Revisiting Our Roots through "Barracoon" with Dr. Ibram Kendi

When the echoes of our ancestors' voices find a way to whisper through the pages of history, it takes a masterful storyteller to translate that whisper into a roar. That's precisely what Zora Neale Hurston achieves in "Barracoon," her account of Cudjoe Lewis's harrowing journey from African freedom to the trials of Jim Crow Apartheid. Our conversation with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, a titan in the realm of antiracist literature, and moderated by the insightful Dr. Tony Keith Jr., bridges the past and present, revealing the undiminished power of such narratives to challenge, teach, and transform.

Imagine the impact of ancestral stories being woven into the fabric of our youth's education, stirring a profound curiosity about their heritage and the complex tapestry of American history. We dissect how "Barracoon" for young readers can spark a voracious appetite for knowledge in children. It's not just about recounting history; it's about inviting young minds to question the legacy of the African diaspora and connect on a deeply personal level with the collective experiences of Black people through time.

Our journey through the literary landscape concludes with an homage to the 'Black Books Matter' movement and the indelible mark African American literature has made on society's consciousness. Dr. Kendi and Dr. Keith, through their erudite perspectives, elevate our discourse and underscore the necessity for these narratives in shaping a more truthful and nuanced understanding of the past. Join us as we affirm the power of black storytelling—a testament to the resilience and brilliance of a people whose stories refuse to be silenced.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Mahogany Books Podcast Network, your gateway to the world of African-American literature. We're proud to present a collection of podcasts dedicated to exploring the depth and richness of African-American literature. Immerse yourself in podcasts like Black Books Matter, the Podcast where we learn about the books and major life moments that influence today's top writers, or tune in to Real Ballads Read, where brothers Jan and Miles invite amazing people to talk about the meaningful books in their lives. So whether you're a literature enthusiast, an advocate for social justice or simply curious about the untold stories that shape our world, subscribe to the Mahogany Books Podcast Network on your favorite platform and let African-American literature ignite your passion.

Speaker 2: 0:47

Let's get into it. Enjoy this conversation with. First of all, I'd like to introduce our moderator, dr Tony Keith Jr, also affectionately known here and across the world as Ed MC. And just a slight plug we're hosting Dr Tony Keith at our store for his book launch here on February 6th. Dr Tony Keith, I just like saying Dr. So please come on up. Dr Tony Keith is a Black American gay poet, spoken word artist and hip-hop educational leader from Washington DC. He is author of the YA memoir Inverse how the Boogie man Became a Poet. Tony's writings have appeared in the International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, the Journal of Black Masculinity and many others. A multi-year fellow of the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, with a PhD in Education from George Mason, tony is the CEO of Ed MC Academy and lives with his husband, harry Christian III, in his hometown of DC. You can visit Dr Tony Keith at TonyKeithJrcom. Please welcome our moderator for tonight, the Ed MC.

Speaker 2: 1:54

Hey, next up is our featured author of the evening, dr Abram X Kendi. Let's give it up for that. First of all, yes, yes, yes, just a little. Just a little side note my husband. I actually met Dr Kendi I guess it was back in 2019 before he became Dr I mean just next level, dr Kendi but he had created the first ever anti-racist festival at that time, and so for a bookstore like ours to be affiliated with something like that was just unheard of. So we were just grateful for that opportunity in that moment. So, to fast forward to now and have many opportunities to connect with him and to host him, I just consider him as a friend and so it's just a great moment to have you here tonight.

Speaker 2: 2:44

So let's get into about Mr Dr Kendi. Kendi is a National Book Award winning and number one New York Times bestselling author. His books include Anti-Racist Baby, good Night Racism, how to Be an Anti-Racist and how to Raise an Anti-Racist. Dr Kendi is the Andrew W Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and the director of the BU Center for Anti-Racist Research. In 2020, time Magazine named Dr Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world not just DC, not Southeast, but in the world right. He has also been awarded a 2021 Mecca Arthur Fellowship, and tonight we are here for to learn about, to hear about Barakoon and this phenomenal story that so many people in history have not heard about, and to have this abdication for young adults, young readers, is something so very powerful to me, so let's please give it up for Dr Abram X Kendi.

Speaker 3: 3:57

Hello, hello, ah, ooh, I sound great. Good evening everybody. How you doing? All right, fantastic, fantastic. A couple of just quick things. I always like to say thank yous again. Thank you Mahogany Books, thank you DC Public Libraries and certainly thank you Dr Kendi for being here. We're gonna just get right to it. Can you just give us the three-minute thing? What's the? What is Barakoon? What is it about? Tell us that part. What's Barakoon? Start there.

Speaker 4: 4:23

Well, first let me just thank everyone for coming out this evening. Of course I want to thank Mahogany Books and I want to congratulate you on your new book. Thank you very much. More on verse 4 that's about to come out. It's it's this Barakoon is is the life story of Kajo Lewis told to the legendary Zora, neale Hurston and Kajo Lewis. At the time when he told this story to Zora, he was the last known survivor of the transatlantic human trade from from Africa to the United States. But what's fascinating to me about his story is that it's a story that really begins in Africa and to a certain extent, ends in Africa town. In sure I am quite soft-spoken, you know it's. It's a story that starts in Africa and and really ends in Africa town, in Africa town in which he faced Jim Crow. And so it's really a story of African freedom to enslavement, to emancipation, to a second slavery in Jim Crow.

Speaker 3: 5:39

Yeah, yeah, you know I had a chance to read the advanced copy of this book, right, and this is important because I'm someone who did not grow up readings Zora Neale Hurston, right, and so I knew nothing of this story, was not even aware sort of this thing. Well, I know as an adult, right, but this was not something that was offered to me as a young person and so I remember, as I was reading this as an adult, the way it was filling in, I think, some gaps about what I know about myself as a black person and the descendant of enslaved people. And so I'm wondering for you well, not for you, but like for the audience, for those of us who don't know much about Zora Neale Hurston or sort of the books, like, why is something like what she wrote so important now for young readers? Like, why Zora Neale? What's the history behind that?

Speaker 4: 6:17

I think, in terms of why it's important for young readers. We're living in a time in which young readers are being prevented from learning about slavery. We're living in a time in which books on racism are being banned. We're living in a time when books that express the culture and the idioms and the languages of, you know, of regular folks are being looked down upon. And but I think, in the case of Zora Neale Hurston, this book in particular demonstrates that she wasn't just a legendary novelist, she wasn't just a legendary folklorist, she was also a legendary anthropologist, and so, for her, the preservation of this story, particularly in the voice of Kajalouis, is really a demonstration of her skill as an anthropologist, and it was her first major anthropological trip, which sort of goes to show the type of anthropologist she ultimately became.

Speaker 3: 7:32

And the kind of questions that she was asking. Right, I remember again reading this book. There's so much about this book. Koto's voice is written in African, american and English or black language and as a black man, I was so excited to just read that language because I don't know. For me it centered something about is that a question before? About? You know, if enslaved Africans already had language right before they were dragged around the world, how in the world did they learn American standard English without given like a culturally relevant method of like how, what language do they create? And I think about the disc that they early by mother father. Those of us in DC speak like that, like where that comes from, and then to read that language coming from an African man in a book was very powerful. Can you talk to us a bit about language and including AAVE, because this is Kujo's, this is his words as they were spoken, right?

Speaker 4: 8:25

So in many ways, to me, language is, is the sound of culture, and so it was incredibly important for Zora Neuersten to not only collect and write about his story, but how he told his story. And I think it's important for us to understand language in the way linguists understand language, which is they essentially define language as communication with rules. So, if we understand it at that basic level, there are a number of different languages there, even a number of different languages within the English tree. That all should be respected and protected. And indeed, african people who were enslaved in the Americas and more or less compelled and forced to speak English or French or Dutch or Portuguese or Spanish, typically created new languages, that sort of blended the old with the new, just as English comes from Germanic and Latin languages Absolutely Right. So you know, I think that African people were creating new languages too, and I think those languages should be respected and heard because in many ways, in certain types of ways, they're in danger.

Speaker 3: 9:56

Yeah, in danger. I was gonna go somewhere with that, but I just. What I appreciate about that, dr Kinney, is the affirmation right, especially for young readers who speak like that, who write like that, who whose voices in their heads sound like I know black kids who talk like Kujo in this book. Right, and so can you talk to us about adapting this story for younger readers? Right, we had this joke in the not really a joke in a green room. We're both PhD people, we got all this academic stuff, but to write for a young adult audience requires some sort of adaptation translation. Can you talk to us about that process? How did you go from what Zerlina Hurston put together into this?

Speaker 4: 10:35

So it was really hard and I was hoping you wasn't say it was easy. I mean not it, I think. But I think the way in which I was able to get into, I think, both the, the sort of head and spiritual space to to adapt this book is I kept thinking about and you'll. You'll read for those of you who haven't read Barakun you'll read about our Kujo Lewis's relationship with his great granddaughters. Yeah, and so during the book, zoran narrates him like giving them peaches, right, you know, or him looking at them play in the yard affectionately, and, and, and that became important to me because I started to think how would Kujo Lewis have told his story, not to Zoran Hill Hurston, but to his granddaughter, his great-granddaughters, and, and, and so I tried to sort of think about it in that way. So how would he have told these painful moments of his story to his great-granddaughter that he loved, right, that he of course, didn't want to feel that pain, but still wanted to understand what happened to him? And and and I think that's what would allow me to, to start to think about, and, I think, put me in the conceptual space to, to, to adapt this, but I would also add the more that I thought about that, the more I thought about this grandfather telling his life story to his great-grandchild.

Speaker 4: 12:11

I thought about the fact that I actually didn't grow up with grandfathers, so my father's father he never knew his.

Speaker 4: 12:20

His father, my mother's father, died a few months before I was born from cancer, so I didn't grow up with any grandfathers, and and so, in a way, the more that I adapted the book, the more that I almost sat in that same seat with his great-granddaughters, in which it became an experience for me in which Kujo wasn't just speaking to his great-granddaughters as children, he was speaking to me as a child.

Speaker 4: 12:50

So I started to think, oh, how would my great-grandfather have told me his story, his life story, particularly knowing my great-grandfather had to deal with the challenges of Jim Crow, georgia, and so that's how I was able to do it, and I think the reason why that was important to me, and the reason why I wanted to think about how a great-grandfather or grandfather or grandmother would have told this life story to their, to their grandchild, is because this is a difficult story. Yes, it's a painful story at times, right, but grandparents still find ways to tell the painful aspects of their lives to people that they love, to their children, to their grandchildren, and so there's a way to do that.

Speaker 3: 13:44

Yeah, I love that so much because it's making me think so much about the power of oral tradition and the ways in which that's always sort of been the thing that's held a lot of black folks together in terms of not being able to have access to always the right kind of literature or you know, but just be able to tell those stories, and so that's really amazing and I was. You probably already answered, but I feel like maybe there's a little bit more there. But, like, did you, did anything surprise you while writing this book? Did something like an aha moment hit you?

Speaker 4: 14:13

I think I think that when you adapt a book you have to read it a number of times.

Speaker 4: 14:22

There we go right and you, in many ways, and I think, what, what really? I think I don't want to say it surprised me in a sort of negative way, but in a sort of pleasantly surprised me was, though I think there was somewhat of an artistry to the sort of Zora, neil Hurston, the interludes of narration, in other words. She could have easily written a book in which at the beginning, zora's approaching Kajo's you know, cabin and they, they talk, and then he starts telling the story and then she comes in at the end, but throughout the book there are times in which she interjects, yes, her, yes, dialogue with Kajo or things that he's doing or things that they're doing together. And and the more that I read that, the more that I realized how genius that was and sort of holding the reader and in sort of pacing the narrative and and so of course I wanted to to ensure that that was, that that was retained, yeah, and that that was sort of elevated yeah, I think particularly for young people.

Speaker 4: 15:37

I thought that would be incredibly effective to making the book interesting for sure, even for me.

Speaker 3: 15:42

While reading it I was like, oh, wow, yeah, there's like Zora still with us in the book. Right, like Zora, neil Hurston's identity does not get lost in this story. I found myself like, oh, that, you know, there's a little side talk or meant, you know, and there's this relationship that she develops with Kajo in this book that I think is so fascinating. It's very much like an old man, you know, not wanting to be bothered sometimes, but loving to tell a lot of stories. How did in this case? Because you mentioned keeping up the pace. This book is illustrations in there. How did those illustrations contribute to the story for you?

Speaker 4: 16:12

well, I mean Jasmine Lee Johnson, yeah, yeah, this, I mean, her illustrations were just sort of we're just stunning, and and the first illustration that she created that I saw, in which I knew that I was okay, I really need to work with her on this book, was this illustration that she she, she says was inspired by this passage she calls smoke pictures, and and this was a passage when, after Kajo Lewis is taken from his home and is being marched to the coast of Africa and his captors sort of create a fire and he's sort of staring into the fire and and the smoke coming from the fire, he sees his, his family members and he's sort of emotional and and so Zara sort of narrates that she left him there with his smoke pictures because it clearly he was, he was in another place, kajo Lewis at that moment, and, and so Jasmine Lee Johnson recreates that scene, you know, in in the book, as well as a whole host of other scenes, and I just think, particularly for young people, for middle graders, that that's another way to not only capture them and and you know, and keep them reading, but also it allows their imagination, you know, to flourish.

Speaker 4: 17:51

Yeah, because I mean, obviously our kids are fed a number of different images, but these are not images that they normally see. You know the images and the scenes of. You know the transatlantic human trait.

Speaker 3: 18:07

Yeah, yeah and it's and I just have to say, the way that it's done in this book, I think, is so artful because, as a young read, well, I'm an adult reader, obviously, but I could imagine, as a young reader, trying to conceptualize what it was like to be someone who was captured from your home and dragged, you know, and I even think, in a book. You know, kujo mentioned this you know, I didn't something about not understanding what was going on, like, why was I taken, why am I being forced to do this labor, this? I don't understand what would happen to me, right? I'm just curious, you know, have you discussed this with younger readers? And what are they saying? What about, maybe your children? I don't know. But like, how are young people responding to that story? Do you know?

Speaker 4: 18:49

So I have a seven-year-old daughter, imani, who is probably my fiercest critic, and so I know you may see a number of different ways people say a whole bunch of things about me.

Speaker 4: 19:09

It's nothing compared to what it's like, true, raw, just. You know what she would say and I, and so we of course had conversations about this book and about certain passages that I would read to her or that she would read, and what was just striking to me was that in many ways she became three or four years old. Three or four years old when they're asking all those why's. I mean, it was just relentless and constant, and to me that was a good thing, because to me, if a child, if a kid reads a text and they come across and they come out of it with question after question after question, not only is it that me we're not teaching them enough, but it also means that they're curious, and I do think, and I hope, this will spark curiosity, and that's why, for me, I'm considering it to be an introductory text, particularly to the transatlantic human trade, because I think it will spark a tremendous number of questions from our kids.

Speaker 3: 20:22

For sure, for sure. When you mentioned questions, I immediately thought about my nephew, who's grown now he's like 20-something years old, but when he was about that questioning age, there was a moment he had a pin, just like with a pin top on it, and he's flying this thing around and he's like Uncle Tony, what's this? I'm like it's a pin. He goes okay. Then he keeps flying a thing around. What's this? It's a pin. And we do this repeatedly for at least 10 times. Then I say and he says what is this? And I say what? You tell me what it is, what do you think it is? He says it's an airplane. And it dawned on me in that moment I have to let this thing be an airplane for this kid. There's something about allowing kids to have an imagination and to have questions and to wonder, and sometimes adults, I think we might clip their wings when it comes to being curious. And so, yeah, what kind of questions are you hoping that kids ask themselves after reading this?

Speaker 4: 21:12

Well, first, I'm hoping they ask why haven't I learned more about this? Why are people hiding this from me? Does this explain how particularly darker skinned people or black people, if they're black arrived in the United States? So this seems quite important, you know, then. Therefore, I should be understanding more about this. Is there a relationship between the way Kajo was treated when he was enslaved and the way black people are treated today?

Speaker 4: 21:46

You know, I would hope that kids realize and ask the question specifically about, because I think what's most, one of the most fascinating moments in the text is after emancipation and the Kajo Lewis and others who arrived on the what's known as the last sort of quote slave ship, the Quotilda in 1859, they decide they want to go back to Africa, like they're free, so they want to go home and they pool their money and realize they don't have enough money to go home. And I'm just hoping in that moment the kid, the kid, the child asks. So I'm oftentimes told that nobody wants to go to Africa, that Africa is bad, but these people wanted to go home. So tell me more about Africa, so not just learning about Africa in the early part of the text when Kujo's a child and he's coming of age, but I think that will also spark interest in learning about Africa, which is a continent that our kids are also not learning about, just as they're not learning about slavery.

Speaker 3: 23:13

Absolutely the yeah clap for that. By the way, that was pretty amazing. There are two more questions bubbling in my brain. I know we're going to get questions from the audience, but the first thing that I'm thinking about is, as you said, that was you know, I think so much about how, as a kid growing up, I would often hear you know teachers, educators or just folks sort of in my sphere talking about the slaves.

Speaker 3: 23:35

It was always the slaves, like there was this disconnection between my relationship and African people, and so I think that, to your point, to have kids asking questions about, I think, africa and its history and people, I think it's really, really brilliant.

Speaker 3: 23:49

And in my book how the Boogie man Became a Poet Slight Plug not even Slight, it was a real plug. So you know I write there's a story that I have in there where I remember being in high school going to go see the film Amistad Y'all remember this and no one really explaining to me sort of the history of all that and sink a shout and give us us free and not really understanding like, wait a minute, these are African women. I come from these people like that connection, true power, which leads me to this idea of knowledge of self. So, for those of you who don't know, I love hip hop and I'm always talking about the five elements, and one of them is knowledge of self. The more you know about who you are, the more powerful you can show up into the world, and so I'm thinking about you and this book and the knowledge of self that's included in this.

Speaker 3: 24:30

What do you say to folks who are saying that this particular knowledge of self is not important in necessary in schools and libraries and therefore we're going to ban them? What do you say? What have you been saying?

Speaker 4: 24:43

Well, I mean, I think, first and foremost, I think it is in order to understand one self, one must understand the world, one must understand the environment that they're living in. We understand ourselves in relation to others and to what's happening in the world. And in order to understand the world, we must understand history. And in order to understand modern history, you have to understand slavery. And even global history cannot be explained without explaining the transatlantic trade. And if you talk about the transatlantic slave trade, you have to talk about colonialism. And so I just don't know how people can understand self, have knowledge of self and be ignorant about history. And I think, typically, the more ignorant that people are about history, the more ignorant they are about themselves.

Speaker 3: 25:46

Yes, yes, so much related y'all. This is probably not another plug. I'm trying to put out books and conversations because I'm realizing something here.

Speaker 4: 25:54

Can I? No, go ahead. No, keep going. So the reason why this is also important is because if you have the power to make people ignorant about themselves, then you have the power to manipulate and control them. So, then, that allows us to understand why certain elected officials are literally trying to ban history so that they can better manipulate people.

Speaker 3: 26:19

Yeah, yeah, the title of my book is how the Boogie man Became a Poet, and so much of that is obviously a metaphor about having a fear as a young person about being authentically a black gay boy in America and America still doesn't love black gay boys and men. But how much internalized racism I had soaked in as a kid because these systems in schools said don't speak like that, don't write like that, don't do it. Like there was sort of this guarding of my posture and my being and so realizing. You know, while I wrote my book I was, like you know, I had to go through some unpacking of wait a minute, like I've internalized this belief about myself that I'm less than according to this hierarchy of a thing, and so I just want to let you know that when you putting books like this into the world, y'all I think restores some of that gap and gives a lot of young people a lot of love and sense of understanding about who they are and realizing that, wait a minute, I am lovable, I am smart, I'm intelligent, I'm a part of a long history, and so I just want to thank you for that, because this, I believe, is absolutely anti-racist in its approach. So there's that Y'all clap for that.

Speaker 3: 27:34

And last thing I want to know so this is one of three adaptations, I think, of Zora Nail's work. Yes, that you've done. Can you walk us through just that process, and then I think we'll get some more questions.

Speaker 4: 27:46

Sure. So, yeah, I am working with Zora's estate and I'm going to adapt six books. Look at everybody's face, though, did you see? Wow? So this is the third book, and the first book was called Magnolia Flower, which was based on a short story that Zora Nail Hurston wrote, and the second book was called the Making of Butterflies, which was based on a folktale that Zora collected. It's a board book that is simply how butterflies came to be, you know, based on a black rule of folktale, and obviously there's this book, baracun, and I think it just goes to show that just the breath of Zora Nail Hurston's sort of body of work, like a short story, a piece of folklore that she collected and then a nonfiction text, and so I'm hoping, through these series of adaptations that you know, like Alice Walker and a whole host of other writers, we're really showing and demonstrating just how much of a literary legend Zora Nail Hurston truly was Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 29:15

Thank you so much. Any other thing that you might want to just say about Baracun or this book, or like any other thing that I probably did not ask you that you want to make sure you share.

Speaker 4: 29:26

Well, it's interesting when you were, you know, talking about just identity and the way in which history and sort of so much shapes that, and I guess we were talking about that. I just want to add that in many ways, I think in too many ways, when we do not teach black people about enslavement and the era of slavery in all of its fullness, what that results in us not teaching black people and even black children that there was consistent and constant resistance to that enslavement. And we're also not teaching black people that, despite the chains of slavery, the humanity of black people never diminished. And I'm mentioning that because during the enslavement era even abolitionists were making this case that slavery literally embruded black people like, made them into these brutes, which is why it's so horrible, which is why it needs to end, and that simply was not true. And I think the more any group of people learn that a particular group that's facing enslavement or some sort of form of oppression still beats their humanity, it also shows the power of humanity. And I think, similarly, if we don't teach white children slavery in all of its fullness, then we're not going to teach them that there were white people who challenged slavery.

Speaker 4: 31:23

How about that Right, and the irony is the very people who are banning slavery are banning it based on this subject of opposition that we just want to teach that all the enslavers who hate right and all of the black people were enslaved when it was much more complicated than that. But it makes sense, right? They don't want that child identifying with that white abolitionist because then that child will identify with white people who are challenging racism today. Right, and it's all connected. But they will also see that many of the ideas and tactics and strategies that enslavers used to manipulate and control the vast majority of white people, who are not enslaving people in the South and the rest of us, are being used today. And the original book banners were enslavers.

Speaker 3: 32:20

How about that? How about that I often think so much about? Ooh, I don't know many stories about white abolitionists, you know, I think it's like hard. That'd be a fascinating sort of not a genre of books, but like something to read. Because I get that question Tony is a white person. What can I do? And I'm like, well, I don't know what to tell you about your people, but please find a way to identify with white abolitionists, figure out what those stories are like. So yeah, thank you so much for that. I think we got some questions from the big audience, so we're going to, I don't know, pass to my thing. We'll clap it up for what we got right now. Clap it up. Thank you very much, dr Kenny. So much. I'm looking at the person with the questions, by the way. It's like a weird thing. Thank you so much for this conversation. I'm really I truly love this book and I'll be sure to pick up how the Booking man became a poet too. Let's see what we got. Let's see what we got.

Speaker 2: 33:06

So the first one is it was a young person, maybe 11 or 12, and their question is why is the book called Barakoon Great?

Speaker 4: 33:18

great question. So the book is called Barakoon because a Barakoon is where enslaved people in Africa were held. It was almost like a prison. So after people were kidnapped from their homes and taken to the coast, they were essentially put in Barakoons. And the reason why they needed these quote unquote Barakoons was because typically, those who came with ships to trade for enslaved people it took a while for them to fill up their ships because they would typically barter. They would typically try to find the people who were the enslaved, people who were the cheapest, a whole host of things and so the people who were enslaved needed to be held, typically for months at a time. And I'm mentioning this because we're often, even with those of us who are familiar with the transatlantic trade, we're taught that it was a long march to the coast. We're taught that there was many months across the Atlantic. What we're not taught is the many months in the Barakoon.

Speaker 2: 34:36

I would drop the mic, but I don't. That was good. Somebody asked what would your number one policy be, priority be, if you were running for president? Dr Ibram X Kendi, I chose to read that. I want to hear this is going to be good.

Speaker 4: 34:55

What would be my number one priority?

Speaker 2: 34:57

Yes.

Speaker 4: 34:58

Wow, I should have prepared for this in some of the DC.

Speaker 4: 35:04

My number one? I think my number one priority would be radically transforming our healthcare system and ensuring that everyone had access to free, high quality healthcare and I say everyone, not just people in Southeast DC but people who live in rural Maryland that there were no trauma deserts. And the reason why I mention this is because if you go home and look at the top 10 leading causes of death, almost every single one of them are diseases. So it's diseases, unintentional injuries, suicides, it's not homicides and people are dying. And people are dying because our system is so broken and people are being bankrupt by our system. They got me timing like a politician.

Speaker 3: 36:05

Come on, you're doing a great job. Yeah, yes, I'm like buying into it. I'm like, yeah, I want this hell plan. I want, yeah, this is yeah, I want this, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:16

But I think we can all relate to that in some form or fashion somebody in our family, something we're going, so it's something that it really does, I think, resonate with a lot of us. So thank you for sharing that. What's going on with book bans? Do you have any plans to bring back your anti-racist book festival? And it says please do in caps.

Speaker 4: 36:37

Yes.

Speaker 2: 36:44

What question would you ask Kujo today if you were interviewing him? Let's go.

Speaker 4: 36:51

Wow.

Speaker 4: 36:55

So for those of you who don't know, so I mentioned earlier how Kujo and other people who came were forced to come on the Quotilda created what became known as Africa Town, and Africa Town still exists outside of Mobile, alabama, but it's surrounded by heavy industry and it's now part of the Cancer Alley, in which people who live in Africa Town have higher levels of all sorts of cancers because of all those toxins that are literally surrounding the community.

Speaker 4: 37:40

And so you know, I would ask Kujo about the decision, because they essentially what happened is they initially were like we want to go back to Africa, but then, when they realized the cost was so inhibited, they were like, ok, let's just plan to save up our money and buy land here. And so I would ask him, when you look at the history of Africa Town since then, you look at the number of your, your ancestors, I should say your descendants, who are encircled by smoke, do you think y'all would have made a different decision and maybe spent more time sort of saving up to eventually try to find a way back, you know, back to to Africa? There's actually a film on Netflix called Descendant that talks about Africa Town and the Quotilda, for those who are interested.

Speaker 2: 38:45

Awesome, Thank you. The next question is do you see your book as having any kind of connection to a movement toward reparations?

Speaker 4: 38:55

So I would hope so and I would, I would hope that young people and older people who are reading this book will.

Speaker 4: 39:07

It will allow them to sit and walk in the shoes of, you know, kujo Lewis and what he faced and others faced, and and really the pain and the loss and the dispossession that happened during the enslavement era. But I should also add that what's fascinating about this book is it doesn't end with emancipation, right, you know, zora first goes to speak to Kujo in 1927. Right, so this is what, 60 years after 50 or five or so years, you know, after emancipation, and and so a lot happened between 1865 and 1927 in his life and in Alabama and Southern Alabama, and and and a lot of that was governed by by Jim Crow. And so the second half of the book tracks the ways in which he was also dispossessed during Jim Crow and their actual stories of that. And so I think it actually those who are advocating for reparations are typically not just advocating based on what was stolen from African Americans during the enslavement era, but also during the Jim Crow era, and I think you see that through through Kujo Lewis's story.

Speaker 3: 40:37

For sure, there's a he develops a family and and well, there's a whole lot that goes on with that family. But yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 40:45

Awesome, awesome, thank you. What is your advice to an aspiring writer and what's the best advice you've received about the writing process?

Speaker 4: 40:54

Okay, so I just did the math it was 62 years right.

Speaker 3: 40:59

Was anyone telling anyone, anyone willing to doubt? Okay?

Speaker 4: 41:03

Ask that question, yes.

Speaker 2: 41:06

You just had to. You have to finish that one in your mind. What is your advice to an aspiring writer and what's the best advice you've received about the writing process?

Speaker 4: 41:16

So I think, as relates to my best advice to to an aspiring writer, is to learn and seek to hone and appreciate your own voice. So the way you express yourself on the page, you know every great writer, you know you're reading them by the way in which they write, and so I just, I would just encourage you to. We talked a lot about language, right. You're learning, as a new writer and aspiring writer, how you speak on the page and I would just encourage you to respect and protect and hone and learn your own personal language. And I would also, in terms of the best piece of advice that that that I've received has has been to basically trust one's own idea but also realize when it's not working.

Speaker 2: 42:33

That's that kind of segues into this next question, though, too, and the question is what made you want to write? And I'm asked that of both, why you could have done anything, dr Kendi, dr Tony Keith. Why write? What was the thing, what was the impetus to say? You know what I'm going to take this time, and I'm going to make this space in my life to write, to jot those things down, to commemorate a lot of different experiences. Why write?

Speaker 4: 42:55

So it's interesting, I grew up wanting to be a sportscaster. Okay, so I was a big sort of basketball fan and I grew up watching NBA on NBA on NBC in the 90s I don't know if anybody remembers that with Bob Costas, and so I was like, hey, I would love to be a Bob Costas, right. But then when I got to college, I told myself that I felt that I was a better writer than I was speaker, and I think that was partly because I grew up in the church. Both my parents were ministers. They always brought me around some of the greatest speakers in the world.

Speaker 1: 43:42

So I was like, okay, I'm not like these people's level.

Speaker 4: 43:46

But so I felt like I think I had more confidence as a writer than as a speaker. So then I was like, okay, I'm going to be a sports writer. And then sports writing transitioned into writing about race, or wanting to be a journalist who wrote on race. But then, ultimately, I decided to go to graduate school and become, you know, a scholar, and unfortunately, unfortunately we have to write as professors.

Speaker 3: 44:15

For me it's. I've been writing. You'll read about how the Book of man became a poet, but I've been writing since I was a child, dealing with again now that I know internalized racism, internalized homophobia. I was also poor, there was a lot going on and I would write poetry to myself at night when nobody was around could see. By the way, in the book again you'll see the photocopies of those poems, which is kind of cool. But, and so my point is, I've always been writing as a way to sort of escape and deal with emotions and to kind of figure out who I am. I go to my poetry for questions a lot. I don't know what's going, even to this day. If I don't know what's going on in the world, I'm writing, probably some kind of poem about it. But to create a book, especially one that's for younger adult readers, it would have happened was.

Speaker 3: 44:54

I was at an event with one of my dear friends who's also a world famous author. We don't need to give him a shout out today. Actually, I will shout out to Jason Reynolds and love that guy and he was doing a book signing. I was just telling you all the story upstairs. This kid comes out of line to me and he says Where's your book? Like, your black gay guy grew up poor, but you're married. Now you got to be like which your story Right? And I was like I don't.

Speaker 3: 45:17

I remember saying like I published on the stage, not the page, or something ridiculous to this kid, you know. And I thought to myself, like are there stories like mine, written in ways that might appeal to this young little black boy who might be gay, or what do I do about this? And so I felt this, this calling, almost this need to write something, especially for young readers. And then what wound up happening, just like probably a lot of my academic work, is the more I wrote that book, the more I began to understand a lot more about myself. And so the title is how the Boogie man Became a Poet. I wrote that book almost as an answering an essay question how did the Boogie man become a poet? And so I wrote that thing and I was hoping that a younger person would pick it up and be like, oh, now how to not be afraid to be yourself. So that's what happened.

Speaker 2: 46:02

That's good, that's good. Thank you both for that. Yes, we chatted about colleges upstairs in the green room. This question is as a student of FAMU, dr Candy, how would you, how would you recount your experience on that campus? How would you recount that? Talking about school, we're talking about academics. How would you recount that experience? So? I mean, I would say and what did it mean to you?

Speaker 4: 46:30

Well, I think it was probably the first place that I felt safe, and what I mean by safe is I felt safe to express myself and learn myself. And I also felt safe to express and learn myself because at FAMU, those who are Florida Agricultural and Mechanical the University of course got to sound this out fully, because you know for other folk who went to HBCUs that are less than family. Wait a minute wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute wait a minute.

Speaker 2: 47:12

Langston University, bowie State. In the back, elizabeth. Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 3: 47:17

I know you got a security team. Be careful.

Speaker 2: 47:19

HBCUs. Okay, so you know.

Speaker 4: 47:22

FAMU was there. It was when I was there. There were people, black people, from all over the nation, even all over the world, and so that allowed me. There was not this sense that you had to conform to a certain form of blackness Because there weren't white folks there who were telling us, like the young brother in Texas that quote, being an American is conforming. You know, there wasn't that, there wasn't that sort of demand to conform or to shape, shift or to change, and that was really the first time I'd experienced that, and so it was safe. You know, personally and culturally, and I think that's probably why I was able to not only grow a lot as an individual but even grow a lot conceptually, and I actually write a lot about that and how to be an anti-racist, and in a way, that space allowed me to think both good and bad things and sort of work through my thoughts, you know, about race, about blackness, about whiteness and so on and so forth.

Speaker 2: 48:44

Yeah, and I'll just add, since we're doing a plug for HBCUs, no, but just to you know, executive privilege here. I attended the HBCU as well and when I think about, before I got to my HBCU, the exposure to black books that I had was nil, it was very limited. And when I got on this campus and I saw these people that looked like me and resources in a facility and library that had all this history in it that I did not have access to, I just gobbled it up and I just started learning more and more about me. And you know, mahogany Books was the brainchild of my husband.

Speaker 2: 49:18

But I also say it wouldn't exist if I had not had that experience at Langston University, because I learned about myself. I learned about the triumphs that we had and also the parts that were not as beautiful. But if I had not known that, there would not have been this yearning to make sure everybody else had access to black books. But I felt at home and was exposed to things that had never been exposed to, that really focused on me and I say me as a black person. So that experience, I mean, was mind blowing. But here you say that from your experience and how it's shaped and how it really formed a lot of your ideals and who you are is powerful, so thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 4: 49:54

And if I could just add very quickly that in my English one-on-one class, my first semester, that's when I first met Zora Neverson- Ah yes, yep, absolutely, just want to also say shout out to the black folks who graduated from PWIs.

Speaker 3: 50:09

Thank you very much. We in the building, we in here, right, and my book about a very particular black experience that occurs at PWIs. Shout out to black student unions and black cultural centers.

Speaker 2: 50:19

Yes, yes and.

Speaker 3: 50:20

American Studies departments. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 50:23

Okay, okay, okay, dr Black Towers, baby, our last question here, man, okay, two, I think we have time for just two. What advice would you have for young readers who are finding their voices as authors? There's young people who are looking to do that as well. What advice for them?

Speaker 4: 50:44

Well, first let me just say that I really admire young people who are already finding their voice as authors.

Speaker 4: 50:56

I did not even begin to find my voice as an author until I was probably, to you, quite ancient, and so I just want to just express an admiration and I also want to express an affection for sort of what you're doing, and but I also my biggest piece of advice for that young person and I would probably say this is the case even for older people is that is to really be correct and to really be courageous.

Speaker 4: 51:38

You know, as you think of what you want to say and what you want to write. And when I say courage, I'm not sort of speaking about courage as the sort of absence of danger, but really the strength to do what's right in the face of something that's dangerous. And I think in the case of a child, it can be dangerous to create and think of a story that nobody is thinking about or that nobody has written it in that way, and so you're like, oh, maybe I shouldn't do that, nobody's thinking of that, nobody's created a character like that. And I just want to encourage you to be courageous, right and to find that strength to create that character to create that story, and because I think that the authors that I admire the most are the authors that are most courageous.

Speaker 3: 52:42

If I may I love that response I would say find a way to discover people whose voices you're in conversation with, and by that I mean I think about, for example, a book like how to Book a man Became a Poet I'm like shout out to Elizabeth Acevedo and Mahogany Brown and Jacqueline Woodson and like so many other authors who are writing in similar kind of ways. And for young people, there are writing groups, probably in your community, your neighborhood, their poetry clubs. There are youth competitions. They are not in all places, not in all rural places or urban places, but please know that now I'm so excited because now those kinds of opportunities exist. When I was a kid they weren't around. Poetry slam teams and teachers doing things with writing was not around. So anyway. So think about whose voices yours are probably already in conversation, right with your friends, right with your cousins, right.

Speaker 2: 53:34

Yeah. So lastly, Dr Kendi, now that this book is out in the world two days ago, 48 hours shout out to the book birthday of Barakoon for young readers. What, yes, that's yes, that's out, it's out. What would you say when you close the last page of that manuscript that you wanted your intention to be as this book floats among all of us in the world? What do you want that intention to be with this book?

Speaker 4: 54:06

So if this book is for young people and even older people in an introductory text to slavery, and even slavery by another name, as one author called it, if it's an introduction, then I would hope that it truly would be an introduction. It truly would be a beginning. It would allow us to begin exploring some of the questions that we raised as we read that book, by finding other authors and finding other books and researching for ourselves. Because I just do, I think, because we don't understand slavery, like we just don't understand this country and we don't understand the modern world, and I just think that the more we understand slavery and the more, the earlier we understand it, I think, the more knowledgeable as a, as a citizen, as you know, as a community and a society will be, and the more knowledgeable will be, the less likely we will be able to be manipulated, you know, by people.

Speaker 2: 55:19

Absolutely. Thank you so much, dr Ibram X Kendi, dr Tony Keith Jr. Bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, uh-uh, yes, yes.

Speaker 4: 55:33

Yes, yes, yes, thank you, thank you all for being here.

Speaker 1: 55:35

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