 Well, good afternoon, and as our fearless leader president, Levina Holmes said, I'm Jane Williams, and I am a member of the San Francisco Alumni Chapter. And I have been with this sorority for almost 50 years now. And I'm very honored to serve as the moderator for our eighth annual Bay Area Authors Speak Out, and really honored to be amongst these wonderful authors and artists and just beautiful, beautiful black women. With us today are, and you can see their photos on this screen, is Dr. Sara Ladipo Menica, Marissa Gabriel, and Francine Thomas Howard. And each of them will present their works with us and share their works with us. And I will be asking them a few questions. And then we will have a Q&A with the audience. So as they're presenting, you can kind of think of some very inspiring questions to ask of our panelists. And each of our panelists came to their writing craft and passion for the arts and literature through different journeys and paths. But as you will hear, each of them also share a similar voice that in their work expresses the wisdom, the strength, the power, the vulnerability, and the sensuality of African-American women and women of the African diaspora in a historical and modern day sense. So I think you'll see a nexus between their work, even though each one is quite different. So we'll begin our conversation today with Sara. Sara Menica is a daughter of Nigerian and British parents. Sara spent her childhood in Nigeria and has lived and traveled around the world. And fortunately, she has made her home in San Francisco. Dr. Menica holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and teaches literature at San Francisco State University. In addition to her writings as an essayist, short stories, and public speaker, she has active in various civic and professional organizations, including being on the board of directors of the Museum of the African Diaspora here in San Francisco. Sara's first book, Novel, Independence, was published in 2008 and has received several international recognitions. Her most recent book, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, which are the props, has received numerous rave reviews and acknowledgments, including being shortlisted for the distinguished 2016 Goldsmiths Prize, a quote, reward for fiction that breaks the mold. And Sara has certainly broken the mold with this work and we're very proud of her. So let's begin. I'm gonna begin with an obvious question and each of you will be getting the same questions so you can be thinking about it. You're gonna start out and how would you describe the story of Like a Mule bringing ice cream to the sun? And what inspired you to do this work? Well, I first want to say thank you so much to this fabulous sorority for inviting us. It's a great honor for me to be here with my fellow authors and thank you to all of you for coming. It's great to be here and it's great to be in San Francisco's main library, which is just so wonderful. So thank you also for hosting us. So Like a Mule bringing ice cream to the sun took me about a month to memorize my own title. It is the story of, well, let me tell you a story. Let's say, let's just imagine a woman. Her name is Mariah De Silva and she is on the cusp of 75 and she's a fabulous woman. It's not hard to imagine a fabulous 75-year-old woman because I see some women that look, I know there's one woman that's a few decades older and she looks like she's 75, so she's a fabulous woman and she is a retired professor and she likes to spend her time in San Francisco going on walks and meeting neighborhood friends and friends from across the years and as she meets a friend, she'll often talk about what sounds like a very glamorous international life. She lived in India, she lived in France and some people might not actually believe her when she says I met with Mrs. Gandhi or I went to Buckingham Palace for tea, but she is the former wife of an ambassador and so these stories are actually true. She also loves to drive and she has a car that she has named Buttercup and it's a fast sports car. So she's larger than life and she's a very sensual woman as well and she, towards the beginning of the story, she has a fall and this shakes all her certainties. She's very independent and she has a fall and you have to read the rest of the book to see what happens, but it's essentially a story of her life and her unusual set of friends in San Francisco which include a woman who is homeless and a Palestinian shopkeeper. In terms of inspirations for the story, I love what Toni Morrison says which is if there is a story that you want to read and cannot find, go write it. So that is what I attempted to do with, well, both of my novels and I wasn't finding very many books about older women and almost no books about older black women and these are the stories that I want to read so that was the inspiration and while I wasn't finding these stories I was meeting fabulous women with incredible stories so that was part of the inspiration. Well, you mentioned Dr. Maria's friends in the book and the characters and her friends are so charismatic and interesting, it feels like you know them or you can say, oh, this is so and so as you're reading through the book and I actually read it twice because I read it again last night because after I heard your presentation at Moad I got a different perspective of your book that I had missed the first time that I read it. So were your characters based on true life people? Well, I think, you know, my fellow writers can answer that as well and I think as writers as we walk around the world we're observing, we're eavesdropping and so all of my characters, all of my stories are in some way inspired by people that I come across. I think there's also a little bit of me in probably most of my characters and I think also, you know, I was really intrigued to read about Francine's work and Mosse's work as well and you can correct me if you're wrong but I think there's a very strong oral tradition that feeds your work. Certainly there's a strong oral tradition that feeds my work and so yeah, this is also something else with behind my characters. So listening and listening to stories, those stories told to me or that I overhear bits of it make their way into my work. So your story takes place in San Francisco and actually Dr. Morell lives close to a neighborhood where I live in San Francisco and she's very, she loves the city and the people in the city and the vibrancy of San Francisco. Maybe not close to Fess but maybe she would pass on that but could the story have been told in any of the other cities that you have lived around the world and throughout the country or San Francisco really something special that you chose as your scene? I think in the last few years I have been writing much more about where I am based, where I've lived for the past 20 years and I grew up in Nigeria and as you said my mother's British so in terms of where I come from and nationalities, those are my nationalities but I have an African-American son and so this is also home to me even though under the current administration I am still an alien, something, whatever, I still claim American-ness because I live here and so the issues that are happening here they affect all of us so I think I was really, after writing my first novel which was set in West Africa, in Nigeria and in Oxford, England I was really ready to write a story here. Well it's very special and the title that you finally memorized how did you come up with that? So I don't know about you but I'm always drawn to titles that leave room for the imagination so titles like Name of the Rose or Toni Morrison's Latest One God Bless the Child, God Help the Child I keep confusing it with the song but just leave room for the imagination so when I was finishing this book I was reading a poem by an American poet, Mary Rufal and her poem is entitled Donkey On and in the last stanza of the poem the character in the poem is handed an extra year of life we're not quite sure by whom but it could be God and the last stanza of the poem goes like this she's being given this extra year of life and the last stanza goes the only question is how to spend it so I carry it on my back like a mule bringing ice cream to the sun so again I've just said leave room for the imagination but for me this image, the imagery and the way that it kind of speaks to the brevity of life bittersweetness of life it seemed somewhat appropriate to the story that I was trying to tell now I'm going to, there might be a longer answer than we have time for but your publishing was done by a African and European publisher and not a traditional American, United States publisher and was that done purposefully or just out of necessity so I chose to publish with Kassava Public Press which is a Nigerian press and actually I haven't thought about this for a while but Walter Mosley was someone who has really touched me in terms of the way he thinks about publishing and who gets to publish stories and so forth I won't go into his story now but I will say that I became very aware of the way that publishing works for a lot of African writers in that a lot of stories written by Africans are published by American or European publishers which is absolutely fine but often what happens is that the stories are not available in the continent and so I always said that if I was to publish a second book and if I were able to I would like to give world rights to a Nigerian publisher that would then sell them so rather than all of the rights being sold to Africa to have them in the position to sell rights to other places which is what's happened with this book and it's absolutely fantastic and it's not just an altruistic decision I love this book cover it's not a baobab tree or a sunset or all the zebras and giraffes all the other stereotypes that one might think of which in the past have found their way to book covers so it's really exciting for me to have a publisher that gets what I'm trying to do and I don't have to feel that I have to explain things all the time and again linking this back to someone like Toni Morrison who talks about she doesn't feel the need to explain and so similarly that was something that was important for me Well, can you share some of your readings your work with us today? So I thought I would read two pages the opening paragraph so you get a sense of my main character and then I thought I would read a little passage later on in the book and it's a bit of a downer of a passage but I've been thinking a lot about what's happening in the world literally in the last few days in cities that I know well in London, a recent incident in Italy and I watched Do the Right Thing last night again and there's a lot of pain in this world and I just thought I would read a passage that sort of speaks to that as well So the first paragraph you are meeting Mariah De Silva for the first time and she lives in San Francisco and this is her talking about where she lives The place where I live is ancient old but sturdy that's what our landlady tells us 500 Belgrave is so strong apparently that it stood the 1906 earthquake didn't even burst a single crack that's the way my landlady says it but between you and me I wouldn't bet on history repeating itself that's the reason why I live on the top floor for if this building collapses then at least they won't have far to dig me out of course I don't wish any harm to my neighbors especially not to the gentlemen living just beneath me as for the sullen woman on the ground floor who insists on calling me Mary because she finds Mariah too hard to pronounce well that's another story but I wish even her no harm you know I'd like to imagine that when the big one strikes we will all be gathered at my place enjoying a glass of Sauvignon blanc and we'd ride the whole thing out and live to tell the tale but who knows you know when the earth finally decides that it's tired or fidgeting and it needs a proper stretch I might be the one walking downstairs and if that's the case then the only survivors will be my books hundreds of them to keep each other company so that's the opening paragraph and I'm going to skip to chapter 8 where she's still in her kitchen and she is thinking about northern Nigeria where she comes from and grew up one morning as I stood in my San Francisco kitchen drinking coffee I opened my newspaper to find on the cover an aerial shot showing bodies in joss wrapped in brightly colored Ankara prints from a distance they looked almost beautiful scattered like crayons in a jumbo sized box until I read the headline and I peered closer and I saw that some of the bodies were splattered and many soaked in a deeper red not belonging to the original fabric people ought to have been safe up there where they hid in the trees where we used to hide as children but these mad people had chased them even there before smoking them out some burning as they fell from the branches the date was September 11, 2001 I started sending money back home to the orphans even though I couldn't always be sure whether the money would reach those most affected it felt better to be doing something rather than nothing for how was it possible that this had happened in my home city the place where I had grown up the place where I once described as the warmest most generous place on earth where parents routinely took it upon themselves to look after everyone else's children or discipline them if need be the place where one always cooked more than the number of people in one's household in case others dropped by the place where old people were never relegated to stuffy barracks to sit for hours waiting for death the place where vegetable sellers routinely gave their loyal customers a dash of several guavas or a small kalabash of tomatoes for the evening stew something small for free the place where people said sorry whenever someone tripped or fell or graced themselves because that was the linguistic mirror of a culture based on empathy having nothing to do with who was at fault and the place where Muslims celebrated Christmas and Christians broke the fast during Ramadan with their Muslim brothers and sisters the place where grown men held hands and grown women walked arm in arm the place where the term cousin was never used because all cousins were brothers or sisters the place where Sundays were spent visiting friends and relatives the place where weddings and funerals and naming ceremonies and baptisms and graduations and independent celebrations and governor's parties were lavish and celebratory the place where everyone knew your family the place where the type of atrocities you read about in history class concerning the Germans, the Russians, the Japanese the Chinese, the Nicaraguans, the Boers all those foreign people was never supposed to happen to you or to your loved ones ever until one day it did and worse beautiful thank you well next we have Maurice Sia Gabriel and Maurice is a shining example of the generation of young socially conscious writers poets, lyricists and artists that have captured the emotion, the spirit, the beauty, the challenges the sensuality of black women in today's world a Bay Area native, Maricia grew up in an environment of art, culture and black political and social consciousness and she bravely and poetically articulates her life journey in her first book, I Twirl in the Smoke I Twirl in the Smoke is described as a collection that quote traces one woman's story from youth to motherhood from pain and insecurity to self-confident and self-actualization Maricia is a graduate of Howard University where she received her BA in French in anthropology and Middlebury College in France where she received her master's degree in French language and literature she describes herself as an educator, speaker poet, author and Afro-Caribbean Frankelphile and most importantly she is the proud mother of two beautiful daughters so Maricia I'm going to ask you that same question if you would give us the pleasure of briefly describing your book and what inspired you to do your writing Thank you for that beautiful introduction first very poetic so what inspired me to write this book when I was in I'll just start with the title and where the image came from when I was in high school a student from Cal came to my class and she was Haitian and she talked about the Haitian Revolution and just gave us all the information that she could to inspire us and we quickly became close friends and she became kind of like a mentor to me and one time I came over her house and she had a sage stick, a smudge stick and she was burning it and she was twirling around and I was in awe of this image and I asked her why she was doing it and she was trying to clean some things and she was talking about some past life experiences and how in the past life she was her mother's mother and apparently she'd done something to her mother and it was affecting their relationship this life it was all so magical in terms of what she embodied and what she brought and taught and so that image of her twirling in the smoke basically her trying to cleanse and repair and come to terms with some things in her life captured what this book was for me me trying to cleanse some memories capture some things and come to term with some events in my life and some people have remarked like they're amazed that I could remember so much although some people will say that all memory is fiction but to the extent that I could to the extent that it's true for me, for my memory I do have a long memory and part of this book is trying to get rid of some of that memory putting it somewhere where it's there to be learned from but I don't have to carry it anymore so that was a part of it at the time that I wrote this book I was teaching at a continuation high school so a lot of my students were dealing with a lot of trauma a lot of them learning disabilities they were facing a lot of their peers were dying a lot of some of my students died so at the context where this book is me living in West Oakland and seeing a lot of those what do they call them those altars from street altars from people being murdered working in a high school with a population that's highly traumatized and myself vicariously becoming traumatized being a single parent of at that time very small children and trying to you know when you become a parent trying to face your childhood differently as well the memories of your childhood differently and your own relationship with your parents so all of that is the context for this book so it deals with a lot of loss and then also how I respond and regain from that well it's a deeply personal story a personal book and in your preface you write quote I wrote this book so I could hear my voice I wanted to feel complete if I had kept these words in my journals where they began my life would have felt inert and incomplete so did your writing satisfy that urge to hear your voice it did it satisfied it and it also rekindled my love for music so it channeled me into or tunneled me into yet another stage of development where I could really feel satisfied at hearing myself and you talked about your memory you recollect a lot about your childhood and I was really impressed with your ability in your writings to reflect on experiences going back to kindergarten I don't think I remember anything about kindergarten except sandbox but you expressed very socially and in people feelings as a child and injustices that were incurring in the black community and so you really had a sense of self at a very early age and how do you account for that and what influenced that well I was born into the black panther party both of my parents were my father's the former minister of culture the black panther party and my mother and teacher in the party so I was raised with born into the preschool the day care and then after the party ended I went to the summer school and my mother was constantly telling me narrating I guess when we would go see a movie she would point things out to me about so I guess she was constantly engaging me in critical thought process with the world and art in the media your mother is incorporated in your book and the end of your book you have an interview with your mother which I thought was very interesting I hadn't seen that in any readings that I have encountered and it was an interview that you had very personal interview you have with your mother and it's almost like asking her what she felt about the book and asking for her was it asking her approval or were you getting her I think I kind of wanted her voice a little bit and part of it was because when I started the book there was a lot more that involved her and she gave me permission to include those things there was a lot of sensitive material that the community of peers do like a community editing for me before I had a professional proofreader so since it included information that was sensitive about her life although it was also my life I felt it was important because I couldn't disguise it I felt it was important for her to at least say yay or nay or I'm too shy about that or too I don't want that revealed in a way some people view it maybe as a critique of my childhood in certain aspects or it shows certain things that are sensitive or hurtful from childhood so I wanted her also to be able to have a say in it as well since it does reveal there's some incomplete and hurtful things that took place that was very maybe therapeutic too so your publishing experience was different than Sarah's more of a kind of a do-it-yourself self-publishing experience so you want to share a little of that with us like a gorilla publisher I hired my friend Laura Amin to do the cover and the layout I hired a proofreader to help me with the process of it, of the writing I then sent the, electronically sent the material to a printer in Los Angeles and that was the process of publishing my book it was getting every piece I hired somebody oh I also had a coach I outlined that though also in the introduction that I had a coach kind of a life coach and he helped me get through some maybe barriers that I had that might of because I was also a working mother as I told you a working single mother so the coach helped keep me motivated and have the momentum and carve out the time not motivated I was motivated but he helped me with timing issues and self-esteem issues around presenting my voice to the public so your book was published in 2011 I believe I believe so it was and since that time you've been involved in other projects and activities and aspects of art you want to describe where your journey has come over the years so having written this book I accompanied my father to Mexico to because he was participating in a Zapatista conference there and the director found out that I was a poet asked me to introduce my father from that point I wrote a poem to introduce him and then I was also asked to perform at a New Year's event there they paired me with some musicians we practiced maybe two hours tops and then we performed a couple of my pieces and I was like that's it I'm making music it was such a love fest between myself and those musicians it's on YouTube as well if you'd like to see it I was amazed we were all amazed and people I asked them what music what kind of music was genre of music and they said we don't know we were just following you so I said well I'm gonna try and get some more people to follow me well why don't we follow you and hear some of your work okay well I'll start off with the olive green ribbon and do you want to use the microphone or is that fine well this is okay because this is for the little it's a little short story this is a book of poems and prose so this is a little short story my grandmother took a scrap of olive green material from the floor and fiddled with it under her sewing light I stood obediently by as she stuck a safety pin through it here you go she said as she turned from her machine and squinted her eyes to find the right spot to pin the ribbon on me I was wearing my favorite t-shirt a light blue baby with the photo of me and my father printed on the front in the photo I was sitting on his lap with my arm around his neck making a snaggle tooth grin I love this shirt and I wore it every chance I got so it was auspicious to me that I would also wear it the day that my grandmother pinned the olive green ribbon on me it was 1981 and I was in the first grade the evening news was saturated with updates about black children being kidnapped in Atlanta it seemed like police were finding bodies of missing children every day beside freeways and streams and drag from the woods I tried to disconnect myself from what I was hearing but it was difficult those children were all black and so was I our color felt like more than a coincidence and I was deeply afraid I played disassociation games to distinguish myself from them I was a girl, they were boys I was in Oakland, they were in Atlanta I hoped that was enough to keep me safe but I also had a little brother I couldn't help but wonder was he as safe as me in Atlanta? Would he be dead now? Anxiety gnawed away at me every day I was one of the first children at my school to wear the green ribbon I was proud to announce my solidarity with the families of murdered children I also felt that the ribbon had a special protective quality that would prevent me from being kidnapped so I wore my favorite t-shirt with the little green ribbon as often as I could eventually it became so much a part that I forgot I was standing for a cause I began to hear less about the murders on the news and the deaths of the children in Atlanta became normalized then one day a classmate ran up to me at recess, you're supposed to wear it the other way now she said I was puzzled, she'd never worn one I was the first in class to have it and now she was telling me how to wear it she saw the look on my face and proudly announced you wear it up like a smile now over, they found the killer and I'll just leave it there you can read the rest I have time for another? yes please I'll stay in my seat for that and as I said this is a book is a journey so I also go into I tried to give a little bit to myself as a woman without just looking at my mother and my children I tried to give some to myself so I wrote this poem and it was inspired by Sandra Cisneros, you bring out the Mexican and me and I wanted it to be an artifact I wanted it to be like if you were to find this poem on the street in like 20, 30 years in Oakland it would show you what Oakland was because Oakland's changing so much I was like I want something that's like an artifact and archeologists would be like oh this is what Oakland was so it's called you bring out the Oakland in me you bring out the rebel in me the dark velvet feline tender and fierce a beautiful black panther you bring out the West Oakland African in me the warrior queen who took burnt land and grew culture like forest on indigenous burial ground you are the one I try to stay home for maybe just maybe have another baby for allow you to enter my sacred spaces and pray at my altar before dawn you only you you bring out the 79th in Lockwood in me the 90 second in hillside the attitude that melts plastic and sets your libido on fire phonies get scared but you you bring it out and get ignited so I keep it lit 100% for you you bring out IET, Angola and Brazil in me the Atlantic in Caribbean sea the diaspora black in me the old mech stone heads with cornrows the Mayan comedic connection you bring out the and condom play in me the pentecostal high priestess in me I could lead thousands of slaves to freedom and still come home and surrender to you you bring out the black eyed peas and colored greens on New Year's day in me the starvation fast on Thanksgiving in me the no religion have sin in me the questioner of all things the answerer to my own intuition the creator of my own rhythm the pretty girl with ebony eyes the one that Stevie Wonder made songs about the one that lures tourists into ghettos, favelas and shantytowns you bring out the quilombos in me the angoletta and hyena and zinga in me you bring out the holy ghost hallelujah church on Sunday talking in tongues in me and it's just Friday afternoon I now pronounce you all mine I will paint your body in red ochre douse you in the fragrant scent of God's liquor you can play in my locks when we're done I will cross your heart with my beads of sweat anointed in lilac wine now everyone will know you are mine you my love only you can get this love the way an Oakland woman loves come let me show you now thank you thank you that's fabulous and that was featured at the Oakland Museum's exhibit Black Panther exhibit recently and wonderful thank you so last but not least Francine Thomas Howard and Francine's journey as we've heard as a full-time writer flourished after her successful career as a pediatric occupational therapist Francine earned her B.A. from San Jose State and master's degree from the University of San Francisco her love for writing resulted in turning remarkable stories of her family's history genealogy and oral history into writings which she had little thought of publishing but to all of our good fortune she wrote her first novel page from a Tennessee journal and submitted it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest which ultimately resulted in her being contacted by Amazon Press in 2016 Francine published her next novel The Daughter of Union County a historical fiction based on her own family's oral history and anecdotal information passed down over the decades as we will hear it is a spellbinding story spanning decades from reconstruction to World War II of a courageous African American family that maintains a deep family secret out of love for family and survival so Francine again we'd like for you to share a little bit about your story and how you were inspired to take on this 420 page journey so again first of all thank you so very much for inviting me to participate on this illustrious panel I feel very honored and very humbled to sit besides these very talented ladies the back cover of the book says the story is about a mother's love a father's legacy a scandalous family secret but there's more to it than that these words were written by my publisher but there's much more it's also a tale of betrayal of greed of racial passing of possible murder and a land grab on a gargantuan scale let me give you a little bit of the background of this story this story is based upon my late husband's family's oral history they were from union county they were from smack over in the early 1920s there was a humongous oil strike in smack over that strike occurred on my husband's family's land that's what inspired me to write this story um the the protagonist of the story the daughter of union county well as many of you know who have oral family histories one branch of the family has one side of the set of tales to tell the other one tells you something else as Susie swears that dress was blue that great great great grandma Isabelle wore and while Uncle Sam says no you know that dress was pink so different versions but in writing my husband's family's story about this awful land grab I focused upon a real woman in the book I called her Margaret one branch says that she was the the daughter of the white land owner and his white wife I called the wife uh birthday in the book but the other branch of the family and they are just as insistent they say no no no no you got it wrong she was really the daughter of the white land owner and his biracial house servant who I call Salome in the book Salome their family story says was a mixture of African American and Native American I've chosen the latter version of the story because I'm trying to balance all these various elements I'm getting from my in-laws but I've chosen her to be passing into the white world because it brings up a lot of decisions when this oil strike happened she and her two brothers she had two brothers who were just a a tad two brown skin to pass as white she was the right one they weren't but they were full siblings when this oil strike happened as you know with when there's a boom like the California Gold Rush or that Alaska Gold Strike in the Klondike everybody in the world rushes to get a piece of the action everybody wants to do what they can to grab some of that land what happened at Smack Over they wanted to become overnight millionaires let me just tell you that I'm not the widow of an overnight billionaire something happened but imagine if you were this young woman and you've inherited a large tract of land from your now deceased father the in-laws tell me that this spot of land in Arkansas was six miles long and a mile wide that's an awful lot of land especially when it's all jam packed full of oil now people were coming to get this oil but you know this was early 1920s it was Arkansas it was the time of Jim Crow black folks were not going to be allowed to keep the land that they owned I'm sure many of you out there have stories of land grabs but it was just the gargantuan nature of this land that was taken from this family if you were this young woman who has for all her world knows is white what do you do do you step into helping your brothers do you try to protect them by trying to take their land by deceit by fraud and most of all by threats of murder and in actuality some of my in-laws were killed because they would not sign you're this white woman what do you do do you help them or do you shrink yourself back into the land of white privilege and say nothing or do you try to straddle the two worlds can you meld your two positions who knows I don't know what I would have done and I ask what would you have done and that's the story of the daughter of union county well as you said you've acknowledged that your story is based on oral history oral history some real life historical events and some liberties for creative effect and some of the critics in this world of social media that everyone can be a critic some of the critics have criticized the historical accuracy of the book and so how do you respond to those critics if at all at last look I think I had some reviews how I respond is I don't read them because there's going to be five star reviews and one star reviews I figure I'm somewhere in the middle but as far as the truth of the story and you're right I've had a disguise a number of events and switch things around because I have in-laws to this very day I have a sister-in-law who is terrified and stirs in that pot she could be killed and this is June 2017 so yes I've disguised some events but the core truth of that family story is in this book I'd venture to guess that there's a lot of black folks black folks here who could tell a story of a relative or somebody they know who has passed or attempted to pass for white and I was really impressed with the non-scientific DNA tests that the midwives would use when a child was born to check behind the ear to see whether or not it was dark to see what color the baby would be when it grew up now we have the more scientific DNA tests and genealogies and finding your roots so how has that storyline resonated the passing the passing part of your story has how has that resonated with your audience and the readers I think that it's interesting I do have a sort of a wide readership in fact I've this book and with my previous two books they've sold sort of internationally and I wonder with questions like that because it interests me greatly I mean this passing story but people bought my books who live in India in Canada Australia China I mean everywhere and this story seems to resonate with them too that this is what people have done what African American people had to do to survive my husband whose story, family's story this is was a light skinned African American man but he only used that one time he told me to pass into the white world and that was to attend his father's funeral well the book has some kind of racy parts and there are some sexually explicit parts and many of them are very negative there are scenes of issues of rape and brutality not just with the black women in the book but also to the white women as well but you also showed strength and courage and a sense of love for family and that as well in the book with your character Salome and her husband and how they stayed together so how difficult was it for you to acknowledge the negative sexual history and encounters that occurred within your family you know I I and my editors at Amazon were very surprised to hear that because I in telling the stories of these people I was reflecting what to me was the reality of the 1870s the story starts in 1872 and this was a world in which white men dominated they held all the power even their white wives did not there defied them openly if they did there was a price to pay and it was that dominance and especially in the character Lord Henry Harden who was the wealthy farm owner who carried the arrogance of his belief of being descended from Dukes in England the British aristocracy he especially had a sense of command of power that he could do what he wanted to whomever he wanted because of who he was and from that is what stems the action of what others have said is this I think it was called gratuitous sexual violence I didn't see anything gratuitous about it at all yeah that was very powerful so with respect to your publishing experience which is again different than our other two authors but you want to give us a little description of your publishing journey I consider myself extremely fortunate as you can tell from this I like to write down family oral histories my first book was Page in the Tennessee Journal and that was the story of my grandmother and my three grandfathers in Tennessee into that book got novel into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest in 2009 and I was just hoping if I could just get to the quarterfinals I'd be so happy unbeknownst to me Amazon decided they had a plan they had a master plan they were going to take infants from this contest, non-winners and they were going to enter the field of traditional publishing Amazon has challenged traditional publishers and even though I didn't win the contest I did advance far enough to be noticed by a tremendous acquisitions editor Terry Goodman he picked up my book and he said I want you I got a telephone number a telephone call and an e-mail from him and of course I spent the whole summer thinking this has got to be a fake nobody really wants to publish my book and he convinced me that yes we want you so they published Page in the Tennessee Journal in 2010 it did extremely well and then they picked me up for this one and there's a third book called Paris and Wall so I've got three books published with Amazon and I feel very fortunate so would you share some of your story with us I shall, I shall this is going to be three pages and this is from the this is the last three pages of chapter two and this is from the point of view of the wealthy white farm owner he watched to be called Lord Henry Hardin because he's carrying this legacy of being descended from the British Duke and he has a problem his family came to the Americas in the early 1600s now we're in 1872 but his wife Bertha has not given him a living child in fact a month ago she's just miscarried their fifth baby and he's very worried I mean what's going to happen to his legacy there's no air a few months ago he was just delighted to discover that his black color colored servant Salome was pregnant with his baby and he's been living anxiously is she going to be able to deliver him a living child he's in the back room on his first floor of his mansion this is a little room off the kitchen called the birthing room and Salome has just delivered the baby and it's alive she's in there with the three other black women Nady Lou the midwife Georgia and Tessie but these women are all acting in a very odd fashion and Henry is not a man to tolerate any kind of disturbance in his path what he wants he wants so he's not happy so he's saying to us hand me the girl Henry stood he's waited these five minutes to get his first look at his daughter Nady Lou Georgia and even Tessie shook their heads in unison Nasa Nady Lou declared I'm aiming to say her eyes grew wide no more twaddle Henry walked to Nady Lou and held out his arms the midwife stood there like stone Henry laid his hands on the blue cover that his weavers to make just for this child Nady Lou stepped back with the babe in her arms she shook her head it's just that the child needs her mama's tip before Nady Lou faced sucking to her frown show me how to hold the baby Henry commanded Salome will feed her but not right now now give her to me Salome sniffles folded off the bed as she rolled to her side I can't, I just can't feed her Nady Lou women were beliving him again he had to tolerate Bertha but these others these colored servants never hand over the baby it's just it's maybe best if her mama first take a look at her oh the cry escaped Salome as she rolled on her back her face grimacing with each movement is something wrong with her she turned to Henry as she pushed up on her elbows Henry touched his chest where his crucifix was hung if he dared wear it he wanted fatherhood so long he never even considered his child his risk could be granted with a deformed child has a child been born with a hunchback or one leg shorter than the other perhaps water on the brain Henry pulled the warming wrap from his daughter's face and looked at the wriggling infant Nady Lou shook her head now Salome looked worried she rolled to her side and tried to slip her legs off the bed Georgia held her back the midwife turned to Salome it ain't never good when it comes out this cup like this Nady Lou kept her eyes away from Henry Henry looked at the women why all this commotion and now Salome appeared worried he turned back to the screaming baby who looked perfectly proportioned the baby girl's eyes opened and shut in the frenzy of flailing arms and legs her eyes they were blue like his own and her immigrant grandfather Tyrone O'Brien the baby's sprawling brought out the redness in her skin but underneath Henry could see this child was as white as he Nady Lou dared best past him still clutching the newborn and bit down to the new mother don't you fear it now Salome honey most young ones would come out looking like this they turned darker when it gets a little older she laid the child on the cot next to Salome her hair she got on her face reflected panic seemed to me like it's yellow but is it going to turn nappy she pleaded with Nady Lou not the wrong color eyes and straight hair too please lord hair what was Salome going on about she had tried her mind to deliver him a dead baby now she looked the picture of the perfect concerned mother what on the baby's hair Henry peered at the light colored fuzz that topped his daughter's head he turned back to Salome her own hair caught between light chestnut and oak brown swung in the long braid down her back Henry loved the way Salome's hair weighed between crinkles and curls allowing his fingers to unravel each strand peek behind the ear Georgia said interrupting his delivery true color come out there Nady Lou granted her she flicked the baby's ear uh-uh she grown same color Henry caught the midwife's glance to Salome Nady Lou looked as though the devil had run a foot race with her and won what was all this talk about hair and color does she have all her fingers and toes he demanded of the very confident Nady Lou ain't a thing wrong with this here girls body and Lord Hardinth it's just that she well sir she just don't look like no colored girl art what are you talking about Henry's day had been much too long his patience was in fuzzles but that wasn't it maybe Nady Lou at close to 40 was too old for this job would this child be able to walk and talk like a normal person his voice was rough he knew it had been a mistake to enslave me and allow colors to say their mind with too few consequences Nady Lou held out the infant to Salome the new mother slid down the bed her arms clamped around the curving sheet Nady Lou Henry turned his glare on the midwife and away from the cantank for Salome out with it woman tell me what you're starting on about or I'll dismiss you from the farm and make sure no other landowner and these parts hires you no Lord Hardinth ain't no need to be doing all that she turned from Henry to Salome I ain't keeping nothing from that is to say she plucked the baby from the bed and held out the bundle to him Henry gathered the child into his arms he struggled to keep the squirming blanket from slipping to the floor this definitely was not like carrying a five pound sack of rice well he couldn't keep his eyes off this baby what is the problem she don't look colored enough Salome raised her voice though she kept her eyes on the child a white looking colored girl ain't gonna live no life except one of misery Henry stared at the baby how white looking will this child be how white looking will this child be how power the midwife ran a finger over the baby's hair it might curl up a mite by and by but it ain't never gonna be real nappy now he moved to a soul she roamed the first fist full of dirt into a grave good without a glance at the baby's mother Henry headed for the door leading to the kitchen his daughter and his arms the Duke of Union Guards Well, thank you, thank you for that. And so I hope that everyone in the audience has been thinking about some questions and being inspired by what you've heard from these wonderful authors. And so we're going to have a period of some questions and answers. And we have a microphone. So does anybody have a burning question for any one of our authors? Marie, great. OK, this question is for Francine Howard. OK, so what is the reaction of your in-laws and your family members to this book? What kind of things have they said to you in response to the book? I think they've been all right, because I told them in the writing process that I would disguise enough of the events that they would not be immediately identified. I tried hard to do that. OK, we have a question over here. Reading Soros of the San Francisco Alumni Chapter and our guests, I wanted to ask the young lady in the middle about your reaction and your relationship currently with your mother after having written so many things about your past. How did that affect your relationship? And did she understand that you really just needed the opportunity to process and vent those things? And did she really come to an understanding of the fact that you are more than just being her baby? Thank you for the question. Some stuff hit home, so she actually cried about some things when she read it. I wrote it because I felt like I've been trying to say it for so long, and it wasn't being heard. So she heard it at that moment. But I realized when I wrote the book, I thought, like, oh, this is it. I'm now on the other side. But I realized that I hadn't touched the tip of the iceberg. It was the beginning of my healing journey. And so, actually, we didn't heal together. So currently, yeah, it didn't work out that way. But I was glad that I wrote it. I was glad that she was able to read it. And we were able to talk about those things at that time. Thank you. Question from one of our younger members of the audience. Hi. How long did it take all of you to write your books? Let's start with Sarah. Can I ask you, are you a writer? Depends. You know, that, for me, is one of the hardest questions to answer, because I'm never quite sure when a story begins. And for me, I started writing a story that had three main characters in it. And then it sort of changed and evolved. And it became this story. So I think I had 18 months that were quite intense focusing on it, but it could have been even longer. So that's a couple of years for a small book. And for me, some of the poems in my book were already written, and some things were half written when I decided. And because I was also working and taking care of kids, I feel like it took me longer than if I wasn't. But it took me about a year to do mine. Francine? Well, thank you for your question. In many ways, I don't feel like a real writer, because these stories are family stories that are given to me. All I have to do is write them down. So this one took me about a year. And that is actually relatively short for authors. So we hear stories of five to 10 plus years in writing a book. So that's very impressive. Do we have another question? OK, I'm questioning character development. How do you develop a character like when you meet somebody who seems unusual or quirky? Do you kind of take some notes about this person and maybe incorporate or find out more about them later? How do you develop characters? That's who Sarah is. You have interesting characters. I sometimes think I should take more notes than I actually do. But for me, a turning point for me in my writing, in some respects, was I had the immense privilege of doing a workshop with Anna de Villa-Smith. And I think as a writer, often, we are so much in our heads. And I did this workshop with her. And all the participants, she asked them to bring what they were working on. And most of the participants were actors. And I'm not. But I was working on a story about, at the time, it was a short story about a cleaner in an airport, a Nigerian woman, again, a woman sort of in her 50s. And I had in my mind that this woman, she worked in Seattle to coma airport. And she would greet service men and women as they came back. And she also had a child who was fighting at that time or in the military over in Iraq. And I didn't really have a strong, so I had this story. But it wasn't kind of all that compelling to me. And then Anna de Villa-Smith got every workshop person to do something. And she said to me, she tilts her head, Sarah, I want you to act this character for three minutes without words. I thought, she'd said before, what scares you the most? Dancing, singing, and I'm like, oh, everything scares me. But when she said, do it without words, that really scared me. But it was the most profound experience for me. Because in preparing for the workshop, I was walking around the house thinking about this character, thinking how am I going to act this character with no words. And after a period of a few days, the character then really became alive. And here was this Nigerian person. She was working in the airport. She's picking up trash. No one really sees her. No one knows her story. No one knows that her son is in the army. And it just came out. And so I think that was very pivotal in terms of thinking now with my characters. I walk around with them. And I talk to them. And I talk with them. And I act them, even though I can't act. That's been very powerful. And so I did that with my characters. And this is why most of my characters are in the first person. Most of the characters are quite invisible in society. And there was a certain point at which they all turned to me and said, Sarah, will you stop writing us in the third person? We need first person voices. Well, Francine, you have a lot of dialogue in your stories, in your book, a lot of conversation that occurs amongst your characters. And how did you get into that, your head, to articulate their conversations? I think it's just the opposite. I get into their heads. They're just there. And in the daughter of Union County, I knew the outlines of my husband's story. But of course, I didn't know, nor did he or any of the in-laws know anything about this Lord Henry Hardin, because he was died in 1898. And I didn't know if he had a wife or not. So I had to, those people just sort of had to appear. But character development is one of the elements that writers really struggle with. For me, I see the time, the historical context in which they live, I see their worldview, and I see them. And like my fellow author here, they become alive to me. And I see them walking and talking, conversing with one another, what they're wearing. And again, I just have to write it down. That's fine. I'd like to know what the difference, can you hear? Not well. Louder. I'd like to know the difference between journaling, prose, and vignettes. And how do you put it all together to be an interesting story to persons other than yourself? So the difference between journaling and poetry, and the, anyone tackle that, Steve? So because my book is so vulnerable and intimate, it is, in a sense, like a journal. But with journaling, of course, you're uncensored. Ideally, that helps you to be able to journal, or it's cathartic. When I journal, that's what it is. It's uncensored. It's cathartic. I just say whatever I want to say. But it's important for me that not to just spill out, to control it, to shape it a little bit so that it's not just blah to the public. So for me, that would be the difference between journaling and presenting a work that feels like a journal, but is not actually a journal. Did that satisfy what you were asking? OK. Let me ask a question about social media, and the proliferation and the use of social media and marketing your work. Because I know that all of you have websites, and YouTube, and Twitter, and Facebook, and all that. How do you cope with that? Is that something you embrace as a positive, or is it a burden? Sarah? I think it has its pros and cons. And I resisted social media until a year ago. And my publisher said, no way you have to do something. So take your pick. So I picked Facebook. And actually, over the last two months, it's been an interesting period for me. Because my first book, Independence, was made the mandatory read for all students in Nigeria applying to university. So this has been in Nigeria's pretty big population. So I've been receiving messages through Facebook and through my website that range from, you know, we love your book. It's inspired me to, your book really sucks. Or your book is too long, whereas the short cut. You know, please give me a summary. So for a writer, this is really interesting, because there's so many stories for me as I'm sort of eavesdropping and watching and seeing what people are saying. So, you know, but it's like Fantine was saying, in terms of the reviews, you get five-star reviews, you get one-star reviews, in terms, you know, so I don't take comments, you know, too personally. It's a privilege for me, it's humbling to have lots of people reading that first book. And so yeah, so I, but then the other thing about social media, I don't know how, you know, you feel about this, it can also be quite distracting. And so I have to be, but I find email quite distracting. I find people on the street quite distracting. It's part of life, right? So I draw on it as much as I can, but I also try not to get sucked into too much social media time. Well, Marisa, you use YouTube as one of your vehicles to... Yes, so I took a course on how to use social media to promote myself once I started making music, but it's the same concept I would imagine it can be transferred over for the writing. So I'm on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram. Then I have teenagers who keep me up to speed with it. They got me on Snapchat and it can be extremely distracting. Sometimes I just completely take a break. I haven't actually looked at my website in a while because I've been wanting to upgrade it and that's a process, changing things with the... So I get kind of like tired sometimes with it, but it has, and as far as the reviews of my book for me, it's been me asking people who've read it and who've told me, oh, I like your book. I'm like, okay, go put it on Goodreads, go put it. So all my reviews are great as a result. But is there, what was the specific question with the social media? No, just, you use it in a different way as your positive is marking for your marketing. Yes, as marketing. Marketing. And then there's newsletters, people get into, there's so much. Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot. Any other questions? My question is to Ms. Howard, but also I would like the other panelists to address it also. And it says, Ms. Howard, to what extent is your development of the theme of passing in your book based on your own family's history, but also the concept of double consciousness that W.E.B. Du Bois talks about and also whether or not you were inspired by the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemons issue. Thank you, interesting questions. The only passing that was done was in the in-laws family, and that was in my husband's immediate family, only he and his brother out of nine siblings were able to pass, and neither one of them chose to do it on a routine basis. I think it's a very deeply painful topic in the African American community, and I think it has been forever. Yes, I'm aware of Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson, but no, that didn't factor into my decision to go with the in-law, Branson said, she was passing as a white woman. And anybody else wanna chime in on that? I think this issue of double consciousness is an interesting one, and I think as women sometimes having this notion of triple consciousness, for me personally, it's been very interesting for me to have had the privilege of living in different parts of the world and to see how race is socially constructed in different parts of the world. The one context in which there would have been room for me to pass, not necessarily as white, but as colored, was in Southern Africa, and my husband is in Barbway and so that has a particular apartheid, the black Indian colored and white, and so particularly earlier on, closer to the time of independence, I was aware that people would look at me and see me as colored, and I would be very colored in the Southern African sense, and I would be very insistent on the fact that I am black in terms of not wanting to put myself in a privileged context. But just as you ask that question, there's another interesting layer to this notion of passing, which I've become more and more conscious of, which is for me the opportunity for me to pass as an African, and so I'm very conscious of the differences that mainstream society can sometimes try and forge between Africans and African-Americans, and particularly someone like me that has a British accent, in some ways, and someone who has a PhD and so forth, I can be put on a pedestal, I'm aware of this, and said to be different to African-Americans, and I think it's something that I feel a particular need to be very conscious of. I am black like anyone else, and I'm not better than African-Americans, which is a root that is often, I'm not being very articulate about this, but I think Africans, African-Immigrants, have to be very conscious of race in America and its roots, and what this means, we are no better, we are the same, and we all have particular fights that we need to fight together to make sure that equality is a reality in America. Question or Tavis? Yes, I just wanted to say excellent presentation, but my question is for Miss Francine Howard, but I guess, because I really don't know the time, John, did you think about how your audience, when you wrote, like starting back in 1870, because I know, I have to confess, I don't get to read as much as I used to when I was younger, before this thing came along. Did you know that? But I noticed that a lot of the younger people don't really read a lot of the older stuff, you know, like my first book, my first book I read was Black Like Me, you know? So, and I grew up reading all the older stuff and the history, you know, what's his name, Albert Herbert, the history of the Negro people's volumes one, two, three, that's the type of stuff I read when I was growing up, but I don't see that type of work being done anymore. So do you like, are you conscious of the timeframe when you make your work, just try to get younger readers and also what age group reads your books? Again, thank you for the question. When I write my stories, I feel a compulsion to tell the oral histories of the people I'm talking about. I feel that these people were so disenfranchised, both by in-laws in the Daughter of Union County and also in my first book, Page for Tennessee Journal. So I'm sort of driven to write down their stories more so than I'm conscious about who's going to read them. My audience appears to be across racial lines and it appears to be mostly, here you're right, people from, I'd say mid-30s up seem to be interested in this genre and my genre primarily is historical fiction. Thank you. But one more question here. Yes, I have a question for all three authors. First question is, I wanna ask if you're, are you familiar with these three authors that I'm gonna mention that only books that I read that really had a lasting impression on me within the last two decades. One of the authors was, I think it's named, the title of the book that he wrote is called, Visions for Black Men. It's author is named Akbar. That's the first one I'd like to draw, so if you're me with that author, named in a hyphen, I am, aka Akbar. And the title of that book that I read over two decades ago, a decade or whatever, two decades, it still had a lasting impression on me. The second one author is, Czech A.C.G.K.H.A. Miller named A.E.N.T.A. Last name, D.O.P. Czech A.A.N.T.D.O. I think it's in West Africa. He wrote two or three books that really, to this day still affects me, you know. And these books that I read, these books that I read affect me from a viewpoint of, the way I was raised in the South and reading the Holy Bible, you know what I'm saying? Because my mind said it's just locked in on nonfiction and stories that African Americans, you know, can relate to as far as, you know, our history, you know what I'm saying? And because back when I was growing up as a kid in Alabama in the 50s, 60s, there was very, either a little at all or very limited black movies or black history. And then there was so much isms of the ones that the powers that be that control our history. You know what I'm saying? That was leaving out a lot of stuff that I only knew in advance when I was going to a segregated school. You know what I'm saying? Where it's all black. You know what I'm saying? Before the Brown versus Relication bill was passed and that. Okay, then the third author is Francis Cress Welfing, Visions for Black Men. When I read those three books, and I kept going back over, you know what I'm saying? Because it was something about the spiritual, something I was going through, of truth, of what our culture and race have been through, through racism, through exploitation of, the European exploitation of African Americans. And through this one other book, I can't think of a name to title, I mean author, but it's called Be Betrayal of Africa. It was the author who was in Canada. He was in Canada. And when I read those books, and even right now, the only book all my life as a sibling, I mean as like maybe six years old, five years old, is the Holy Bible. My grandfather was a Baptist minister. And my mentor was a kid growing up to this day, with Donald Mallard, the King of Junior. And I can do the Bible all the day. A lot of what in Washington they went through, even though I grew up in the Bible area. Yeah, well I think not to interrupt you because I think what you're saying is so critical and important in terms of why we have these programs like this. And I know that, no, no, we appreciate it. I saw some of the nods. I wasn't familiar with the books that you've articulated, but I think some of our panelists are. Exactly. And so that's why we're so happy to have this event here at the San Francisco Library. And they have, there's a fabulous African-American the book section here, devoted to the librarian Naomi Jelks, who is our librarian liaison has been so helpful in facilitating this and keeping the collections of African-American authors here at the library for public access. And so I don't know if anybody wants to just. Oh yes, yes, I'm familiar with all of those authors. And yes, and well, I'm familiar with all of them. I didn't necessarily delve into their work, but check out the deal obviously because I have the French background in him being Senegalese. So that was, and then also what his work has done for it. So just the summary and understanding of his work without having gone into it. And I saw, did see a video of him and he had an interpreter and I was so jealous because I was like, I could do that. I wish I was his interpreter, but that's it. Thank you. So I just wanted to quickly add, I just wanted to add in terms of, I'm familiar with Che Cantha Diop as well out of the three that you've mentioned. And as you're speaking and you're speaking about the influence of the Bible as well, I think of James Baldwin because James Baldwin, first of all I'm really glad that you're, it's always great when people are very excited about books, fiction may not particularly speak to you, but there's great non-fiction. And the reason I raise Baldwin is because he has written a lot of essays and with his meetings in Paris with people like Che Cantha Diop and Senghor and others. And so I think, I would like to challenge you and say if you're not as familiar perhaps with Baldwin's essays, and yeah, so he's, yeah. I haven't read it, I know his name and I know that he's in it, I haven't read his book. Well, I hate to, I hate to cut this off, but you're going to have an opportunity to continue conversation as we go into our reception where you can purchase the books of these authors and get them signed and engage in a little bit more dialogue. And I would like to thank all of you very much and I'd like to thank the audience for these questions.