and i think that is what gets unstuck each and every time is the homophobia, the transphobia, the islamophobia, the fatphobia we just get stuck there and we can't to move past that, to really talk about coalition building and really and a really powerful way. yes i think we can it at that. okay i think that was that a good way to close let's give a warm hand to all of our our speakers professor love professor greer and professor rappaport,hi. good afternoon. how is everyone? i know we are a bit happier and brighter to be in this of medgar evers college at the national

writers conference. it is such a pleasure to be today. this afternoon, in conversation with patricia spears jones merida, golden and kevin powell, we can give them a round of applause, please. i am just going to briefly read each of our author's bios and these are condensed kind of in the effort for us to have enough time, a very brief word about each writer. and then, as you know as you will do there is room that contains their wonderful books and i hope you will spend time picking up their books and spending with all of their words. as i have done for many, many years. so to begin we have marita golden. she is the award winning author over 20 works of fiction and nonfiction. her most book is the new black

woman herself has boundaries heals every day. she co-founder and present president emerita of the hurston wright foundation and teaches workshops and is a literary consult tim patricia spears jones is an arkansas born and raised playwright cultural and author of the beloved community and other collections of poetry. her work is widely anthologized raised and she teaches at barnard. she is the current new state poet and recipient of the 2017 jackson poetry prize, she lives on a magical street embed style brooklyn and kevin powell who is a 2024 grammy nominated poet. human and civil rights activist, journalist, author of 16 books, including the kevin powell reader, his collected writings,

filmmaker, former two time candidate for u.s. congress and new york city hip hop historian and shakur biographer. if we could give all of the authors a roundup of one. and i am now going to migrate to the table and, begin to as we are here to talk our panel today is the power of healing and so in our conversation today the writers will be talking about the in relationship to topic of healing and what we hope for today is engage this space landscape of healing within the black literary community and elsewhere and then what we hope to do is to have you participate meet with a question and answer i will lead and we can kind of have a real conversation each

other so that we're not just up on the stage talking at you but that we're talking with you together, healing because we really, truly are in a time where feel like i'm saying the word healing. healing every day. and so i'm really looking forward for us to. be together and hold space together in the name of healing. and i cannot think of a better place than to be here. the legacy of medgar evers. so thank you very much. okay. now i'm at another microphone, but that's just fine. so what i'd like to do, as i just mentioned, begin the conversation with patricia merida and kevin these who i deeply admire. i have to tell them i'm really grateful for all the things you

do in our community and your own gifts as writers, cultural workers, mentors, you. i see you as good trouble you know that you're out there in the world, not only writing and the imagination that you've offered our community but also i know that i am not alone as a younger writer who turns often my community think about healing. and so what i'd like to do now is start our conversation about healing, right which is so fluid. it's so shape shifting. it is studded with ancestors. the natural world, the diaspora, everything. but i'd like us to really focus on your own understanding of healing as have it. how you came to it at this time. i shared some questions in advance. you, because i wanted us to kind

of try to focus somewhere inside the word healing and where we might journey to today in the time that we have. and so i thought i might you each to begin to just briefly think about this idea of healing and how in writing or another writer's. how the idea healing has deeply influenced you and your journey as as as a writer and. if you'd like to share with us that there was a writer, a movement that really set you on your path. and the notion healing and you may be here and think well my work isn't really healing explicitly but it might be near healing. and i thought now that i've said more than enough, i want to hear your voices. we could begin and let's open it up. i mean, you can go and order or engage however you want, whoever

it like to go first. i wish we had of a ring shout so i know that we're looking at you, marie to be clear, because you're like yes. and the marita golden the marita golden use you as well. i'm in the process now of writing a very long essay called how to become a black writer. and i'm looking back at my my beginnings and at my writing and all the people who influenced me and when i think about healing, i this essay starts with me in my bedroom at nine years old and my father is beside my bed. and as on many nights he is telling me stories and he's telling me stories about the sphinx and he takes my finger and puts it on the globe and says, that's egypt. and then he pulls out a photograph and points to the sphinx and says, see that nose at your nose or tells me about frederick douglass.

and these were stories that only looking back did i realize were teaching me how to write, but they were also healing me healing me in advance, so they were actually arming me for, i think, the world that my father knew i would be going into. and then i had this mother. one day we're standing in the kitchen dating myself, making biscuits by hand, and he she had seen me reading voraciously, writing poetry, going up into the attic where i had pasted pictures from, life in look magazine and my books and solace in being alone and finding solace in writing stories. and she said to me, one day, you're going to write book and only back of was did i realize it in the kitchen that day i was baptize, but now i realize i was

healed. and so there are many writers. of course, you know who feel me. i love, for example, alice courage, you know, the thing i learned from her about writing was your point person. you're an advance person for the hard, difficult. but my parents, they me. my first lessons about the power of stories to heal and the necessity to tell. and i think the necessity to make your life a powerful story. yes. oh, my gosh. thank you so much for that. and yeah, i had the opposite. i grew up in a family that didn't tell stories and we were not where i grew up. i grew up in a poor family. and i still remember when roots out and i went to one of my gradients and said, well, can you tell me anything about

mississippi? and she just said, i don't want to talk about so. for me, healing is often really a topic in my poetry. but i think resilience is an empathy. and so. but there are in incredible number of wonderful poets who i think really are sort of actively using that topic. i think for us and for most. marilyn nelson, who not only is just a extruded airy poet, but she also writes lot of why a an illustrated books that in verse and and dealing with history and dealing community in ways that i wish i had the genius to do. she really does incredibly well

and and and into zaki especially when she about her family. there's a great form of her i mean i, i old school i carry paper. sorry. we love to see it as this is corny. yeah. yeah. is this corny it's almost classic. all right. so i'm a classic person for this. there's a great of her is called mood indigo, which opens the lines it hasn't always been this way was not a street robes and no mere memory dubois walked up my stairs humming some tune over me, sleeping in the company of men who changed the world. and that's the first stanza. and it's so. but then i thought about where you were saying and then i

started to think my own work. and then a few years ago i was commissioned to write a poem, the jacob lawrence migration series at the museum of modern art, which you can see on me read online is really a long one. yeah, it was longest poem in the whole thing. i had no idea it was. the longest poem until they told me it. and i was like, this is like, could you cut a few of these lines? okay, but here. but it's it is about power that is seven, which is the only female figure lone figure that jacob morris painted and and what i said near the end and this is about healing last is to arrive north the first is see the way home to make a home puts her skills on hotplate shelves

for a mason jars full of peach pickles taste of home chanel's on the lumpy mattress. the chicago defender on a kitchen table biscuits. hey rising before sunrise greens found the market run by italians she stands in this painting a cruciform of desire for it a center of beauty dressed in white. the stick her cudgel, her sword, the laundry, her step on the ladder to the future. we are people who seek beauty. that's where i think healing starts. well. just just an honor to be here is to three legendary writers. thank you all for having me. i was listening closely.

i my mother is a storyteller. my mother was a storyteller. i come from a family proud geechee, gullah folks from south carolina and lowcountry folks. yeah. oh, yeah. and you two things can exist at the same time as my wife. angela always says my mother, my family told amazing stories, which is why i'm a writer. i'm very clear about that. listening to my mother, her sisters, my grandmother, their stories, mostly black women in my life shaping me when i was growing up. but also, i come from a family just like what i heard a moment ago where we can't talk about, that we can't talk about it. and so what i think about the word healing, i knew as a child that something was profoundly wrong in my home in my community, in the black church, everywhere i went with people who are my people. and i love african people. i love african people. i love african. i'm a product of post-civil rights america.

so i didn't have no memory of the civil rights movement. black a black liberation movement, which means i also went to schools where they conveniently start teaching about history after world war two, which means i grew up a self-hating black person was ashamed of who i was. my, my nose, my lips, everything. y'all know what i'm about. i think it's incredible blessing. if you happen to have had a parent or parents told you that you're beautiful as black person because they knew they were beautiful. and so when i think of oh yeah. and when i think about healing, i think about, well, if we to talk about healing, that must mean we must be wounded, we must be we must be hurt. and i simply did not have the vocabulary until i got to college and only went to college in new jersey, where i'm born and raised because of a program that was created by folks who were activists, who were fighters during the civil era. it's called educational opportunity fund, new york. we call here. y'all know what i'm talking about you know me and i got to

college. i was introduced to someone named x. i was told i needed to read this book called the autobiography of malcolm x. and i'm a voracious reader. i read everything i can. i love reading. i've always loved reading since i was a child. i was just reading the wrong stuff because of stuff i was reading. i was i didn't exist in it and when you talk about healing and what we may have read, i think it's a profound question. you asked sister rachel when i read the autobiography of malcolm x, it literally transformed my life. one book because i saw myself in his story, i didn't even know he was dead until i got to the end of the book. i had no idea that he had been killed any of it. but what i took from the book and grew up without a father figure, i know there great fathers out there. there are black men in our communities as role models, as mentors. i do my best to show up as a black man, but unfortunate i didn't have that. so malcolm, a series of healings for me that there are powerful black men out there, you know here's a here's a formula that

you could use for manhood. you could reinvent yourself over and over again. part of healing means that you have to be honest. malcolm was honest about everything, you know what i mean? because not only did i read his autobiography after i finished the autobiography, i started listening to his speeches. i would listen to audio of speeches. i would watch television programs that he was on. and i was like, i want to be like him. i want to read everything. i want to know history because malcolm x who said history is a people's memory. what i realize if don't understand how history has us, you're never going to hear. you're never going to hear this society, this country was founded on racism and sexism and classism and enslave people, kidnap people from, africa, us, build the economic infrastructure of this country period. i didn't know any of that until i stumbled into malcolm and malcolm led me to other stuff. so i believe you can't heal black people or any people if you don't even know who you are. you have idea where you came from. you know, you don't understand the trauma.

as we used words like trauma a lot in these times. we use words like trigger a lot. you're right, rachel. we use the word healing a lot. but what i began to realize my mama, who i love dearly to this was just with her the other day. you know, i loved my mother. my mother has been damaged by racism because she's black she's damaged by sexism because she's a woman and she was damaged by classism because she was poor. yeah. with me out there and because my mother, there was no there was no panels like this for mother. there was no a jamar van zandt, no oprah. there was no bell hooks. there was no walker, there was no toni morrison. she was like many black folks who just had to suck it up and keep going. y'all with me and being raised in this environment and literally what she was taught was passed on to me, y'all with me. and it wasn't until i got to college and started going to therapy at the end of my college years because i had to that i began to unpack. wait a minute you've been damaged your entire by this system of oppression. just call it what it is, you

know. bell always taught us me, including in peace bell hooks, you know you have to name the oppression. so we can't just say healing if we're not willing to name what has happened to us. why don't black folks want to talk about mississippi or south carolina? you know what i mean? why do we say that? you know, that's that's in past. let's just get over it. why do we black families or any family, jewish families, families. y'all know, i'm talking about? well, one minute they cursed each other out. the next minute, which i want to eat. y'all with me. and so for me, i've wanted to be a writer. i was a child because my momma took me the library when i was eight years old and. i fell in love with reading and by 11 i'm like, i want to be a writer, but think about the damage. i didn't know that black writers exist until i got to college. you know, they existed because. the wonderful educational of a school that i went to a all these black writers we have sitting, they didn't exist.

nikki giovanni never heard of alice walker, never heard of mary brock and never heard of them. quincy troupe never of them. you know, the damage that does to you. and so literally had to figure out okay i've been taught to hate myself the first 18 years of my life i now have to unpack all that stuff i've got to do a deep dive into, my own history, my own culture. i've to move from self-hatred, self love and the way i'm acting. all the damage that has happened to me. y'all with me out there and some of us are violent physically. some of us are violent. some of us are violent verbally. some of us are violent always. there are. people sitting in this audience right now who i know, who are stalwarts in the community, new york city, including brooklyn, who do wonderful work in the community, but are some of the most after people i've ever met in my life. y'all who i'm talking about. oh, because you think that can hide behind an african or islamic name some african clothes, veganism, me, all that kind of stuff and actually deal with what really has to be

talked about when talk about healing, what has happened us internally, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually that has allowed us to hurt ourselves and, each other. and this is the last i'm going to say because. i've been going to writers conferences all around the world, black writers for 30 plus years. some of us have written some of the most incredible stuff about the journey of our people. but also we'll say many of the folks that we talk about have been have had some of the worst eating habits, have been alcoholics and drug addicts and otherwise abused themselves. because at this stage in my life, in my fifties, being a since i was a kid, i'm like black people, black writers. if we're going to talk about healing, we better have courage now to look in the mirror. because how you gonna write all this stuff, but you don't even practice it yourself. that's all i got to say. wow. i want to use them. i want to pick up on two things that you said. you and patricia both talked about the things that in

families are not talked about and i'm glad mentioned therapy because healing the two primary tools my perpetua lifelong day to day healing have been a couple of stints therapy. yes, ma'am. and then my writing and my writing forced me to my history, examine my past and plot out my future. and, yes, had this father who was afrocentric before, we use the words he was black, black as night, and he wore his blackness like beautiful flag unfurling. yeah. and that same mother who told me that one day i was going to write a book also told me one day that i was going to have to get a light skinned husband for the sake of my children. wow.

and she had grown up in north carolina and the toxic belief in colorism was part of she was right so she told me two things get a light skinned husband for you think of child and the math the cruel of the world we live in. that math was that equation that made sense. wow. so she tells me these two things. i'm going to write a book, so i must be something. but then i got to get a light skinned husband for the sake my children. so these two things are warring. so when india rewrites song, video and brown, one day i'm at home and my my step daughter called merida. merida, i know you hate beat videos but please on there's a video you kind of like and it's endearing yeah and i'm sitting there absolutely spelled out and in 4 minutes she has unlocked in

me. mm. the courage i needed and i'm something to confront what. my mother told me wow. so then i write a book called, don't blame the sun. one woman's journey through the car comes. and i think i know. okay. i think because i've written all these books and i'm marita golden i know everything about colorism. so going to be honest with you, i don't. and the book is about my journey through colorism. i talk to scholars and and writers and intellectuals, and i interview black people all shades, black men and women. and i, i know everything about colorism, but my light skinned sisters sell. wait a minute. we're victims, too. once this is said, i got sick of brothers going absolutely full. crazy about me walking down the street because i'm high yellow and got long hair. i cut my hair off. mm. one light skinned sisters as i got so sick of walking into a

room. and before i'd open mouth, the brown skin is to say, you high yella --. wow. and so what that book did was it taught me how wounded we are. yes. how much healing we have to do. and yes, as i wrote it there's this cosmic thing that's happening to you as you write, when you're in the zone, when the spirits are talking. you and i forgave my mother. i didn't realize how angry i was at her for saying what she'd said to me. yeah. and writing book allowed me to forgive my mother and love her and understand and why she had said those two things to me. you're going write a book, but you better get a light skinned husband of the sake of your children. and i loved her more than i ever had because i finally understood. mm. thank you.

okay. i feel like i'm going to be the contrary in here is a no, no, no. i understand the thing about colorism a little bit and but i grew up in the last days of the segregated south in, a small town in arkansas so i grew up in a community, a, you know, a black community just everything from millionaire is the people who literally lived in shacks. and so i have a sense of black. is a by outkast car while. and one of the things i liked about movie is totally black fantasy because it says somewhere in georgia and and there are no white people in the. now one not even a not even a

hint is like they're just black folks being crazy in their own way. some of them are good, some of them are bad, blah, blah, blah. i feel like i grew up in that kind of a community. i am not somewhat here to say that. segregation is so wonderful. it wasn't, as i said, point out to somebody of the day. i two. i had terrible dental work because the dentist, my community was the black guy who have retired like ten years before he started working on my so i know that but what also know is that the range of people, the colors, the shapes the sizes who knew who what you knew where all sort of there were. i mean, i felt like when i toni morrison for the first time i thought, oh yeah, that's my that's my, that's my neighborhood right. so i guess i feel like we, we

had, these things that bother us but we also had to remember we're part of the human condition and somehow we're suffering is a real thing for everybody on the planet where maybe the exception of a couple of, you know, idiots or wannabe dictators, they don't suffer all. they just make other people suffer anyway. so i think what i want think about healing is this. and it's something that merida is saying is a process both of you guys were talking about process. and it takes years. it doesn't in a day doesn't happen in a week. it doesn't when you go out to a wellness spa, although there may be pleasant and. well, it might be. and but it but it also says to me, we are each of us in this room have to decide what of

human being we want to be. we be, you know, kevin brings the fact that many great writers are also, you know, abuse their bodies, blah, blah, you know, i mean, i, i, hey, i used to be someone eight too many pints haagen-dazs, so i understand that so, you know, i like 50 pounds heavier than i am now and i'm very glad that i'm 50 pounds lighter. i don't mind that could be 50 pounds lighter. do again if i could figure that out anyway. but what i want to say is, is that we also need to forgiveness a real thing and we have to understand that the very things that can push us into the best work. we can also things that can make our lives miserable and have to

figure out, you know. everybody works on their balancing act, you know, in at some point if you live long enough and, i have you kind of figure out how to do that. if you're lucky, if you have good people in your life, if you understand that even though the forces outside of you are horrific and they are, you do have to adhere to how to respond to those forces you make your decisions about, how you deal with that. you find a way like merida to like at a problem seek some answer and then literally the spirit takes over the spirit. this is a crazy think my mother made me a writer.

she gave me a wound because i was a writer. i could die sick that wound. that's what i realized when i was writing the book. that's crazy. that's wonderful. that's wonderful. but then what it says to me is that creativity. is a key, that that's part of the healing process, right? yeah. kevin, you look like you want to speak on it. i mean, writing is therapy. it's always been third between literary media just said that. and i think that if it wasn't for writing, i wouldn't even be able to sit up here because it's like it's helped me do insane moments in my life. but i think, you know, i want to keep coming back to something because i'm not just a writer. i'm also a long time humanist, civil rights activist. i do work in our communities i mean, all 50 states in this country, 5 to 7 continents. i've been around people of all backgrounds around the world and yet a lot of people are suffering. with all due respect, you know what?

african people have had to go through around the world is another you know, i mean, we at the west and east africa, america, black brits, we can go down a list of things is profound. the hatred that is thrown at us all around the world and toni morrison has been referenced a few times here i think toni morrison is powerful to reference because know when you think about beloved remember that where it is the healing the circle of folks you know let's ask ourselves a simple question when safe slavery ended in this country, where was the mass therapy session for black folks? where was the healing circle for all black folks who were enslaved in america jamaica, guyana, brazil, costa rica, puerto rico, dominican? probably haiti? yeah. you go down the list was the healing circle. it was like, yeah, gone figure it. and we did have to, you know, sister spears mentioned it. we had our communities in america are sacred communities where. we built our things. but i believe few exceptions. what a very few exceptions. very few exceptions, actually were zora neale hurston in there because when look at their eyes watching god, i consider that a

book is one of the few books where it talks honestly about, what is going on in the community? not the beautiful things, but also what hurts us. i think we get caught up in in america is is either scenario, we can only talk about one thing. i think we've got to talk about it both. we are a beautiful, powerful people. we are actually miracle to even still exist given everything that's happened to us. but we also have to be honest about the fact that many of us been damaged by this. and some of us have been damaged wise. are some of our greatest writers some of our greatest artists, some of our creators created people. and what i'm saying is, if we've seen this happening for generation after generation, how can we expect crown heights for green bed-stuy, east near brownsville, harlem, jamaica, queens to heal if the people who are the stories about what's going on with us and healing, that's what i'm saying. and so when you see a toni morrison on charlie rose, the famous clips that get passed around, that's what she's really talking about. how do we heal as a people? does make sense, y'all. you know what i mean? and we can't say, well, i had you know, i did the best i could. i'm like, well, maybe we need to do better. last time i checked, we are

suffer mightily across the board, which is why we have this panel in the first place about healing, because something profound has been happening to us. and it's not just the white supremacists like donald trump, it's also us who have internalized the white supremacy and take it out on each other. you, me, and we do it to ourselves and i'm what i'm saying is part of the plan. now, i believe, for black folks who are writers, etc., is what is the plan for us, you know, i mean, we could publish books, we can win awards. we all have one up here as one awards of published books. we've done well. we have a life as a writer. but i'm like, you know what? i don't want to be a drunk anymore. so i stopped drinking 20 years ago, you know? i mean, i don't to be the person that if someone tries to leave name, i be people who have died who could have who died of preventable stuff because even if they're chinese incredible stories and writing these great things about black people, they're literally dying of preventable stuff because they're not taking care of themselves. if what i'm saying, writers are supposed to be memory keepers, but writers should be. artists should also not. here's what the world looks like, but here's what the world could be. and i think a lot of the stuff stuck on here's what it is.

i'm like, well, what can it be? that's what we to get to. that's what i want to see, what our art matter, what we call ourselves, writers or something else. how do we actually here? i'm saying that to be preachy. it doesn't to be prescriptive, but i'm like, you know what? in the spirit of octavia butler and other people show what it can look like, but and i think we're broken vessels. yeah, i think everybody up here is a broken vessel. if i take a ceramic bowl and hit it with a hammer and you say you've now got to repair that right? i'm going to repair it. but the cracks are going to be there and actually, the cracks may be put on display in a museum because now it is a different of bowl that has a different kind of beauty. that's so that cracks our wounds are inevitable and they're part of the actually part they drive us. that's right. they drive us to create something beautiful. yeah. yeah, we're wounded, broken vessels. i know. i am same here. but i also think that we also should honor the fact that.

there's all kinds ways in which black people have been able. there's a reason why we're still here. there's a reason why we are honored. the tiniest of minorities in this country. we were not supposed to live literally. we weren't right. and so and everybody in this room is alive and you know some of the black are alive. so leslie, let's think about the things that have that are the faster, that healing process. we've already a little bit about you because it's not just about writing or anymore or therapy. it's also and that's why i was saying had to figure out how to you. i make a choice about what kind of life we want to live what kind of community we to live in, how do we make that community?

kevin is talking about the activism? yes, we have faced all kinds of all kinds of horrible --. we will continue to face all of horrible --. but you know what, i go from a people that just stood and said, i'm gorgeous. i was not raised to not think of myself as. part of a group of. people who were just stunning in all kinds of ways and we were all poor. but on easter sunday, everybody looked really good. so i. so that kind of thing about self-loathing i never, you know, there are other reasons why i have problems. being black was not one of so i have to figure out what it is for me is that when i hear merida and i hear kevin, i hear

someone who i hear two people who are finding and and myself my own way or are finding ways in which to cast only repair ourselves. hmm. going back to malcolm x in the fact malcolm biography is is almost it is it is the hero's tale it is the ultimate definition of a hero's tale. because he really was a and there are so many as why wouldn't zack is talking about meeting paul robeson who was from new jersey and and and who was he literally went from being one of the most well-known people on the planet to be

completely silenced. yes we we have to not allow the silence of any any of our leaders any of our artists ever cannot allow that to happen. and that f stuff is going on right now in florida. right now in texas, right now, in all kinds of places. you know, the whole thing about we're not teaching black history. what kevin just talked about. that's what that's that's all about trying say to every last one of us, you don't matter. we don't give a hoot or you matter so much. we're so scared of you. we have to erase you somehow. if we can't do it this way, we'll just take away books. that's what all this banning of books is. this is this is part of breaking us or trying to break us.

and we have to fight to keep from happening. that's part the healing process to because outside this room and outside this panel there those oppressive forces kevin talked about are huge and hideous and. well well supported. and to me, this is where our we have to go beyond resilience and we can't beyond repair to say like that their line the langston hughes i want to be at the table. i am over there. if i'm not at the table, we will make your life a living hell so that other people will have to figure out how they're going to heal. right. i'm, you know, maybe a little bit more of a rebel than i i'm

here for. yeah. thought about, but i just think we, you know, the fight is on and so we need be and i think what kevin is trying to say, i'm hearing right we need to be well armored as we can as healthy as we could be absolutely be able to make that fight. i think this would. right. and i'm also saying that the oppressive forces are in three levels is system of oppression. but then it's also the internalized oppression in our community. what we do to ourselves, each other, and then internalized is the oppression of us not taking care of our business. like how are we moving spirits and how we will be eventually. i it's three levels and i think that we have to be very clear about that. you know what is happening on these three levels because you know many of us can go off about white supremacy, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. we have a right to do that. we should be doing those things. challenge systems, oppression, but then we're fighting each other and then we've got our own stuff that we don't deal with inside of us. and i think it's three levels i think we've got to think about

in those three levels, and i think we've got to say very and i think that when we talk our history, you know, i think we all clear with beautiful people we've always said in different fourth we are beautiful people, but you don't advance us if you're not willing to have conversations. because if i'm to be mad at florida books at fort florida for banning books and say, you can't black history, then i'm also going mad at black folks are not willing to have certain conversations. you know, i mean, how do we hear it? i mean, some of the conversations are going to be uncomfortable. they're going to be uncomfortable. i feeling like the hooks when she was alive were loving her when she was dead. but that bringing up uncomfortable conversations and we talk about as i can intersectionality but a lot of people hate it for colored girls, you know i mean she was having uncomfortable conversation. some people hate it. you know what i'm saying. but i'm saying we need to be willing to have those conversations like why you uncomfortable? yeah, you know what i mean? i think that if we can't even have conversations, how are we going to move forward as a people, you know? and that's what i want to see us win, want to see us be empowered. but i'm saying if something has to mean i also want to be careful. i'm not speaking from a space of

privilege, you know what i mean? what i'm talking about. i look around the country and i'm in schools, i'm in prisons. wherever i go, working in our communities, i'm seeing stuff that is worse probably than it's been slavery in terms of the level self-hatred. what are people. i'm being serious that. okay, you know what i mean? i'm not sitting here as some highfalutin writer. i'm speaking for myself for a second. oh, you. i'm good. i know this stuff. i'm like, yo, know what? there's a lot of folks who don't know a lot of basic stuff unless intentional. why? because these things social media has done major damage, you know, way before the banning of black books. there was already erasure of black history, black studies programs around the country. this has been going on since the civil rights era. how do we get rid of this stuff? and so you literally have generations, black folks who have grown up not knowing who they who are disconnected or even know that communities black wall street existed, or wilmington, north carolina or auburn avenue in atlanta, georgia, or central los angeles. you know what i mean? and so what i'm saying is that we have responsibility. how do we here we got to connect to who we are and the history is part of it. but we got to also understand, because we might be woke here, everybody ain't woke.

you know, i'm saying and people have to literally talk to love themselves. and many of us don't love ourselves. you can't heal if you don't love yourself as an african person, as a black person. and i can't just go as individualistic, eurocentric and say, well, i'm good. i figured it out. i ain't thinking about me kevin powell. i'm thinking about us. i'm thinking about us and what i see because love us profoundly is that some real work that has to happen with us many of us don't even love ourselves. you know, only black writers write about black folks that have nothing to do with black people. you know, black people, black culture is just a way to make a buck as a writer, you know? i mean, i'm that to be married to a person, i say you got to be around black folks all the time. but there folks weren't even comfortable, often asking to be around black repeat black writers, except in a passing way. i don't even know black writers, you know. i mean and so and then the folks who get stuck in their own generation and have no conversation with people who are older, younger, that's the kind of stuff i'm talking about. that's the internalized oppression i'm talking about. i to just be around people only my age range, you know, only my perspective. i'm like i got to be around older people can be younger

people and i got to learn how to listen. you. that's what i'm talking about. and so when i think about healing, it's like, you know, i'm not here to debate anybody. i'm not here to argue with anybody. i'm here to have a conversation. well, how do you feel? this is my perspective as someone who grew up without a daddy welfare, food stamps, government. she's hated myself. the first 18 years of my life, i had to learn black history, you know, i'm saying i had to figure this stuff out. i've had to figure out how to be a writer, how to realize. all right, you know what? i'm negative. the right who happens to be black. i'm a black writer. i got a responsibility. i come from zora neale hurston, langston hughes. i thought of responsibility. this ain't about some -- awards. this ain't about some accolades. how i could do that? that's right. easy that's easy. i'm like, well, this is about. how do we save and empower black people? that's what it's about. that's healing. i'm talking about, well, how you do it that way. yeah, i mean, you know, how do we do it right? think that's a great question to kind of open it up. just keeping eye on the time here is is that call to action

and that looks like and how that manifests in a community that is not monolithic and that is not static and that is testing it with its dialects and languages, ways of being globally on economic levels esthetics, politics, religions, all of ways. right. how how does that look like that conversation? where black folk globally. so we're now at the point we're going to and i think there are just so many i want to thank each of you for really getting personal going. you know, i just feel like the wingspan was opened here and we were allowed really see, you know, what is at stake and that we could sit here tomorrow, have these questions about healing and have an entirely different conversation that would still be just as relevant, necessary, important and. you know as many of you noted, like healing isn't a thing. it does.

does it end for you? is there a moment you're like, well, i'm healed you, know, and i listen to each of you, you know, there's a healing of youth there's a healing when you're middle age, when you're an elder, when you look at elders who are not healed, you know, there's just so many things and ways that it can go and and, you know, as marita said, which is so right. know this kind of notion, because we are human, which also rips into what patricia's we are human. so we have we are broken vessels. and yet there is a need for healing and recognition and acknowledgment of that there is a kind of inner reparations that must happen separate of whatever is is owed or dude or must be imagined. right language and elsewhere, body and elsewhere. so what i think yes, we go to question. i just do want to say something and i think that black families do much more repairing and

support and healing of than we give those families credit for many black families will often have one or two people in the family who are more educated, more monetarily successful and many black families, those people become the anchor or they become the family atm, the family therapist, the family healer. i know when was writing my book, saving our sons back in the nineties. much criticism of people leaving the cities and moving to the suburbs. but every black family i know who moved to the suburbs went to church on sunday back in the city they went to the barbershop in the city. they helped their sister in the city keep, her cell phone on.

they took in the brothers kid who was about to go to juvenile hall. they went to court and interceded for him so that we talk a lot about what we don't do for one another but the black would not be here if we had not done a magnificent job of being social workers. therapist psychologists and ministers within these small black family units. and we never say that we need say that miracle. thank you so much, reader, i mean, there's just, you know, we could go into any kind of direction and there really is no limit of what we could be saying now. and i'm just really grateful and appreciative of all of you and everyone listening, because as we said, listening, is that part of healing. listening is leaving this room and hearing something that is going to last and you and that

you are going to offer it to someone else. and you know, to speak of miss morrison, you know, you have to free somebody else. you have to try to take this forward. and so i would like to now open this up questions, you know, i mean, i have so many myself, but i would really like us use the remainder of our time as a way to, you know, engage each other and be together there's a microphone i see over if could just make a line there and try to keep your question succinct so that everyone is standing to ask something may ask that and i just want to say for a minute, kevin, you held up the phone and i when i you know, i'm 45 and when i look at younger black folk that i teach or i'm in the space of this presence of the phone and the image of blackness that can be both connected but

also very, very, very disembodied and and illusion of, you know, your looks, your likes, your your your coin money, you know, your eyelashes, whatever it is, it's just it's just boggling. i mean, i grew up just as a whole being in and thank goodness i'm really i had that. but also, you know, you look at the presence of technology and the the carrot of capitalism that is constantly damaging and dangling in front of you. and i think when i think of younger too who've lived through the pandemic black children, what is going to be healing for them? how am i when i am anyone of your ages say to younger black folks who are wounded, how can i identify their wound and it and see where the edges of that are when it's touching my own and is touching the elders wounds that i'm trying to touch and heal

from that. so i just want to put that there to and move on. ward sister, can you start with your question for us? yes. thank you for being here. as someone who is not here, i can't. yeah, it might might have to go so and tall. you might have to. yeah. there we. oh, okay. wow, that sounds like. okay. hi, everyone. thank you so much for being here. i've really this conversation i to ask in light of this panel being about literature and healing what we can do. writers of and how we can maybe foster that healing through our writing and the ways that you have done it. perhaps i'm thinking also about fact that we are still in working within a system that has a publishing world full of gatekeepers who want to see stories told certain, certain

and. sometimes i know when i pick up certain, i feel i'm reading trauma and tragedy and sometimes i'm looking for joy and i'm just wondering, as writers how we someone who i'm a budding writer, i hope one day i'll be able to. you are writer. i am. i'll thank you. i am writer. but that's one of the things that i struggle with is wanting to heal and bring joy through my writing and wondering how that works. and i just thought maybe you could speak on that. thank you so much for your question. and so the authors if you have a brief remark decline or only we're looking at you patricia i think you just have to tell i think you have to decide what story you want to tell. and i think you have to find a way to tell it. the way possible. i think you have to be true to your own truth. yeah. and where the joy will come in and i everybody who writes to

trend. is first off, if the trend is already there is already over well the right. and so you're going to have create your own trend. that's what it means. that's i think anyway right on and so book but i think you know as i think morrison said maybe other people there's truth there are facts and there's truth and so you have to out what your truth is and how you want to make. and then i think you need to find some really good people who you who respect and who respect you to share your work with so that you get some feedback. yeah. and they can tell you the truth about what you're doing and you can be but they have to be people you really respect and they really have respect. you. thank you. thank you.

either of you like to respond or shall we go to the next question really quickly? a couple of things. when covid hit hard, we set up a we did a zoom writing workshop for writers all different backgrounds, mostly black. if you go to facebook, there's something called kevin powell. and writing workshop is not about me, it's about us writers. there's a ton of free resources there. advice from people like nikki giovanni, eve ensler, who now goes by a bunch of writers. it covers every genre of john of writing, poetry, fiction, etc. i want to suggest that you check that out. and then to my readers point, i agree that know, you just. toni morrison said write what you want to see. write what you want to see. and i just think that for me when i write, i think about, okay, am i going to just tell the same old stories over and over again? is there some way to do this? for example, now and i don't want that, you know, the publishing world is going to be what it's going to be. i've published 16 books. it has not been. but what i did, i made it a point to go and study people like langston hughes, zora neale hurston, folks who came before me. how do they navigate this and how do i remix it for my time? and sometimes i've gotten published, sometimes haven't

gotten published. it is what it is. but make sure that i never stop being a writer. no one can take away from you that you are a writer. you know what i mean is sometimes no. and sometimes you have to go in other spaces. i have my first film coming out later this year about black manhood, about black masculine, about black fathers. one thing, things i realized we often see black men only as athletes, entertainers, or someone from the streets. right? i'm like, let's i want to create a documentary. film is going to present a holistic picture of black men while also asking some questions about black manhood and how we with ourselves, with women, etc. you know, i mean, we have to create what we want to see and don't let anyone stop from saying that you are a writer, you're not an aspiring writer, you're not a budding writer. you are a writer. and you. thank you so much. the question. hi. hello hi. hi, everyone. thank you so much for being here. thank you for your transparency, your honesty about your process. speak to the mind. sorry, sorry. thank you for being transparent. your process and how you get here. i'd like some just what you

recommend terms of the healing. do your own writing process and system that maybe some of the the methods you use as you know because i find like i've resisted some of the writers zora neale hurston things because it is painful you know, confronting some of those things and what it would bring up in me. but how do you even though as you're seeking your own healing, how do you, you know, navigate the pain? well, if you haven't left some blood on the page, you're not writing that straight. oh, and that's just the truth. yeah. and writing is hard. but we write because it's. that's right. it's a puzzle and we write because we want to. complete the puzzle. it's question because we're looking for the answer and i think people think that it's supposed to be neat. oh it's messy always messy and it's you want to enjoy it day by

day, hour by hour. i'm at a point in my life when i write. i one hour a day when i was younger and working on a lot of books i would write, you know, four and 5 hours a day were first. 2 hours was, you know, alicia soap opera writer taking a nap. so now i write that one hour and it's very but one of the things i would often find when i was we had to confront something really hard in my own right is i would make up a prompt now of course a prompt is nothing but a sentence or a fragment and that you ask your students or whoever to complete and would sit down. and i said, what's the hardest thing i want to write today? and i would write as a fragment. when i was writing book about color, i just full of so much anxiety because. there wasn't a language i did all this research. i said, surely has written a personal book about the color complex.

nobody. so i said i've got to find a language to tell this story. and i was tear afraid, dark skinned people can be mad with me. light skinned people are going to be mad with me. and so my agent, my editor said, merida, this is good, but, you know, you've got to go deep. i tell my students that all the time. so i said, okay, what is the thing you're afraid of? i'm of really talking about how angry am so i my timer for 10 minutes and i and i was so anxious. i said i feared if i put down on the page how angry i was about the way that the color complex impacted economics, politics, psychology, love that i would literally explode i mean really this makes no sense. but i did feel that so i set the timer 10 minutes and i said, right, 10 minutes. and i wrote to pages. i used the word fear.

now i use the word anger 12 times. and those pages became the spine the backbone of the. and once i had written that and it was all the room was full of blood full blue, i had found my voice that's it. so you have recognize and you can ease it. just do 5 minutes. that is for 5 minutes. and once that zone gets you we write for. you so much. thank you so much. that question. hi. greetings. good afternoon, everyone. thank you all so much for your comments. i also want to thank dr. greene for hosting a book club. for hosting a book club, the height of the pandemic. that helped me and everyone else not let our minds melt too much. and dr. golden. you were one of our featured and i thank you so for your work on

dementia because as a young person dealing with dementia in my family work has been a balm. thank you thank you. so my question was so i have the privilege of teaching my undergraduate alma mater howard university you and black excellence and resiliency tropes are as harmful as outright racism. so i wonder if you all could give us some specific examples in how i can build healing into the syllabi and curriculum that i give our future black global leaders. thank you. you can tell them to read strong black woman how how a myth endangers the physical and mental health of black women. is that the elaine? that's that's my the strong black woman. how a man. thank you dangerous the physical and you go by it and then oh wait a minute i absolutely how a myth endangers the mental and physical health of black women and wrote it during the pandemic

and it deconstructs the dangerous myth that black women have to be for everyone all the time. yeah. and then they can by the new woman loves herself heals day has boundaries in which i talk about meditation. i'm quite in silence. yes. and setting boundaries as in. no, no do what you -- damsel. i come in, i also say that, you know, they can read poems to. yes, and yes, you know, besides besides, you know, your poetry. my poetry, yeah. yeah. i really think people need you to discover and use maryland nelson. mm hmm. i really do, because i think she is somebody. who maryland way range of the about everything from you know

the free people of color in connecticut to the incredible poem about coal miner miracle where this she wrote a long time ago. this describes something that when she she's in the middle of the midway and this guy you know calls her her friend, you know, -- and she and then the guy comes back apologizes. mm hmm. and there is a minor miracle. so there are all kinds of i mean, think one of the things that hasn't happened enough is the uses of american. this is the golden age for black poetry. yes. i'm glad. be part of it. yes. so and so. yeah. tell them to open up those and read poems to is as you were at

howard crazy. excuse me. crazy tony medina. i'm trying to i try i'm trying to keep my language correct here is there is he is a fount everything. oh yeah yeah. and tell him to read poetry but poetry write poetry write their own poetry. yeah. you know lucille clifton lucille clifton, lucille clifton is a poet that i turn back to often. i think she's of our most brilliant and underrated poets ever because she actually speaks to everything we've been saying in her poetry on this podium today, this panel today. so i just want to recommend her, i think in terms of of wellness, bell hooks wrote about 40 books in 40 years. but i always think about rock my, soul, black people in self esteem, my soul, black people in esteem. and as a poet myself, yes, poetry, poetry, poetry is tremendous. rachel, as a poet mean you have poets on the stage. are poets out there. but i think that know baraka said it best poetry is often treated treated as like the nag

igas of art entertainment, etc. and poetry is healing poetry is healing. and i think that whole thing about black excellence, you write, can be as dangerous as the other part of it. we have to give people the grace to fall down, make mistakes, be messy, all those kind of things, you know? i mean, my wife had to sort of present to us today who said speaking about how black specifically are worn down by this world, she's like no one ever said no one. people her gifts, no one gives a president. i said, well, we're going to give you a gift because we see that black women do everything and be black women, black men, no matter what your gender identity identities are. i think one of the things that is a legacy of slavery is working ourselves to death and not knowing how to set of boundaries, healing boundaries. rest is resistance. so they have to read that. yes. yeah. thank you all. so thank you. you evangel, who's the author of the book rest is misty determined life time. yeah, yeah. restless resistance, yeah. restless. resist. that's a manifest no that's a

pathway for who exist you can look it up. trisha hurst, richard thank great the nap ministry once you read book. yeah it's really good thank you so much. hello. hi. hi. hi everybody. thank you for this. i really appreciate it. variance firing came a little late, but ever since i've heard you guys speak, the heart is burning and i appreciate it. you guys touched on the healing process. and, you know, when listening i couldn't help but personally me, i'm from south africa. i've been here for four years, born and raised in america. i'm poor. so that's my spirit. that's my callender's, my everything. yes, but that mr. powell was mentioning earlier about the healing. and much like you, my good sir grew up technically a single mother home, but uncles were there. aunties, the grandmother was there. so there is a village and right

to my creative, i work jobs. but the healing you were talking about is very inspiring. mine is thinking like, okay, my father is still alive, right? and yes, this man has, kids of his own, a family of his own. but i have now reached a point of that healing where. i no longer resentment. i'm definitely angry. yeah, i'm angry. and i write about that anger. right. but at the end of the day you are where i want to beat. you have a wife, you have kids. that's where i want to be and i need you got no kids yourself out. we're working on it. no, no, no goods. i'm talking about my father. you? your father? yes. yeah, he has a wife. he has kids, and i needed to take myself out of that resentment. look, my okay for. yeah, well. as much as love my mother, she raised me. i don't know her as a wife.

i don't her as a girlfriend. whatever you had with her is between you and you know. and that took years, you know, and it led to more healing internalized work because as as much i was very active back home and as much as you want to be that used to there is a double standard if you're not doing it yourself. so i appreciate that. my question has more to with the systems you guys touched on. i don't remember which mama it was i think it was my mom there touched on the dictatorship. the truth is back where i'm from, democracy has not worked for us. it's getting to a point where guatemala is. i'm thinking i'm beginning to think it's even un-african and a lot of us, we are angry. we are angry. we are tired of it.

it not worked for us. and what i'm seeing with leaders and people that i've looked up to and even your malcolm x is that you mentioned they were disrupters, they were artists, they were creative, but disrupting. and i am of the opinion. i want to hear your guy's opinion on that disruption because in the current system we have now. i see other option than to corrupt it. the only one of the only ways to our people to be what we want to be is to corrupt the current system. because that was malcolm. he was not a follower. he was a he was a corrupt one. i think i think most of us in this room are distraught upstairs, which is why we are here. andrew. and i think that you we get the word democracy thrown out there a lot, but it's not true. democracy is still, paul said on one of the albums idols is people saying democracy. so i was very from a very early

age that i have to fight against all systems of oppression, you know, along the way i realize as i'm fighting against systems of oppression, how can i say i'm against racism, but then i'm attacking or or oppressing black women. how can i say i'm against oppression and i'm homophobic or transphobic or ages or classes or hurting other people? if what i'm saying, maybe there's some things that have happened to me that i'm now passing on to other people, you feel i'm and so i keep coming back to it systems oppression is what we've got going on our community that is also what's going on inside of us. and you know merida said forgiveness i had to forgive my mother, you know, my poetry book is called grocery shopping with my mother. it's a long poem about my mother's life and forgiving my mother because she did the best that she could. i forgave my father ten years ago. i didn't. i only saw my father two or three times until i was eight years old. i, i went to his cemetery in south carolina. it's in the last chapter of my book, the education of kevin powell confronting my father and i. i dropped to my knees and i spoke to my father's tombstone, and i forgave because i was like, if i don't forgive, how do

we here, you got to forgive and say, okay, there's nothing i can do about this, but how can i move from this? what can i learn from, you know what i mean? south africa i was a part of the anti-apartheid movement. so is black america. is black is brixton in england. you black people are catching hell all around world. most people are catching hell. some people just don't. they're catching here because of whatever privilege they might have. but the reality is 1% of the population controls, everything on the planet, that's what this is really about, you know what i mean? and so we're fighting each around race, color, gender, -- identity. that's purposeful. they want us to be fighting each other. but if you're messed up, you and you even see that. you know what i mean? y'all know what i'm talking about. if you look at what's going on in this country around the world is purposely pitting people against other you know what i mean? and so when i think about real healing is how do we bring together, no matter who they are black folks? yes. this is a black writers conference but people in general. so we can understand we can actually create something. i'm just saying what i want to fight against. what is the world? i want to see where everyone can be free to be who they are. no matter who you are, you can be who you are. how are you? identify yourself. you can be who you are.

so i'm not just sitting here saying what i'm against. i'm clear. when dr. king said the love community. that's what i'm talking about. yeah. you know, mean what paul robeson was talking about. that's what i'm talking about where bell hooks was talking about. that's what i was talking about was toni morrison. but she was talking about what i'm talking about. what do we actually want to see? and i think you can't see it if you're all massive we're all messed up on the inside. my wife, i have profound conversations about, all the isms and phobias all the time. but we're also clear in the spirit of healing where rachel started us off, and we believe love. we believe in kindness we believe that empathy. we believe in compassion, we believe in truth telling. and we also believe in, you know what? we can't go out here hurting people. you now, i'm saying, you know, and so it's it's a struggle. but i also you notes at a point that was brought up by both patricia murrieta we're the spaces for joy is everything just rage and i'm angry as hell. there's very few. he was angry as i'm an angry -- trust me on that c-span. i'm an angry --. i'm clear about that. but i'm also a loving --.

right. thank you so much. come and i appreciate that and i appreciate your i just want to try to get in now last to questions that we have before we start to wrap up. thank you so i'm angry to i just finished reading a side of shakur's book for the third time and every i read it, i get a whole new level angry. but that's neither here nor there. but thank you all today event in itself has been a catalyst for healing me just being in the room just in the room. i'm a writer i came over here from jersey city to see more of these in jersey organize it. i'll come absolutely. and i've been writing as since i was seven. i was going to the library with my mother all the time, writing and writing and writing and what i found when i was writing i was using writing as an escape and

what i to know because i didn't hear any. you mentioned that you used writing as an escape, but when you use it to you don't address the issues. and during that time, when i was writing this was like in the early i didn't know about any black authors other than maybe langston hughes. and so my writing ideas were stephen king's, peter straub, you know, and i was writing again to escape and i got find myself so angry now as a writer because all of these years, i spent idolizing these people and writing like them, i don't even know what my voice is, you know is you speaking right now? yeah, yeah it is.

and i think you don't think of it, you know, i don't know how you look. young to me, 55. oh, the harder are young to cry so okay so me that means you may living another 20, 30, 40 years and you can write as a friend of mine said about writing you know you don't have to worry about your knees. i mean this is not a play by play. it's not about playing baseball or something where you you know, you've got to worry about things like that. yeah, you have to. i'm sorry. i'm being so brave really and truly you know, i'm some rachel knows this very well i'm somebody who's been writing too since i was like 12. and i've been in new york city. this is my 50th year in new york city. and i came as a young woman and i've had my ups, downs, and a lot of it was downs with leave me and only in last seven, eight

years have my career as a poet taken off literally. so you don't don't you know, listen, know how to write something now. once you figure out what you really want to write, you already got the foundation you just got to run with it, right? you got to run it. don't worry about you already know. think about what you've done. use and then make something new. that's right. i think i do. to share this, you know, with the audience is that i found a lot of healing, been journaling since was nine and journaling has really helped me heal because every year, every decade, every couple decades i go back and look at everything i've written and i can see where i've grown, you know, cycles that have been. and as you mentioned earlier,

you know, reflecting and looking and being able to like forgive my parents for certain things because now i'm an adult with children so but thank you so much thank you so much. thank you. turn out to be a counseling session. thank you. hi. we have just a little bit of time left. and you are last, but definitely not so we can have your question. thank. good afternoon. my name is sebastian gorton. i am currently an undergraduate at adelphi for a psychology and biology and listening to my fellow brothers sisters tell their stories, i'm wondering how, we as a collective of this generation can get past this pain that we aren't really, truly speaking to each other and at least the pride, the courage or, the mental blocks and aspirations that opium have set that have gotten the way of us

attempting to, you know, keep thank thank you so much for your question anne. and if we can just if someone would like one win of one of the authors to respond i've always believed in the power of community before the internet, when i was a single mother in washington, dc and needed the support of other single mothers, i would add in the paper city paper and the women who needed the same thing i needed, they found me i moved from boston don't want go there but so i'd be in washington where i knew there was a community of black writers and i became a big of that community. i dove into that community and i created other forms of community and i find a lot of times i'll talk to young people who are all in the internet, all on social media, all of tiktok, but they'll be so alone and so

isolated. and i say, wait a minute, they'll need community. i say, you're on tik. you're to tell people you're looking for. yeah, ask for what you need. yeah. and the same people who are looking for that same thing. they will respond. yeah. and if there's thing i'd like to see young people who so fascinated with all these, these formats do is put it down for a minute and talk to someone face to face or just say to somebody, you know, i'm a writer, you know, does anybody else want to write, you know, once a week, once a month, we get together a potluck. oh, my, you have so many people. but these are in the way very thing. look at another black person. what you want. tell them what you want. and if they can't give it to you, they know some black person who wants the same thing. yeah thank you so much. i want to say you want to say be open. be open to whoever walks your way because that's i think i

taught at a delphi. so they have a great creative writing program there. so take a clear writing class, you will find other people and see that works. you may find the other black person in the room or the other person of color in the room. and you can start there and and follow up what said that's how you can start to do it. okay. okay. i, i also think i want to be your generation to me is brilliant. i need to say that i do mean that because i work with a lot of young around the country and that's intentional because i know what it's like when i was a youth coming up, how many older folks would this young people you know? i mean, and i vowed that i would not be like older folks when i was younger. if that makes i think that we got to also that it's a very different time we were growing up yo grew up in newark new jersey so know what i'm talking about we had four or five tv channels ten tv channels, you know it's not young people's faults that android and iphones exist it's not young people's fault that social media exists.

it was actually older folks who created all of this stuff. let's be clear about that. and so i think that, you know, you just have to create these spaces i was just at two schools in new jersey the other day, one in jersey city, one in harris, new jersey. i just create the spaces for young people to talk. i think what would often happens, there's an assumption that young people have nothing on their minds. and i'm saying to y'all, new york, to california, i hear brilliant all the time. we just have to make sure space is for young people to speak and not just ghettoized them. here's the stuff for you. the young people like. how do you feel about this stuff? you know and you'll be amazed. and a lot of us don't even listen to own kids, to be honest with you. y'all know, what i'm talking about. and so i just think i mean, when i think about when i was in high school, i mean, i don't remember anyone who came to my school to speak because. they all said the same stuff. the older adults, they weren't actually talking with us and listen to us. i'm actually glad that you asked the question. i'm saying y'all are geniuses. y'all are brilliant. take my let's exchange information afterwards. let's stay in touch because that's how i roll because i think that generational divide is also a form oppression the generational distinction is a form of oppression as well. i'm not down with that because i hear a lot of old folks wanting people to cosign their hair, the tattoos, their