 Hello everyone Hello, we're gonna get started. It's so good to see your faces today and to be in such Wonderful company with all these outstanding authors So welcome to the San Francisco Public Library I'm Shauna Sherman manager of the African-American Center And we are so glad to be once again hosting the American Book Awards with the before Columbus Foundation and This time this year and it's 44th year So before we get started I want to acknowledge that the library is located on the area now known as the San Francisco Peninsula, which is the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula as The original peoples of this land the Ramaytush Ohlone have never ceded lost nor forgotten their Responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. We recognize that we benefit from living Working and learning on their traditional homeland as uninvited guests We affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors elders and relatives of the Ramaytush community If you didn't already know about the African-American Center It is a space dedicated to celebrating and promoting the culture history and and culture and history of African-Americans We collect books we partner with community We host exhibits and programs like this awards ceremony We are located on the third floor of the main library and all the books in the center are now also available for checkout So please visit the center if you have some time today and At the San Francisco Public Library the center is just one place that holds space for the outstanding Literature of our diverse community So it's really an honor to be partnering again with the before Columbus Foundation on this awards ceremony It seems like an appropriate place for it And congratulations to all the award winners with us here tonight So before we get started I'm gonna bring the president of the before Columbus Foundation up to the stage Wajahid Ali and I'll just tell you a little bit of about him before I bring him up Wajahid Ali is the New York Times contributing op-ed writer an award-winning playwright a recovering attorney and a former consultant for the US State Department His writing appears regularly in the New York Times the Atlantic the Washington Post and the Guardian He helped launch the Al Jazeera America Network as co-host of the stream a daily news show that extended the conversation to social media and beyond as A playwright Ali is the author of the domestic crusaders the first major play about Muslim Americans post 9-11 Which was published by McSweeney's and performed off-Broadway at the Kennedy Center He is a Peabody nominated producer of the series the secret life of Muslims a short a series of short form first-person Documentary films featuring a diverse set of American Muslims Ali was also the lead author and researcher of fear Inc routes of the Islamophobia network in America the seminal report from the Center for American Progress Please join me in welcoming what Wajahid Ali to the stage Thank You Shana if I wasn't married I could have scored two dates off that amazing introduction that my public says probably wrote Which hotly would have sufficed, but I appreciate it. Welcome everyone to the annual American Book Awards proudly presented by the before Columbus Foundation as Shana said this is our 44th year You give that round of applause. Thank you. We'll take a golf clap as well In the first time since the pandemic that we're meeting in person So it's lovely to see everyone's faces and I would like to tell everyone that babies are welcome. There's no shame We love babies. So bring the baby back pets Kids elders it is very deliberately indefinitely an open forum for our communities So do not be ashamed the baby has a voice and the baby has something to say It is an honor to be the president of the before Columbus Foundation, which is a very tasty title Which makes me sound much more important than I am but what we all are on the board is basically cultural workers at a time when We're living in the United States of America in the year 2023 Where a library is? one of the most dangerous places for some Americans Some parents are more comfortable with their kids Potentially getting shot at school or getting covert they're reading a book written by Tony Morrison Too soon too soon Our librarians our teachers our educators are under threat and under attack By a right-wing group that is radicalized and weaponized and will do whatever it takes to take their country back and make it great again The rest of us the majority are always choke-holded by their economic anxiety and As such our books must be banned our Stories must be banned in some places that I won't name but might rhyme with Mlorda You apparently can't say gay Because if you say gay it makes people uncomfortable. So don't say gay And it's apparently it's like Beetlejuice if you say gay three times gays magically appear I think that's the rules that apply But we have to censor ourselves hide ourselves not take up space just so we don't let some people feel discomfort and They would much rather ban our books to feel Not be but feel comfortable Even if that temporary feeling of comfort comes at the expense of justice fairness equity accountability or truth And then everyone talks about we'll get to reconciliation. We just want reconciliation the question I have is how do you get to reconciliation without truth? you can't You don't you won't and with that here. We are at the San Francisco Public Library at Coret auditorium Let's give it up for libraries and librarians Who are literally doing their job? Under duress and threat. I'm not making that up. That's 2023 America right now Where we have a treasure trove of this thing called books scary stories things with words in them Right and these stories are so powerful and so scary That in the last two years, there are certain forces in America that have banned over 2,000 books. I don't know if you've seen the videos, but in Tennessee some lawmakers Burn books last year with a blowtorch Can't make it up But they're also against cancel culture. So figure that out if you can These books are predominantly written by people of color black people and LGBTQ communities and so it is only fitting that here we are For the 44th annual American Book Awards presented by the before Columbus Foundation whose mission back in the day was to expand and stretch America to accommodate all the stories that were rendered invisible that were banned That were excised that were put in the margins and that were stereotyped you need all of it and sadly The same complaints and laments that were present in 1976 That prompted the birth of the before Columbus Foundation the American Book Awards have come full circle Come full circle right now in America. I always joke that it's not a remake, but it's a reboot The story happens again and again and again and again Because the central story that some people need to maintain is a myth the myth that America was birthed by the white Christian man and sure there were some savages here But because of the white Christian man, they were able to pacify it and this country belongs to them And there were stewards of this land and only once the other voices are pacified Ken America become great again But there's also the Statue of Liberty and we're a country for everyone and all that other stuff The rest of us try to fill in the blanks and the missing pages and to expand and stretch ourselves our libraries our Workplaces and hopefully our communities to accommodate the rest of the voices and to make space for the co-protagonists Who never got the spotlight who never got the grill at the end who never got to save America You know people like me who are never on the billboards people like me who were shot and killed by Chuck Norris in the 80s Yeah, if I have if I can't say one thing with white supremacy It's so insidious that when you watch yourself and your people getting blown up in the 80s and 90s You root for Chuck Norris and then years later like This is kind of racist and deeply troubling. I wish I wish I was the hero of the story and so today We are celebrating heroes Men and women and people who have written stories under great duress Who have published stories under great duress and who are being acknowledged For the gift of the words that have presented our communities and the way it works very deliberately is there's no first place There's no second place. There's no last place very deliberate. There's no losers. There are only winners You will see that the winners were chosen by our Auguste board now I want to name some names. I want to flux for a second because our board is pretty pretty Pretty awesome. All right. I'm gonna name some names. This is the board. It's me. I'm nobody I wear makeup on TV once in a while, but There are other folks this young writer named Ishmael Reed up-and-coming writer Viet Tan Nguyen Margaret Porter troop Sean Wong Simon Ortiz Nancy Mercado Gundar Strahd Jenny Lim Juan Felipe Herrera up-and-coming poet joy Harjo There's talent there Victor Hernandez Cruz Justin DeMang Caroline Forch a Henry Louis Gates, Jr. You'll see him on PBS once in a while Sean Hill Ishmael Hope Marlon James Leila Lalami Nancy Carnival Carla Brundage Mitch Berman and Mary Anderson in that group folks. There are MacArthur genius winners Peeler to winners Peeler to nominated authors Booker prize winners folks have won all these fellowships with French names that I can't pronounce Poet laureates of the United States of America It's a big deal and so the way it works in full transparency is we get inundated with books and poetry and We have to spend the entire year sifting through it. The board comes up with their selections We all bring it forward to the board consensus. We hatch at it out It gets chiseled down and these are the books that are selected. All right The books that are selected another cool thing about this is you'll notice that there are folks who are published by major fancy shamancy New York publishers and then there are independent publishers first-time writers Celebrated writers poets journalists publishers editors graphic artists and novice So there's no quota system here. All right, there's no favoritism You have been chosen due to your words And so I hope that means something for all the award winners who are here assembled in this august company And well you could give it. I like that golf club. Let's give it up to them. Thank you, sir And finally a run of show My job is done. I come and give this speech and then I introduce our master of ceremonies The man wearing the bow tie and meal and what's gonna happen. He's gonna kick it off. We're gonna introduce each award winner We're gonna give you a very fancy shamancy plaque that Justin makes. It's expensive. So please cherish it You're gonna take a fancy shamancy photo. You're gonna pose right there Think of your children think of Instagram pose. Well, this is being recorded. This will also be on C-Span and for the winners you get Three to five minutes, you know, you know, if you see some grumbling, that's the symphony Telling you to you know Brevity is a beautiful mistress that you should embrace at that time Three to five minutes though. We're here to celebrate you and to kick it off. Let me introduce our emcee of the day Emile Guillermo Journalist commentator columnist in TV radio and digital platforms. He was the first Asian American host of NPR's all things considered in 1989 Who writes a weekly column on race, politics, culture and media that can be found on the Asian American legal defense and education fund website His reality talk show is on www.amuk.com. He hosts the PETA podcast as a stand-up solo artist He has performed his amuk monologues all across the country his book amuk essays from an Asian American perspective won the American Book Award in 2000 not only is a winner. He's also the emcee He dropped out of Harvard because he's a good man Just kidding. Some of our we love Harvard graduates. Some of our favorite graduates are Harvard graduates But unlike Bill Gates, he returned for his degree and he just completed a New York run of Ishmael Reed's play directed by Carla Blank the Conductor where he played a Conservative TV pundit. Give it up for your emcee, Emile Guillermo Thank you very much. You know when they asked they didn't really ask me to do this. I said I'm in New York I'm doing this play wouldn't it be nice to reprise my look of the conservative Pundit on TV and so it's a bow tie in the Because people who know me know I'm not really all that conservative. So it that that's what they call acting acting It was you know watch it. Thank you for that introduction. I realized when I sent it to you I essentially just cribbed off the program notes off the conductor Which was off off Broadway when I say off off Broadway because I don't want people to be confused to think that oh you mean like El Cerrito no it was off off Broadway was in New York City and I cribbed off the notes I really should have just used chat GPT because I I went to chat GPT I said give me a short bio for Emile Guillermo and this is what it said I could not have paid a PR person More of it Emile Guillermo is an accomplished writer known for his insightful commentary and thought provoking for essays With a career spanning several decades. He has contributed to various publications Including newspapers magazines and online platforms. I mean this person really knows me Yeah, Guillermo's work often explores topics such as race ethnicity and social justice Providing readers with a unique perspective on these issues his writing combines a deep Understanding of these subjects with a talent for engaging storytelling making his work work both informative and compelling Guillermo's contributions to the world of literature and journalism Have earned him a respected place in the field Exactly in the basement of the San Francisco Public Library here for the ceremony. No, I could not this chat GPT I'm I'm in favor of chat people put down chat GPT. No, they're wrong. They're wrong Anyway, so I want to thank also Lodge for pointing out that I did win this award in 2000 and I remember giving the speech in Chicago and During the the big book festival there and thinking wow, what's gonna happen? And now I look back 23 years my my column is still Published by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. You can see it at aldef.org from 2013 to 2023 all 600,000 words of that not all of them award winning certainly But they're there and it's out there for people and if you count the years at Asian week from 1995 to 2010 when they went under That's like close to a million words of Filipino American Asian American words that no one would have seen if There wasn't an ethnic media if there wasn't an ethnic press if there weren't people who said hey We ought to conclude these voices. This is America and there it is I mean a million words isn't much and not all of them are award-winning But we did it and that's what of all the things in my bio. I'm proud to say I am a writer a writer of Asian American Filipino ancestry and my words are out there for anyone who wants to find them and I thank the before Columbus Foundation for being here 44 years later and For being this presence to bring those words to people and we honor today a woman who the Lifetime Achievement Award Goes to woman. I don't think she remembers the words she put when she blurred my book But she blurred my book and they were the most important words on my book because they reminded me That I must honor My words I must honor what I say and these weren't just you know things that were just off the top of my head These were expressions from a real Asian American Filipino soul of the time and They were important and I look at the back of the cover and I see Maxine's blurb on my book saying oh Emil He's fun. He's the first person I read my read Asian week And I I honor those words and I honor her today when we get to that point It's a lifetime achievement award Maxine Hong Kingston She may not remember it, but I remember when she did it I just said oh, she's the godmother of you know Asian American literature for generations and So anyway, that's coming up now one of the things is this is a celebration So we're gonna have a little part. I maybe I'll tell some jokes somewhere I did play this part and I reprise my costume were or bowtie and And these glasses I thought maybe these well because I'm reading some of these things I'm reading but I Also, there's a number of things that they wanted me to do Oh first of all, this is a celebration of writers, right and writers Especially on a Sunday. They should be home writing They they shouldn't be here. They should be writing and and so Actually Maybe they asked me to emcee because a lot of people aren't coming today and they're not present So they've asked me to vamp and so I'll do that But the the response to people who aren't here who are receiving awards is well, of course, they're writing They are writing. They're doing the most important thing that writers do so they are they are writing now Just before and I'll just tell you behind the scenes thing. I was slipped a little statement from The founder of the before Columbus Foundation. He said no one knows I've done this but I want you to read this and I'm very honored to be able to read this statement from Ishmael Reed in 1976 when I founded the before Columbus Foundation and invited Victor Hernandez careers to be the co-founder I Was reminded by the New York Times that I was a member of the establishment Having received recognition from prestigious literary organizations Having edited anthologies by that time including yard bird reader a literary magazine I was aware that there were writers Native American Hispanic black Asian American Irish Italian and Jewish Americans who wrote as well as me Where was the recognition for them? This was the guiding spirit of the American Book Awards Which we began in 1980 a since then a scores of writers have received awards that have led to their Promotions at institutions where they teach or have longer shelf life for their books It wasn't long before the major publishers who ignored us at first began vying for our attention a Few years ago the Washington Post called the American Book Awards the American League to the National Book Awards National League on Our board are to MacArthur Fellows a Booker Prize winner a Pulitzer Prize winner and to former US poet laureates We are the writers awards Don Delillo Johnny Williams Gloria Naylor and others have traveled to receive their awards at their own expense But there were lean years Gundar straws got us through them a son of Latvian parents who were displaced by Soviet Union tyranny Gundar's knows the treasure of free expression and the literary establishment selection of divas and divos from ethnic groups Lessons the free expression of those who write as well as their tokens Gundar started in our shabby office on 6th Street and attended American booksellers conventions nationwide He was in New Orleans with a great Alan Toussaint performed for us But our rivals persuaded the National Endowment to end our grants a mere $16,000 yearly. I asked Gundar's how we got through those years He said with blind persistence If we've been around for over 40 years defying the warning of our critics that we'd be short-lived it's because of the dedication to our purpose by Gundar straws and Justin DeMangels Despite Justin this here for Justin Despite a year of intense pain and surgeries Justin manages the foundation not only has he worked our program the American Book Awards But programs that have honored great writers like Ted Jones and forums addressing topics that address the concerns of the literary community There is no way that we can repay DeMangels who is probably in pain while sitting here He wouldn't want me to tell you because he is no writer So we want to thank both Gundar's and Justin for their devotion to multicultural literature in a period when Fascists are burning books Organizations like the before Columbus count foundation Well, we'll see to it that literature survives as it has for thousands of years While book banners have risen and fallen Signed Ishmael Reed So it feels right here is mill the wave to the crowd go through the crowd Like I said honored to read his words, but I read his words in the play and he gave me more laugh lines in the play So all right, so here we are so as I said we're gonna go with our first award And it's Ayanna Lloyd-Banwo. She is not here. Ayanna Lloyd-Banwo when when we were birds is a novel and And she's a winner from Trinidad and Tobago currently living in London her debut novel Was a 2023 winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean literature and the authors club best first novel award So let us honor when we were birds Ayanna Lloyd-Banwo the second person Edgar Gomez He also is not here because we know as I said before he's a writer He's probably writing now. He's probably writing at Edgar wrote the book high-risk homosexual a memoir Sassy He's a Florida born writer. So imagine how how well this goes off in Florida With roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico, he's a graduate of the University of California Riverside give it up for Riverside the Inland Empire Where he received an MFA? His words have appeared all over LA Times poets and writers The New York Times the New York Times in fact called him a breath of fresh air because the New York Times knows it needs a breath of fresh air It was the best book of 2022 by the publishers weekly We are honoring it high-risk homosexual a memoir and unlike some others Edgar did send a note. So it's a good thing that I played a role in Ishmael's play because I'm not gonna act This is Edgar Gomez Hello, everyone. I Really wish I could be in San Francisco With you all to celebrate and can't tell you how honored I am that my memoir High-risk homosexual is the recipient of an American book award when I was writing my book I had to fight the voice in my head that told me that there was no room in the publishing industry for a queer Central American memoir This award proves to me and hopefully to others like me That there is room for us and that if we dare to follow our dreams There are people out there who want to see us winning Not writing he said winning Thank you Edgar Gomez Edgar Gomez All right, what is what is next? Oh now we have You know, this is the thing they her book is called Bad Mexicans Race Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands and let me just read a little about about her She's a professor of history African-American African-American studies and urban planning at UCLA where she holds the Thomas E Lifka endowed chair in history and we got to mention that so that she'll so her her checks won't bounce. She is a Endowed chair. She directs the Ralph J. Bunch Center for African-American studies She's one of the nation's leading experts on race immigration and mass Incarceration, let's welcome the winner of an American Book Award Kelly little Hernandez if I can read from the from the synopsis bad Mexicans tells a dramatic story of the Magonistas the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States Led by brilliant, but ill-tempered radical named Ricardo Flores Magon The Magonistas were a motley band of journalists Miners migrant workers and more who organize Thousands of Mexican workers and American dissidents to their cause so bad Mexicans Kelly little Hernandez winner of the American before all right next it's Everett Hogan the ways poems of affirmation remembrance reflection and wonder and Everett Hogan is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth He was the first poet laureate of New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1994 what took them so long new Bedford? He his work has appeared in numerous anthologies in several works The ways is a collection of mainly quiet and Contemplative poems most are new written during the current pandemic a Winner of the American Book Award for the ways poems of affirmation remembrance and reflection and wonder Everett Hogan our next award I'm going to introduce Carla Brundage who is accepting the award For our next winner. The next winner is Anne Hyde She wrote the book born of lakes and planes Mixed descent peoples and the making of the American West Anne Hyde is a professor of history and editor-in-chief of the Western historical quarterly her most recent work Born of lake and plains mixed descendant mixed descent peoples and the making of the American West was published by Norton in 2022 She she says are the as you will see in the program often overlooked There is mixed blood at the heart of America and at the heart of native life for centuries There are complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create perspective circles of kin and This is the subject of an hides book born of lakes and plains mixed descent peoples and the making of the American West to accept on behalf of Professor Professor Hyde is Carla Brundage poet educator and a board member of the before Columbus Foundation everyone It's an honor to be accepting this on behalf of Anne Hyde It was incredibly enlightening to read this book which brought to light many dynamics in the early history of the United States of America, especially in the Midwest as Revealing mostly the unknown Parts that reveal how complicated a history actually can be Her path breaking history Kind of brings to light voices that have been muted and she follows five mixed race families of Indige did indigenous and many European descent who had formed these families and Started businesses which of a brown trade and around the fur and then when the Indian Removal Act comes It's really interesting to read a book which is Perfectly historically based and which reveals what happens when there is family connection and racial I don't know the excuse of using race to Take people's stuff That's how I want to say it During the pivotal 19th century mixed descent people who had once occupied a middle ground became a Racial problem Drawing hostility from all sides their identities were challenged by the pseudo science of blood quantum Which many of us in this country have suffered for and it's the instrument of allotment policy Their traditions by the Indian schools are established to erase the native ways and as Anne Hyde shows They navigated the hard choices they faced for centuries by relying on the rich resources of family and kin So it's a beautiful story, and I hope you all read it for our next award. I'm going to have The president you know I don't want to demote you the president of the Fort Columbus Foundation come up and introduce our next winter Watch watch Ali come in and who is our next winter one? Let's give it up to meal who has been preparing and waiting for this day for a long time Carla and Ishma, I think you really need to give him another role immediately Thank you everyone for Just coming along, you know, I know oftentimes when we do this in person We usually have all the winners, but right now There's a COVID spike, and I don't know if you all have been noticing in New York Infrastructure is having a problem There are some leaks so a lot of folks couldn't make it but those who did we appreciate you and we actually have our first award winner who is here in person so High expectations Jameel Jameel John coach. I wrote a fantastic book, which was recommended to me by Justin Daymong The book is right here the haunting of haji hotek a collection of short stories written by Jameel and Jameel is an award-winning writer from I hope I could say from the Bay Area a Refugee born in Peshawar Pakistan from Afghanistan and then from Pakistan they moved to the Bay Area Even though English was not his first language now He is award-winning writer in English and oftentimes when people talk about Afghans We see horror stories. We see refugees first from the the Soviet invasion and then the US invasion Which was the longest invasion in US history and oftentimes that we don't see or we don't hear from or Afghans And we see them as stats and we see them chasing airplanes and then we say oh They helped us. Oh, it's so sad. Oh Insha'Allah things will get better for them or we go to Fremont Boulevard in Fremont, California my hometown Or we go to Devganon kebab house and eat chapli kebab and we're like oh these Afghans They make really good chapli kebab to which they do And bullani But we don't hear their stories and so what Jameel does in this collection of short stories fictional is He talks about pain He talks about trauma. He talks about disappointment and he talks about how it is to live a Life of dignity when you're not treated with dignity how it is to survive in America and Afghanistan and Pakistan as the child or the descendants of unending war what it feels like to play video games Said is metal gear solid and then see Yourself playing in Afghanistan What that happens? And so these are stories that are not interconnected, but they stand alone But nonetheless they paint a portrait of peoples who have endured and survived and still continue to survive and thrive despite Going through so much pain and it's done with a lot of life and vibrancy and colorful language And so it is my honor to award The annual American Book Award to Jameel John Kochai. Who is a Local writer Jameel Asalaamu alaikum everyone. Thank you all for being here I want to thank the before Columbus Foundation for selecting my book for an American Book Award It's such a tremendous honor And it's and it's especially surreal to be sitting in the same room here as Maxine Han Kingston a Legend and and a personal literary hero of mine I want to thank my family for their stories my more than a lot my aunts and uncles my brothers and sisters who are always my first editors Everything I write is written in the shadows of these great incredible funny tragic Oral tales that I grew up hearing Finally, I want to thank my beautiful wife nazifa Who agreed to marry me when I was just a broke silly graduate student with too many dreams and too many bills and without a publication to my name and now we here we are together except in an American Book Award Thank you so much I would like to say this Ameel mentioned that he is a recipient of the American Book Award for those who don't know many many years ago when I was a young man and I had actually Black hair and not gray hair and it was 10 pounds 12 pounds lighter I was a student at UC Berkeley and my professor was Professor Ishmael Reed in a short story writing class and There was another professor a young writer by the name of Maxine Han Kingston yeah, yeah young writer you might know and These were Titans When I was growing up and I got into Ishmael Reed's class and Ishmael Reed told me a 21 year old at that time Hey, don't write a short story. You should write plays. I'm like, what are you talking about? She goes yeah, yeah, don't waste your time wearing short stories Look, I think you're a playwright. You have a gift for characters and dialogue So give me 20 pages of a play you ever read Raisin in the Sun death of a salesman long-dazed earning in a night I'm like yes, write me something like that. I'm like what? He goes yeah, look 9-11 just happened and as a black man I could tell you that your people are gonna get hazed and the way that my people have fought back for the 400 years is through art culture and storytelling and So they can't take away your story. You're like Muslim in Pakistan. You're right write me a story of a play of a traditional kitchen American drama but from the perspective of a Pakistani Muslim American family this was October 2001 folks and That play then became the domestic crusaders Which the first person that came on to produce and help the play after I graduated from college two years later Was Ishmael Reed as the first producer his partner in crime Who helps him and tolerates him some would say it's Carla blank she came on as the director and Ishmael literally turned to Carl and said hey, you should direct this play and she goes I should she goes Yeah, yeah, go ahead. It'll be easy little did they know they will spend the next eight years surrounded by Pakistanis Eating my mom's Briani and all this to say is the domestic crusaders The the first if you will group the first collection of writers that believed in this play that nobody else believed in Was the before Columbus Foundation that play eventually got off Broadway at the New York and Poets Cafe got published by McSweeney's and McSweeney's contacted me a year and a half ago on the 20th anniversary of 9-11 and said can we republish the play and That was the play if you remember Carl and Ishmael everyone said Who will want to listen to a play about Muslims and Pakistanis? The mainstream is not ready for ethnic stories Karma is real Karma is brown and karma is very petty all of this is to say is that All of us have humble beginnings And this is all to say for those who are in the audience and those who are listening because I know this will be on C-span later Oftentimes all you need is one person One teacher one friend one parent who says you got something You have a story and oftentimes many of us who were had humble beginnings I was also a broke-ass broke writer who married way up and my and I said inshallah one day will make it my wife's like We better You need someone to believe in you and that's the wind that lifts the sails and so anyone who's watching right now If you know someone in your family or a community who has a talent you could be that one person That helps them out and if you think your time has passed. That's the beautiful thing about writing If you could pick up a pen and write it ain't too late it ain't too late and Speaking about people who keep going and who persevere I say this in my introduction Even though Ishmael has hinted at it and I hope he's not embarrassed our chairman of BCF is Justin de mong Did I pronounce it correctly Justin? Where are you at? All right? When I when I first read his name I thought it was Desmangles because that's it's pronounced D. It's the written D. S. M. N. A. N. G. LES But it's a de mong much like when people say I have a lot of interesting translations in my name My favorite is warble out and watch at the hut, but Justin de mong Single-handedly keeps BCF running All right, this guy's the engine before Justin. It was goondars and look what it did to goondars Goondars is barely alive. All right before Columbus Foundation. If you don't mind me saying this 44 years we've been running if I showed you the budget you would cry Because here we have institutions in New York that have jumped on the DI bandwagon in the past three years They've discovered something called multiculturalism and as such they've been getting six figures sometimes seven figures to do nothing Meanwhile, I think this OG crew of Ishmael and Victor Hernandez crews and all these other giants figured it out in 1976 folks and They've been just running on prayers fumes love and inshallah And so if you can if you can please consider donating to the BCF It's a nonprofit organization tax deductible and in the absence of funds The person who has kept it running is Justin and I will say this that Justin Has had so many surgeries in the past year Justin's foot is going through you know I believe in God if you believe in God send a prayer if you don't believe in God Send a good good will to the universe that hopefully inshallah things work out for him He's gone through so much stress so much stuff and as his guys recuperating in the hospital He emails me about the BCF. I'm like bro You literally in the hospital. You can't walk give BCF a rest for a day. He goes no man. The awards are coming up I got to read this extra book. I'm like Justin the books can wait. He goes American book awards are too important And so I just want us to recognize Justin and if you can give him some love and a round of applause because he made it happen and Justin in addition to being a lover of words is also a lover of jazz music And I don't know if you've been paying attention to the Twitters otherwise known as X Yesterday there was a troll on Twitter a check mark This troll this tweet went viral and it was just a right-wing troll who had a photo of John Coltrane And he said I've given jazz a chance and I don't see the big deal about it It's just a lot of gibberish and noise and to which I quote tweet responded I knew I shouldn't have indulged the troll, but I said oh, that's a shame You're missing out on so much beauty and So Justin de Maung is gonna introduce 80 and Levy and I'll let him tell you all about this thing called jazz Thank you so much And thanks to all of you for being here this afternoon with us Hey Steve Thank you for being here one of the unique characteristics of Black American literature is that it emerges from centuries When literacy was punished by death, right? so For hundreds of years The African in the Americas who learned to read and write was risking their life and so serious Was this law taken to be? That even those of you who had the courage To teach Reading and writing to the African in the Americas You were killed too so What then is the relationship of? This extraordinary ordinary fact To African-American letters and music specifically well obviously the understanding of language as a technique of gaining and maintaining power is Entirely different right The supple bend and flex and twist of the rhythmic propulsion and the sense of urgency in African-American letters emerges From this century's long space But what would happen or what did happen under these circumstances? We're such that The history of many tribes and peoples and empires who were enslaved over hundreds and hundreds of years that story that archive if you will was then Contained in the ritual action of the music The music which contained the history of These many peoples and tribes right and that music Which contained the archive of this history Pre-Columbian pre-European African stretching back tens of thousands of years Which could not be written down? Taken down on tape or played back Informed What would become the archive of African-American letters, but it begins there it begins there and So the masters of The music that we know today as jazz are those who bring forth the message that for centuries Kept these communities spiritually intact To revive and resuscitate an image that was spiritually intact under these many centuries of slavery and to be sure Always already contained An urgent and damaging critique of the institutions which developed around their enslavement So this in essence is what informed the tradition of what we understand today as jazz and as I said the masters of this this Continue to bring that Continue to bring that forth Now in the historical biography of jazz as literature there has been to say the very least an immense failure to contestualize and Amplify this story After all one of the theological Propositions of slavery is that the African doesn't have a spirituality so part of Aidan levy's great triumph and Indeed his biography of Sonny Rollins is a great triumph is That this very gifted writer Aidan levy Gave us much more than a biography of Sonny Rollins He he deeply contextualized the story of Sonny Rollins and the story that I'm talking about today Which has to do with that continuum Emerging over many many centuries to amplify and uplift the message and the meaning of the music and That archive and that history Which also informs our literature and our art and so it is great honor to welcome Aidan levy to the stage and to present the 44th American Book Award To saxophone colossus Aidan levy it's such an honor to be here today with all of you and First I want to just thank the before Columbus Foundation does an organization that I Revere I think its mission couldn't be more important in this moment when the humanities are under attack I Want to thank Justin DeMong and Ishmael Reed One of my literary heroes I'm about to teach mumbo jumbo again To Columbia University undergraduates I'm looking forward to that Just a few thank yous I'd like to thank the folks at Hachette books My agent Russ Galen Terry Hinty, Sonny Rollins publicist I'd like to thank my family My mom Patty my dad Harlan my sister Allegra and most of all my Brilliant wife Caitlyn Mondello who is here with my daughter Isabel that you may be able to hear in the background She seemed to be filming this Although it looks like she's bent over with the baby. I hope you're not changing a diaper I Like to thank all of the interview subjects for this book I conducted more than 200 interviews over the course of the book so It was very much a communal effort to tell this story As well as the librarians and archivists. It's such a thankless job and they really need to be thanked More than they are and we are in a library of course So I don't want to leave that out just so many archivists Who contributed to this project? Most of all though, I have to thank Sonny Rollins himself who just a month ago turned 93 and He's Still keeping up The struggle so a round of applause for your Sonny Rollins and I'll just Leave you with a couple thoughts about Sonny Rollins one is that in the in the early 60s He would come out on stage in a white cowboy hat sometimes and He might start playing Songs that were made famous by Al Jolson or Bing Crosby year He could play something by the composer Edward McDowell of the McDowell Colony and Then he might play his own composition Something like Olio He paid tribute to Miles Davis to Thelonious Monk to Duke Ellington and Then he would take off the cowboy hat and underneath it. He had a mohawk And this was before the punk movement He was really kind of the OG Musician with a mohawk and some people thought he was doing it just to be Weird but he was actually doing it to honor Native Americans and When Sonny went to Japan for the first time in 1963 he had the mohawk and everybody was so Curious about it that it ended up dominating the press conference that he had there And when he came back in 1968 he didn't have it anymore. They didn't believe it was him So he got another haircut Anyway, Sonny is an artist who is truly beyond category I think that that's a phrase that Duke Ellington used. I think that he exemplifies Everything that the American Book Awards stand for and I guess I'll just close with a Quote from Sonny himself. This is something that he wrote 65 years ago for his album Freedom Suite, which If you haven't heard I recommend that you listen to it tonight And it goes like this America is rooted in African-American culture. It's colloquialisms. It's humor. It's music How ironic That The African-American people who more than any other people Can claim American culture as their own are being persecuted and repressed That African-Americans who have exemplified the humanities and their very existence are being rewarded with inhumanity That was what he wrote 65 years ago It's still true today So I'd like to dedicate this award to Sonny Rollins who as I said is still with us. He's still Keeping up the fight and It's truly an American hero and an American original. So thank you very much. Thank you so much Hayden Levy well, you know writers writers can afford To be dishonest with the world Lord knows a lot of them are but they can't afford to be dishonest with themselves Not if they're gonna write effectively Not if the illumination of their mind is gonna continue to light the way With the melody and the rhythm and the sound and meaning of their words Well, there's some jive-ass writers out there, but to write effectively To be more than heard to be read and read again and to illuminate Writer can't afford to be dishonest with themselves. No Bohan Lewis Bojan Lewis Bojan Lewis. Yeah Bojan Lewis has That honesty That ring of truth That oscillation between the inner and outer world that guides the reader towards tremendous authority of feeling and Undeniable sense of reality and wisdom Sometimes love is saying goodbye. It's The sinking bell the sound and This is actually Bojan's second American Book Award. So We're deeply grateful to him for Guiding us as well as his readers Towards a broader sensibility and understanding of our world today and the Inner conflicts and unresolved mixed emotions of his characters. It's so So eloquently speak to the situation of his people of our people and The world that we can possibly welcome ahead with that Practical form of the imagination with its horizon set on freedom those are the The things that come to mind when thinking about Bojan Lewis and he's here Today, so please welcome the author of sinking bell collection of short stories from Grey Wolf wonderful writer Bojan Lewis Yeah, yeah to the American before Columbus Foundation I Brought my family and we've just been chilling with some friends who live here Great to be back in San Francisco I guess what I'm trying to say is like I thought I would be able to write something I'd have a toddler who just Takes all my attention and my lovely wife Sarah Samms Thank you to her for always supporting me Through my cranky bullshit Through getting sober through becoming a parent I couldn't have done it without them And thank you to my daughter who is showing me how to Be joyful and not such a pessimist probably and Thank you to all for being here and thank you to all the other award winners your work inspires me your stories inspire me all the time I Wouldn't be doing this without Without work like this. I probably would have given up a long time ago. So thank you everyone. Thank you Okay, so now we're we've hit a groove, right? I mean we're almost halfway through and Thank you very much Justin and Was for coming up Just this is sort of like the the Oscars, you know where you have like co-presenters, but they I don't get a wardrobe change ish mail. What's what's wrong? I'm wearing and maybe a slight change. I tweaked my tie No, I thought I thought that I would be the one who only talks or presents people who didn't show up But I was I was told that some people had really good excuses besides that they are in fact writing for example Everett Hogan is actually very ill. So we our thoughts and prayers to Everett He won for the ways poems of affirmation remembrance reflection and wonder Other people we just have to think you're that they are writing. They're busy writing now our next winner is an Oakland writer Leela Motley Nightcrawling a novel is not present. She actually did send me a statement And I'll read this because I am an actor Thank you so much to the before Columbus Foundation for the honor of the American Book Award I'm truly privileged just to exist on the same list as so many other incredible authors It means so much to have Kiara and her story recognized in this way as a story centering Black girlhood and the experiences of vulnerability in a world that so rarely allows us the luxury of softness Thank you for witnessing this story for reading it and sharing it and finding something in it I'm immensely grateful Leela Motley now that was Leela's statement, but I know someone came up to me and said Leela is a great writer and I got something to say about Leela and he's on the board of the before Columbus Foundation Let me bring up gondar straws gondar Sorry, I was just sitting down in the front row and I was saying after 44 years I'm sort of missing the stage and I saw I talked my way on to here I want to say a huge thanks to Justin for having taken over this role and when I was out of town and moving and changing things and He's been more than capable his able hands have amazed me in a lot of ways and he cares as much as I do to the point of Not getting any reward for it Other than people we love and care about saying nice things about you. So anyway Just wanted to say in the last You know 44 years we've had a lot of Great writers who are now great writers Who this was their first time and this is booked by Leela Motley. He's also, you know a first time Effort but with so much more to say she's definitely a new voice that We have and we've we've introduced a lot of new voices and a lot of them have gone on to bigger better things and We get to be lucky enough to say Yeah, we noticed Back when I remember I had to explain to people what multicultural meant and convention one year Woman came up to me says oh multi cultural. Oh, that's the thing this year, isn't it as If it's eventually going to go away like a tick-tock video that isn't viral anymore But we're still here and I'm glad I'm still here through all of what it's taken and I want to you know Thank all the great new writers Who have new voices when you think you've heard it every everything? You have it just like in music. You think you've heard it all and some like Sonny Rollins comes along and It Changes the whole scene and it inspires other people to come back right take a look at how many people sit there and mention their Mentors the people who guided them who gave them a chance and We're hoping to do that here too to make sure that everybody Who wants to could get a chance to shine and That's all I have to say for now, but It's most taken a picture of me. I better get off But I want to thank all the writers too who could come and those who couldn't come I know it's difficult right now these times so but All right, let's hear for Lila motley and gondar straw Thanks gondar's Oh, wow, you know While we're telling sort of our origin stories, I should say this I know if you see me talk at the American book words I'd say this sort of a lot, but it means something because I was a an MFA candidate at wash you when I Finished off at Harvard. I I went to wash you because there was one writer. I wanted to be like and that was Stanley Elkin and he was a Jewish American comic writer and he was the guy I wanted to be and I remember writing stories and I write a lot of stories about Filipinos and Stanley said Who are these people? I mean, oh, well, can't you write a story without Filipinos and It's astonished me. I thought well, maybe I can maybe I could write blankless Invisible type people and write their stories But there was a visiting lecturer there at st. Louis at the time And the man's name was Ishmael Reed and when I told him what Stanley told them that Stanley wanted me to take the Filipinos out Ishmael said put those Filipinos back in a meal. What are you talking about? And that really changed my The arc of my narrative and the people I write about and the people I care about in a literary way And it's because of that I dropped out of the MFA program and went into TV broadcasting But that's all right. That's all right. That's another kind of narrative arc and narrative storytelling but it was because I could talk about Filipinos and TV and I always thought Ishmael was the person who pushed me in that direction. So I Thank you my teacher Ishmael Reed All right, our next person that we honor is Daryl Pinkney He wrote the book come back in September a literary education on West 67th Street In Manhattan He of course is not present. So that's why I'm presenting the award Daryl Pinkney is a longtime contributor to the New York Review of Books the author of two novels High Cotton 1992 Black Deutschland 2016 and several works of nonfiction he arrived at Columbia University in New York City in the early 1970s and I guess he took he got off the one and went the right way and was in Columbia because if you go the wrong way on 160th you end up in Harlem, but Daryl From from there went on to an illustrious literary career We honor him today with the American Book Award come back in September a literary education on West 67th Street Daryl Pinkney Man, it's strange there because inclusion this whole thing isn't just about literature It's all about art and everything else I went to the Met because that's where you meet your old friends at the Met and my friend said let us find some Filipino art here in the Met and We looked for it and we went to the guards. We went to the they were the webs there was there was one piece of Filipino art and it was often the mezzanine in a glass you know Sort of box it was a santo anino a baby Jesus So they had the baby Jesus and they had a Joseph and they were both the size There are no bigger than this book and they're the only representations of Filipino art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art currently and We scoured the website. We asked the docents. We asked the guard who happened to be a Filipino artist who had worked there for 27 years Guarding the art that people really wanted to see and she told me I'm sorry You're not gonna see any Filipino art. Maybe in the mezzanine. You'll find that baby santo anino and the Joseph and I was saddened by that Right right there they're looking I mean I just I couldn't believe that inclusion is Is The problem of inclusion is pervasive not just in literature, but in all the arts Anyway, so after we honor Daryl Pinkney our next honoree is Cheryl Shinoda Sherry Shinoda wrote mummy eaters She calls herself a poet and a pediatrician a lover a daughter a mother a friend an orthodox Christian She says as a pediatrician lady doc. I'm trained in a human rights approach to medicine My faith informs my practice of medicine my practice of medicine Enforced my faith and both inform my writing She was born in Cairo. She lives near Los Angeles She has a Coptic poet and a pediatrician and we honor her today with her book or for her book Mummy eaters Sherry Shinoda and accepting the award for Sherry her friend Sammy Godalla Sammy Sherry couldn't make it today. It's such an honor to be here. So I'm just she asked me to read her statement for her It is an absolute delight to be listed among such very good company And I am I very much regret that family obligations prevent me from joining in person to celebrate with you It is an immense honor to accept the American Book Award my gratitude to the before Columbus Foundation I am thankful. I am so thankful The mythology of ancient Egyptians was oriented not toward death, but toward resurrection Mimification was an attempt to preserve the body to buy time long enough for the soul to find itself Its own face in arrow the field of reeds the soul of the great River Nile their virgin of heaven in the afterlife This reverence for the human body as a sick as sacred matter was lost on the Europeans who in the 16th and 17th Centuries ate mummies Egyptian human remains as medicine Mummies were thought to contain the powerful life force of these foreign ancients This strikes me as an apt metaphor for the consumption of later later colonialism Mummy eaters follows the path of an imagined ancestor through Mammification as she races her way to the afterlife before her body decomposes Running parallel to her journey is the violation and desecration of a year of the European practice of mommy eating Mommy eating dehumanized and fetishized ancient Egyptians while ostracizing and demeaning than modern-day Egyptians This desecration sinks even deeper when you consider the importance of an incarnated body to the Egyptian to the ancient Egyptians They could not enter the afterlife without it This book hinges on the broad on a broad unwritten question, which is what would our past including colonialism or our future? Dealing with existential crises like climate change or the threat of nuclear war look like if we believe that the other Was human would we still consume each other? In the words of my Angelo quote, I believe in anger Anger is like fire. It can burn out all the dross and leave some positive things But what I don't believe in is bitterness Forgiveness is imperative because you don't want to carry that weight around who needs to and it will throw you down It doesn't help you to live life. I don't make myself vulnerable if I can help it Mummy eaters is about silencing of people of color of minorities of the people who didn't get to write the history the history books throughout history into modern times The Coptic tradition which finds its root deep in the heart of ancient Egypt has suffered much attempted silencing By alt but ultimately this is a book about processing marginalizing Marginalization and working toward forgiveness. It is about learning to speak from silence This book owes a great debt to the African poetry book fund the University of Nebraska Press and especially to Kwame Dawes for superlative sensitive editing Always and forever my love and gratitude rest on my family both born and chosen who sacrificed much to make space for my writing My congratulations to my fellow award winners and in the words of the Coptic greeting in funerals at funerals in commemoration of our ancestors Maybe may we live and remember. Thank you Here it again for mummy eaters mummy eaters All right our next award Goes to Masab Abu Toha things you may find hidden in my ear poems from Gaza He is not here, but he has sent a representative Elaine Katzenberger who is the chief executive and publisher of city lights books Elaine please it's nice to be here again. I am One of the lucky people who is familiar with the American Book Award. I think this is The third time I've accepted an award for somebody here So I'm a proud publisher and I'm always grateful to the before Columbus Foundation Masab was on his way here Masab is he's from Gaza and Maybe some of you understand something about how difficult it is for a Palestinian But especially a Ghazan to leave and come to the United States It's very complicated There was a Palestine lit festival happening in Philadelphia where he was being featured and He was there and was on his way here but unfortunately had to go back to Gaza because Things are happening over there and the there was a threat of the border Between Egypt and Gaza closing and he would be stuck outside. So he wasn't able to come and he's quite disappointed But he did write something last night and sent it to me and I'm going to read that to you It starts with a quote from his book of poems This is one of the poems that seems to move people a great deal because it's a poem about resilience basically These four lines don't ever be surprised to see a rose shoulder up under the rubble of the house This is how we survived And he adds here and don't ever be surprised to hear us speak from under the rubble of the refugee camp This is how our stories never died. I Write this letter late at night while the drones still were overhead in the Gaza skies Where even the heavy cloud cover can't serve to protect our ears? I write this letter on my laptop while there is no electricity. It's been cut off for several hours I'm honored to be published by city lights and it's especially significant for me since the city I was born and raised in has been dark at night since 2007 The year that Israel imposed a brutal siege which began with the bombing of the only power plant in Gaza The past 16 years have been harsh About 70% of the population here in Gaza are refugees and their descendants. I come from a family that was expelled from Yaffa in 1948 I've never been there, but Yaffa is my home I named my six-year-old daughter Yaffa after my family city the place that all four of my grandparents were unable to return to before dying Despite the occupation and siege I've managed to find a way Through poetry I rebuild Gaza the city of my birth and liberate Yaffa my grandfather's city I open its doors and windows to the migrating birds and the tired cats dogs and hens The pages of my notebook are open lands planted with flowers and trees whose roots have been watered by rain From clouds that predate all of this But this land is also stuffed with unexploded bombs that go off whenever the politics of greed and denial is discussed Though our voices are usually silenced We continue to speak not because our stories are so unique, but because our wounds have not closed We are still bleeding. I want to thank the before Columbus Foundation for recognizing my book of poems with an American book award It is a great honor to join the list of this year's awardees and the list of so many of my heroes Especially Edward Said, Amiel Alcalay and Audre Lorde. I Wish I could be there with all of you in San Francisco and accept my award in person But life is always very complicated for our Gaza this time I was actually able to get out of Gaza and Attend a literary conference on the East Coast I was about to set off for California when the threat of a sudden closure of the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt meant that I could get stuck outside Away from my family and so I was forced back To be a gazon is to be unable to plan anything Sometimes even something as simple as arranging a zoom call or recording a video and sharing it with others To be a gazon is to be unable to do much at all of what so many others take for granted Huge thanks to my publisher and editor at City Lights Elaine Katzenberger Who agreed to read my acceptance speech to you today and also to the wonderful team at City Lights Stacy Natalie Chris and all of the people who keep it going Again, thank you for honoring me with this award And I hope to meet each one of you in person at other wonderful occasions to come Most of our buttoca. Thank you very much All right one more time for For our winner and Elaine. Thank you very much All right. Our next one. We're just gonna go move along Javier Zamora wrote solito, which is a memoir. He was born in El Salvador in 1990 when he was six years old his father fled El Salvador for due to the US funded Salvador and Civil War His adventure is a 3,000 mile journey from his hometown. We honor him for his memoir solito Javier Zamora Let's see. I welcome back Justin DeMann who accepts the award for the anti-essentorship award is Netta C. Crawford for the Pentagon Climate change and war charting the rise and fall of US military emissions Netta is also the author of accountability for killing moral responsibility for collateral damage in America post 9 11 2013 it was published And so the anti-sensorship award Netta C. Crawford for the Pentagon Climate change and war charting the rise and fall of US military emissions and accepting is Justin DeMann before we Talk very briefly about Netta Crawford's book. I want to return to Darryl Pinkney because his book is just that good and That was very brief no disrespect Emil. I know I want to keep it moving but I'm gonna say a little bit more about Darryl Pinkney's book and I'm going to urge you all to read it and This citation For come back in September a literary education on West 67th Street, Manhattan and Darryl actually couldn't be with us today because he is in England as was Ms. Bonwo Ayanna Bonwo So before we get to Netta Crawford's anti censorship Let me read this citation stepping back a bit to Darryl's wonderful book. How fortunate we are To have Darryl Pinkney's love so generously offered in these pages elegant vivacious supremely confident and yet beguilingly Vulnerable to immerse oneself as a reader into come back in September is to submerge Into a great river of longing and wonder of knowledge itself The sparks the fire the eventual enveloping inferno of knowing The lucky and unlucky happenstance seemingly random intersections of occurrence becoming synchronicity Producing flames of knowledge burn everywhere as readers We are invited into a very private and intimate space of close talk and Even closer kinship Pinkney's gifts as a writer are in such abundance Throughout the prose is almost luxurious in its splendor reading With an open heart. We are welcomed to a world of luminous discovery Unfolding in the mind of a young man at the beginning of intellectual adventure Getting to The anti censorship award. It's an it's an infrequent award. We don't give it out every year But this was very important I'm sure most of you agree That attention On the Department of Defense since they're spending your money You don't mind right That's 50% of discretionary spending in the federal budget. All right, so the last You know the one that we're currently Spending right was nearly a trillion dollars And who did they name it after why they named the defense budget after? Mr. Enhoff mr. James Enhoff of Oklahoma who you probably remember once threw a snowball on the floor of the Senate to prove that the global warming didn't exist Yes, he stood there in 2009 through snowball on the floor of the Senate and said how can the global warming exist? It's snowing outside in Washington, D.C. So the largest Polluter the one who's responsible for the greatest number of carbon emissions in the world today on the planet Is the Department of Defense? right over 700 military bases in Your name 270 gallons of fuel are burnt By the Department of Defense every second 970,000 gallons of fuel per hour 23 million gallons of fuel per day The Air Force was the consumer of the largest Department of Defense fuel and expense 85% of its annual budget to deliver the fuel of Which only six percent is part of their annual budget and more than 75 percent of the Department of Defense fuel today Is used for transporting and conveying fuel Prior to its final destination and as I mentioned the Department of Defense is the largest institutional consumer of energy worldwide and Vis-a-vis the Paris Accords and other climate agreements, although the Congress and your favorite Newscasters and folks on the editorial pages didn't bother to mention. They don't have to report their emissions Vis-a-vis these these climate agreements. They're given a loophole. So they don't have to talk about what they do 270 gallons of fuel per second globally students of history Will recall the off quoted January 17th 1961 speech by Eisenhower where he Warns of the military-industrial complex But it was during those very hours that Patrice Lumumba was assassinated and Eisenhower was very enthusiastic about that as a matter of fact as he's delivering his speech They're killing Lumumba and Frank Carlucci is Driving the car with Lumumba's body the man who would later form the Carlisle group an Investment consortium led by George Herbert Walker Bush So this reveals some of the Jekyll and Hyde character Not only of United States foreign policy But of all of us here and what it is We say about ourselves and what it is that the United States government is actually doing Now very few people obviously are willing to take on the task of Confronting This particular issue particularly since the lion's share of the budget Every year goes to the Department of Defense and I never heard any argument about that on the floor of the Senate. Did you? Billions of dollars are spent Trying to convince you and I that the two parties are at each other's throats and indeed there are issues at which are they are in complete discord the fact that child poverty rose it doubled in the last year is Unquestionably attributable to the intransigence of the Republican Party But when it comes to spending money at the Department of Defense, there's absolute unanimity There's no debate about that and so these are some of the Reasons and reasonings that informed our decision that before Columbus to prevent the anti to present the anti-centorship award to Nita Crawford Who couldn't be with us today? She also like Daryl is in England teaching at Oxford University But she did send this message Thank you for this honor The military has understood Climate change very well Indeed paid for significant research in the field since the 1950s But although the Pentagon is The United States single largest energy user the military have not looked at their emissions as a contribution To climate change with the reference I was making to their loophole that they don't have to report in the Paris Accords and other agreements I write because I believe that good arguments can make a difference and Challenge the accepted wisdom and offer alternatives and again Thank you and know that I am honored to be in such good company. Nita Crawford so before Bringing Tonya Foster to the stage. I want to say a few words about the woman we honor with the Walter and Lillian Lowenfeld's criticism award Many of you know but is not certainly well known that Bell Hooks actually began in publishing as a poet And in fact her first book a chap book and there we wept was Distributed by the before Columbus Foundation long before the American Book Award going back to the late 1970s Small book chap book published by Golemics during Bell Hooks lifetime One of the very few honors that she received was the American Book Award in 1991 for yearning race gender and cultural politics now I spoke earlier about Honesty, you know the veracity of writers who Deal with themselves and illuminate our world thusly Bell Hooks was One of the most courageous in this regard a woman of tremendous courage and fortitude and The light of her mind the light of her mind which continues to illuminate some of the darkest corners of American life and around the world and one of the very very few in The academic world to call out other academics on their failures to Remain in some kind of sonnets or harmony with the masses of Black and dark-skinned people who continue under duress state-sponsored murder and She paid a dear price for that so I'm very happy to welcome Poet and educator Tonya Foster to accept the award for Bell Hooks and to offer some more insight and some more description of this extraordinary Theretician poet and writer who we honor today So please welcome Tonya Foster Begin one Justin. Thank you for this invitation It's an honor to stand here and Acknowledge and celebrate Bell Hooks One of the things that happened Shortly before I got this invitation was I taught a class and on this particular day I teach six hours and So there's a class I'm teaching called feminist imaginaries And I came home and for some reason I kept thinking about Bell Hooks And I thought well, you know what's going on So I there's a quote of hers that I had about About interdependence It then was some point in that day. I was in my graduate class I said, we're gonna pause for a minute and I want to know how you are And the students kind of looked at me like I said well Let's talk about what you're bringing with you in this study of feminist imaginaries In part because the idea of compartmentalization of the various ways we have of knowing are actually tools for organizing us for separating us and For disallowing Precisely what hooks called for Was which was that the work of the institution or within these academic spaces Needed to also be work that happened outside those spaces and so I just I wanted to start there and so I got home and I sent this quote from Hooks to the students Not clear on why she was on my mind And it was her birthday. It turned out And Shortly after I think the next day I got an email from Harriet Mullen Saying Tanya has Justin DeMong's Sent an email to you to ask you to accept this award for For Bell hooks. I'm like, no, but I'm so glad to hear from you Harriet and immediately after Justin's email came and so there was a There was a kind of beautiful at least in my mind synchronicity That That had space in the classroom and in my own thinking about hooks Now I'd like to start with a poem of hers from Appalachian elegy Poetry in place number six Listen little sister angels make their hope here in these heels Follow me. I will guide you careful now. No trespass. I will guide you word for word mouth for mouth all The holy ones embracing us all our kin Making a home here renegade marooned lawless fugitives grace these mountains We have earth to bind us the common and between us can never be broken vows to live and let live This is a poem written by Bell hooks whose given name was Gloria Jean Watkins In a 2017 interview with Silas how she responds to house's questions about an Erica young quote to change one's name is the first act of the poet and the revolutionary Now hooks responds to this. Well, I Respond to that quote by you know recognizing that names have power In the name I was born with really does Gloria Jean given to me really reflects how much my parents wanted me to be a Very feminine southern bell type girl and I think that in order to find my voice and use it I Had to use the name of my great-grandmother on a maternal side Bell hooks in order to bring a self into being that my parents and my home Were not nurturing She goes on to explain why she chose of course not to capitalize her chosen name Well, you know people forget that early on in the late 60s and early 70s Especially among people engaged with feminism There was all of this talk about getting rid of the ego You know, we weren't just engaged with feminism We were engaged in all these eastern religions sexual liberation and the whole idea of divorcing one's self from the ego Paying attention to who is speaking was you know politically incorrect The point was to listen to what people were saying So lots of people in those days engaged with feminism use pseudonyms of or different names in my case, you know and And she goes on in this terrific essay but our interview rather now in contra distinction to the American cult of competition Hooks as critic as theorist as poet as feminist as being as mensch Navigating a world on fire and in distress Calls on us in our shifting and varied configurations She calls on us. She says we have to be aware of the extent to which liberal Individualism has actually been an assault on community When the genuine staff of life is our Interdependency is our capacity to feel both with and for ourselves and other people She asserts that the true work of love and later in her life She she said that she had become a kind of priestess of love But the true work of love is just so hard It requires integrity That there be a congruency between what we think say and do She Bell hooks though gone on as we say where I'm from Still insist through the over 30 books and the various recorded lectures through all the students She taught directly and indirectly on a continue. She insists on a continuous refusal of the easy and murderous Compartmentalizations that marketing and branding demand We are multiple and various Even within the cells we are told to think we are Thank you Bell made Gloria for insisting that we attend to the material in ethical possibilities and consequences of our theories of our Figurations of our critical and creative articulations Thank you One more time for Tonya Foster for Bell hooks You know, I didn't realize that Bell hooks wasn't her real name in there like a use of pen names It's very calm. I used the term amok am ok because it means to be thrust in a murderous frenzy Which is a great metaphor for me, but I learned something this this pandemic. I I went to I finished med school this pandemic meditation school and I I learned to control a sense of that anger that I had and the final awardee I've been listening a lot to her audible book I love a broad margin to my life where that means I get to listen to Maxine Hong Kingston Talked me to sleep at night and it it has sort of changed my my direction or my feeling about what my words mean and so our last award is the Lifetime Achievement Award and To introduce the winner Maxine Hong Kingston Let me introduce Colleen lie the associate professor of English at UC Berkeley who will introduce our award winner Colleen so hi everybody Thanks for staying Sean Wong was meant to be here today to introduce the winner of this Lifetime Achievement Award, but he came down with COVID and so I'm here in this place Why me I'm actually one of those pesky critics of literature not a creator of literature And my only claim to fame is that I walk the same halls of a building That Maxine Hong Kingston taught in as well as Ishmael read for many years that is at the English department at UC Berkeley Now read of course founded the before Columbus Foundation 1976 and 1976 was also the year that Kingston published her first book as you'll soon hear about So now 47 years later, we've come full circle So now I'm just gonna read you what Sean was going to say because his words are beautiful pretend I'm Sean now in the In the early 70s, you could count the number of books in print Written by Asian American writers on one hand, and we certainly did not occupy a seat at the big table of American literature Our published books had gone out of print and the writers lived a life of obscurity No one had read Dono Kata's no no boy Lewis choose eat a bowl of tea or the short stories of he say Yamamoto and Toshio Mori and Then an astounding thing happened in 1976 Maxine Hong Kingston published the woman warrior and the critical and commercial success of the book Met for many Asian American writers working the margins that someone had at least moved a chair closer to the big table Since that time Maxine Hong Kingston has won nearly every literary award available One might say the before Columbus Foundation is a little late to the party or for the kind of guest that doesn't know when to leave The party and stays too late Whatever the case I look at it as an award given to a writer by writers, which makes us different I've been using one of Maxine Hong Kingston's book in my classes at the University of Washington for years And that's her novel tripmaster monkey his fake book It hasn't received the kind of notice her books her other books have Why is that? It's a novel about literary Asian America Had Kingston published a novel about literary New York critics would have lauded its publication Because it would have confirmed what everyone perceived as the literary canon that didn't include us. I Remember telling one of my graduate students when the book came out in 1989 that it was still possible to read every Asian American book In print in America, and it would have taken her just a few weeks to do so Kingston's main character in that book women are seeing as a Chinese American writer And if you know Asian American literature and its writers you were able to read tripmaster monkey and recognize Who many of the people were in the story or know the origins of some of the stories? Karen Yamashita and her novel I hotel another novel about literary Asian America calls Kingston the godmother of Asian American literature so true The before Columbus Foundation is here to not just celebrate a writer and her books But a member of the family who tells our story and we can say there I am in this book Thank You Maxine for giving us a seat at the table of American literature. Thank you everybody this award Means a lot to me especially That it was presented by Sean Wong This means that there is some raw pro Schmont coming Among writers who were arguing Who do those stories belong to and who is? Authentic in other words who is true and And and on this level who is a Chinese and who is Chinese American? And for Sean and I We were on Opposite sides of this argument and So his words today means that there is Raw pro Schmont if not reconciliation Thousand years before Columbus Chinese ships sailed here and they came to Turtle Island and In the in those days the Chinese Exploration ships carried They carried artwork They brought the culture of the Middle Kingdom As far as they could go so those ships were loaded with sculptures and scrolls and paintings musical instruments drums compasses and and When they got here To Turtle Island the culture that they found here That they received was This was a land that where women were the most powerful and actually Here they came to Turtle Island, but they called it the land of women and And what impressed them was There was no war and No taxes came then They're maybe about 30 years ago Earl and I were Living at the Grand Canyon and we went to visit the Hopes and One of the Hopi women was showing us around I thought look look up there they they have curved roofs and In the curved roofs there are Ceramic or clay sculptures of animals and People and they're traveling on these curved roofs and I said oh we have those too and And then she said well what village do you come from? What tribe are you from? I said oh no no no no no I I'm I'm talking about China and And she said oh we came from there 5000 years ago We came across five rocks and then I said wow Five rocks What baby the islands of Hawaii, and then they got here And then Years later I In in China I Saw Everywhere you could find these everywhere. They're sculptures I think they're made out of bronze or iron and and they're turtles and They they actually they look like Volkswagen bugs. They're about that same size and And on their backs is a Stella and and on on these Stilles on the backs of the turtles there's poems and What they say is that? Turtles turtles brought writing to China and And so So I think wow I'm looking at these at these roofs Both in China and at Hopi, and I think well there's The we must have gotten together somewhere And then a few years ago, maybe maybe about 30 years ago, this was in the 1980s and the cultural revolution was just ending and I was traveling with Leslie Marmon Silcoe through China. Oh, Tony Morrison was there too. We were we were traveling together and And Leslie was wearing Pancho and It had all kinds of Laguna Indian designs on it and and then we were looking at at rugs in China and She looks at them She says wow And she holds up her Pancho she holds up the rug and it's the same designs the same symbols And so she bought one of those rugs She's gonna bring it back And then we were at a Temple and there's there's these columns and The columns were turquoise blue and Chinese red with the white trims and Leslie says wow and then she goes like this and you see her earrings dangling down and they're the same as those columns and So then we looked at each other and we're saying wow and Then we're saying Yeah, there was a rainbow bridge and the rainbow bridge is a two-way street And so anyway that just shows how we are connected or Even as bell hooks the Buddhist would say we are one and Shakespeare reminds us that kin and kindness and Come from the same roots. Oh as living treasure of Hawaii Thank You Maxine and congratulations For the Lifetime Achievement Award and I know that because I read I Love a broad margin to my life a rider doesn't die until they're They run out of words right you're gonna keep the next book is coming out soon right We hope we hope anyway That was our last award. Thank you very much for being here Thank you very much for those of you at home watching remember the before Columbus Foundation in your will and your donations Thank you very much for watching. Thank you for these 44th Anniversary Awards we will be back next year keep reading keep writing keep fighting for diversity and inclusion My name is Emil Guillermo. Thank you very much