 And I'm going to hit live on YouTube and I'm going to open the webinar. All right, we're live. Welcome. All right, welcome and welcome YouTube viewers. You are out there and no. All right, we'll give it just a second we open the door just a one minute late. We'll give it a moment to fill in. The chat is open. It is your river of consciousness in the virtual land. And here is the link to tonight's document. All right, so I'm just going to get started with library news and information. And I'll set up tonight's event. Hello everyone. I'm an ESA. I'm your virtual librarian. You can find me here lots of nights of the week. So I'm excited that we are here with artists and storytellers tonight. And I want to thank you all for being here as well. We are here tonight to hear Nilo far to leave me and key to Lucas and conversation. And I'm excited about this. But first, our library wants to acknowledge that we occupy the unseated ancestral homeland of the raw me to Sholoni peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland, and as uninvited guests we affirm our sovereign rights, as we from their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respect to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the raw me to the community. And I'll throw in the chat and amazing organization out of Oakland the security land trust, an amazing group of indigenous women, just, they should just rule the world, check them out. So tonight we are here to talk to to be to hear a conversation and dialogue and I'm sure you can throw your questions or into the chat, as well as your comments. And we will look at those and get to them but tonight we are here to talk to me low far to leavey and key to Lucas, discuss the concept of home, a subject to leavey began exploring in 2019. And her hybrid memoir self portrait in bloom and continues to address in her new fiction and nonfiction projects. And with her tonight is key to Lucas and you can check out her photography at SF camera works and I'll put the links for all those. And of course that link that I provided you is your link to take home and I'll keep up as they talk and any, any other links they have I will throw those in. So, Milo far to leavey is the author of self portrait in bloom. And she's calling it. It's been called a hybrid wonder by the rumpus and a brutally honest memoir of life built by words destroyed by words rebuilt by words by New York Times bestselling author. By Rosé Dumas. It breaks with a memoir form and presents a portrait of an Iranian poet, a mod Shamlu, and his poetry in her award winning translation. Lucas is an artist based in San Francisco Bay Area she uses photography to explore ideas of home heritage and inheritance. She's interested in how many how ideas are passed down and seemingly inconsequential moments create changes. That last generations. And again, you can see her work up and I'll put the link into that I'm going to stop sharing and I'm going to turn it over to Milo far to meet me. Thank you very much, Anissa. I'd like to thank the San Francisco Public Library and you Anissa for for giving us this opportunity to have this conversation. And I would like to thank the San Francisco Arts Commission for providing support for this entire project and this talk, and also Keisha Lucas for being my partner and arms here tonight for our conversation. Before I forget I wanted to say that the copies of my book are of course available for sale on the bigger websites. And I hope that you can also get them on loan through the San Francisco Public Library. Our subject matter tonight is home, and it may seem like a very pedestrian subject matter homes. A lot of people write about home and talk about home. I started to have several years ago I started to have a reaction against watching people who are immigrants, or refugees or exiles or people who are new to this country or any other country be interrogated about home. I don't I didn't I couldn't verbalize or articulate years ago why I had this repulsion because it seems sort of obvious that we would as new guests in a country we would be asked about our home. It was something very, and I didn't have those words at that time but now I know very colonial at the heart of being interrogated about once home by persons who are of European descent and whose families had been in the country in which we were adopting is our second homes that they had been immigrants here for a long time and therefore consider themselves more native than us to this country to this land. Fast forward years later as I was writing my book that I'll be reading from my memoir self portrait and bloom. This memoir is actually a biography of an iconic Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlu whose work I translate, and who I knew personally as a young girl. I started to Google map and Google Earth, the locations in the city of Tehran which is the city that I grew up in in Iran, and the city in which I knew him. It became a whole chapter it became months long, few months long research, as I was sort of spying on my own city that I haven't been to in 38 years. So that sort of obsession with home and not being able to go to home or choosing not to go home started, you know, it took place as a book in 2019. Since then, the straw that broke the camel's back was a panel discussion that I observed. It was a Canadian during a Canadian literary festival and it was two people who were from the Middle East, who were being asked in a very sort of precious about their home by this European Canadian woman and I had to stop that and it took me a few years. Once I went to this the country of Georgia on a Fulbright fellowship to write a book, a historical book that is partially set in Georgia. And is about Georgia, partially, I, everything sort of came together to me because I was near my ancestral home which is Iran. I was not going there, but I was also away from the United States which is where my second home or my current home or my more long term home has been for many years. And I was able to sort of cast a glance, proper glance at what home actually meant and what that I could put into words what this repulsion against the notion of home in a way being in a way weaponized against people who are immigrants. A few months ago I was walking in Fort Mason, and I walked by the new SF camera work, beautiful gallery, and I was drawn into this by stunning visuals. And I found out that those visuals were by the artists that were in conversation with Tuna Kija Lukas. She has an exhibit there that's, that's up for another couple of weeks at SF camera work in San Francisco called a taxonomy of belonging, or the taxonomy of belonging Kija will let us know. And they're incredible scans of various clippings, plant clippings, clippings and other things. And I've asked, I immediately contacted Kija and asked whether she and I could be in conversation together because I thought that what she was doing in visual art was very, very similar to what I was doing. In terms of my also new writings, which I'll be reading you a little bit from later in this conversation. And Kija and I now are here with you tonight. I would love to invite Kija to do a slide shows, if many of you if some of you have not seen the show yet I would love for you to invite you to watch the slideshow that Kija has for us to see a little bit about about the to hear a little bit about her project and the visuals that she's created. Kija. Okay, I'm going to try to make this in a way that you can see the whole thing view. Oh, I think it's control. Oh no, control. Sorry. All right, is it taking up the whole screen. Okay, cool. Um, so I usually start with this quote when I talk about my work but first, I wanted to thank Neil afar for having me here with you and inviting to get to know your work a little bit and I feel like I have another question that people ask me and that is, what are you and what nationality are you and what kind of name is Kija. And so I feel like it's a very similar feeling that I get because I understand the question that they're asked actually asking when they asked those questions. But I'll start with this. This acute awareness of tradition is a modern phenomenon that reflects desire for custom and routine and a world characterized by constant change and innovation. Reverence for the past become so strong that when traditions do not exist, they're frequently invented. In my bio when it says ideas of home heritage and inheritance. I'm not talking about the money that you get in the bank from your parents when they pass away or a home or something like that I'm talking about things that we inherit through our DNA through our through learning how to be humans through our family, the way that my seventh generation great grandmother has everything to do with who I am today. When I was in college and art school at San Francisco Art Institute RIP. I learned for the first time because I, I didn't go to high school so I learned for the first time there in an anthropology class about Carl Linnaeus and his taxonomy of man. And it was the first time I like really understood had language to talk about the ideas that I want to talk about, because I didn't really know I didn't have proof, you know, and so there was a page in a reader that was Carl Linnaeus who came up with the taxonomy of botanicals and animals and then in the 10th edition of his book systems of nature, there was taxonomy of man and there was laid out with the European European males and the top of the hierarchy and then different people from other parts of the world with really stereotypes that we still hear today. So I'm just in their descriptions of who they are on Linnaeus didn't travel the world himself he depending on other people's descriptions. I also grew up with a father who's a gardener so I've always been really interested in plants and this is sort of where these two things come together. I began collecting botanical specimens from my neighborhood in San Francisco at the time at first, and then my grandmother's yard and then I traveled around the country to different places that were significant to my ancestry. I come from a mixed race family, different parts of my family have experienced being in this country in very different ways, and all of their stories are my story. And a lot of their stories weren't stories that they shared. And so I was lucky enough to find a newspaper article and stories that my grandmother's had written down and be able to piece sort of piece together. Other than became really interested in genealogy so now she tells me where to go. If you know the work of Anna Atkins, she made cyanotypes of botanicals and use Linnaeus's taxonomic names, her work is the first ever photographic book. And so my pieces, while they're not cyanotypes, they are a cyanotype, I don't know, probably some of you have made sun prints, you put an object on the light sensitive paper, put it out in the sun, and that makes the image. My works, I put the object directly on the flat bed of a scanner, and, and it makes an image so it's not a direct to print, but it is a direct to, it is a direct on, you know, putting the object onto a thing. Here's my road trip that I went on in 2013, which started off this project to go to places that were significant to where my ancestors were brought or moved to throughout the United States. Is the image up or am I the only one not seeing it? Oh, you can't see the images? I just see the text, the first quote that you've read. Oh no. Oh no. This is not right. I'm sorry. It's okay, Kisha. I was like showing all of these anyhow this is the Anna Atkins image. Can you see it now? Yes. Oh, I'm so sorry that's so embarrassing. Here's the road, here's the map of the road trip that I went on 13 states in six weeks. I drove 5000 miles by myself and stayed with related strangers. Some of the botanicals that I collected along the way. This is from Montezuma, Buxton, and Grinnell, Iowa. And here's this piece of dirt that I believe Nilofariou referred to early on. This piece of dirt is from Bristol, Virginia, on land where my ancestors were enslaved. More than one generation. I was able to find back to, I believe, the early 1700s. My great great grandparents were on this land. And I visited, I was able to sort of walk around and see. I went to a historical site, and I was able to walk around and, and it was about two weeks into my road trip and I forgot the card for my camera. It's very embarrassed when I asked the people who are who are working there if it would be okay for me to come back later on my own. I was really questioning myself whether or not this work was something that others would be interested in. And I, I was back there late in the afternoon. It was Virginia the South in the summer is very hot I was sweating through my jeans and my eyelids were sweating, and I was packing up everything in the car. I, I saw the sun shine through the gray sky the clouds like opened up in the sunshine through onto this clump of dirt that was dug out from below a house that was being rebuilt on this land, and this dirt was from beneath the foundation. And I looked at that dirt it was almost like in the movies when the sun's just shining through the clouds onto something and you can almost hear it sing like. And I walked over and I picked it up and I was like that's my fucking dirt. And I took it with me and made this picture and this is the first photograph that I made from the series that I was like, okay, I know what I'm doing now. My ancestors labored for free on that land and they sweat and bled into this dirt and so I feel like my DNA is in there, you know, in that in the in the land there so that is some of my work. I'm going to stop my share now and leave it to you to go ahead and read. Thank you. Okay, that that image is a really large. What is it like six five foot by three foot scan. Is that, is that how big it is 40 it's 40 by 40 by, sorry, 30 by 40 inches. That was the first image that when you walk into Keisha's exhibit that's the first image that you see and that clump of earth, the significance of that clump of earth resonated really a lot with me. And of course there are so many other slides that Keisha could have shown today but we are so limited on time. There are just clippings botanical clippings that are exquisite, absolutely exquisite works of art. The clump of earth, earth really resonated with me because I was constructing a historical novel, and the historical novel that I went to Georgia to write was about land, land inheritance. It's about, you know, how this piece of land goes through it through four generations, and what it signifies and how it's lost and regained and, and all that. And when I, of course, when I got to Georgia. I think I mentioned it earlier that's why I say of course I started to write a completely different book, triggered by just being in Georgia by being in a third place and that that this rage and repulsion against being at home as an immigrant started to come into focus and I started to have language, mainly because at the time I was there earlier this year that the Ukraine war had just started. And we were confronting you know we, you know, as a person who lives in Georgia, who was living in Georgia, hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons from the Ukraine Belarus and Russia. And at the same time as there was graffiti against Russia and Ukrainian flags everywhere so Georgia has a very interesting and tense relationship with with Russia that we don't have time to get into today in this talk. But I started to think about what it means for all of us to to not be at home and yet try to make it home together. I started to realize that Georgia, the city of Tbilisi is not that far away it's a one hour plane ride from Tehran. It's a one hour plane ride that I could not make. And it is the bane of my existence that I couldn't make that one hour plane ride because I have chosen for 38 years, not to visit Iran because if you're listening to, you know, current events and the news. You'll know that it's been a despotic regime for the last 43 years so 38 years ago when I left I decided not to ever go back until it was safe to go back and it's still not safe that homeland is burning. It's going through an incredible transformations now. Now being able to make that one hour trip and then being around people who had maybe flown an hour to be in Georgia, then take refuge from other things that were going on geographically in the region. And when you fall into focus, Tbilisi used to be called Tiflis, and I grew up in Iran, hearing it be referred to as Tiflis right when when the when the snow started to melt and spring sprung and summer came. And the large boulevards had these grand sycamores that were just in full lush bloom, starting at the end of spring. And I remember one day I came to my knees in public. I'm talking I may even still cry now. I was walking down Kazvegi Street. It's one of their larger streets, and it just hit me that sensation that you, you know, it's just, it's a sensory emotion of being in Tehran as a child and walking down these grand boulevards where in fact my father's work my father's clinic was, and just having that same exact sycamore feeling. And so I started to sort of think about how Georgia is my proxy home, because I cannot have a home. And that was a really powerful feeling and I started to write this book that I will read from today with for you. And it's just been nonstop I couldn't stop writing. And he just asked me to read a couple of paragraphs from self portrait and bloom where I write about Tehran, when all I can do is is spy on it through Google Earth and Google Maps. This is the middle of the Tehran chapter where I'm where I was obsessed with finding dimensions, you know, when you're living in a place when you're young, everything seems really large and you don't really know what the distances are between things. And so I was really obsessed with finding what the distance was between my childhood home and the poet Shamlu's home. And surprisingly, we actually lived very close to each other and I never knew that. Here's just an excerpt Tehran city of soot, landing silently like snow on the shoulder of my mother's sleeve, as she is gingerly exiting the passenger side of our car impeccably dressed and with hands held at attention fingertips glistening with fresh red polish soot, which she delicately blows off the cream colored silk, and then boasts to my father of her ingenious calculation against the error of a rub off that would have ruined the pristine surface with a black and red streak. Tehran city of slogans of festivals and cinemas city of grand tree lined the boulevards city of sycamores and elms of shaded alleys of no significance city of storytellers and tea houses of working class districts, and wandering show men of olden days with their European city peep shows Shahre Farang. I'll just show you what those look like. Shahre Farang, made of metal in the shape of an oriental castle with several holes through which images transported crouching viewers to exotic lands they would never visit Tehran city of summer siestas. I had on the bear clammy torso of my father, home for lunch from the clinic city of uniformed school children running to buses or cars Tehran city of child laborers and child beggars and street vendors squatting in cardboard boxes, sleeping alone on sidewalks, not immune to violence by officials to allow them city of bewildered peasants, hanging themselves under bridges impoverished from the confiscation of their livelihoods by the authorities who rob their provincial dreams. Tehran city of the sick and addicted cowering behind burning trash cans splayed in toxic alleys Tehran city of southern slums and shanty towns with bitter graffiti that reads don't look it will cost you too much Tehran city of hungry grave dwellers of sewer pipe undesirables with gangrene or frostbitten feet. Tinsel city of molla money, oil money, city of Instagrammed nose jobs, flaunted Fendi bags, gangster hip hop poses and underground jam sessions, secret city of pool parties and catwalks, city of ski trips and shallows, designer vodkas and supercars, depravity and decadence, no different than Bel Air. I'll fast forward. There is a Tehran in my mind. I do not know if it bears any resemblance to the Tehran that exists. It is the composite city of the remote past, my own past, when it was my present, and the city of now I only know from afar in fragments, virtually. It is cities erased and cities erected to make the city of my imagination. It is the Orientalist city captured romanticized minimized and gazed upon by the Western eye. It is the city in which I kissed a boy in the basement wearing a floral green shirt and jaded colored t shirt after he silently air spelled the word much or smooch with his index finger on the wall to baptize our kiss. Never mind that I was not born there, nor that I only lived there for less than 12 years of my early life Tehran was, is and always will be my city from time and memorial when stardust was cast across space to float for billions of years to coalesce into the primordial earthly larvae that left water for land to become a wandering hunter and gatherer who made stone sickles and painted cave walls to cross the grasslands of the Euphrates Valley and the steps of Central Asia to build shelter in the bronze age to survive the massacre of Mongols to the embryo that was conceived in the summer of love to the lemon tree and then the stardust that I will become again and again, I was always evolving to be a Tehranian. I'll stop that excerpt here. So this is a little bit of the, you know, the real rage and longing and the not belonging but wanting to belong to the land of your genetics of your ancestral land. So this was, you know, from the 2019 book. When I was in Georgia, Georgia of course is two countries north of Iran between is Armenia. And of course Armenia and Iran share a border and I always knew that I would go from Georgia to the to the border of Armenia and Iran. But this was not an easy task to do. It took humongous amount of effort to find the right driver, etc, etc, not knowing the language not knowing the country. And I got myself to the border of Iran and Armenia and you know, when you ask people what are you afraid of sometimes myself included sometimes you say well I'm afraid of standing at the edge of a skyscraper and then jumping. Just because of that weird impetus right. Well I was really afraid that I would actually cross the border and go into Iran. I didn't. I was almost pulled in by the the Soviet style, you know, horrible Armenian police at the border. But I wrote about it I wrote about that that episode in this in this new work that I'm calling for now home proxy home. Prior to that there is a whole other section. And I don't know if you'll have time for me to read that the whole other section with. Well I'll just read it very quickly. Hi, who enters the ATM lobby after me and waits on a bench tells me it's a Georgian thing that the young woman in a crop top and high waisted white jeans stands at my back talking loudly on her phone and looking over my shoulder as I'm trying to transact. She doesn't budge, despite me turning around to mine, you are crowding me please step back. She was in the same position with the eight the man at the ATM before me. So I thought they were together and was confused when she didn't leave with him. I spread my body to crowd her back and turn to tell the guy that I've been coming to this lobby for a few months now into Balisi and nothing like this Georgian thing has happened. I said it would make sense. A doctor I saw at the clinic in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, told me to undress and just stood there with her nurse glaring at me, arms crossed and grinning. In the US, they leave the room give you time and a paper vest, then knock before entering. Where I'm from, I say, isn't it obvious, since I've just demanded space in English, no less. No, I say I'm from America. He says he wants to go there one day. It's usual for me to hear this abroad everybody's like USA USA Wow California, I want to say and sorry USA USA Wow California. I want to say, it's not what you think, but I don't. You should go. Are you Georgian? No, I'm Ukrainian. Oh, shit. I should have known from his slouch here in the country of Georgia, thousands of refugees from Ukraine Belarus, and Russia mingle a gift of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started in February 2022. He had that over a vibe. I'll get into that later. Light of possessions untethered in limbo aloff the car, a drifter floating in the wind. He translates a grievance from an American to a Georgian by a Ukrainian in Russian. She scowls and huffs out not too long after. He's kind of cute. I step out and wait on the front steps staring at my phone as he finishes his transaction. He says he's from a war torn city and yes a refugee. He doesn't know if he can go to USA. I say why not through Mexico. He says yeah sure the black way he says I ask if he's okay here in Georgia he says yeah yeah I'm okay I've been here before but overall not okay. This is a variation on what the Iranians here in Georgia say when I ask if they're happy. Iranians leaving that religious dictatorship for a better life were allowed in for a brief time into Georgia in 2015. Now they're pestered at the border of a land that used to be in fact part of the Persian Empire during the Raja era in the 19th century. Before the territories were ceded to Russia following three wars. I want to talk more but it's awkward and he's on his way and I say good luck with everything. What else can I do but hope that he was able to get money from the machine. He says he's going to Europe to make it to USA one day. I'll make it one day. I'm going to fast forward because of my voluntary self exile from Iran. I visit the land in proximity of her Georgia and Armenia. Once part of the greater Persian Empire these lands have ancient ruins built on the bones of my ancestors. That's why this is so important. In the end the globe is one ancient ball and we all we're all just dust but the DNA demands specificity it is a zombie marching home. After three months of finding many Tehran's in Tbilisi the city of sycamore line streets just like Tehran. I travel south to Yerevan Armenia. It too is full of sycamores. For one reason my driver picks me up. We awkwardly walk to his dusty old Toyota Camry. When he puts my grimy red carry on into his trunk I notice a stained pillow and blanket. The backseat doesn't appear to have a working seat belt I fuss and say I can't drive in a car without a seat belt in it. There I've already alienated the situation. He pulls over but I'm on a mission. The gods have sent me an Armenian Iranian to take me to the Armenian Iranian border. My driver is assault of the earth middle aged man of no pretenses and easy disposition. As a young man he moved to the US from Iran for a few years but the he found the dog eat dog to taxing so he came to Armenia. He is my brother in arms well into the ride we have broken the tension he says in Persian. Your land your own land is something else. He's talking about Iran. He's lived in Armenia for 30 years, but he'd go back to Iran if it ever became free. Another way Iranians say this is Mamle Katnadorim or Mamle Katnist which means we don't have a country or this is no country for us. I don't care about sites on the way. I just want to be driven so that I can take in the landscape, the topography of my own dust. The road south is mountainous first we have a clear view of Mount Ararat and little Ararat next to it. This mountain of the Armenian Highland is the national symbol of Armenia, but it's now just on the other side of the border the Turkish border so close by. Taurus pose with it looming in the background on a platform with a carved out opening designated exactly for this memento. The lesser caucus caucuses are rolling hills within hills at times downy green at times velvety fawn dabbled with trees. We two Caucasians ascend a series of mountains called Zangizur. The region was ceded to Russia by Kajar Iran, according to the Treaty of Galveston in 1813. These big bell towers and my driver tells me these bells were told to herald approaching enemy forces, hence the name Zang, which means bell. It is of zoo is force, the bells of war. The landscape is bright green with yellow wildflowers and large rectangular patches of purple wildflowers. The people up to their waist in one of the distant patches it reminds me of the lavender fields of Provence in the south of France, whose tiny roads I've drove through the summer before this in my large white Ford. I'll skip the anecdote about realizing one day in France that actually I was American, which I had never known for 38 years at all. Harrowing hours of driving through misty mountains passing dog, passing and dodging trucks that carry goods back and forth from Iran to Russia. One overnight stay in a hellish motel with vagrant men and 30 minutes skirting the Armenian Iranian border where the crittiness and ruthless border police make me delete all the photos of the Baron toxic dump that the area is a stinking toilet of splattered shit nearly confiscating my phone and passport. The border mountains are stony and bone dry. The atmosphere is apocalyptic. I narrowly escape. We backtrack behind a rusty metal shed and some burnt out car parts at the foot of electric barbed by wire fence, my driver and I scraped some earth from this borderland. But what difference does it earth make? I even forget the plastic bag in this trunk. I superimpose Iran onto Georgia. The Alboros and Zagros ranges of Iran onto the Caucasus mountains of Svaneti and Racha. Peak on peak, range on range. The Sycamores or Valyah Street in Tehran onto the Sycamores of Cosbecky Street in Tbilisi, swaying in the breeze on hot afternoons. Rainy summer sunsets, leaf on leaf, tree on tree. Tbilisi Street onto Rustavelli Street, epic poet onto epic poet, name on name. Grandmothers onto grandmothers, women in black, listlessly carrying bags of groceries. Never a smile, grandmothers shouldering history that Iran, Iraq war, one brother turned onto brother, even as we speak all over Iran. There were many refugees here in Georgia after the Soviets bolted and all that was left was chaos. No water, no heat, when gangs pillaged. Men who smoke and carry nothing and everything. Streets on streets, country on country. Beautiful boys onto beautiful boys, boys of no hope, boys of hope and no hope. Caged doves without flight. Boys of a tale that is not theirs. Boys abiding by the rules of ignoble men. Boys who will dissolve into history, unrealized as the plucked rose, rose buds of my heart. These boys of history, one boy who seals a city for me. Tehran onto Tbilisi, I am back at the calming green leaves high above boulevards. Tbilisi is the city of my parents' golden youth. I don't even want it as my own city. I want to bring theirs back, bring them back in time. The women who walk past me don't return my smile. The country outside which I dig doesn't invite me in. I reach for you, you cold mothers. I'll stop here. Thank you so much for reading that. And thank you for reading the words on Tehran too. I just thought the way that you wrote about it was so beautiful and so whole in a way that just really felt like we know that you're writing about a loved one, something that is very important to you and multifaceted there. It makes me think about San Francisco or the Bay Area and places that I love that have beautiful and also difficult things about them. Are you born in San Francisco? I grew up in the south peninsula, but I've been in San Francisco between San Francisco and Oakland most of my adult life. Let's see. So the first question I have for you today is, well, I was going to ask you about the beginning of the essay as well, but we missed that part. But starting with Georgia, when you went to Georgia for your full, right, when you started on that journey, I'm curious like what were you looking for and then what is it that you found? That's such a good question. No matter how much I prepared and Googled Georgia and talked to Georgians here and abroad. I just had no idea what to expect. What did I find? I learned so much about the region's history and the relationship. You know, I went, we live in one empire here. I went to the shadow of another empire. And that was really eye-opening. The question of identity for them is really very, very raw and that I had so much sympathy for that. They don't really know what Georgianness is because they've been dominated by empires for so long. And they've only been out of the shadow of Russia for 31, 32 years since 1991. So it's very new for them. They don't really know what Georgianness is. I really understood that. Now, alongside home, we immigrants are also interrogated constantly about our identity. And I think a lot of people want to express and delineate their identities. I've never been one to want to do that. I would rather just be considered a mammal or like stardust or something. I don't want to say I'm, you know, this and that and just bring it down to sub-sub-sub categories. But it was really palpable for them. So that's what I learned. And I was very, very fortunate that it became a trigger for me to write the book, parts of which I read for you right now. It just, it was really that missing element, Keija, like for years I had wanted to express this deliberate nonbelongingness or this desire to belong, but this impossibility to belong on my own terms, without being without that, you know, imperious, for lack of a better word, no pun intended, but pun intended, imperious sort of imperial gaze, because, you know, the empires are places where our countries or nations that are responsible for the displacement of people who then they deem to, you know, allowing to their countries. So it's something extremely perverse, I think it's very, very perverse to then get very precious about it and ask immigrants about their home. I think that a good tactic would be to immediately ask them back about what it's like to live an empire and to be responsible, to live an empire that is responsible for the displacement of so many people. So that's, that's, that's what I learned. And that's, that's the gift that Georgia was to me. It's this book. So, I'm also curious, because this is something that we have in common about the earth that you scraped from the border, although it's a very different piece of earth. So the journey that you took with this taxi driver was really important to you and it was risky for both of you and it seemed very important for both of you. And you asked, in the end of that anecdote, what difference does this earth make? And I wonder what difference did the experience of finding it make for you? I think not caring so much about it was the more important part. We had to, it was really like a guerrilla situation. They were after us, the police for some reason, because I was taking photos. And they almost like pulled me in, you know, the border has two buildings. There's the Armenian side where you exit Armenia and then there's no man's land in the middle and then there's the place in Iran that takes you in. And I just felt that they wanted to suck me in. And they had, they had me by my wrist only because I was taking photos and the stupid soldier at the border had my phone in his hand and he couldn't figure out how to delete the photos. And so he was getting angry. So he was like passport, passport, and my driver, but he wasn't a taxi driver. He was a driver that was a friend of a friend from thousands of miles away. And he was actually a professional driver by by profession, like his father was the driver for the American Embassy in Tehran. I mean, this is like for years from a driver family. I was very lucky to have him. And but it was not driving through misty, very high mountains without really a lot of infrastructure and roads with all those really big trucks coming down at us. It's probably the second most great or maybe the first most courageous thing I've ever done, like for 12 hours, it was like this nonstop. So I think the importance of that piece of earth for me was that I went there I went to the border I looked at Iran, although if you think about it no matter how you slice it I was somehow in the old Persian Empire, the whole time I was there in that region. And it didn't matter. Okay, I didn't have that piece of earth it was already at the bottom of my shoes. I had already ingested it, you know, letting go of that immediately was the more important lesson that that I think I came away with writing the fact that we can write about it is the most important gift. Thank you. What about you, when you, when you, you know, because it's interesting because once you talked about it today earlier today. You said oh this land this this earth is mine and my ancestors were here and all that and now that I'm reading out loud my writing from a few months ago. You know it is about like this, this earth. This is the ruins of my ancestors. It's very similar what about you did it had you forgotten that piece of earth, what would have, what about you, would you have. It's, it's kind of sorry I interrupted you know go ahead. Um, it's interesting because when I think about it I think about that one clump of dirt, but be having my ancestors have been enslaved on stolen land as well. I also don't have claim to that land, but I also do feel like this dirt holds my DNA this piece of dirt, and I don't have it anymore I do have other objects that I collected during that time, but I left it behind after I made the photograph. I think that to me it represents this groundedness this understanding this finding of my roots a bit. I feel like being part of this melting pot generation of the late 70s. I was asked to let go of my roots not on purpose by anyone but just the way that that things were talked about you know we're all individuals in a melting pot and everything's just mixing together and, and I feel like that sort of asks all of us to sort of forget where we were from, and it gave undue responsibility on our shoulders for generations of various experiences. And so to me like finding my ancestors and finding that piece of that clump of earth was important and like just really understanding that I'm part of a greater history that I'm part of nature that I'm part of like a story that is longer than just you know when I was born. Well in a way I know we both memorialized that clump of earth right me and writing and you with that incredible scan. Everybody should go see it it's so beautiful. I don't know if this is the time to open up the I don't know if you all have any questions from us from both Asia and me please put them in the chat box. And the meantime you were you were you were you going to ask me about rage you told me earlier. I was going to ask you about rage I was going to ask you, because I believe in the beginning of your essay, you start with the calm, like the uprising that's happening right now. I believe the rage goes on much longer than that for you. And I'm, and I was curious if you would feel comfortable talking about that or if that was something in for you to express this evening. Well I think rage I think I think I heard somewhere that all women have rage. Which would make sense because we live in like the matrix is patriarchy. The matrix is invisible and then one day you awaken to it and you're like wait a minute, every everything from the language from the structures domestic structures from every aspect of our lives is geared to create that hierarchy that we're somehow in in relation to where women were secondary in relation to to the to the mail. And on top of that, we have, you know, people like me who are living. I don't know as a beige person whatever you want to call me in in the US where, even though I don't think of myself as either a woman or somebody who has different skin color. I am made I am treated with that. And it took me until a few years ago. I mean we're talking about decades to awaken to the fact that I had, you know, this, this being annoyed at the way I was treated at the way I was belittled at all of those things. Nowadays as a term for microaggressions all that. All of that started to make sense that Oh, I am living we're living in conceptual and physical actual language that is absolutely it. Others us by virtue of its very nature. So, you know, when you awaken to that and when you have years of not having language and and, you know, a social change to allow that language and that space to be there to speak up against it. I mean, it's pent up rage and pent up expression that's been that's been there. And so I think that's that's what that's what the rage is about and I'm not. I think there is a way to be constructive with rage I mean, I'm writing this book I'm writing other books I'm doing other things, and, and to speaking up and speaking out when you feel like, you know, those those old structures and and rhetoric doesn't it's it's so outdated. It's so outdated that I think that not just this isn't just for for women this is for all of us citizens to learn to to reframe for ourselves, not to be in relation to that way. I see some some things in the chat box let me see I'll go for the first one. I feel like there is something wrong in both of your works that we've seen heard, like a contender honest do agree. Do you agree Keisha something wrong your work. What is wrong your work. Perhaps I'm not. I'm not sure. Yeah, perhaps I'm not sure if it's, there's probably is something wrong and me that create that causes me to want to create the work so I guess I guess so how about you. I would, I would probably rephrase that raw the word raw to truth. Getting to the bottom of your truth. I think that's probably what Tony, you might be referring to as that run us. It is about just, you know, I a few it was maybe about 10 years ago I realized what my real job was as a writer. Aside from learning craft and engaging in innovation with words which are my, they're literally my tools was that if I had to be extremely vulnerable and tell the absolute truth of my humanity. Because only then it could be of use to others why else would somebody read or consume art. It's so that they, they can learn something about themselves or they can feel literally less alone. And so once that clicked for me it was like, no holds barred I will, I will get to the bottom of my human experience that specific experience because you can bet that it's a universal experience if I'm feeling it. But the challenge there is to really understand how you're feeling and really understand what those impulses are. Like I said, I had had that repulsion against being asked about home or watching people be asked about home, because I just instinctively never put myself in those positions. As far as I can remember, but I just didn't have language for it and it took years and years to sort of understand exactly what the feeling was what the reaction was what that counter narrative was, so that I could be specific with it. So I would just change raw to true. The next question is, what are you working on now and do you have a favorite poet. And William asks that I'm working on this book. Do I have a favorite poet no but the poet that's not leaving me alone is Ahmad Shambu. You should look him up. Well, if you if you get this through the library. If you loan this or get this on loan through the library. It's really the literary biography with selective translations of the 20th century Iranian poet who was actually nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1984, when I was a teenager and he was at our home. Let me see if I can all love everyone. So that's whose work I continue to translate and I've also co created a an opera with the composer Alexandra Vrbalov and the director Roy Rallow, inspired by his effect in my life and his poetry and the metaphors and his work and the work called Abraham in Flames, and that's available for for viewing on YouTube for free for everyone. I don't know if there are other questions. Anissa do you have a question or Keisha do you have a question is there anything else that we've forgotten to cover. I can. I have plenty of questions I don't know, please Keisha one more. Um, so I, I have read some of your book self portrait and bloom and actually watched part of the opera as well. And you often collaborate and create that work that defies media are your writer and a translator and create performances and do you know which form or which hybridity this project is going to take do you plan on taking it outside of the novel or this one. Yes, this one. Yeah. I think it's, I intended to write fiction. So the work is going to tell you what it's going to do the work is becoming like nonfiction again, just like self portrait and bloom but this time, there's a section that I write about a specific person and I have to fictionalize. I can't expose, you know, I have to fictionalize it so. And as you noticed, in the last section of what I read it's more, you know, there are line breaks and it's more lyrical just like sections of self portrait and bloom. I think that might be caught the P word poetry. So it's just, you know, I think of all of it as text I don't really think of the, the, the, the form or the genre. I shouldn't say form I don't think of the genre. So it just comes out. The content dictates the genre and the form of it so. But I do think it's mainly going to be nonfiction, it's going to be hybrid ninth nonfiction again. That's literally my home. Williams curious what's meant by a hybrid work do you want to in my in my work and Keisha you can. Maybe you could talk to it to hybrid as well in visual work in hybrid is when the pop you know you. It's it's nonfiction slash poetry slash translation in fact we could have had many more slashes like literary criticism photo essay you know because there's a lot of photos in this book. So a hybrid to me is mixing different kinds of writing different kinds of text. Some of it fiction some of it nonfiction some of it poetry. You know, even some of it photos and you know the opera that I mentioned earlier Abraham and flames is sort of the operatic version of this book. It's about becoming so Keisha another I forgot to tell you I don't know if you know but my first book is called belonging. That was that as well immediately, but you know the opera is kind of a operatic version of this which is really about belong becoming and becoming in the presence of greatness in the presence of arts. So yeah so that's what I think of hybridity do you have. I, I, I do sometimes work in a bit of social practice but it, the outcome is always photography. It seemed I'll try to start to do something that I think it's going to be a little bit different but the outcome is always photography so I do have a body of work called the Museum of sentimental taxonomy and I photographed sentimental objects of over 500 people like probably around 3000 objects, altogether. And it's exhibited as printed images on a website. And then also, I interview people as I'm documenting the objects that they bring to me and it's kind of about what we value and whose stories are told and what is considered important and museum institutions so. That's great so when you say you you you're so you say, I'm a photographer I always think I'm going to start some, you know, at least with this project you said I think you said that you started it as something else but it became photography. What were you starting it off as well. It was like part photography but it was like, Oh, there's a, there's a installation component and there's also a social practice component so I'm, I'm working with people from various communities like I've traveled to five or six cities around the country to document objects, and so the conversation is part of it and I always thought that like oh maybe I'll put a little bit of that in there but in the end it ends up being like installation and photography, but most, but it's all, it's all photographic work in the end, you know. So installation, did you have the interviews, did you have some snippets from the interviews about the objects. Those are available on the website it's installed kind of like a museum so there's large frameworks that have multiple images or multiple objects on it on an image and then images and the trains that have multiple objects in them as well so you kind of look at them as if you're looking at an object in a museum. Yeah, I love that and I think Tony, Tony says oh that's interesting intimate that's exactly the word out that came to mind as well Tony if you're referring to Keisha's specific project here that is very intimate. Yeah, definitely. It made me have to. I'm a little bit shy and it made me have to like be like okay I have to ask people for things, you know and I have to. I have to be the one who is is here and making someone else feel comfortable. So I had me to like, I couldn't just be a person alone in my studio like making photographs I was like okay. I have to be in conversation and make the room feel safe for someone to feel willing to share, which I think was really special for me, and it's ongoing I think I'll do this work forever. Yeah, it's a way to connect right because as a photographer I mean this is, I think it would be I love taking photos with my iPhone I think it's, it's the best thing I do with my iPhone is taking photos is because you kind of become. A peeping Tom, which I love to be as a writer I mean that's what I am. Let's face it let's be honest that's what that's what a writer is it's like you're just constantly observing. But the best thing I do with my iPhone is taking photographs, but it kind of distances you right it sort of puts you at this very very specific other position to the rest of the environment. So maybe that's your way of sort of connecting right connecting with your subjects. Definitely, definitely. When I was younger I would be. I would bring a camera to a party because I, that would be my protection I would, I would photograph and have the space between me and other people and then I decided no longer to do that and I also you notice there's no humans in my photos unless it's like a picture sort of thing with other folks but not not in my art. And so the the objects became standards for the people and and really thinking of them as like portraits of a person and their experiences. I'm noticing portraits of person and experiences, portraits of experiences that's that goes back to the clump of earth also when you said did it, did it, what did it mean that I didn't bring it. The experience happened anyway, like it's not lost. Yeah, so the portrait of the experience I love that I love that phrase. Thank you, whoever is doing that the Anisa you're doing that, putting our Instagram. Thanks there to connect with us. I don't know if you have more questions or not but thank you Anisa. If there are no other questions from the attendees. Yeah, I think the questions have. And there was some. Thank you and a very interesting talk and some other love in the chat. I appreciate you all being here tonight and, you know, both of you are amazing. I always, you know, I always get energy from other women and just their creativity and I would never, I won't go there, but I wouldn't maybe would never book another man if I had to, didn't have to. I do love, I do love, you know, working with women and you are the intimacy. And I think, you know, Tony said raw. I just think, you know, it's just very honest. Yeah, so both of you. Yeah. Thank you to the library community, Keja, Neil afar. Thank you so much for being here tonight. I appreciate you all and we'll see you again. Thank you Anisa thank you Keja and thank you all of you and the library and go see just exhibited it's it's been extended until December 23rd so there's plenty of time. And we'll hope to see you both again. Thank you so much everybody. Have a great night. You too, everybody. Bye.