of our sage board members have come to fruition. The rise of white nationalism the mainstreaming of fascism book bands, ladies and gentlemen in the past year, America has banned more than 1200 books, primarily written by black women and LGBTQ authors, some parents in America in 2022 or more comfortable with their kid potentially than reading Toni Morrison's beloved, because these narratives make them uncomfortable, they're discomfort, they skew their very clean 90 degree angle view of an America where there's no racism no double standards and you just have to pull yourself up from the bootstraps. And the rest of us say well what happens when the boot is on your neck and they say stop complaining, why don't you act like a model minority. And so in America as books are being banned, we do not take this lightly that we have assembled this ethnic avengers to come and celebrate the word in the books. And I just want to flex a little bit. Justin mentioned the board. Let me tell you who's on the board ladies and gentlemen. We have the 10 when Caroline Porsche, we've got Ishmael Reed but Jenny Lynn, we got Joy Harjo, we got Juan Felipe Herrera. We have Simon Ortiz, Marlon James, Nancy Carnival, Leila Lampe, Ishmael Reed, Sean Wong, Nancy Mercado, Margaret Porter, Trude, Mary Anderson, Carla Brundage, and Oya Meen, Justin, who come along for the ride. For those of you who don't know, this is a collection of Pulitzer Prize winners, McCarthy's genius winners, Pulitzer Prize nominated authors, the poet Laureate of the United States of America for the past three years. We have academics, we have journalists, we have poets, we have authors, we have writers. So how does this work? Every year, everyone gets to submit one or two nominations. Then as a group, we do a little kind of a meeting, and when we talk about it, I can make your case. And just to let you know, Justin will tell you, we get so many book submissions that our humble Oakland office is, and I use the word literally as it's meant to be used, is overflowing with books. People desperately want their book to get the American Book Award. I say all this because for those of you who have won the award, I hope you have some pride in it. You can flex a little bit, have some humble swagger. These are men and women of the arts, some of the most respected people who have chosen your work. In addition, you'll notice there's no gold prize, silver prize or bronze. There's no first, second or third. That's very deliberate. We believe all these writers are equal. They're equal winners. And if we were there in San Francisco, all of you at the end of the day would share the stage equally. That means first-time writers. People have published independently. People have won awards. People have bestsellers. People who later credited with the American Book Awards, giving them a shot in the arm that gave them a career that later led to the Pulitzer and the Bookers and all the tasty foundational words that give them money, right? So I hope you really embrace it. I hope you enjoy it. And what I'll shamelessly say, if you are a publisher or a family member of the writers in the chat section, shamelessly put a link to the book. Writers eat through their words. They have to eat. Books are being banned, ladies and gentlemen. Celebrate the word. Help these publishers. Help these writers. And I'll also say this because I'm the president. I could say this. Before Columbus Foundation, people think we're balling out of control. I'm an old man, so I can use that reference. They're like, what? You guys are just, you know, Ishmael Reid kind of jokingly every time we do this live passes his hat at the end like it's church. And people joke, but he's like, no, no, no, you got some money. Put him that hat. We have now evolved in the past several years, and we have a PayPal link on BCF. It is a nonprofit 501C3. So you get tax deductible credit. If you have some extra dollars, please donate to Before Columbus Foundation. Now, with that being said, it is my honor and privilege to kick off the award ceremonies by introducing the first recipient, every recipient after I give them hopefully a warm introduction that will make them look awesome because they are awesome. They have a few minutes to say what they want to say, however they want to say it. And again, you will be getting really beautiful awards that Justin spends a lot of money and time on. And people really like the first recipient is Spencer Ackerman, a journalist who has been covering the war on terror terror for the past 20 years. He's written for the Guardian. He has written for Wired. He has now written a book called Rain of Terror, how the 911 era destabilized America and produce Trump. As Ishmael and Justin were saying, oftentimes in this day and age with the rise of fascism, it is infuriating when you see corporate media do a both sides analysis and skew what is normal to the abnormal to court access and power. But Spencer doesn't do that. He calls a spade a spade and he backs it up rigorous research, meticulous notes, interviews. He's a power. He shows the power of witness and accountability journalism. And specifically what he does, he connects the dots for the past 20 years. He takes a DeLorean all the way back to the war on terror, which is still ongoing. He talks about the voracious appetite of the US military industrial complex and how the domestic and international programs led to the mainstreaming and presidency of Donald Trump. Without Trump, there's no Trump without 911 and the Patriot Act and mass surveillance and the obscene demonization of Muslims and immigrants and those who look miss Muslims. The members of today have many mothers and both political parties have left behind orphans worldwide. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct pleasure to give the 43rd annual American Book Award to Spencer Ackerman for reign of terror of the 911 era destabilized America and produced Trump. Take it away Spencer. Thank you so much to the before Columbus Foundation for this prestigious award. It's a particular honor to receive it alongside legendary authors like Gail Jones and fearless journalists like Jeffrey St. Clair. I released the book and recorded some music in 2021 so I'm basically Michelle's honor. And accordingly, it's a special pleasure to share an award with her. I cannot beat an introduction and an award show from a friend like Wajalee, who I think we can all tell is a theater kid through and through. But perhaps most meaningful of all is receiving an award founded by Ishmael Reed, one of my father's favorite authors. As far back as I can remember, I can recall a sun beaten paperback of Shrove tide in old New Orleans that my dad read so much that the adhesive binding failed and left it in three pieces. I'm 42 years old and I'm a native New Yorker. All I have ever covered as a journalist has been the war on terror because there has been no end to this ongoing nightmare. Even though most of the reporters columnists and TV personalities who supported it have long since moved on without reckoning with their complicity. Last year, the costs of war project at Brown University presented what it recognizes as an analytically conservative estimate that found the war on terror is responsible for at minimum the depths of 900,000 people. It has made tens of millions more into refugees. There is no alleged hollow success. The war is yielded that can counterbalance this horrific actuarial table. Even if we were to accept the dubious proposition that the war on terror succeeded in preventing another 911, something only one terrorist organization have the capacity to accomplish a single time. We would be saying that the United States is justified in killing over 900,000 people. Occupying Iraq, Afghanistan and eastern Syria, conducting commando raids and drone strikes in those three countries plus Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Niger, maintaining a forever prison on stolen Cuban land and spying on the communications of most of the world. The success of the war on terror lies in normalizing permanent war and domestic persecution, something history tells us tends to accelerate the decline of the empires that waged. The reign of terror is not what the rules of my profession would consider a neutral account of the war on terror. But in abandoning the rules of my profession, I tried to tell a truer story about my subject. There is no honest way of presenting the war on terror without examining the racist, nativist and exceptionalist forces animating it. Forces that the state of emergency chosen after 911 validated and welcomed back into power. There is no honest way of presenting the war on terror without exploring how liberals and technocrats accommodated those forces and deluded themselves into thinking that they could wage an endless war that wouldn't stoke such forces. There is no honest way of presenting the war on terror without identifying the ways politicians of both parties aided the security state in hollowing out the Fourth Amendment's guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment's guarantees of due process. There is no honest way of presenting the war on terror without documenting how it divided the country into real Americans and conditional Americans. And there is no honest way of presenting the war on terror without recognizing it as a threat to democracy. That is not how mainstream journalism presented the war on terror. To start the war on terror was a cancel culture. Susan Sontag was the subject of relentless mainstream media demonization for telling the truth so soon after 911 that the attack was not an assault on freedom, but bloody revenge for decades of violent exploitative and American intervention in the Middle East and South Asia. Critics of the Afghanistan occupation were told that they were enemies of women's rights, echoing a long forgotten justification for the horrific British occupation of India. Opponents of the Iraq occupation were told they would be complicit in a genocide if America withdrew, with the hawks not once acknowledging their own complicity as the war they championed yielded the civil war they first denied until they recognized it became an opportunity for escalation. Elites whose children never showed their rifle wrote that America had no serious option but to wage a generation long war against an ever mutating enemy. It was and is a war fueled by official lies and journalistic deference to it. An entire book The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock demonstrated through official documents that policymakers and senior military officers across multiple presidential administrations knew how hollow their proclamations of progress in Afghanistan were. Even when excellent journalism detailed the reality of CIA torture, NSA bulk surveillance, CIA and military drone strikes or FBI and NYPD mosque surveillance. Most often editors preferred to sanitize such operations through euphemisms preferred and even designed by the authorities, such as enhanced interrogation, the terrorist surveillance program and targeted killing. Even when mainstream journalism was critical of the war on terror, it tended to frame its criticisms in terms of harm done to American interests, rather than to human beings whose stories tended to be ignored, particularly if they blamed America for America's actions. I hardly exempt myself from blame, particularly as I committed my share of ignorant journalism struggling to see what was right in front of. As a profession, we have no right to bemoan the rise of disinformation as we spent the past 21 years promoting it, and we deserve the collapse of public trust in our profession. I intended reign of terror as a corrective to the way mainstream American journalism so often failed to describe a generation long war truthfully to the war mongers torturers spies mosque infiltrators and apologists who escaped accountability for the war on terror. May this book haunt you throughout history. It is long past time to break a final taboo of mainstream journalism on the subject and say that there is only one option for society that wishes to be and remain free total abolition of the operations institutions and authorities of the 911 era. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Spencer. We appreciate we appreciate your journalism. I have the distinct pleasure of introducing the next winners. And it's a brilliant anthology of Navajo literature called the DNA reader University of Arizona Press as the publisher. The authors are Esther Billen, Jeff Berglund, Connie Jacobs, Anthony Webster, the DNA reader, according to Joe Joy Harjo, our board member and also one of the Titans of American literature and also former court lawyer of the United States of America, two times in row says the following about the DNA reader the anthology of Navajo literature quote it confirms the prominent and influential position that DNA writings hold in American letters today. This valuable collection holds the poetry pose and thoughts of several generations of DNA or Navajo writers with numerous foundational heavy hitters in literature alongside emerging writers and fresh voices. Every one of these writers and poets marks a fresh era of thought and becoming this anthology proves that DNA writers are at the heart of not just contemporary Native American literature, but the canon of American literature these writers are defining their own literature, defining the future as they stand as the next generations of literary ancestors, they're behind their own cultural critics and are moving away from the generic term of being a native or Native American writer. This finally edited groundbreaking collection is essentially a statement of sovereignty and proof of continuance of the songs and thoughts of their ancestors. It is destined to become a classic of American and world literature. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Esther Bailen, Jeff Berglund, Connie Jacobs and Anthony K Webster with the DNA reader and anthology of Navajo literature published by the University of Arizona. Thank you for those kind words and I had a joy for recognizing recognizing our work. Good afternoon, everyone. I extend my warmest greetings to the members of the before Columbus Foundation who selected the DNA reader for the American Book Award. All the other distinguished writers honored in this year's awards. I'm joining you all from the borderless four corners of the United States in my home, just east of our northern boundary mountain, the Nebezat, or the Benzat. I'm going to do a Navajo introduction. I am sorry as well that we can't all meet in person. Please know that we most definitely are connected in spirit. And today I represent the editorial team of four, myself, Jeff Berglund, Connie Jacobs and Anthony Webster. We are all equally honored to be receiving such a prestigious recognition. We share this award with all the contributing writers who had faith in us to finish the anthology, our publisher, the longtime supporter of indigenous literary arts, University of Arizona Press, especially Kristen Buckles. The recognition is deeply important, as our book is an offering of literary sovereignty, celebrating over 30 Dena writers. In spite of the genocidal tactics of education, the United States has employed to wipe out Indian nations. We continue to tell our stories by integrating the English language with Dena poetics. On the eve of what is called Indigenous People's Day, I will bless you all with this seed of thought. The idea for this book was most likely envisioned by others before we started to germinate this much needed project. Indigenous people and those who work alongside them acclimate to scarcity and invisibility. This book makes us visible, a collective presence that extends over hundreds of years. The identity and fulfillment of this book was carried forward from all those ancestors and visionaries who continue to walk alongside us. Our intention is that this book will be the first of many to celebrate literary sovereignty of Indigenous peoples on this land and others. I feel so much love from the Before Columbus Foundation who recognizes the genocidal invasion all land-based peoples experience because this honor gives a heartfelt hug of empathy, encouragement, and solidarity. I love to each of our families who continue to love us and give support to keep doing the work that we do. I celebrate this recognition with all the authors in the book and with my co-editors. Thank you Esther and congratulations again. The book again is called The Dine and Reader Anthology of Novel Literature published by the University of Arizona Press. Good things coming through and I have the honor of introducing the third recipient of the American Book Awards and I love the diversity here that we have. Next up is Emma Brodie and I just want to give a shout out to James Taylor and Joni Mitchell for dating back in the day because without that fact we probably wouldn't have had this gorgeous wonderful novel written by Emma Brodie. It's about chasing your dreams, chasing love, chasing stardom, chasing music and it's many beautiful, ugly, painful, joyous costs and victories all told to the soundtrack of 1969 and the early 1970s. However I will give a quote from Mary Anderson who said that Emma Brodie's songs in Ursa Major published by Naught is the author is adept at creating her characters realistically with her flaws highlighted in contrast to great talent. Real people with contrasting pain and joy expressed often simultaneously. We look forward to reading more creative works by this author in the future and that was again from board member Marie Anderson, give it up for Emma Brodie and her novel songs in Ursa Major published by Naught. Thank you so much. Hi everyone. Thank you so much to the Before Columbus Foundation for creating this important award. And thank you to San Francisco Public Library for hosting it. Thank you to the judges for this profound honor and congratulations to the amazing authors here today. I'm truly humbled to be in your company. Songs are like tattoos, according to Joni Mitchell's 1971 masterpiece blue. No offense to Joni but I actually think books are much more like tattoos. After all books are also made from ink images, pain and permanence. This is precisely what makes the American Book Awards so meaningful. It is such a tremendous honor to be recognized by fellow authors, navigating the same stars and the same scars. I want to thank everyone who made songs in Ursa Major possible. My agent Susan Gollum my editor Jenny Jackson and my entire publishing team at Knopf. Thank you to anyone who has read my book or sold it in your bookstore. I'm still not over it. Thank you to my family for valuing art and for putting up with my decades-long Mandy Moore obsession. Thank you most of all to my husband Kevin and my dog Freddie Mercury for being my pack through thick and thin. Thanks again to the Before Columbus Foundation and a huge congrats to my fellow honorees. Thank you so much Emma Brody. Again, songs in Ursa Major winner of the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Coming up in just a moment, we're going to be bringing Daphne Brooks, who received the American Book Award this year for her extraordinary work. Liner notes for the revolution, the intellectual life of black feminist sound. In the history of the Before Columbus Foundation and the American Book Award, there are direct antecedents to this work from Daphne Brooks. I'm thinking of course of Paul Gilroy's 1994 American Book Award winning a black Atlantic, modernity and double consciousness. And more recently from 1998, Angela Davis's blues legacies and black feminism. Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. Towards the end of the masterpiece Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin, Baldwin writes, I don't know much about music except that most people never hear it. Well, Daphne Brooks can hear the music. And from this wellspring of imagination of thought, pains, satisfactions, refusals, acceptances. She weaves an extraordinary vision of our lives, woven from uncommon threads. A mirror woven from our shadows in song. It's a great honor to welcome Daphne Brooks and present her with the 43rd American Book Award. And I must say, I will look forward to the opportunity to expand on this conversation and bring in some of the music, which she makes so vivid and so persuasive and illuminates with such power in her book, Liner Notes for the Revolution. So join me in welcoming Daphne Brooks this afternoon. Daphne congratulations again on the American Book Award. Thank you so much Justin for this incredibly kind and moving introduction deeply lyrical coming after Emma Brody there's some wonderful serendipity to have heard her lyrical remarks right before yours as well. Thank you of course to the to you for the generosity that you and your colleagues from the before Columbus Foundation have shown to liner notes for the Revolution. And my deepest thanks to all of you for this extraordinary honor. I want to start by saying that I'm truly humbled like everyone else here to be in the presence of my fellow honorees, authors whose work I greatly admire. And those who are here today and those who are the source of celebration today, who have modeled for me a kind of vision and risk taking and fearless creativity that have created conditions of possibility for me as a writer. I feel like this year's lifetime achievement honoree Gail Jones, as well as the before Columbus Foundation founder Ishmael Reed, these two giants of African American literature, each produced pathbreaking works brimming with a richness and language, a holistic experimentation and historical density that invited me and an entire generation of scholars and readers to ask different and deeper questions of black life and culture, and to continue to tell different stories from the ones that dominant regimes have actually handed to us about ourselves a liner notes for the revolution is a book that is essentially a counter narrative, a counter history of American popular music culture that draws to the foreground the radical and world altering the origins of black women artists who transform the expressive cultural conditions of our modern world. It is a story about the importance of popular music in the evolution of 20th century culture, the chronic neglect of black women's crucial history in this phenomenon, and the miraculous ways that generations of black and white feminist thinkers, as well as the musicians themselves, nonetheless cared for champion the value of, and produce knowledge about their music. It means everything to me to receive this award from a foundation with Bay Area roots at an event hosted by the San Francisco Public Library. As the youngest child of African American great migration travelers turned Bay Area residents, the late Nathaniel Hawthorne Brooks, yes that really was his name, and my 96 year old mom Juanita Catherine Watson Brooks who's on the line today. And I am a Janet, Jen Xer who ultimately wrote a book that manifests, and I hope properly pays tribute to the revolutionary eclecticism and cultural heterogeneities of the electrifying post civil rights era, Northern California that shaped me from the legacies of power, integrated education and the black freedom struggle all around me to the black feminist literary renaissance handed down to me by my sister, legendary Bay Area broadcaster Rinal Brooks moon to my own love affair with local soul and rock and roll, and my obsessive engagement with the provocative rock music criticism of Rolling Stone and Grail Marcus. This is the landscape that set my imagination on fire. This book is a love letter to all of that, as much as it is an invitation, a call and sos to music critics, my fellow colleagues as well as future black feminist thinkers to keep imagining ways of writing the holy disregarded histories that are all around in plain sight, the ones that inform the very foundations of our being, and the ones which are awaiting our ability to score them. Thank you so much again for this great honor. Thank you so much, Daphne Brooks. One of the miracles of fiction of the novel is that in many ways, in many ways, intuitive and emotional, it can come much, much closer to the facts of our lives and how we live. There have been journalists and nonfiction or social scientists, or many of the others who endeavor to tell the story of our existence, a person, a reader, wishing to know more and have a deeper understanding of the Irish in Chicago. A person of the 20th century would be perhaps much better advised to read somebody like James T. Farrell than any number of newspaper articles from the same city in the same day. This is very true of Maryam Chancy and her extraordinary work, What Storm, What Thunder, coming much closer with her extraordinary agility of imagination to the lives of those in contemporary Haiti. A story of love and of dignity, and a story that evades the often degrading and purposefully mercurial presentations of the great nation and its peoples. It is a miraculous work, as I mentioned, and like so many in tradition of the great novelist, such as Farrell, who I mentioned, it comes closer to the truth of how we live and what we understand about each other. So it is a great honor to bring Maryam Chancy to the ceremony this afternoon and present the 43rd American Book Award to What Storm, What Thunder. Maryam Chancy. Thank you so much, Justin, for your introduction and for being a stalwart steward of the Before Columbus Foundation. I'm so happy to be here, albeit virtually, to accept this award alongside my fellow awardees. Thank you for listening to Daphne and Emma, I wish I had said something about the music that inspired this novel, but instead I'll begin with a brief quote from What Storm, What Thunder, a novel that tells about the 2010 Haiti earthquake through 10 narrative voices of different ages, and economic situations. Quote, we all look away unless it's us or someone we love going up in flames. You don't know what collective you belong to until your own house is on fire, says Didier, a musician and paperless cab driver in Boston voicing his tale of a 2010 Haiti earthquake. We all look away unless it's us or someone we love going up in flames. It seems to me that all of the books honored by the American Book Award offer us the possibility of entering new collectives of standing in houses on fire here and elsewhere, so that we might never look away, be looked away from. So that those we love or have lost might be remembered beyond ourselves, even if only on the bookshelves that in the end house our collective memories. I want to recall today another Haitian American writer, Edwidge Dandika, who received the ABA for her 1998 novel, The Farming of Bones, about the 1937 massacre of King Cutters in the border zones between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, who told me in an interview I conducted with her in 2000, a year after she was awarded the ABA, that it was one of her most cherished awards, because the Before Columbus Foundation honors all of the Americas, and all of those who constitute it. I want to recall Barbadian American writer Paula Marshall, whose 1983 novel praised song for the widow received in 1984 ABA for her retelling of Avatar Johnson's journey of reconnection to ancestral practices running from the US south through Brooklyn to Haiti, and Kariaku, a novel that I cherish and teach ritualistically for the ways in which it reconstitutes loss and memory across the African diaspora, and underscores that not all has been lost, that retention of sacred ways across these geographies remain. Similarly to these two novels, I wrote What Storm What Thunder as a memorial, a testimony for the 300,000 and more whose names will never be inscribed on tombstones, nor their stories in historical annals. I wrote it for the thousands more who still grieve the 45 seconds that shattered the shape of their lives, of their nation, of their futures, for whom tomorrow will never be what seemed promised the day before, January 12, 2010. I wrote it too for those who have had to leave homes fallen and lost without a possibility of hope, becoming itinerance in lands as close as the other side of the island, and as far as the outermost reaches of South America, who travels still from nation to nation, only to be repudiated. It is an elegy and a remembrance, a love letter, a swan song. I wish to thank all the members of the Before Columbus Foundation for highlighting works shedding light on bio issues in our global world, and for highlighting the importance of the many over the few, with the collaboration of the San Francisco Public Library, our host today. I want to thank my editor at Harper Collins Canada, Janice Zawardney, for believing in this novel when it was first brought to her in manuscript form, my editor at Tin House, Maisie Cochran, for bringing it to polished form inside and out, the entire team at Tin House, including Becky Kramer, Craig Poplars, Nancy Moclesky, and Diane Chonette, for championing the novel for in wide, and for readers who took the work to heart, and urge others in their circles to tackle a quote unquote difficult read. And last but never least, I give thanks to my spouse, Natalia Afonso, who summaryed through all the final stages of bringing the novel to the world, who always understood the work as being one for and with the ancestors, who always knew to cite another character, who opens and closes the novel, that quote, those who died may have been unclaimed, the remains abandoned of necessity, but never, never were they unloved, unquote. And in closing, I'd like to raise a glass to the foundation, and to all of your awardees, for the brave and hard work that you do, nula, nula, nula, we are here. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Myriam, Chancy. One of the many characteristics that distinguishes the American Book Awards from others is that it is an award given to writers from other writers, from a body of esteemed writers, elevating the art form, and the individuals whom we collectively feel are advancing that. And at the beginning of today's program, I mentioned some of the writers who have most recently joined our board of directors at Before Columbus, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer, has this to say about our next honoree, Francisco Goldman, who very generously is sharing his time joining us all the way from Italy in the wee hours of the morning on the European continent to accept the award for Monkey Boy. And again, from Viet Thanh Nguyen, I'll read his words of love and praise for Francisco Goldman's novel. Francisco Goldman's Monkey Boy is an enrapturing novel, a Prussian trip through one man's life and memory as well as the violent history of colonization that binds the Americas. Goldman's alter ego, Francisco Goldberg, Frankie, is, like him, descended from a Jewish American father and a Guatemalan mother. On a train trip from New York to Boston, Goldberg reflects on his life, his erotic affairs, his parents, and his profession, journalism, which has taken him to Mexico and Guatemala and allowed him to witness and reflect on the results of US intervention in those countries. Perhaps the novel could be called autobiographical fiction, but it also exists somewhere in the realm of historical fiction as filtered through a deeply personal and idiosyncratic narrative that is beguiling in his voice. That voice, or those voices of Goldman, the author, and Goldberg, the narrator, pull the reader in a way a warm bath breaths until one is completely immersed up to the neck and perhaps the ears in no way wishing to leave. And yet, what these voices convey, how traumatic history ripples through time, individuals and families, crossing national borders, but also crossing into memory. The title we learn is the cruel nickname given to Goldberg as a boy by bullies. Monkey Boy refers to his physique, but of course also conjures up lamentable and grotesque racism, which is trans American in its scope. The abuses heaped on Goldberg by the bullies echo with the harm that the United States has inflicted on its southern neighbors. Goldman and Goldberg weave back and forth between this often horrific history and the equally devastating trauma inflicted by one person on another. In this case, the abuse heaped on Goldberg by his father, disappointed with his life and his son. Goldberg emerges somewhat intact from these intersections of memory and family, history and tragedy, or as intact as any of us might be. He is flawed, emotionally stunted, limited in his ability to forge human connections, and yet he is also an astute observer of the people, places and politics around him. He knows how to build a mysterious edifice of sentences and stories from the rubble of his life. And for all that he has suffered, and for all that he might have made his loved ones suffer, his narrative in Monkey Boy is something of a salvation. In the end, Goldberg's most finely observed subject is himself rendered with empathy and skepticism, intimacy and distance, tenderness and resignation. He is all grown up, but he is still Monkey Boy, reminding himself and us that childhood is something that many of us can never leave behind completely. And yet, from the welter of confusion and pain and yearning and hope, there comes life in all its beauty and horror, the possibility of art, something new and renewed, a novel such as this. Viet Thanh Nguyen on Francisco Goldman's Monkey Boy, winner of the 43rd American Book Award. Francisco, thank you for being so generous with your time and joining us in the wee hours of mourning in Europe. I wouldn't have missed this or anything. That's just so, I'm staggered. Well, I want to thank Beyond Columbus Foundation and all the judges for inviting me for this night to be a member of the Ethnic Justice League or Ethnic Avengers. I remember my first year, I don't know if Gail Jones remembers me, but my first year when I was at the University of Michigan, she was a grad student teaching a teaching fellow, I guess, grad student. I used to run into her on the floor all the time, we used to have the most wonderful conversations. Ishmael Reed was one of my mumbo jumbo was one of my literary touchstones in that year, which is the year when I really began to discover brain more experimental, politically charged fiction. You know, reading it really for the first time in my life that year. And now hearing the list of people that have been involved in that are on your board and have been the judges. It's decent. This is, you know, I finally feel as the kids say nowadays seen by the very types of writers and writers I dreamed of being read by. It's much too tall. My other fellow and sister on a reason it's just an honor to be with you. And I've never felt so incredibly I'm stunned by the ethanuans words about my book he's just one of my, you know, great living gods, literary gods. And I know that, you know, I'm just so honored. I'll say that about the monkey boy, you know, it was quite a trip that book took a long time I'd never struggled with a novel so much took seven years, a book I thought was going to go fairly quickly when I started it. But I want to say to that I began it in a very dark place in a very dark place and at a time when I felt I'd been in a long. You could call traumatic grief that couldn't seem to get out of. I wondered if I'd ever be able to love and receive love again. One thing that took made the book takes a long was that my life kept changing. And all of a sudden as I was working on the book. Beautiful things began to happen. I met Joanna Jovi who became my wife and is this is the center of my life. I became a dad very late in life with Azaria Jojo, who I are the heart of everything. I think that gave the book as it went developing over the years it's real soul, that conversation between the darkness that began with, and all the light and love I discovered and was discovering as I went. Along with other incredibly significant things that happened in those years, including my mother's death at a time when I felt so emotionally close to her. And she's really also one of the hearts of the book. Nobody, you don't write a novel to go back over things you already know and know you know, you know, it's a search for more elusive hidden secret. Desired meanings. One of the things I'm so used to thinking of my life as having been defined by those years I spent in as a right out of college, pretty much a decade in Central America mostly Guatemala. And which led me to a life of a kind of activism I've never let go of. I'm so used to thinking about myself that way. And it's takes up all the time a lot of my, you know, thoughts and time and action and things I do. But I wondered when I was writing about this book, how it related to the rest of my life. And my rest of my relations. And I thought, you know, you know, who am I when I'm not actively living those things, you know, are they still really a part of me. So I invented this five day trip home. You know, where it's a time five day trip home to see your mother and a nursing home and other people from your childhood and youth. You're not going to necessarily be thinking about the 80s and Guatemala yet it's still going to be present. And so all of that was in dialogue to, you know, on that trip home he, and I discovered so much, you know, it turned into a story of many different encounters. There was a woman, you know, women who my mother, my sister, other women from my childhood woman who helped raise me. And I went along discovering that in all these relationships, whether they were people who had had to overcome the violence of a violent abuse of husband or a violent abuse of father, or racist town, you know, or, or all the challenges of immigration of being an immigrant in the Northeast and Massachusetts and New York, even that, you know, people have been so close to me have had to deal with over the course of 50 years, you know, different generations, Guatemala and Mexican. And so in most of all, you know, I think the biggest discovery for me in writing this book is I think I began this book, thinking myself as perhaps somebody who needed to overcome or think about the damage. I felt that very abusive, angry man, our father had done to my sister and I and to my mother. And the most beautiful thing I discovered in the course of this book was really that I have, I'm not, I'm not my father's son. That's not what defines me. I discovered that I'm my mother's son. She's been trying to be close to my mother and the world she came from, and trying to live up to her beauty her humor her spirit, her strength. But that has really been the thing that's like, given my life meaning. And that was something I didn't know before I started the book. And I'll always, you know, I'll always be grateful for this book. To have brought that, you know, there it is between the pages is that story. Another thing I learned was I think that you know we live in this, you know, this, we live in a society that sometimes can do, you know, it's insistence on putting people in boxes and putting people in categories that was another thing that inspired me early on. Hilton Al's beautiful essay, two strepeaks in white girls. This is really one of the first things I was thinking of when I started the book. He had a character in there that he wrote about that he was, you know, basically as a teenager, kind of in love with a woman who was half Puerto Rican have Jewish, who felt that because of the insistence of people putting you in categories that she couldn't really be either of those things. And he talked about the stupidity of that. And I thought, you know, I needed to like look at that too. And finally, you know where the book brought me was a realization that nobody is half and half anything. We're always everything we are. And we're fully who we are. We're fully who we are as individuals. And we're fully who we are in connection to others and so that I read with others. And that was something that I think I hope the book if other people deal with that problem, you know, they'll feel that book speaking to them in that way. Thank you very much. I also need to thank my editor, Elizabeth Schmidt, and my agent, and the urban binky and Morgan my publisher binky was with me was nobody supported me more through this whole process that she did. That's why the book is dedicated to her with my mother and Jovi and the kids and and Justin. Thank you so much. You're extraordinary. I love you, man. Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you, Francisco. Thank you again. Coming up. Next, we're going to welcome the founder, the founder of the before Columbus Foundation. He is a towering presence in international arts and letters. And one of the very few writers whose scope of fertile imaginative influence has penetrated and illuminated all of the arts. Photography, filmmaking, choreography, theater, painting, the scope and panorama and arc of Ishmael Reed's work has illuminated all of these spheres throughout the arts and his nonfiction essays and cultural criticism. Also, second to no one. Ishmael Reed joins us today by way of an introduction as well to Zaki Harris, who receives the American Book Award this year for her novel The Other Black Girl. So please, please join me in welcoming Ishmael Reed. Thank you, Justin. Thank you for soldiering on during your medical crisis and arranging this award ceremony. And I want to thank the San Francisco Public Library. I'm going to read from a review of The Other Black Girl, written by Dr. Eleanor Trailer, who's a former chairman or chairperson of Howard University's English department. And this review was published in Conch, our magazine, an online magazine that's managed by my younger daughter, Tennessee, a Reed. And Dr. Eleanor Trailer are among a number of black critics, literary critics, whose bylines have never appeared in our leading book reviews. I call them the literary Negro Leagues. The name of Hazel in black women's fiction is seismic. Contemporary literature precisely in Tony K. Bambara's The Real of My Love, 1970. Ms. Hazel becomes the northern part, northern, the northernmost point from the 19th century influence cult of true womanhood to the new age actualized ideal black woman. She dissolves spiritual, emotional, intellectual, moral, economic and socially aware consciousness at work in the world raising generations to think better that they've been praying and seducing social justice. She is as sexually appealing as she is street smart and village mannered. She has the honorous divides between grassroots and the rest of us. Similarly, though resourceful and generous by contrast, self fashion, empowering, excellence oriented, goal directed, success seeking self commodified Hazel of the other black girl is, in millennial terms, dope. When Hazel appearing to answer Nella's desire for diversity becomes Nella's office mate, the novel's action begins to model a tableau of Duboisian double consciousness as pathology. Quote, two warring souls in one dark body, and as gift of second sight, the art of making connections. With Hazel's entry, the novel itself morphs to resemble a fond and silica narrative as well as an account of the present moment. From back and forth from time to time and through space and time, the other black girl opens a pandora's boxer to juggle. Through the perspectives of multiple derpubengas narratives, the hottest topics of our time, the politics of representational stereotypical names, the exception on Negro, white supremacy, social justice, betrayal, double consciousness, replacement theories, the personal versus the collective, the politics of identity versus. Zero Neil Hurston's skin folk, kinfolk distinction, leading to the razor sharp question. Who is black? And why? And this is why I call Elton trailer the giant coal train of literary criticism. The languages she uses. So this is a. This is a rare novel which tells you the inside story of blacks and publishing. And it's not a very good story since publishing is still about 72% white, the other black girl. Thank you so much to the before Columbus Foundation. I had such an honor to receive the American Book Award for the other black girl. When I started writing this book a few years ago, I was still working in book publishing. I'd been there for a little while I'd been promoted to assistant editor. But even then I knew that editing wasn't the track for me. I'd always wanted to be a writer so it's incredible three years later to be here giving this acceptance speech. And have gone through the motions of quitting that publishing job, finishing the novel, getting an agent, doing what I'd seen so many other writers do. It's just an incredible feeling to be here and even more incredible to receive this award from so many brilliant writers and thinkers. So thank you to every single one of you for taking the time to read and just engage with my work on such a fundamental level. I also want to be here without so many other writers who really informed my worldview helped me find my voice. James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Nella Larson, Octavia Butler, Chimamanda Ngotia Dice, Mary Baraka, so many writers I could keep going. But all of these writers really helped me with my own journey of self-discovery and helping me figure out what my blackness went to me. And they provided me with also just so many different ways of thinking about being black in America. And that's what I wanted this book to provide as well, just examples of what we have to go through as black women in corporate America. So love looking back to go forward. And a big thank you of course to my lovely agent Stephanie Delman, my wonderful editor Lindsay Segnat at Atria and everybody at Atria. Arielle, you guys really just like push this book out into the world in a way that exceeded my expectations tenfold and I couldn't be here without you. And thank you also to Temi Koker who just gave this book legs, your artwork. Really appreciate you letting us use it for the cover and just showing that, that blackness, loud and proud and bookshelves and everywhere. So thank you all. And last but not least, thank you so much to my husband, my family, my friends, all of you. Thanks for not rolling your eyes or shrugging when I told you I was quitting my full time job to write this novel. I could not have done this without you, without your belief in me, without your support. I just really love you all and appreciate you. So thank you so much. And thanks again to the Before Columbus Foundation. I'm so sorry I can't be there with you today, but I hope this little snippet of me has just conveyed how grateful I am to all of you for your support of my novel. Thank you. Thank you so much, Zacchia Harris for joining us this afternoon. And again, thanks to Atria Books for helping to facilitate the video. As many of you know, much of my professional background is in broadcasting and radio broadcasting. And as I signed off on a late night program broadcasting from the Western Edition in San Francisco and the legendary KPOO. Near about 4am I walked to the back room where someone had turned on a television. And witnessed the beginnings of Katrina enter into Louisiana, Mississippi and New Orleans. And odd as it may sound, one of the first thoughts that my mind turned to as I began to see the destruction unfold, was the destruction and looting of the Iraqi National Museum in the beginnings of the Iraq war. Now why this had occurred was because there is a vested interest in the destruction and absence of dissemination of that history in one of the oldest cities in the world. Just as there is a vested interest in the absence and destruction of the history of one of the oldest cities in the new world. I'm talking about New Orleans. And it wondered my mind to consider who would benefit, who would look forward to the destruction of that history. Because the battle to preserve, protect and disseminate the knowledge of what New Orleans has really meant for the many, many centuries of existence has always been just that it's been a battle. And historians, black historians in particular dealing with this issue have been faced again and again with something that W. E. B. Du Bois described in an essay as the Sisyphus syndrome, because as soon as you roll that rock up. There's somebody awaiting to roll it down over you. Anyone who is attempting to unearth. The, the true story of what this city and its history, particularly in relationship to the revolutionary impulses that were emerging from the Haitian Revolution right are always up against this as soon as you uncover there's someone standing behind you is ready to bury it. So, this is part of the miraculous invention and power of the rigorous deciphering interpretation and excavation involved in the before Columbus Foundation, American Book Award winning economy hall. The hidden history of a free black brotherhood. Which is authored by the historian and also novelist Fatima shake. So it is a great honor to welcome Fatima shake and again presenting the 43rd American Book Award to economy hall. The hidden history of a free black brotherhood. Fatima shake. Thank you to the before Columbus Foundation for giving me this award I'm really thrilled about it. I remember when you began. And I, of course, read Shrovetide in New Orleans. I admire what you've been doing all of these years you're enduring history and the people that you honored and I'm just thrilled to be among them. I congratulate my fellow honorees, and I'd like to thank the San Francisco public library for participating today. Of course, I think my family who listened to all my stories about economy hall for 20 years because that's how long I've been working on this book. And I want to tell you that the historic New Orleans collection published this book and and Jessica Dorman and Kathy my cell Nelson put a lot of attention into it and, and I appreciate that. I, the economy hall, the hidden history of a free black brotherhood is about the descend the ancestors of my community. The people who were in in Louisiana, before Louisiana became a state. They were in New Orleans they were two thirds of the population black people were two thirds of the population of New Orleans for its formative years. And the state itself was more than half black for all of the 19th century. The people who are in the society economy, who some of whom came from Haiti created an organization in 1836, and they, they were part of the civil rights movement of the 19th century they did voter registration in the hall that they built. In March they went to the courts, and many of them were murdered for their beliefs. So this this history that is in this book goes from about the Haitian Revolution to the creation of jazz, because the hall economy hall became called the Carnegie hall of jazz everybody who's played in economy hall, but I think it was important because of the history that had come before it was a radical history. And I'll tell you something about some of these descendants of these people. After many people were murdered in the 19th century, the 20th century descendants became school teachers and builders and people who created institutions that are still standing today. While these people were special in my, in my mind, they were not unique, because I think you can look at so many communities, almost every black community in the United States and you will see the people who built it. School teachers, builders, contractors, preachers, I mean there are people all around who have either their history and their names have either been ignored or erased. So I thank the before Columbus Foundation for giving me this opportunity to say a little bit about economy hall and maybe stories like this in other communities will get recognized too. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Fatima for joining us this afternoon. And coming up in a moment, we're going to be hearing from the poet Edwin Torres. Edwin Torres received the American Book Award this year for Quan Nundrum. I will be your many angled thing. Now, at the beginning of the program, I talked about all of the books and individuals that we're honoring this afternoon, as an expression of the unexpressed but intended, and the unintentionally expressed. As Sun Ra teaches in his prose and his poetry and most of all his music, music and poetry as an expression of cosmological consciousness is very rare expressed in the artist. Many poets are determined not to give themselves over to these impulses and resist them. Not allowing their readers to become susceptible to leaving these questions suspended, if only for a moment to allow in what Sun Ra might describe as the wavelength of this cosmology. This is precisely this source of music and precisely this source of consciousness, which inhabits the poetry of Edwin Torres. And by way of amplifying that principle, I will read what Will Alexander, the current nominee for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the 2013 American Book Award for singing in magnetic hoofbeat, has to say about Edwin Torres' book of poems, award winning book of poems. Edwin Torres, Qua Nundrum, expresses itself with a wisdom not unlike the energy that probes its own expanse akin to aphoristic exploration. These poems spontaneously engage a depth that magically responds to themselves. With an expanded lexicon, they explore regions of the human psyche that remain poetically precise, so that their sonic contact engages the verbal magnetism, athletically merging with a plane that remains the unaccountable. It is, again, a great honor to present the 43rd American Book Award to Edwin Torres and his most powerful collection, Qua Nundrum, Edwin Torres. Well, thank you, Justin. It's so humbling and so beautiful to be here with everybody. Words within words, people within people. It's a beautiful humiliating, not humiliating humility. See how words interfere. I want to read what I wrote. That's probably safest. I want to first thank the Before Columbus Foundation for such a prestigious recognition to the other recipients for the discipline of your vision to the committee and to Nancy Mercado for bringing the book to the committee and for continual support over many years. The wee cultural nomads will be further adrift without publishers who believe in our mission. James Sherry, founder of Ruth Books, this is my third book with them, spread out over 20 years. Think about that. It's just one to one. I'll go off script here. James is James, and he takes in, he's such a symbolism of the independent press to have no agent, no publicity department, its author and publisher. So, my many thanks for giving me that opening into portal searching, as Velimir Klednikov wrote in his Super Saga Zangezi, room my friends to roam. A thank you to my family, Elizabeth and Ruby, who occupy the space between words I haven't heard yet. And finally, some thoughts here about the fulcrum that propels change into purpose. This book's question is a call for empowerment. The notion of an identity seemingly displaced from the mainline as minority or other has always been aligned for me with the artist that pervasively original element at the border that not fitting in constitutes a broad ethnicity. The imagination of selfhood aligned with being to allow freedom its course is a powerful embodiment of object as fulcrum. Her language can pull towards the margins, towards the physical edges of what text is supposed to represent on a page. As a graphic designer, my concerns are what happens within a grid. Where does the eye travel across the page? What is the journey representing to the reader? My typography teacher taught me about text on a page and how the best design is often the typography that disappears behind the content. If your letter spacing is perfect, if the font chosen is in tune with that particular message, there is no place for the reader to lose trust in your design. The enactment of the grid is to bring life into its destruction slash creation. To disappear through meticulous precarity is to allow an opinion through. I've carried that into my writing, how to get out of my own way to allow more ways through a lifelong lesson for a writer. This book combines aspects of that removal, both lingually and visually, to see where the page can bring our freedom to allow the object of language to tactile reemergence for selfhood out of thinghood. After all, the shift of meaning into survival is a human passage. The conundrum presented is to question the quandary, word stuff, in search of body stuff. I would have lost many years of ground if I didn't have poetry to see through the layers to have a book object as one moment across my trajectory is a gift I don't take lightly. The honor is reciprocal across lifetimes to be heard with each book is to be granted more lifetime. The American Book Award is such an honor. And to be here with all of you is an even greater honor. Thank you very much. And now I would like to introduce one of our most valiant board members, Jenny Lim. Jenny Lim will be presenting to you. Book of the other small in comparison from Kaia Press and its author, Trong. Oh, ironic. I was just going to thank you, Justin, for your valiant valiant leadership and bringing every program to bear every year and to Ishmael for pioneering founding of the American Book Awards before Columbus Foundation and Wahajat for his fiery leadership as president. Thank you. And to congratulations to all you well deserved awardees. The book of the other small in comparison by Tron Tron. When I think of poetic justice I think of the book of the other small in comparison by Tron Tron. It's examination of the psychology of race and racism is uncompromising. Tron's no holds barred inquiry of the self and other through memory and trauma. Following the demoralizing defeat of his lawsuit against the creative writing department. Why not SF State University for racial bias looks at race as an ontological concept, which he dissects through his relationship to poetry, as well as his relationship to whiteness as an Asian male and poet. The psychic consequences of that unequal interrelationship is what the reader experiences as Tron exposes the insidious effects of historical racism as a legacy of systemic violence that continues to this day. It is a courageous and unflinchingly honest book that speaks to the psychic and spiritual costs of racism, whether in its overt forms as an anti Asian violence, which is the fastest rising of hate crimes in this country, something like 400% during the pandemic. It also speaks to Trump's epithets like China virus and go flu on its hidden forms such as in the violence of institutional racism. So I'm very happy to honor Tron Tron for the book of the other. Thank you so much for this honor and for the this acknowledgement of my words. Thank you Jenny limb for your kind words and for the gift of truly seeing. I want you to know that I wrote myself out of silence and back into existence. That I am seen by you. And the before Columbus Foundation in this moment means everything to me. This is a book I wanted to write. This is a book I had to write. This is not an experience. I want it to live. This is something that happened. It is still happening. Racism when reconfigured and tempered as discrimination, then nepotism, then the claims of a non tribal offense is the workings of whiteness. I devoted my life to being identified as a brown poet, only to be told by the very people in the institution that I graduated from where I once taught at as being just the poet and small in comparison. From panels consisting of three white individuals, always a panel of white people in threes. I want to end by claiming, or shall I say reclaiming my identity as a poet. I offer you this in solidarity and community from book of the other. I'm hoarding language, the English language for a time when the English language will be revoked with reclaim. I'm sorry. My eyes are so bad these days. Let me start this game. I'm hoarding the English language. I'm hoarding language the English language for a time when they're when this English language will be revoked reclaim. When I will be told that writing as I have is deemed a crime. To write the truth is to run the hallway in search of an exit, even so, even when they want you to leave. They wait by the exit to catch you believing. One last, one last note, I would be remiss if I did not think Nula Banerjee be managing editor of Kaia and Sun Young Lee, who is the editor and publisher of Kaia as well. Thank you for standing by me all this time. And for when they came for us and they came for this book, you stood there right next to me so I'm grateful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Trump Tron. And thank you for being generous and joining us this afternoon as part of our ceremonies. Earlier in the program in my introduction to Daphne Brooks, I mentioned the writer James Baldwin, who has recently been revived and resuscitated to revive and resuscitate the spirit. Earlier in the United States and throughout the world. One of the statements that he made as a public speaker was from the artist in their struggle that it is only the poet only the poets who learn anything from history. And because it is the poets who must excavate history in order to do their work. This is certainly very true of yellow rain by major bang. And we are very proud to bring the American Book Award the 43rd American Book Award to yellow rain. Before we do an introduction. I will bring to us the words of one Felipe Herrera, former poet laureate of the state of California, as well as poet laureate of the United States of America, who writes of major. The writer takes account. She dares to open the chemical weapon ink rained down upon the valiant mom, escaping the horrors of the Vietnam war. The blotted skin, the triple death. That is the dissolving skin, the chemical yellow agent, ripping flesh, the deaths invisible, invisibilized, the evaporated histories. The trail, the document, the reassembled bodies of truth, the poem of floating pieces, the poems of research of rebirth and trapezoid housing. This is the yellow rain. Now, again, being retested with truth on your hands. As you turn the page splattered onto your eyes, as you dare to read the government's report in shadow, yet alive, everything is alive. The writer gives it a new life. It is called enlightenment. It is called a time to honor the dead, the home. It is called a time for humanity. The book of the century. John Felipe Herrera in praise and honor and love of yellow rain by made her a vine who joins us this afternoon as a winner of the 43rd American Book Award made her thank you so much for being generous with your time and joining us this afternoon. Thank you so much for that introduction, Justin. I want to start by offering my appreciation to the before Columbus Foundation to its board of directors, and to Juan Felipe Herrera for that beautiful citation, and of course to the San Francisco Public Library. For being part of lifting up the narrative of Hmong refugees and their children and for bringing visibility to the tragic story that was yellow rain, and for acknowledging the losses, and of course for this incredible recognition. When I started this book, I could never have imagined it would become what it became what it is now and where it would lead me the trails of research that I would follow and the thousands of pages of declassified documents that I eventually found myself immersed in. The book yellow rain is a collection of documentary poetry that reinvestigates the issue of yellow rain, which was believed to be a chemical biological weapon used against Hmong refugees when they fled Laos, following the end to the US war in Vietnam, and its proxy war in Laos. And over time what ended up happening was that the Hmong allegations were discredited and invalidated and so my book tries to challenge the dismissing of these allegations while pushing against the erasure of this history. To attempt to disprove the tragedy of what happened to the Hmong with regard to yellow rain is a violation of the Hmong shared experience and collective suffering. It cements another layer on top of the damage that already exists from the war, generating in my mind yet another crime against the Hmong. It's almost as if they seek to disenfranchise us from our own loss and to suggest that because our trauma never happened then our suffering must have never happened either. To disassemble and reassemble yellow rain I sought refuge in language and poetics, poetry's paradoxical and dexterous ability to offer its own kind of truths has been transformative and alchemical for me. I wrote poems, I assembled collages, I excerpted from documents, wrote more poems, ripped pages up, assembled again, snipped images and so on. I was all in an effort to offer another version of yellow rain from my perspective as a daughter of Hmong refugees. And I tried with every poem in the book to expand the possibility of what an answer might be. I pushed for each poem to make an offering of personal truth in a world that is rife with doubt and stagnation. And while poems are not beholden to the truth, I strove for every poem to be an action for the potential for a new truth to emerge. I want to thank my publisher and editors at Gray Wolf Press big thanks to Fiona McCrae, Jeff shots and Chance Ireland. I'm so grateful they took a chance on this book and supported me throughout the process of writing and editing. Thanks also to Dr Rebecca cats whose groundbreaking research on yellow rain helped to inform my work. And also, thanks to the national security archive at George Washington University, where I was able to conduct additional research. I'm grateful to my family who supported and encouraged me throughout the nearly 10 years it took for me to work on this book. And finally, thank you to my partner and fellow poet Anthony Cody who has been a constant source of love support dialogue and guidance. Thank you for encouraging me through the highs and the lows of the entire writing process. Once again, thank you to the report Columbus Foundation. I'm so proud to share this honor alongside so many writers I admire and I congratulate all of you. Thank you. My dear. Thank you so much for being with us this afternoon. In its ancient emanation poetry. From its origins, often follows three very explicit traditions, the poem of praise, often offered in a community or individuals, aspirations or accomplishments, or even in death. There is the blessing, the blessing as a form of often in marriage or in birth. And of course, also the curse, the use of the poem as a curse to bring harm to one's enemies living or dead. One of the miracles about the collection by Philip B Williams mutiny is that it holds all three of these traditions in their ancient emanation and brings them vitally and vibrantly into the present time. It is an accomplishment that is all too rare in both its point of view, its attitude, and its unflinching desire to bring a deeper sense of truth and possibility of freedom to our lives. And so it is a great pleasure to bring the 43rd American Book Award to the collection mutiny by Philip B Williams. And I will share these words from one of our board members Sean Hill. Speaking on this beautiful work mutiny, a rebellion of subversion, an onslaught in poems that rebuke classical mythos and Western canonical figures and embrace Afro diasporan folk and spiritual imagery. Philip B Williams conjures the hell of being erased exploited and ill imagined, and then through a force of generosity and a vision propels himself into life, selfhood, and a path forward, intimate, bold, sonically mesmerizing mutiny addresses loneliness, desire, doubt, memory, and the borderline between beauty and tragedy. With a ferocity that allies the tenderness and vulnerability at the heart of this remarkable collection. Williams honors the transformative power of anger and the clarity that comes from allowing that anger to burn clean. Philip B Williams joining us, all the way from the European continent over in the wee hours of the morning Philip thank you for being generous with your time and coming through at this late hour early morning, where you join us from Italy thank you again Philip. Thank you, Justin. I've also become very ill over the course of the hour so I'll be as quick as possible. Thank you to the before Columbus Foundation for this honor. I want to also thank founder Ishmael Reed for his vision. This award recognizes the books for the grand experimentations and demands for truth. So this is an honor. Congratulations to all the other honorees. Thank you to Bill Clegg, Paul Slovak, and Ali Marola for believing in this book. Incredible thanks to Sean Hill for his kind words. Mutiny is a book written out of and for anger, against greed, injustice, and suspicion against anger that seeks to topple power. It is a book that rejects literary institutions that replicate capitalism's dehumanizing grammar. It is a book that saved my life. May all of you find love in your indictments and please support the other honorees with absolutely everything that you have. Thank you. Thank you so much Philip. And again, I appreciate your generosity for staying with us through your early morning. Our next honoree, Michelle Zauner, crying H. Mark, many of you know her as the leader, composer, songwriter, and singer of Japanese breakfast, which is presently on tour. And the reason why she could not be with us today, I will say a few words about this important novel. Michelle Zauner's memoir Crying in H. Mark is a beautifully incandescent mother and daughter story, full of heart and humor. When her New Yorker essay of the same name went viral in 2018, Zauner's words struck a chord with readers, many the fellow children of immigrants for whom a trip to H. Mark and the meal subsequently prepared represents bonds with family. A closeness to a far away culture and a feeling of physical and emotional fullness. H. Mark for those unacquainted is the beloved Korean grocery store chain and suburban Mecca for Asian and Asian Americans whose culinary needs are not readily satisfied by the local grocery store. In H. Mark Zauner writes, we're all searching for a piece of home or a piece of ourselves. We look for a taste of it in the food we order and the ingredients we buy. These words come to us from the international examiner based in Seattle, Washington from Katie Sabara. And again, congratulations to Michelle Zauner, winner of the 43rd Annual American Book Award for her novel Crying in H. Mark. As we continue in our program, we move now to the Lifetime Achievement Award and we honor Gail Jones, who has been such a source of wisdom and strength for writers throughout the world since the beginning of her career and has most recently returned to us in last year's novel Pulmeris. And very graciously, Mary Emma Graham, one of the eminent scholars of literature of African American literature here in the United States will be joining us now to offer her praise and knowledge of Gail Jones. She is the first winner of the American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement this year from the Four Columbus Foundation. So please join me in welcoming the eminent Mary Emma Graham to speak on the subject of the great novelist Gail Jones. Mary Emma. Thank you, Justin. It is good to be here to see all of you and to share some words. It would be only appropriate for me to start with Gail's words herself. My great-grandma told my grandma the part she lived through, that my grandma didn't live through, and my grandma told my mama what they both didn't live through, and my mama told me. Now, many of you will remember this powerful passage by Ursa from Carrigajadora, the groundbreaking novel, now in multiple editions published by Gail Jones in 1975 when she was 25. At the beginning of a stunning career, her early brilliance was recognized by many, notably Michael Harper, her mentor Ed Brown, and Toni Morrison, her editor at Random House. More than four decades later, in addition to a teaching career, now with six novels, two short story collections, two poetry collections, a play, and a collection of critical essays that doubles as an anthology, and reputedly three works forthcoming. This lifetime achievement award is not only confirmation of this brilliance, but also an acknowledgement of a movement in American letters which Gail Jones inspired. What we know is this. The landscape of what literature could do and be was changed for those writers who followed Gail Jones' lead. Indeed, it was Toni Morrison herself who predicted upon the release of Jones' first novel, and I quote, no novel about any black woman will ever be the same after this. We may never know what transpired between the older Morrison and the younger Jones, although we hope to learn some of that in Dana Williams' forthcoming book, Morrison at Random. Needless to say, Morrison's Beloved, published more than a decade after Corrigidora, gives more than a hint that the conversations between the two women were mutually beneficial. I'm tempted to call these comments Gail Jones and the liberation of African American literary fiction, but that would not get at the real significance of such a singular achievement. Language matters deeply to Jones, and her unique version of black vernacular in her sound driven narratives can be raw and unsettling, just as it is arguably the trust the truest representation of the black voice male or female alike. While some consider black speech limiting Jones' faithfulness to the linguistic cues, including code switching, offers the widest possible range of feelings and emotions associated with her characters. We might say that she uses language to get at the souls of black folk. Jones respects and trusts the listening ear as she positions herself inside rather than outside her characters. This feature in her work can often confuse or trouble the reader who perhaps lacking familiarity with black culture, made I understand why Jones represents the nature of black life so well. Contradiction connects with ambivalence, pain with love and fear, and what is good with evil. In her own words, Jones writes without judging her characters. Her imagination goes deep. The writing is intense. So much so that John Edgar Weidman suggested that she scared people, especially given her choice of women characters, literary geniuses often do that. Jones today for her fierce commitment to the truths of history, and her reimagining of the lives of those who had no voice. Coming full circle in more recent novels, it is not surprising that Palmares considers slavery and resistance on a much broader scale, especially in its focus on the fugitive slave community in Brazil. There is a lifetime of achievement, just as there is more to come. We already know that Jones is gearing up for another phase of her career. In doing so, I'd like to acknowledge an event that serves as a model for our ongoing work as readers, critics and educators. In reaction to the mainstream's preoccupation with Jones's desire for privacy, many of us insist on focusing on Jones's sustained career of literary innovation. In May of this year, a virtual conference organized by Hiana Hawkins Owen from Boston University. Kiana Middleton from UC San Diego. And Tala Kamalak from CSU Fullerton gave studied attention to Jones's work and influence. The intergenerational gathering appropriately titled, then you don't want me, canonizing Gail Jones, borrowed the line from Jones's novel, Eva's Man. The ambitious program was a concerted effort to carve out a space to assess Jones work and literary practice. They also wanted to challenge the conception of Jones as a writer that history forgot, as some establishment critics had begun to do. The event established a through line from an extended discussion of Jones's scholarly impact on the humanities and the creative world. Through a wide range of individual presentations, such a multidisciplinary approach was essential for viewing the full range of Jones's life and career. The Lifetime Achievement Award brings renewed attention to the Jones's career as a transformative writer. At this precise moment, when she and centers enters what I think may become a most fertile period to date. In closing, I encourage all of us to join in such efforts to deepen and trouble the canon of American literature, black literature and women's literature. Jones continues to crack open something new in African American literature as Imani Perry suggests her contributions to narrative writing and her experimentation with the form and function of language have made her legendary. The door that she has opened cannot be closed, especially in her new work, we see an even greater blend of speculative writing and magic realism as she pushes against boundaries, real and perceived. I cannot speak for Gail Jones. I do want to speak as an advocate in offering my sincere appreciation to before Columbus Foundation. Gail Jones is a living legend, the writers writer, and today's honor has broken the silence in the long overdue recognition of this prolific writer. We cannot take the extra ordinariness of Gail Jones for granted. The novel Pomeranus was a finalist with a Pulitzer Prize, and Jones will learn next month, whether her latest novel birdcatcher will move from finalist to selection for the 2022 National Book Award. I began with words from her first novel. Now hear these words from healing. You may sing for men as well as for women, but only a woman knows your full meaning. I am not a feminist. I only think a woman should be true to whom she believes herself to be, or who she wants herself to be, or who she imagines herself to be. I don't know what I mean, or whether I'm true to myself. To any of that, I don't think there are many of us who are true to our possibilities. I am certain that we can always expect Gail Jones to remain true to her possibilities. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mary Emma Graham. Thank you for your time and insight. And again, congratulations to Gail Jones, winner of the American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement on the 43rd Annual American Book Awards this year. From time to time, certainly not every year, but from time to time, a critical work of such distinction attracts our attention at Before Columbus that we feel compelled to honor it with the Walter and Lillian Lowenthal's award for criticism. Such a work came to us this year as sound recording technology and American literature from the phonograph to the remix. It's author Jessica Teague of the University of Las Vegas. I want to read from my own citation for welcoming Professor Teague about this extraordinary work, sound recording technology and American literature from the phonograph to the remix. Here are the word music, and most often it will be in reference to a recording. So thoroughly has music been supplanted by its archiving devices. But what impact has this sudden departure from the ancient muses had on American literature? Jessica Teague has some answers, surprising, beautiful and frequently vivacious answers. To begin, this great revolution in recording coincided with the even greater revolution in jazz, and this alone dramatically changed the way that we not only hear, but how we write, and what we hear when we read and Stranger Still, how we hear what it is we write, as we write it. Authors, musicians, creative writers, poets, all are transformed by the experience of recording and playing back. The newsreel, the talky, the first 78 RPM records turn the world of literature on its ear. Legendary composers and musicians could now write books from their own speaking voices, taken gently down on tape by interested archivists. They could interpolate the sounds they heard directly from records into their books, intimating what their inner ear might have otherwise not so adamantly insisted. And emerging from all this cataclysm was a rebirth, a traumatic break with the past, which was also a fertile harvesting of sound. Interpreters such as Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Michay are given their due as authors by Teague, revealing the complexities of putting black speech into print. Interpreters of the master improvisers and music authors as diverse as the great Langston Hughes and the experimentalist Jack Kerouac are given bountiful rendering and thought provoking analysis. Dystopic uses of recording and its technocratic nightmares are explored in the daunting works of William S. Burroughs. A pioneering search for a new aesthetic embodying the struggle for self-determination among blacks internationally is explored with a significant chapter on Amiri Baraka. And all in all, Teague's work itself is pioneering, charting a territory very few have begun to enter. It is an area that Teague explores with wit, curiosity, tenacity, and a thoroughness all too rare in the field. We congratulate Teague and are elated to bring this honor to her work. Jessica Teague. Thank you for being with us this afternoon. Thank you, Justin. And thank you for those kind words. I can't believe I'm in the company of writers like Gail Jones and Daphne Brooks whose words have so long inspired me and really to all the writers who are honored today. Thank you for making such important work that is a pleasure to read and to teach. And thank you to the Before Columbus Foundation for recognizing and elevating such a diverse body of work for so many years. I am beyond honored to receive the Walter and Lillian Lowenfeld's Award for criticism, in part because this is my first book. And when I first started doing research for this as a graduate student, I think I had somewhat modest expectations. I was interested in the relationship between music and literature, and the way that writing sounds. And I started to wonder about the invention of sound recording technology and what that might have meant for writers, how it might have helped them to rethink the way they wrote. And I was wondering about this in part because as a phonetic language like English is writing has always been a kind of sound recording technology, a way to capture the speech of the people. But one of the things that I discovered and trying to do the research for this book was that so many histories of sound recording technology are almost exclusively about music. The book tries to correct that somewhat, and to show the ways that writers themselves from Zora Neil Hurston to William S. Burroughs were actively shaping the way that sound technology has been used. And I suppose in a larger sense my work attempts to tackle some big questions about the relationships between listening and literacy between writers and technology. I consider how sound mediates issues of race and how America hears itself. Of course, you know a book like this one takes many years to write and so naturally there are a lot of individuals and institutions that I need to thank. Certainly, the book would not be what it is without the support of my graduate school mentors at Columbia University, especially Brent Edwards, Bob O'Mealy and Michael Goldston. And I'm so grateful to each of them and especially to the larger community of scholars who are part of the Center for Jazz Studies whose conversations helped me to understand the stakes of my work. I'm also so appreciative to my home institution, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and my lovely colleagues here in the English department and the College of Liberal Arts. So many people met up for colloquia for writing groups and really supported this work along the way and I'm grateful to my students who inspire me to do this kind of research. I should also of course thank Cambridge University Press and especially Ray Ryan, Leonard Casuto and Edgar Mendez for their support of the project and for bringing the book to print in the middle of a pandemic, which wasn't easy. I'm also writing a book like this one that tracking down a different kind of archive of materials and it meant listening to a lot of recordings poking through authors personal archives and so the research led me from New York to New Orleans to Paris among other places and I'm really grateful to the many archives and collections that made this work possible. These include the Hogan Jazz Archives at Tulane, the Bibliothèque National de France, the Beinecke Library at Yale, the New York Public Library, and University of Virginia Special Collections. I can't really actually name all of them and I would love to thank all of the librarians individually who helped me access materials to and also to thank the individuals who answered emails or agreed to be interviewed and part of the process. I'm writing this book, special thanks to also to the ACLS and University of Virginia for giving me financial support to travel to some of these archives. Sorry this is a long list here but lastly I want to be sure and thank my amazing amazing family who has supported me every step of the way. My husband John Hay who is my best editor and collaborator, our son Leo who's a lovely distraction. And of course my parents who fostered my interest in books and music from a very young age and continue to be my biggest boosters and the book is dedicated to them. Finally, since we're gathered here by the San Francisco Public Library I'll just wrap things up by saying that it's good to be back in the Bay Area, even if it's only virtually. I grew up in San Jose and I benefited from Bay Area public schools and public libraries and from Bay Area nonprofit theater. I grew up listening to radio stations like KCSM and KPFA and so I really appreciate that the Before Columbus Foundation comes from that community because I really don't think I'd be doing what I'm doing without it. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. And now to introduce Jeffrey Sinclair, editor and publisher of Counterpunch, receiving the anti censorship award. Again, of returning to this afternoon's program ish mail read ish mail read returning to 4 to 3 annual. To introduce. I can't start the video for some reason. Oh, there you are. Okay. I would like to suggest that the winners send their acceptance speeches word format Microsoft word to Justin. So that we might use them in a project that we're working on. What do you think Justin. Absolutely. I'm glad that you mentioned that because what ish mail is referring to is a book that he and I are editing together, which will be published at the end of next year about the before Columbus Foundation and the American and to emphasize ish mail's request I would encourage everyone involved to forward your acceptance speeches about today and participate in ish mail and I book project, which will be published by Baraka books at Montreal Canada at the end of next year. Okay, if anybody can tell me the difference between corporate and state media, I would like to hear their argument, both censor or neglect views that challenge their audiences and their power. Billionaires have more power than politicians. Ruben Murdoch, whose network promises the big lie or promote the big lie might be responsible for the arrival of the authoritarian America. But news readers are forbidden to mention his name. As a result of a non aggression pact between billionaire network owners. The state of mentioned the help Carlson and handy. For its part. CNN and CVS elected Donald Trump. As if that were not bad enough to enough in their quest to section off some of Murdoch's audiences. They demoted Don lemon. He had a terrible goodbye last night. Lemon is like some of the diverse faces that appear on cable. Powerless blacks. The situation is no different from 1930s when likes and use complain. And most of the plays written about blacks doing that period were written by white men. Privileged white men and women at the New York Times. Have a better chance of publishing articles and opinion columns about black life. The blacks. Over the last two weeks, Michelle Goldberg weighed in on the education of black boys. And Alexa solowski. Can always be dependent upon to say something ignorant about black theater. The Times performs. Like a publication from the 19th century. Catering to the settler population. Surrounded by Native American crime. The newspapers exaggeration of Native American crime. Led to massacres of Native Americans. Now for the times and other Jim Crow media. The settler population. Is surrounded by black crime and yet. The highest numbers of murders and crimes occur in red states. I guess the Democrats don't know that they're clueless on other things too. Yet the times is soft on white crime and white pathology. Noticing that for the first time. White longevity rates. Were lower than that of blacks. Due to the anti vaccine sentiments promoted by their cult leader. And their drug addition. I asked the Times editorial. Page writer. Whether the white male columnist who dominate the editorial page were going to skull whites. The way that they've been scolding blacks for decades about alleged flaws in their personal behavior. Is the New York Times a settler publication. This is the newspaper. That today or yesterday called Joan Didion. A member. Of California settler population. The voice. Of the West. The voice of the West. A member of the settler. The American invading population. She was a good writer. But the voice of the West. Latin writers were publishing works 200 years before the American invasion. Try the history of New Mexico published in 1610. Since then Hispanic writers are a strong presence in the West. They have produced city and state poor laureates. Dozens of Native Americans have written about the West. They have an orature that's thousands of years old. Black writers have been writing you out the West for 200 years so of Asian American writers. So one writer whose family arrived with the American invasion is considered by the Times. To be the voice. The voice. Of the West. Texas. Arizona. New Mexico. Wyoming. State of Washington. Oregon. This person is the voice of the West. This is not to disparage Didion. She had nothing to do with this white supremacist farce. Not the Irish, Italian or Jewish American supremacy. White supremacy. Which is a false ethnicity. White supremacists are people who don't know their roots thanks to the Afrocentric curriculum. That does nothing but cause hate crimes all over the country. Which is why the biggest racial brawls take place at our centers of learning. I talk about the times because this is the most influential American newspaper with more power to influence black cultural trends than all the black intellectuals institutions can buy. Still, it's not the only media institution, 50 years behind the south in terms of diversity, and whose opinion pages are dominated by men whose resumes are interchangeable. Privileged white males dominate the means of expression. Their bylines appear in the Atlantic, the New Republic, newsrooms that are 78% white, publishing industry 75% white, 84% of TV executives are white, 92% of film executives are white. Yet some complain about Wokeness, cancel culture, and other hobgoblins and ghosts. Though they dismiss the dissenters as a hasty, they sound like him. When commenting, they sounded like him. When commenting on the San Francisco recall of three school board members, I corrected their coverage and my new play, The Conductor, which will be streamed next Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from the theater for the New City. And I'll mirror myself a plug here. More information go to theaterforthenewcity.net, theaterforthenewcity.net, and buy some tickets. Are my complaints sour grapes because these media don't publish me? I get plenty of coverage. Over the last years, I've been publishing Liberation Paris, Harats in Israel, El País, and other foreign publications. A few weeks ago, El País, Spain's leading newspaper, published a piece about why Hispanic and Black men vote for Trump, Kanye West. They like him because he's a gangster and a player. But where do we go to get published when we're denied publication by a media that won't publish views that make their white audience uncomfortable? Social media and Jeffrey St. Clair's counter punch. St. Clair was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and attended American University in Washington, D.C., majoring in English and History. He has worked as an environmental organizer and writer for Friends of the Earth, Clean Water Action, and the Hoosier Environmental Council. In 1990, he moved to Oregon to edit the environmental magazine Forest Watch. In 1994, he joined journalists Alexander Coburn and Ken Silverstein on Counter Punch. He co-edited Counter Punch from 1999 to 2012 with Coburn until the latter died in 2012. Clair has been the editor since 2012 joined by managing editor Joshua Frank in 2012. In 1998, he published his first book with Coburn, White Out, the CIA, Drugs and the Press, a history of the CIA's alleged ties to drug gangs from World War II when they cooperated with Lucky Luciano to bring heroin into the New York ports, which some say destroyed the Puerto Rican family, to Mohajin Nicaraguan Contras. Though the corporate media dismissed the claim that the Reagan administration dumped crack cocaine into the black inner city, including in Oakland where I live in the inner city, I watched this happen from my front porch, where all of a sudden crack operations popped up on my street. It was courageous of St. Clair to expose the administration's role in a drug plague that has caused thousands of lives. And now that the plague has jumped to the suburbs, there's a lot of concern about therapy and recovery centers and all this. Also, incidentally, there's no difference between the way the Jim Crow media covers issues than what the average American thinks. This big dichotomy between powder cocaine and crack cocaine, whites do most of the crack cocaine. A typical crack addict is a white male living in the suburbs. The New York Times for the 1990s. One of the diversity faces on our television, John in the Cape Park, said he just found that out. In the 19th century, Jeffrey St. Clair would be the publisher of Fugitive Slaves, who had a bounty on their heads. In 2022, he is the publisher of Fugitive Opinion, which we censor elsewhere, appropriate that we give the anti-censorship award of 2022 to our hero, Jeffrey St. Clair. Wow. Thank you, Maestro Reed. Just a note on your evisceration of the New York Times. That paper still does not have one Native American on its staff. That's one of the reasons why we need the Before Columbus Foundation. Hope you bear with me. I've been fighting a stubborn case of COVID for the last 10 days or so. My brain is still the fog. My voice coming up from swampy lungs. But I'm elated at this recognition of our work at Counterpunch by the Before Columbus Foundation. And what a special bonus to be introduced by Ishmael Reed, who is the publisher that I've admired for 40 years or so. Ever since a friend of mine, I was working with on a street painting crew in Indianapolis during summer break from college, slipped me a copy of Yellowback Radio Broke Down and asked me, what the hell do you make of this? My friend Bobby was a Ravenous reader. He was a student at Crispus Addix High School, alma mater of Oscar Robertson, but deferred college to care for his large economically destitute family. But over that summer he fed me books and records I'd never heard of, from Ferris Anders, Rest in Peace, to Ishmael Reed. That shaped my life. I devoured Reed's mock Western over the weekend, laughing for three straight days. What did I make of it? It's like blazing saddles only funnier, more acidly written, sharper in its takedown of everything, every absurdity, every myth and ritual that white suburban America holds dear about itself. I learned that blazing saddles, it was quite an unacknowledged debt to Reed and Richard Pryor. Check it out online. Now flash forward 20 years or so, when I opened my email one morning and jumped out of my chair, as excited as Steve Martin in The Jerk, when he learns that his name is printed in the new phone book, in my inbox, a submission to Counterpunch from Ishmael Reed. In my giddiness, I almost immediately committed a crime against him by quote, smoothing out his prose, rearranging a few sentences and paragraphs, tightening the lead as meddlesome editors are want to do, just to put their own imprint on a piece. And so he sent back his mutilated essay and swiftly got a response that sat me right back down in my chair. Let Reed be Reed. And of course he was right. I'd engaged in censorship by style sheet. It's a lesson that I've taken to heart. And hopefully these days, Counterpunch's daily slate of stories doesn't read like the sterile lab grown prose of the New Yorker or the Washington Post. We've tried for the last 20 years to give writers who've been denied a mainstream outlet, not only a platform to speak, but the ability to be heard and read in their own voice, the voice of prisoners of laborers of immigrants, the voice of the houseless, often adjunct professors these days, the voice of students, the infirm, the marginalized, the voices of activists from Pine Ridge to the fields of the Central Valley to Gaza City, and the voice of poets who are largely immune from editorial abuse, if only because they're so often ignored, but they're not ignored on Counterpunch. Obviously this award is a recognition of the work done every day by the entire Counterpunch team, especially Becky Grant, David Wheeler, Andrew Knopf Singer, and Nicole Stevens on the post of California, Joshua Frank down in Long Beach, Nathaniel St. Clair in Portland, and here on my home front for her editorial and psychological counseling, my wife Kimberly, who is a librarian, has been on the front lines of the intensifying battle against censorship. We're at a perilous moment in our culture where our most fundamental rights are under assault, starting with the basic right to self-identify, to define who we are as individuals, to speak our thoughts freely without reprisal from the state. We're witnessing books being ripped off of library shelves, librarians being harangued, paraded, intimidated by government officials, teachers being told what they can and can't teach and can and can't say, history books being scrubbed of vexatious episodes and troublesome facts in favor of mythologized past that syncs with the great patriotic narrative. Closer to my own work as a writer and an editor, journalists and their sources are being targeted by governments, often our own, for revealing inconvenient, embarrassing and criminal acts by those very same institutions. This, the sensorious enterprise, by the way, is entirely bipartisan. Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than Bush and Trump. And at this very moment, Julian Assange is confined in a bleak cell in Belmarsh prison, awaiting extradition to the US on charges that could lock him away in a supermax for the rest of his life. Disclosing documents leaked to him by Chelsea Manning and others, revealing atrocities committed by US forces in Iraq. Now, if the Biden administration's Justice Department succeeds in prosecuting Assange, the authorities will be emboldened to pursue any of the rest of us who excavate and publish stories about official corruption and villainy. As writers and readers, we must resist these outrageous moves to criminalize journalism and to enforce a suffocating stupidity upon our own population. The inconvenient truths about our own nation's past, including the very recent past, are the truths that is the most urgent to hear, to learn from, and to work to rectify. Thanks to the Beyond Columbus Foundation for being on the front lines of this struggle to the San Francisco Public Library, who's right there with them, and for recognizing our efforts. Thank you very much, Jeffrey Sinclair, again, editor and publisher of Counterpunch, and the recipient of the American Book Award Anti-Censorship Award. This year, going to Jeffrey Sinclair. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. As we bring this afternoon's program to a conclusion, we center ourselves on the enterprise of publishing, which takes the enormous risks of bringing to us a work that would otherwise be neglected. And is often not rewarded for its plumbing the depths of American letters, and its importance in taking those risks and the role of the publisher, which is often a very treacherous one for those who navigate non-commercial publishing. Infrequently, the Before Columbus Foundation is so moved by the gravity of a particular publisher, and what they're able to create in the continuity of their authors and their books, that we are compelled as a group. As the Before Columbus Foundation, as the American Book Award Committee to offer an award to the editor publisher. This year, we are very, very pleased to bring the editor publisher award to Wave Books, Charlie Wright, and Joshua Beckman. And I will read from the citation from the Before Columbus Foundation in welcoming Charlie Wright, publisher who will introduce Joshua Beckman, editor-in-chief of Wave Books. As chairman of Before Columbus Foundation, I see more books than the law allows. Thousands pass through our office each year. A Renaissance or a glut of MFA's. Time will tell. Publishers want you to buy their books. Authors would like you to read it. And understanding that book may be a distant third in that race. Above and beyond any contemporary house, Wave Books has distinguished itself as preeminent. I remember very well the first time I touched a book from Wave. That is but one element that sets them apart. Their feel, the design of each publication is unique, yet as consistent as Reed Miles. Elegant, formal, without pretension, balanced and attractive. A Wave Books publication is immediately recognized. In recent years, award committees seem to have caught on. There have been some major victories for Wave authors in the upper echelons. Don Me Choy and Taimba Jess, of course, come immediately to mind. But it is the vision of Wave Books and its tremendous scope that we honor here today. Less are known, but no less important works that Wave has brought into print are equally vivacious and vital. I am thinking of scenes of life at the capital by the late Philip Waylon. So skillfully edited by David Brazil. What is poetry? Just kidding, I know you know. Interviews from the Poetry Project Nul's letter, 1983 to 2009, is an invaluable contribution to international letters, edited by Anselm Berrigan. When we gaze out over the last 70 years of American literature, a handful of editors and publishers have played such decisive roles. Richard Siever, Arnie Rossett, James Lothman, and Lawrence Farrell and Getty leap forward, as does Donald Allen. The harder, tougher work being done at the street level from folks like Emery Baraka, Diane de Prima, and Hedy Jones with Eugen and Floating Bear, or the legendary Dudley Randall at Broadside Press in Detroit, or our own Ishmael Reed with Yardbird Reader in Berkeley, California. Small presses, too, that made enormous impact, such as Angel Hair, that great gift bestowed by Anne Waldman and Louis Warsh. I have no doubt that Wave Books will join all of these in the annals of art history. And with that, the presentation of the American Book Award, publisher editor award to Charlie Wright and Joshua Beckman of Wave Books. God bless Wave Books. Hi, everybody. Thanks. I mean, sincere deep thanks to the Before Columbus Foundation. I'm personally very happy, but also happy on behalf of the whole team at Wave Books for the receipt of this award. And Justin, thank you for your insightful, soul-stroking comments, and also for the time you spent with me on the phone a few days ago to talk about your perceptions of Wave Books. In conversations one doesn't have very often, and it meant an awful lot to me personally, so thank you for that. I should say it's also an honor just to be virtually present with all of these great writers today. This is a nice moment. This is a nice day. Thank you all for that. We set out at Wave Books 15 years ago-ish to build a press that would search for excellence in contemporary poetry, but just as important to stand behind the vision and the aspiration and the needs of the poets that we work with. I mean, we're mostly and happily and intentionally in the background, but sometimes like today, we get to bask in the light that these poets that we've worked with have created. And so we have to thank today all of the poets that we work with for this recognition. And so I would say that really nobody understands the day-to-day workings and the ethos of Wave Books better than Joshua Beckman, our editor in chief. He's been the lead vision maker for Wave since we began. He very importantly assembled the fantastic team that we have at Wave, and in all ways, he's been a driving force for Wave's adventure over the years. And so without further ado, I'd like to introduce him and turn this over to Joshua Beckman. Hello. I want to thank everyone at the American Book Awards and the Before Columbus Foundation. We are truly honored to receive this award and to be among the other honorees. At Wave, we publish books by poets, and much of what we do is centered around the care and support of our authors. Coming to know them, their practices, the things they make, what those things mean to them. Coming to know their hopes for what they might mean to others, how they might be in the lives of others, what spaces the books might make for new shared meanings and experiences as they move from the private to the public sphere. We believe in the book and are excited about its possibilities. As a press, we find ourselves at the intersection of the private experience of the artist and the public encounter with their work. And in being responsible for that transition, the authors put a great deal of trust in us. A trust that we will find in the process of attending to their work, of experiencing their work, a new physical form that brings it meaningfully out into the lives of others. Often this takes a long time. And one of the great pleasures is simply to be there for all of it as people to listen, to learn, to experience, to collaborate and find ourselves with them. Today I got to see Edwin. Hi Edwin. Edwin Torres is one of the poets we have published and finding his name on the list of awardees was such a pleasure and I could see his words move across the page and hear his voice propelling them out into the world. What I want to do is just list all the authors tell you all their names, introduce you to them, show you all their books, but it has been 16 years, so that would get a bit long. And I think what I am feeling is the gratitude for the time spent with each of them with the things they deeply felt and thoughtfully made. So I would like to say for those of us presently at the press, Charlie Wright, Heidi Broadhead, Matthew Zapruder, Blissner, and Isabelle Boudier and Catherine Bresner, and all of those who have been a part of it over the years, that we are thankful for what the authors have given us and let us give to others. And so pleased to have it recognized today. Thank you so much. And I will, I will just add to that, that wave books, Charlie Wright and Joshua Beckman, you know, your, your triumph is our triumph as well. And it is with great elation and joy that we have before Columbus are able to bring this, this honor to your work, and to your This concludes the 43rd annual American Book Awards. I'll echo our president's call at the beginning of the program to visit us online at BeforeColumbusFoundation.com, where you can support our programs and the American Book Award by way of a donation to the BeforeColumbus Foundation. Also, my thanks again to our founder Ishmael Reed, and I will emphasize again his point that he and I are in the midst of editing a book for Baraka Books of Montreal, Canada, about the BeforeColumbus Foundation, which will be coming out at the end of next year. And I encourage today's awardees recipients of the American Book Award to send your, your acceptance speeches as well as thoughts about the ceremony today. And a reminder to everyone in our audience live and in our rebroadcast audience on YouTube and in the future at C-SPAN Book TV that every day is before Columbus Day. So thank you again for your time and attention and generosity this afternoon. And we will look forward to the 44th annual American Book Awards next year. Thank you again, San Francisco Public Library, the American Academy of Poets, and the Poetry Foundation as well. Thank you.