 Good afternoon. We are so excited that so many of you have joined us for our second event of Critical Conversations. My name is Yula Taylor, and as you know, I'm the proud chair of the Department of African-American Studies here at UC Berkeley. Our Critical Conversation series is organized around two themes, celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. Barbara T. Christian, an architect of Black feminist criticism, a founding member of our department, and a gifted writer and teacher, as well as exploring the concept of abolition democracy, thinking creatively and collaboratively about the practice of abolition as necessary to building life-affirming institutions and robust democratic structures. Through both themes, we ask, what are the lessons of the Black feminist, Black radical, and Black intellectual traditions for our moment, and what is the role of Black Studies in building more just futures? Before we begin today's conversation, reaping what we sow, a conversation with Ms. Alice Walker, I want to give my colleagues, professors Lee Raifert, Nikki Jones, and Tiana Pachel, an opportunity to share a bit more about our activities and to recognize the financial support for all of our efforts. Thank you, Yula, and good afternoon, everyone. It truly is an honor for our department to host this conversation today and for the abolition democracy initiative to play a role in co-organizing this event. The abolition democracy initiative also referred to as the ADI in our department is a department initiative that works in a synergistic way with the Black Studies Collaboratory to center and respond to the most pressing questions of the moment. Questions that are perhaps new to some, but that we understand as enduring questions about Black freedom and the ongoing project of abolition. With support from the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, the Chancellor's Office and Dean Rocker Ray, the ADI builds on the work of W.B. Du Bois and Angela Davis and others in an effort to support and amplify the work of academics and activists who are actively imagining and building, as we speak, a world in which policing and prisons are obsolete. ADI supports collaborative, community-oriented, anti-racist research in the social sciences that centers Black humanity and critical epistemologies like the Black radical and Black feminist traditions. The ADI also supports public engagement activities and conversations like this one today, conversations that will inspire and influence members of our department, the campus community and our community beyond the boundaries of campus. The critical conversation series stands as an open invitation to all of you out there to join these conversations through the Gateway of Black Studies. We hope that these conversations will inspire you to commit or recommit to the important and unfinished work of building up the life-affirming institutions and relationships we need now. We also want the work of the ADI to have some impact beyond the Academy, to influence decision-making, policy and practice. We look forward to the conversation ahead. With that, I will turn it over to my brilliant colleague and program director for the Black Studies Collaboratory, Professor Lee Rayford. Hello, everyone. Thank you, Yula. Thank you, Nikki. I'm so thrilled that we are here today and I'm so glad all of you could join us. Again, my name is Lee Rayford and I'm proud to be the inaugural director of the Black Studies Collaboratory. We are a recipient of a Mellon Foundation Just Futures grant which is a collaborative initiative to address racial inequality through bold and unique humanities-based research projects. The Black Studies Collaboratory asks, what is the role of Black Studies in building a more just future and how do we solidify our commitment to Black Studies as a public good? Among our goals for the Black Studies Collaboratory is to provide space for critical engagement and collaborative dreaming to create opportunities for joyful and generative engagement among Black faculty, students, staff, the surrounding community and around the country and certainly today's event is in that spirit. Our work over the next three years in the Black Studies Collaboratory will consist of academic year think tanks, summer labs for graduate students, research grants for faculty and students and a university course open to the public. The Black Futures Retreat, which will be organized in collaboration with a host of community partners will be the culmination of our initiative. Before I turn to my colleague, co-conspirator and co-lead on this grant, Dr. Tiana Pichel, I want to acknowledge and thank all of our collaborators and supporters. First, I want to thank Miss Joan Mura, Miss Alice Walker's assistant for helping us organize today. I want to thank our long-term, long-time departmental supporters, Michael and Jeanne Williams. I want to thank Stanford University's SME Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, led by Dr. Jennifer Brody, who graciously offered co-sponsorship of this event. I'd also like to acknowledge and thank wholeheartedly our African-American Studies Department administrative staff, Sandra Richmond, Lauren Taylor and Maria Aridea. I want to thank our graduate student assistants, Rachel Ansbach, Gilberto Rosa-Duran and Delfine Sims for all of their incredible hard work. The Assistant Dean of Development of Social Sciences, Christian Gordon and his staff, especially Hagie Kaspi and Debbie Kelly, have been instrumental in bringing these events to you. And we'd like to also thank Educational Technology Services for their expert running of this event, especially Gwen Pointot. And with that, I'm gonna hand it to my wonderful colleague, Tiana Pichelle. Good morning, everyone. So the largest component of the Black Studies Collaboratory is our Abolition Democracy Fellows Program, which will welcome our first cohort later this fall and hopefully in person. In bringing elders, activists, artists, postdoctoral and dissertation fellows into critical engagement and collaborative imagining, the fellows program aims to create a shared space for experimentation, world building and exchange towards more just futures. So it is with great pleasure and excitement that we announce our first fellow, Ms. Daphne Muse, who will serve as our inaugural elder in residence. A writer, activist archivist, cultural broker and a longtime member of Alice Walker's Brain Trust, Daphne Muse has already contributed so much to our community in the Department of African-American Studies at Berkeley and to the Greater Bay Area Black Community. Her life's work is truly remarkable and her enthusiasm and I should say laughter is contagious. We are so honored, she has accepted our invitation and we look forward to welcoming her along with other fellows in the fall. We will now hear from Dr. Yula Taylor who will introduce the moderators for today's conversation with Alice Walker. Thank you. Thank you professors, Lee Rayford, Nikki Jones and Tiana Pichelle. Now I have the pleasure to introduce our two moderators who will in turn introduce Ms. Alice Walker and begin the conversation. Professor Derek Scott is a professor in African-American Studies here at UC Berkeley and is the author of Extravagant Objection, Blackness, Power and Sexuality in the African-American Literary Imagination. Winner of the 2011 Allen Bray Prize for Queer Studies of the Modern Language Association and the author of the novels Hex published in 2007 and Traders to the Race in 1995. And we are so excited about his forthcoming novel, Keeping It Unreal, Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics. Keeping It Unreal examines representations of blackness in the fantasy infused genres of comics, film and fantasy and theorizes how fantasies of black power fashion theoretical and political aesthetics to challenge white supremacy and anti-blackness. There are also teachers for the department his popular course on the novels of Toni Morrison. Derek's co-moderator is Ra Malika Mhotep who is a black feminist writer and performance artist from Atlanta, Georgia currently pursuing a doctoral degree in African-Diaspora Studies in the Department of African-American Studies here at UC Berkeley. Her intellectual and creative work tends to the relationships between queer articulations of black femininity, vernacular culture and the performance of labor. She is the co-convener of an embodied spiritual political education project called The Church of Black Feminist Thought. I will now turn it over to both Derek and Malika. Thank you, Yula. Welcome, everybody. Wonderful to have you all here this afternoon for this conversation we're gonna have with Alice Walker. Alice Walker needs no introduction, but as an offering of our love and appreciation for the breadth of her life's work, Malika and I are going to offer one anyway. During the first panel of this critical conversation series, poet and theorist Fred Moten lauded Barbara Christian's practice of being in an active relationship with the black women writers of her time. She thought them out, she reviewed their books and she built courses that would introduce them to her students. Alice Walker is a writer to whom Barbara Christian paid rigorous and loving attention and also a peer and co-steward of the black feminist and womanist traditions. It also bears mentioning that Alice Walker was the friend of another of our department, anchor ancestors, the poet activist June Jordan. It's our hope that this conversation today will honor the spirit of this intimate network of black feminist and womanist fellowship. Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children's books and volumes of essays and poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and National Book Award-winning work, The Color Purple. Walker has been an activist all of her adult life and believes that learning to extend the range of our compassion is activity and work available to all. She's a staunch defender, not only of human rights but of the rights of all living beings. She's one of the world's most prolific writers, yet continues to travel the world to stand on the side of the poor and the economically, spiritually and politically oppressed. She also stands on the side of the revolutionaries, teachers and leaders who seek change and transformation of the world. In the essay titled, Alice Walker, The Black Woman Artist is Wayward, Barbara Christian described the defining characteristics of Walker's writing in terms that articulate exactly why Walker's work and her wisdom are indispensable to the future of black studies. Walker's peculiar sound, Christian writes, the specific mode through which her deepening of self-knowledge and self-love comes, seems to have much to do with her contrariness, her willingness at all turns to challenge the fashion belief of the day, to reexamine it in the light of her own experiences and of dearly worn principles that she has previously challenged and absorbed. There is a sense in which the forbidden and society is consistently approached by Walker as a possible route to truth. At the core of this contrariness is an unwavering honesty about what she sees. And so with very full hearts, we welcome you Ms. Alice Walker and your unwavering honesty as we reflect on the legacy of Barbara Christian in the themes of creativity, freedom and survival your work has illuminated for us all. And to start, we just wanna ask how you're doing and what's something bringing you joy today? Oh, I'm doing well. It's been a little chilly in the night here in Hohesco because of the storms and the cold weather, but otherwise it's extremely beautiful. And I'm well taken care of and my friends are fairly near and my dog is very near. So life is good. Thank you. We're so happy. I am literally bursting. I'm sure you can tell, but I just had to name it before I keep talking. Our first question wants to invite just some reflection on the spirit of friendship of your creative and social relationships with Barbara Christian and June Jordan. Would you reflect on those friendships for us and what they've meant to your work? Well, June and I were actually warriors connected almost at all times, even though we were very different. And this is something that we should really think about a lot, how you can have goals in terms of changing society, but you don't have to really agree with each other all the time. It just isn't necessary. And with Barbara, I would say we were more colleagues than we were friends. We weren't, June and I talked about intimate things too, but Barbara and I did not. We talked more about, you know, work. And I remember my strongest memory of her, I think, is that after I had convened a gathering of women, and I think maybe one man, maybe Robert Ballin, to talk about whether we should proceed with making a film of the color purple, she thought it was a good idea, you know, since you understand that once Hollywood gets a hold of something, they're quite capable of going along with it, whether you want to go or not. I mean, they just changed the fellows of the people, right? So we knew that. And so she was the kind of person who was very clear about what she thought, what the risks would be, you know, what it would entail, which is wonderful to have in a friend, to have someone who just outlines all the possibilities. And then when the film was made, she didn't like it. And so that was also very good because she could disagree and, you know, just say, well, I think, you know, they missed the whole point. And that is very valuable because you don't want, you know, friends and colleagues who will lie to you. It's not helpful, it just isn't. So we were on the same side and we knew that. Yes. Well, sort of sticking with talking about Barbara Christian, Ms. Walker, for many of us in the Academy who identify ourselves as following in the legacy of Barbara Christian, a lot of us reference her essay from 1987 called The Race for Theory, where she argues that theorizing in the African-American intellectual tradition has often or even primarily been done in fiction by fiction writers. And she mentions you a couple of times in that essay. And we want to ask, do you think of yourself as doing the work of theory, of theorizing or creating theory in what you write? And if you do, what are you theorizing currently in your poetry and fiction? I don't, I don't think about that at all. I think about what brings me joy and what intrigues me and what seems wonderful and what seems maddening is for somebody else to do the theorizing and I'm happy for them to do it. I think I would feel weighed down by even thinking about, thinking about what I'm doing. Joy of doing for me is very much the same joy I imagine a flower feels as it's blooming. Thank you. Thank you. And really write in alignment with our next question which is about how you're writing pools on our senses always engaging sensorial experiences so rigorously. And wanting to hear you talk a little bit about why that's important to you and perhaps why you feel that's important to black thought and black life and black literature. We mustn't become a people who can't feel. We see what happens to people who just stop feeling. And I just put on my blog something about well, it's kind of a review of this last incredible book about Malcolm X where it's just mind boggling and blowing this book. But what I was wanting to share was that he had the nerve and the courage to keep reaching for his own spirit. And when you don't do that you become like so many of the people in the culture that we're surrounded by, they're just bodies. They have no, I mean from my observation the soul is gone, they're basically meet people. And that is to say that they have this, the body but they don't really have a light, they're not really and that that is something worth talking about and understanding in our culture because otherwise we will just imitate what we see which would destroy so much that it's so beautiful in our spirits. We were not meant to be meet people. I mean some of us unfortunately are but that was never intended for us. We don't come from a tradition where you just stomp all over your heart and your spirit. You affirm your heart and your spirit. Even when you have to adopt a God that is foreign to you you use that God to help you stay alive in your spirit. I mean that's what God has been for people who could not possibly believe that they were branded that Jesus wanted that mark on their body. And are you thinking about like when you develop characters are you thinking about ways to like make that everything you just shared just like felt in the character that you created? Who knows how characters are born? Who knows where they come from? Who knows what creation is? I'm creating just like anything else here on the planet. That is what I do. That is my job. That is my function. That is my being. And so I don't have all the questions about which you know why and this and that. I mean sometimes I want to farm something so that other people can see what I'm doing means by making any other object. You know if you want to give people water you have to create a cup. And so I can see that I'm doing that. And that is to say that there are certain realities that I feel I'm uniquely placed to understand and have been educated and worked with by forces of whatever kind to deliver that. And I see that as basically is my reason for being. And I love it. I love that because I see that everything else in nature produces what it produces. Why shouldn't we? So in a way the theorizing part is just really foreign to me. Yeah, I know that in academia you know it's sometimes thought of as just totally necessary and we have to you know. I really am not I've never been all that attractive. I like instead to feel and to grow from my feeling you know to even grow my understanding from my feeling. You know, yes. Ms. Walker, in this period of COVID a lot of us have been experiencing forest isolation and solitude as a privation but you've written about how solitude is really fundamental to your practice and to your spiritual practice as well as your work. Could you talk about the lessons of solitude or how this period has been for you in terms of this the forest isolation all of us are experiencing? I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed having you know my usual solitude basically which is to say that of course I get a little stir crazy from time to time but then I've always done a little stir crazy. And that's when I traditionally have planned big parties and wonderful picnics and you know people spread all over the land and sleeping overnight in the A I mean that's that's how it goes you know but for so much of the time I'm perfectly content in solitude and it feeds me and my thought is clarified you know in that silence just the same way that when you make tea or something and the leaves drop to the bottom and you get your purity it's like that you know and so I've learned to really treasure that a lot. Could you talk a little bit about your rituals? I'm sorry. Could you talk a little bit about your daily rituals in terms of solitude and one of the questions that came up from one of the registrants was how is it that you're able to do your work and also maintain peace that you're how do you balance those things? I maintain peace because I'm doing my work. If I were not doing my work I would not be at peace and I don't see how people can be if they don't do their work and honestly don't get it. How can you given you know given yourself in your education or your tools you know your training your experience how can you not use that to do the work that clearly is yours to do and my hope for everyone is that there is or becomes a clear work that they know is theirs nobody else can do it. So there's a great deal of peace in that just just to know that you're here you have this to do. No matter you know who is against it and who hates it and who doesn't want it you know that's their problem. Your job is to do what you do and I I've been very joyful you know I've had some you know sinks of course like all of us but overwhelmingly I have felt just incredible joy at making that contribution to life. You know that I have been gifted really to provide and I don't even understand quite how it happened. You know I'm one of eight children we were very poor in the South all that and yet somehow my desire to share I think the fundamental joy I found in reading learning to read so early and and and recognizing the magic of it I just wanted that for everyone and so that's been part of my path make sure that that is passed on. Thank you so much. I'm so thrilled that we're having the chance to just explore all these regions of thought and feeling. My question or this question and our questions are kind of combining things that we came up with and feedback we got from registrants but I'm thinking about ways that you find yourself in conversation with the the past or specifically the kind of like Southern traditions of storytelling of wisdom sharing that come before you and and how you feel like in knowing that or however you feel about your relationship to the past and ancient wisdoms and all those things what's your relationship to the future like do you find yourself writing for the future or towards the future or are you writing for the present or both or everything? Is there a future? You know, I mean we kind of know we've had a past but I'm not so sure we know we have a future but what there is you know. What can you say except that you will continue to do your best and you know try to arouse the humans to do their best and to you know get them really to see that they're in incredible danger and to act. So you know it sounds like kind of a downer but it's very realistic and I would like more realism around this issue of future. You know I mean more people than you would like to think about just take it for granted. Well, why would you do that? Yes, you know I mean not not I mean there will be a future of course for planets and stars and you know Earth maybe but you know maybe not for you and I would really like us to really hone in on that because you know I love little ones as much as anybody but it's harder and harder to see them come into the world than humans have ruined. Have you felt that sense of danger as a consistent presence throughout your writing career? No, not that there was no future. I mean hardly any because lucky for me when I grew up you know we we got our water from a spring just came up out of the ground it was perfectly pure and delicious. Now there are millions of people on the planet who have no idea what even they can't even imagine it. I mean their water is so foul or you know hardly they hardly have any water. So these are issues that I think you know the Academy might work into all of this theorizing. Yes, you know what I mean that we're really down to it now. We're really you know I mean we're really we're there we're there and that is something that I think we really have to you know see and then and then from that from that place what do we do as a human race? So you work in a range of forms poetry fiction commentary gardening photography what you write on your website what moves you to do work in all of those different forms what kinds of impetuses or questions move you towards doing different forms of expression. Absolute love totally. I garden because I love to plant I come from generations of farmers you know we also could tell when spring was coming by the scent of the wind. I don't want to lose that. You know I dance because in my community that's what you love to do on a Saturday night you dance you found some kind of community and you did that. I don't know I mean I'm just basically living out the life of the ancestors and it's all coming through me and I'm living in that stream but fine tune your question because I think I'm kind of jumping around it. Well, I guess part of the question is are there particular forms that. Address needs or desires for expression that come up for you and why a particular form at a particular time so for example now the current moment in what the exigencies of the moment are as you've been talking about where it's as though our future is fleeting before so we don't have one what kinds of forms of expression seem most important to you or most expressive for you in dealing with that study. Believe it or not I think that part of why we're lost is that we've forgotten we have to study where we come from and what we're doing and I just can't stress enough how much I want our people with all people but you know our people to really get a grip on how you have to understand where you've been in order to know where you are or where you're going and for whatever reason in much of our you know community people don't honor study. They don't and I mean I see that in my own family although I have a niece who just left two days ago you know who the whole time she was here. She was reading this new incredible biography of Malcolm X because I had been raving about it. I had been raving about this this new book about Malcolm excuse me so you know poco a poco little by little or maybe not so little. We have to really help our young understand that in order to know where they're going or where they are they have to study. They have to study. They can't just think they're learning by listening to hip hop. I mean they are learning something you know and God bless them and bless hip hop but you know it's very deep the stuff we need to know and you have to find wisdom and use it in order to understand where you are is really very simple. You know when I was in high school I was the only person in my whole school who just loved reading you know and who could just be found somewhere you know trying to understand you know the 16th century because I could I could almost then see I could begin to see how it hadn't died the 16th century. Those old centuries don't die necessarily you know you look up and damn they're still there in some form or look at our Constitution. I mean look at our thing here you know I mean if it were not set up in such a way that you know Trump was acquitted you know we'd be in a whole different situation but but no we're we're not really examining you know the history enough to see how it continues to make rules that we follow that then undermine in this case democracy we know what there is in our country. So I would you know I would really want people to be just absolutely devoted to studying this world to studying the history and to understand much better how they how is well in our case how it's really just stacked against us so much in it you know I know you know Wow something is coming up for me and we have so many questions about particular work that you've done right we have questions about looking for Zora we have questions about the color purple we have questions about in search of our mother's garden and I'm thinking about how what you just presented even like this this mandate for for folks to study is moving in tandem with like your mandate for our folks to love and I kind of just want to hear you talk more about how how love and study in blackness move together. Well let us start with something very basic the black human vulva that has been under attack for six thousand years. Excuse me. You know it's been really challenging to get people to really deal with that issue of FGM of you know I don't know this this coffee is not this tea is not working. It's okay take your time. But you know I'm offering this because I know it's one of the most challenging places that we as a people can go and many of us are not going. But actually if we never go there if we never go there and as I as far as I can see we actually have no right to just to keep you know fussing about how terrible the world is treating us because look how terrible we're treating ourselves and our children. So you know I know there's interest in the color purple and the film and the you know constant whatever and how it has a long life and I'm grateful because I think it does a wonderful job of teaching about so many things but there are so many things you know for us to really look at other than what is current what is I mean it's 40 years old so it's not really current but you know there's so many things for us to really consider in a deeper way than by stoning the messenger. And I want us to get over that. You know in all of these controversies you know I'm nothing I'm you know I'm just basically saying look at this. You know I mean and you don't have to get attached to try to knock my hand down right now you could just say oh yeah well look at that and then you go ahead and do something else. Hi darling I'm talking I can't talk to you now. Okay. Okay. Bye. I love it. I love it so much. Good. So anyway where were we we were you were talking about stoning the messenger and how we have a choice whether we get fixated on the hand that's delivering the message or we can we can make other decisions about how we respond and we must we must I mean don't even let people drag you into some fruitless controversy. Yes about a crying child there is no controversy. The child was crying you know the messenger by then who knows when she's gone on off to wherever and you're still there. You know don't do that it's just a waste of time. Right. And I think you just kind of answered again the question about how you do your work and keep your peace right I think is because your work is the truth so you keep your peace because you know that you're doing the work of the truth. You keep it pushing. Well it's the truth as I understand it and and I mean there is no greater truth than a child a child is crying from being being hurt. I mean what great a truth is there and who are we if we can't see that I mean what we we didn't say well you know I don't care who's crying you know but you should have told me she's crying and that's that's so where we have been where we got stuck and just don't have it we don't have you know we have no time. We never had time for any of that but now we really have none period. Following up on the the sort of talking about the color purple. Since it's been made into a film recently into a musical it's a kind of icon in the culture in many ways and shows up as a meme in various places. How do you think about that do you how do you feel about the work having taken on its own life and been transformed into things far beyond or different from what you may have intended or what you work what you created yourself. Do you sort of ignore that or just forget about it or is the work when it's done is it done for you or do you follow the sort of different lives that the that the book has had. It was a gift. It was a gift to me to be able to basically write in my grandparents voices. A lot of it. I was very thankful when I finished that novel I cried I cried on my knees of and I really think that some of that gift that I felt and have felt is what people feel they know it's a gift. You know people people have not been so stunned by the onslaught slot of Western civilization that they can't recognize a gift from ancestors. That's what they see that's what they feel. You know and they know some of the ancestors were just as rotten and just as raunchy and just as crazy as they still are being the one people around us now just just you know whatever they are. But I you know I offer what I can you know they always want you know more so I offer what I have you know from wherever I am that's my job. You know that's what I'm supposed to do with what I have offered already you know offer more of what I can you know what I can but do I hang on to it. No not at all and I feel when the people you know have taken the nourishment that they need they won't either and that that will be fine. And then I want to turn them loose on the temple of my familiar. Yes. We're just much more to my my taste in a way you know I mean I I love it all because you know it's lovable it's lovable because it's it's it's it has a certain humility in it all of it you know it's like okay. You know got this and don't know how it happened but you know I I got to bring this and so I'm very grateful. Yes. Well I have to give a shout out to another alum of African-American Studies at UC Berkeley Jasmine Johnson who gifted me a copy of the temple of my familiar when I graduated undergrad. So just like the the webs of legacy work and how how big of a gift that was even if I'm sure she knew because she must because because we'd be knowing but yes absolutely love that novel and and every time I go somewhere and there's always one person who's just been blown away and we collect you know. On the other hand I'm you know I'm happy wherever people are and I think all of my books have been for me miracles you know just the the because you know you actually it's like you draw so much just out of nothing. I mean you know that's how you you start to understand how full the universe is that you can create out of actually nothing you know and it's an incredible gift. And it keeps giving it's just like self-seeding flowers like it just keeps happening. I don't cling to it either. When the day arrives when nothing is coming through me or to my you know I'm going to be so fine with it now never. Do you read literary criticism of your work and think about it and you know send me something. And you know like my friend Melanie has written this book about womanism in in in terms of religion you know and I you know but you know what I'm really happy when I feel somebody understands. That's what makes me happy somebody will write something or say something and I will think oh what I was trying to give was received. Yeah and that makes me very happy but but I have to say I don't really spend hard any time where there's a controversy about it. Absolutely I'd rather just go and do something else. For instance there were years of controversy over the color purple and during those years I decided to start a publishing company. As I like to say in order to publish other unpopular people. So who has time you know who has I mean in other words you will find if you haven't already that there is a mission in life there is something for you to do is yours is your nobody else can do it really and if you're doing that you don't have time really to wonder or worry or care. I mean although caring is so natural and I've been deeply hurt so you know there's that but actually on another level you realize that oh I have only so much time to fulfill whatever this is is that I see is my work to do things that I understand that I somehow and I'm sure you've had this experience you know you feel like oh I get this I know what this is let me work on this. And the bliss that comes after that recognition is so distracting I mean it is like why would I want to get involved with that when I'm perfectly happy being showered with the gold of this understanding you know this new this new whatever it is because creation itself is just bliss. I mean it is it is just creating something out of nothing. I mean what could be more wonderful. Can we talk for a second about another unpopular person that you actually resurrected in a lot of ways can we talk about Zora no Hurston and and like the love work of finding her and the approach you took. What do you want to know. I just I think I'm trying to like again put in my questions mixed in with the questions that we received but why was it important for you to include your own journey and your telling of this of the reclamation of Zora no Hurston. I know my my father was deeply impacted by your story of going and putting a headstone on her grave and like and so what what do you feel like was the importance of not just writing about like a essay about Zora no Hurston but writing a story of your work to find Zora. Okay I just posted something on my blog just one line and it says in order to show people how beautiful they are you have to show them how ugly they've been acting. Got it. Okay. So in writing it in that way I got to actually you know embody a behavior. That that is I think a more healthy one then then then Zora had been subjected to and so so it was a showing it was an enactment of our duty our responsibility and our beauty you know and so coming from the south I knew that there would be people who would be so hard broken and offended that they let her slip by and down and out you know and I wanted them to feel that you know I was so interesting because you know all these years later you know you go back that well not now because everybody's pretty much dead but at the time it was remarkable how many people disclaimed any you know slight stutter you know any you know bad mouthing of her you know how people do I mean they act later on. But but I think that in writing it in that way and pretending to be her niece especially. It was a way of reminding people of our that familial responsibility I mean this is a literary aunt and we have a responsibility to the people who show us anything of value we do. And I think that we don't that somehow you know you know they can just kind of bleed out their hearts bleed out their hearts for us you know show us something to think that that can happen and then we just take it and kick it you know to the curb if you want to as you know right did and what's his name also you know they they often and then years later you know a new crop of really wonderful black male writers delighted and telling me that they've never read her when they thought they thought that was a wonderful thing to tell me and I could look at them and think you know who are you who are you is being a man worth this that you're basically disowning a part of your soul that this woman has been dragging up the hill to to leave for you. So what could you you write a lot about in the website you talk about the sort of perspective of being an elder and commenting on various things like pose or the writing for Vidal or whatever. What does it mean to you to be an elder. I just posted something else on the blog which which just appeared out of nowhere but as a talk that I gave many many many years ago. About how in our culture people have often forgotten that they have a role to play as an elder. And instead of you know being that which is to kind of be there for the youth. They're just trying to be the youth. And if you are all going to be the youth. We're lost. We have no guidance. So you know I think that in every village whether it's you know a village we create create like now or however. There there are people that we trust that we know we trust we know we trust them by the way they've lived their lives. That's the only way you can really you know know you look at somebody and say well you know where were they here and what they do there and so you know you say oh yeah I think I can listen to that person. And we have to have elders who are you know like Daphne Muse you have to have people who recognize the value of being an elder not a senior. You know as in high school. I mean you can be that too if you want to but definitely elder elder and the elder ring. Traditionally and I think for as long as there have been humans. Has really meant something very positive very nutritious spiritually. For the for the you know the tribe and people should stop being afraid of being old. You know it is so it's so wasteful. Thank you. Wow I'm like I know we're getting closer to time but I feel like like a duty to my my generation of black feminist woman is thinkers and feelers and writers and poets and actresses and dancers just to ask like you still feel like like when you wrote the definition for woman is you created so much space like I think almost every day about the last line like she loves herself regardless. But I know that there's sometimes a lot of contention like if is a black feminist the woman is is a woman is the black feminist do you still do you feel like there's a meaningful distinction or do you feel like there's some space there that's substantial. I feel like you should try to learn to know what you feel and go with that. I mean I I never you know offered that to cause any kind of dissension or fighting over who's got you know more of this or that that's why it has that long definition. You know it has a real meaning comes out of a specific history and culture and it's just an offering is offering like anything else. You know it's not you know meant to be fussed over and whatever else people do. It's just an offering you know it's like giving you a flower. And then you you look at the flower and you like it or you don't like it or you you know put it in your hair or you put a base or you whatever that's not my interest you know my interest is and my responsibility was to give you something to help you see yourself differently. And you know choose it or not it's all the same to me. Yeah and that you did definitely. And it's fun. I mean that's the other part of it. I don't create I mean I was trying to explain to somebody how when I'm creating even though I'm creating sometimes things that are just so rough often I'm very in some deep inner part of my spirit so happy so happy because I get to shape it and give it a form that people can actually use and use it. I can tell you know some part of me really understands that it's going to be like you know magic and in their lives. You know. I mean think about sure you can see these kids it was a very close yes you know nobody you know. But it was able to help so many people understand kissing. And that you have a right to kiss. Okay who you're kissing. You know kiss. I mean that's the so you know so the joy of creativity the joy of being able to offer. You know a key to the locked door just get that key unlock that door be free. This planet has so much to do with being free. You can't really enjoy this planet the way it's meant to be enjoyed if you're a slave of anything. Is there any advice that you would give to your younger writing self or to younger writers. Any advice other than be free. Well study be free. Enjoy your life. You know dance when you feel like dancing you know sleep outside under the moon when you want to swim in whatever body of water feels to you although the ocean is a little tricky now because of Fukushima on our coast and on the other coast you know. The noble but thigh. But but live you know live your life. Live it I mean I don't care if you know every time you open your mouth somebody's you know ready to. Throw something at you you know or trip you up or lie about you or whatever. You know the the joy of being here I think only comes if you are really here as you. You know you have to be here. I think of all the people who were here is somebody else. I mean and now who comes to mind the Sammy Davis Junior but you know we. You know me but you know what I mean. Yeah but you have to really love. No nature if you if you love nature is I love nature. You will always feel that you belong. Everything in nature is just what it is. And so we. No if we can trust that. And I'm right because I weren't right I wouldn't be here. Right. Yes absolutely I feel like we need to be holding hands at this point like I'm looking at the faces in the in our little zoom space and there's so much life and movement and feeling and emotion plan to do that after the pandemic if there's an end to the pandemic. Let's gather somewhere. Yeah no the other part of my talk all these years has been the necessity of circles. You have to have some kind of circle to play off of each other and to share and to talk and to be down rounded with the reality of where we are we are in a terrible situation. You know and we need we mustn't be alone so we're very smart we'll figure out how to deal with this. But it's really important that the circle whenever we can and it's great that we can do it in person. But if we can't you know this is great I love this. I'm like Derek what do we let's say you. Point at which to come to a close but are there any other questions you want to ask. Now I think I just want to say thank you and just again my heart still full you know I'm still feeling just flush with so much excitement and gratitude and yeah just thank you for forgiving so abundantly in your work and in conversation with us today. Yeah I would like to that and say also that when I was asking that question about theorizing part of what Barbara Christian was saying in that essay was that what we think of as theorizing is not necessarily the kind of theory that gets has really been done in the African-American intellectual tradition and that we should be looking at other sources and fiction being one of those and I you know as a teacher is talking work and has been in the Academy for a long time I feel that you have contributed a great deal to our thinking as students of African-American culture and literature and your gift has been immense and I'm just really grateful for it I know we all are and thank you so much for it. But I think all of you for being beautiful. I think beauty is just such an incredible gift to each other to the world to the universe it mirrors the universe you and you're all beautiful you're all doing your work which is another form of beauty and I'm very grateful that you are here and that you're carrying on. Thank you so much. Thank you. Can we clap. Yes. Please please show some appreciation for Miss Alice Walker Miss Malika Mhotep Professor Derek Scott. We thank the three of you. I'm sure most of you would agree that we just experienced creative genius and we are indeed living in the stream of our ancestors so amazing. Thank you so so very much. Tomorrow all of you will receive an email from us where you can comment and reflect on what you just witnessed. Additionally you will receive an email alerting you to our next conversation on February 22nd black feminism and the sonic archive with professors Daphne Brooks and Carter Mathis and it's going to be moderated by our own Professor Lee Rayford. We look forward to seeing all of you on February 22nd and we deeply deeply appreciate your participation today. Thank you.