LIVE: We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World
Summary
In inspired and incisive writing the contributors to WE ARE MEANT TO RISE speak unvarnished truths not only to the original and pernicious racism threaded through the American experience but also to the deeply personal. This episode features Carolyn Holbrook, David Mura, Douglas Kearney, Melissa Olson, Said Shaiye, and Kao Kalia Yang. It is a recording from a live event at Next Chapter Booksellers in St. Paul, MN, on November 29, 2021.That's not the answer. Yeah. Yeah.
Riley:Thank you all for being here today. I am the events manager. My name is Riley. We, so I'm grateful to have you guys all here today. This past year has been great as we've been able to start doing events again.
Riley:After last year, we weren't able to do events. So, I'm always really excited when we have, like, a large turnout because it just feels like all the time. So I'm going to introduce the editor of University of Minnesota Press, and he will introduce our readers today. So Eric Anderson, if
Riley:you could take the stage.
Erik Anderson:Yo. Thank you. First of all, everyone who's who's here. Thank you, everyone who's there. Thank you to Next Chapter.
Erik Anderson:It feels really good, to gather together safely, in this time, and and we're so grateful that even more people can join. I'm gonna be very brief because I'm not the one you wanna be hearing from tonight, but I do wanna just kinda lift up on behalf of the press our gratitude and, just joy in being able to
Erik Anderson:work with Carolyn and David and all of
Erik Anderson:these contributors on this incredible book. You know, we've been oppressed for ninety five years, I believe it is. I haven't been there for all of them, so I'm willing to have faith there. I'd like to think that we take our work seriously. And I know that as an editor, I feel incredible gratitude pretty much every day because of the people that I get to work with and because of the things that I learned, the things that I better about myself through the act of working with people like Carolyn, like David, like the contributors to this collection.
Erik Anderson:And so just on behalf of all of us at the press, you know, thank you for, the opportunity to help lift this into the world. And I won't talk a lot about the book because I want you to hear that from Carolyn and David. But it's meant a lot to me, to work on this book. And so I I just thank you both for that to start. I get to introduce Carolyn, and then Carolyn and David will introduce, other writers as we go.
Erik Anderson:But but it's my honor to get to introduce Carolyn right now. Carolyn is founder and director of More Than a Single Story. She's a writer, educator, and an advocate for the healing power of the arts. Her essay collection, Tell Me Your Names, and I Will Testify, received a Minnesota Book Award for memoir and creative nonfiction. She is coauthor with doctor Josie Johnson of her memoir, Hope and Struggle, and her essays have been published widely in A Good Time for the Truth, Race in Minnesota, and Blues Vision, African American Writing from Minnesota, as well as many other publications.
Erik Anderson:She was the first person of color to win the Kaye Sexton Award. That's the part on script, off script. I will say I've gotten to work with Carolyn for many years now. We began working together on Josie Johnson's book. She made me see so much.
Erik Anderson:I felt like certainly under you know, how many other people has she done this for? And the
Erik Anderson:more that I worked with her,
Erik Anderson:I realized you could fill an arena with the people that have been inspired and encouraged. She is incredibly generous with her time, with her spirit, with her wisdom. As an editor, sometimes, you hope that you can be there for your authors as much as possible. Wonderful thing is when you learn you have authors that are there for you as well. I have certainly leaned on Carolyn at times, both, professionally and personally, and I am really grateful to introduce and bring up Carolyn over.
Carolyn Holbrook:Oh, goodness. Eric, thank you so much. So I want to thank the University of Minnesota press and a special thanks to our wonderful manager who we just met Eric Anderson. I also want to say thank you to the 33 writers who lent their voices to this effort. My deepest gratitude to my friend and colleague David Nora for co editing this call with me.
Carolyn Holbrook:I couldn't be prouder that more than a single story now stands among the many, thank you, who have raised a voice to speak about this fraught moment in American and Minnesota history. Many of you know that I started more than a single story in 2015. We are a conversation series where black indigenous people and writers and arts activists discuss issues of importance to us. About two years ago, I mentioned to Eric Henderson that I've been thinking of putting together an anthology. And
Carolyn Holbrook:as
Carolyn Holbrook:you can see, his response was and always is enthusiastic. It's just the awesomeness editor. I invited David Mirra into more of a single story early in our history to develop and moderate conversations centering around experiences of BIPOC men. I'm honored that he also agreed to work with me as co editor of We Are Men to Rise. The original idea for the anthology was to invite writers who have participated in the first five years of More Than a Single Story, but the
Carolyn Holbrook:pandemic and the murder of
Carolyn Holbrook:George Floyd changed all that. In the actual publication we experienced the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath from the point of view of some who have worked grappling with those life shattering events. But the book also contains essays and poems about loss, family, youth culture, economic security, mental health, and other issues. The voices in our book reflect the variety of BIPOC writers in Minnesota from authors with international reputations to newly emerging voices and voices from many cultures including indigenous, Dakota, and Ojibwe, African American, Hmong, Somali, Afghani, Lebanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Mexican, transracial adoptees, mixed race, LGBTQ plus, and people with disabilities. And we dedicated the book to the memories of George Floyd, Philando Castile, Jamar Clark, Alawi, Brandon Leducer, At this point I'd like to name the writer's representative book.
Carolyn Holbrook:Some are here tonight in person, others are attending online and some just weren't able to make it, but if you're here please stand when I call your name. Suleiman Aghan, Pamela Fletcher Bush, Mary Moore Easter, Louise Erdrich, Monica Fajardo, Safi Holland Farah, Sherry Fernandez Williams, Shannon Gibney, Catherine Haddad, Tish Jones, Ezekiel Jobert the third, Douglas Kearney, Edbot Lee, Ricardo Nevins Morales, Arlita Little, Resmaa Menachem, Tess Montgomery, Ahmad Kais Munazim, Melissa Olsen, Alex Pate, Bao Fee, Mona Susan Power, Marcy Rendon, Samantha Sensor Vera, Saeed Shaidi, Aaron Sharkey, Sun Young Shin, Michael Torres, Diane Wilson, Kao Kalia Yang, and Kevin Yang. Now I'd like to turn it over to my co editor, David He is the author of A Stranger's Journey, Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing, as well as two memoirs, Turning Japanese, Memoirs of of a Sensei, which won the Oakland PENJosephine Miles Book Award and was a New York Times notable book and where the body needs memory. His documentary on PBS, Armed with language. Armed with language has won an Emmy award.
Carolyn Holbrook:David is going to speak and then the four writers that are also on this program with us are going to read, and we will introduce each one of them, Kao Kaleida Yang, Douglas Kearney, Melissa Olsen, and Saeed Shai. And then we'll move chairs up to the front, and we'll have sort of a panel, with each of us asking a question to the authors. And then we'll have audience q and a, and then, we'll have refreshments and book signing. So David.
David Mura:I wanna thank Carolyn, first of all, for inviting me to be a part of and then to help her with a more than a single story series, which sort of serves as the basis in how this whole anthology started. And then Carolyn asked me to become a co editor of the book, which I'm so so pleased and honored. And Carolyn has been such a pillar of the local writing community for so many years. She mentored and helped so many other writers. She started Sassy, the right place, which was a gift to the community, giving classes and grants and programs, you know, for for many BIPOC writers.
David Mura:And last year she published her wonderful collection of essays with the University of Minnesota Press, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify, which won last year's Minnesota Book Award. That's a great thing watching some of these writers emerge. You know, some of them came up some of them, like Alex Bay, came up with this, and some of them are much younger. And it's been wonderful to see a whole new generation of writers taking hold as part of, Minnesota. I I was just flashing on the fact that, you know, Robert Bly died over the weekend and there were many tributes to him.
David Mura:And the first reading I attended in Minnesota was at the firehouse with Robert White and a number of others. And it was a terrific reading, but I think I was the only writer of color there. So I've seen this community really change. I wanna thank my wife, Susan Spencer, for all the support she's given me all these years. I infamously, when I won the Tay Sexton book award, did not mention her.
David Mura:And, you know, I've ever you know? And and so I wanna apologize again for that. I really wanna thank her in public, so everything that I've done. Sam has an essay and his book too, so it it's great. And we just had a new addition to our family, our our grandson Tadashi, who, is three months old.
David Mura:So it's a great time. Finally, I wanna thank all the wonderful, just eloquent, powerful, incisive, brave, honest writers who are part of this anthology. It's such a powerful anthology. It covers so many different aspects of what it's like to be a BIPOC writer and in in Minnesota, what our communities have gone through over these past couple of years, which has been this difficult and strange and troubling as any years in our history, particularly 02/2012, '20, which is when a lot of these essays were written. I've known so many of the writers in this community, but I particularly wanna thank four of them who've been my good friends and really colleagues.
David Mura:So here, Alex Pate, Baufi, Ed Bakley, and Sunu Shim. I'm gonna read just a couple paragraphs from my introduction. Here's the first paragraph. For readers, this anthology of Minnesota writers of color and indigenous writers will serve as many things, a presentation of the growing University of Minnesota and of the many voices scraped within us, A series of lenses on the American experience. A bouquet of wordsmiths and thinkers, memoirs and novelists, poets and activists.
David Mura:A panoply of witnesses of the year 2020, '1 of the strangest and most unsettling in our history. Inspired by more than a single story series of panel discussions, this anthology is an exploration of what so many people of color and indigenous communities have experienced in their own lives. It's also an encouragement for each of us, no matter our race or ethnicity, to speak out, to tell our own stories, to own our own powers. In such a time, the stories of people of color and indigenous people, the reactions to the state of the nation not only provide valued witnesses to our present but also speak to our future. So often in our daily lives, especially outside our own communities, we BIPOC people may hold back from speaking what we are truly thinking and feeling.
David Mura:Here, these writers are giving you the full unvarnished truths. Many write profoundly and profitedly about the quest for racial equality. At the same time, the writers in the anthology are singular individuals and talents. Each is telling their own unique story with their own unique voice about their unique experiences in ways that challenge and enrich us. Douglass is going to talk about his essay tonight, which I quote in the introduction.
David Mura:So I just wanna mention there was an article aft a letter in the Star Tribune after the George Floyd murder during the protests. And in it, this Northside Minneapolis School Teacher talked about her experience with her fifth grade class where she asked her class, what is your image? What what do you think America is? And here's what she wrote. Nearly a % of my class wrote about their fear of the police and police brutality.
David Mura:These are in seven great words, they expressed unjust behaviors by authorities towards them. They are 12 and 13 years old. They do not need this weight on their shoulders right now. Their goal should be learning and being a kid. I sat down at my desk and sob, thinking of what my students go through on a daily basis, whether walking, playing, and talking all black.
David Mura:These seven critics. Right now we're in this controversy, stupid ass stupid ass controversy about critical race theory in the 69 Pew Project, which is really, like, can you tell the truth about American history? And, you know, I I was remarking Derek, because some of this is like the abuser's psychology because it says, the problem isn't what we did to you. It said you keep remembering what
David Mura:we and
David Mura:you keep talking about it. And that's the problem. And by your talking about it, you are victimizing us, which is absolutely insane and ridiculous. Still, the question remains, out of so many different voices, out of such diversity, how do we form a common vision? How do we come together to create a society that is truly democratic and truly just, that provides a space and opportunity for all of us to thrive.
David Mura:From America's inception, the confrontation between white settlers and Native Americans, between white slave owners and their black slaves have engendered questions of identity, of who we are as a nation. And now for many, each day in America, and I'm quoting, I quote before this passage by James Baldwin, which I won't cohere, A stranger walks into our village, or we are a stranger walking into someone else's village. The appearance of the stranger Baldwin maintains challenges our own way of looking at our village, But at the same time, the stranger also looks at us differently than the way we look at ourselves. And thus, we must question our own identity in ways we have not before. And that has been America's society, strangers encountering strangers.
David Mura:Again, this can be a terrifying proposition. It certainly was for the indigenous people who resided in America when confronted with colonizers who took their land and wanted to exterminate them. But our present day encounters with our fellow Americans can involve a very different process. We can look at each stranger as a fellow human being, a fellow traveler, a fellow American. We can choose to learn from the stranger, learn a different language, a different culture, a different history, and we can comfort ourselves by the fact that this process has always been occurring in America.
David Mura:In so many cases, such encounters and exchanges they have catalyzed have only made us stronger, more resilient, more creative and innovative, more capable of making connections with the rest of the world outside of America. That is, if we let the stranger into our village, into our nation, and indeed into our hearts. Several years ago, I was asked by The Nation's Magazine to write on Minnesota for an anthology of writers commenting on their own states. Back in the 1920s, the magazine The Nation did a similar anthology, and Sinclair Lewis, the Nobel Prize winning novelist from Salk Center, wrote about Minnesota. In his essay, Lewis commented on quote unquote the strange new immigrants, the Swedes.
David Mura:Native Americans and the enslaved Africans have been central to the American story from its beginning. But we've always been a country of immigrants, whether they were my Japanese grandparents or the Swedes and other Scandinavians who settled in Minnesota or the Somali, Mexican, Vietnamese, Hmong, Lebanese, South Asian, Liberian, and other immigrants who have come and settled here. I know this word is out of style, but I believe in it as a description. Diversity is who we are. Diversity is our strength.
David Mura:Each new speaker who becomes part of America is our strength. The writers in this anthology provide us with individualized pulpits of who we are, and in doing so, they can help us to know each other, our neighbors, our fellow citizens. These writers prove we are indeed more than a single story. Thank you.
Carolyn Holbrook:Our first reader is Kao Kalia Yang. She is a Hmong American writer for both children and adults. Her books have been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dayton's Literary Peace Prize, the Chautauqua Institute, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and with four Minnesota Book Awards. She is the Edelstein Keller Writer in Residence in the creative writing program at the University of Minnesota. Her books include The Late Home Cover, A Long Family Memoir, The Song Poet, The Shared Room, and Yang Warriors.
Kao Kalia Yang:Thank you, Carolyn, for that lovely introduction. Dave and Carolyn, thank you for bringing us together. Eric, Heather, the university, Minnesota Press, thank you for giving calls for this book to be in the world and for bringing it forth. Readers, writers, it is an honor to be among you in this place that so many of us love. I've been thinking a lot about space.
Kao Kalia Yang:I was born a stateless child in a refugee camp. I've known Minnesota since I was six. The space where George Floyd was murdered was actually the site of where I fell in love with a white man. It is a site of murders I know past, present, and future. How can this be?
Kao Kalia Yang:That is one of the big questions, I think, for me. And so in this book, I got to test off some of my very small place. I'm from the East Side Of Saint Paul. The East Side Of Saint Paul is one of the most diverse and one of the most impoverished parts of our city. It's home to many new refugees, and I would read about three instances of, fragrance.
Kao Kalia Yang:The first one. As was usual in those long ago summer nights in the falling down neighborhood, our African American neighbors ended and began each week with a gathering on their back porch. The men and women drank beer and barbecue at an old circular grill with rusted legs. They listened to music and sometimes danced. Mostly though, they talked.
Kao Kalia Yang:Through the thin windows on the walls, we bathed in the smoky decent of sozzling meats of the stories they told, cut through with laughter, sometimes tears. In the moments with the top low, we paid attention to the music, loud beads that created a pulse in our mouth and the air we breathe and slept in. These evening parties by our neighbors have become the backdrop of our lives. One night, though, things took a turn when one of their friends wanted to get into our house through a bedroom window. The younger children were asleep between us.
Kao Kalia Yang:Stowe and I were not yet asleep. We were dreaming into the future and quietly putting into words a fishing trip where we might actually stay in a cabin or a tent, something we'd only ever seen on television. We heard the pounding at the same time, someone clenching at the window of the middle bedroom. We both sat up, got back to her feet quickly. Without turning on the light, she walked toward the kitchen and followed her.
Kao Kalia Yang:She fumbled the knives drawer and came out with a sharp, long knife, its fine tip leaning in the middle of the kitchen. I was scared of the sharp knives. So I grabbed a much smaller prepared knife, the one I knew how to handle well, among the peels of apples and peaches, down the way toward the middle bedroom. Suddenly, it seemed like the clock ticking on our walls had a life of its own. Its steady tick was no more.
Kao Kalia Yang:In its place was a new tick far louder and faster than any we'd heard before. Doug quietly opened the door to the middle bedroom. The room was bathed in moonlight. The sheer blue curtain with a single big window, and the room did little to hold back the night. We saw the shape of a person pressed tight to the window.
Kao Kalia Yang:We heard the screen outside the window fall. We separated, each moving with the wall shadows until we ended up on either side of the window. We could hear the loud breathing of the person on the other side of the pane of glass. Someone was with him. Don't do this.
Kao Kalia Yang:It's just kids inside. You're going to scare them. We recognized the voice of the older woman from the top of the duplex next door. We didn't talk with her, but we went to her whenever we saw her outside. She always waved back.
Kao Kalia Yang:Her voice said, come on, you're drunk. Let me help you. The man's words are labored and rough. He said, you can't help me. Nobody can.
Kao Kalia Yang:His words broke. They turned into a wail. We've seen grown men cry before, tears falling from faces, voices shaking with emotion. But we'd never heard a man wail before outside of a Maupiro house, cries coming from deep in the hollow of the belly, rumpling through the heart. He cried out the words, nobody's gonna help me.
Kao Kalia Yang:It seemed he hugged our window tight for a moment and then slowly slid down. Our neighbor said, shh, shh, shh. She said calmly again and again, everything's going to be alright. Dow and I stood there beside that long winded windshield, holding our knives and our breath until the woman helped the man up and then left our house alone. The second break in.
Kao Kalia Yang:A white man tried to break into our house a few weeks after the experience with a white woman. We were still pretty shaken up, praying to our ancestors. Police not just show up one day at our house, looking for the capris and its law breaking content, long children. It was now near autumn. The American elm in our front yard, always the first tree in the neighborhood to drop its leaves, was already mostly bare.
Kao Kalia Yang:Crispy leaves covered up the grass, still green from summer. The curtains of the wide front windows are pulled to one side to invite the evening light of the picture of my favorite season into the house. I was in the kitchen cooking of a simple dinner, beef, polka, kielbasa, sausage as fried with tomatoes and onions. Doug was bathing the two older kids in the bathroom. Mom and dad were at work.
Kao Kalia Yang:The baby was asleep. Three year old Shell was at the front window. She saw a person with a ponytail peek into the our house. That person pointed to the door, a gesture for her to open it. Shao thought that the person was her auntie who who also wore her hair in a ponytail.
Kao Kalia Yang:Shao walked to the front door, reached for the lock, and turned it. I heard Michelle scream of fear. I ran to her. There was an arm inside our door. I was trying to break the chain on top.
Kao Kalia Yang:I screamed for Doug. I slammed into the door with my body. The hand did not back out. He pushed. I moved.
Kao Kalia Yang:I knew I was too weak. I placed my feet against the wall in front of me, and I pushed my back into the wooden door. I thought I was going to crack my legs into each time the door lurched behind my back and my knees went high on the air. Noah and the kids from the bathroom naked and went ran out and assembled in a mess against the door. We were all trying to stay away from the speech.
Kao Kalia Yang:We were all pushing against the old wooden door. Each time we managed to hit the door against his arm, the man outside our door seemed to grow stronger. Little Shell stood away and cried, our hands to her mouth. In the end, it was Sue, our seven year old brother, who had the wherewithal to run to the kitchen and grab a bread knife. Now we used the tip of the knife to stab into the man's hands again and again and again until she forced it outside.
Kao Kalia Yang:When the doors slammed into place, I was able to lock it. My hands are shaking against my beating heart. The man outside her door swore and swore and said, I'll be back for all of you. We heard the sound of a motorcycle roar to life. We watched him go away, low hair in a ponytail.
Kao Kalia Yang:The final break in. It was 02/2003, and I was a senior in college when the house was broken in two again. Our grandmother had died at our unclean's house. Following the tradition of our people, we went over to spend nights warming up their house to the sounds of our lives. We were not home the night of the break in.
Kao Kalia Yang:The persons who broke into the house came through the back where mom's garden was. They'd stepped on her tomato and her chili plants, our Thai basil and threw them in each patch. They broke into a window near the back and entered the house through the kitchen. The thieves took everything of value, our television, our traditional wall clothes, the precious life savings of the younger children, coins in food chubby containers from the ancient stores, the family's single computer. They left behind a weapon, a leg of a table with a long nail sticking out of one end.
Kao Kalia Yang:We called the cops when we came home and found the house. All a mess. Two cops arrived, and after a walk through told us that there was nothing they could do. A few days later, Noah forgot her keys and knocked on our Latino neighbors' doors. They lived in the downstairs duplex.
Kao Kalia Yang:She asked if she could use their phone. They said yes. Inside, she saw our television and our computer and the kids' empty savings container. The two boys' friends of our younger siblings were shy and embarrassed, but their father but their father acted normal, so Doug did too. A few months after the break in, after ten years in America, our family moved away from the East Side Of Saint Paul, and life was never the same again.
Kao Kalia Yang:By then, Doug and I were mostly made. We had learned how to get along with each other, and the communities we lived in would take that with us no matter where we went in the unleveled future.
David Mura:Thank you, Tom. Doug, you're here? Yeah. Okay. Douglas Kearney has published seven collections of poetry, including Sho, which was recently nominated for National Book Award.
David Mura:That's the winner of the theater of rock team, the moral poetry war, and the firecracker award for poetry from the community of literary magazines and presses, and the California book awards silver medalist in poetry. He's written a collection of librettes, Someone Took Despens, His Mess, and His Mess, His Mess, and Mess, and, was a small press distribution handbag selection. His operas include Suction, Ward Drake, Crescent City, Sweetland, and Comet Ophea, commissioned by the American Modern Opera Company. He received the Whiting Writers' Award, which is a really big award, foundation for the from the contemporary arts Cy Humbley Award for poetry. He teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and lives in Saint Paul and his family.
David Mura:And I know he functions as a valued resource for writers of color who pass through the MFA program here, including one of them who's reading tonight. So, anyway, Doug Kearney, who, has been here for many years, and then he went to California. Fortunately for us, he came back.
Douglas Kearney:Thank you, David. I always tell people I came back on purpose. Thank you, Caroline. Thank you, David, for for this collection, but also for, years of, support and work. I don't know if people know how special this community is.
Douglas Kearney:I feel like a lot of Minnesotans just kinda do the work and keep kicking. But I came back here because of how special the community is here, and y'all are architects of that. So thank you. My piece is called Dear Editor. So I'll just read that because that does all contextualization.
Douglas Kearney:There's one thing that I do want to amplify about that part which is you know how we describe Derek shelving murdering george floyd We oftentimes will use a passive construction george floyd was murdered or we'll say george floyd's murder as a key on it and I think it's really important and it's and and I don't this is this has happened I it's happened when I grew up in Los Angeles After 04/29/1992, which I've learned is also called korean side good but that was the day that the verdicts came out around before police officers, who wait by the king People always called it the king verdict or the king tribe as if he was the one who was on trial. And in a way, he was. Scant days after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, I received an email from an editor of an online magazine. The email was a request to respond to the murder calling on roughly my expertise in anti blackness, my stature, and my proximity on the ground, an unfortunate choice of words in the Twin Cities. Instead of producing an exclusive comment, I posted a version of this statement on my Facebook account on 06/05/2020.
Douglas Kearney:It was late in the morning, almost noon. I had made very few revisions. Dear editor, I thank you for this invitation. Funny. I composed a poem about the historic Watts Uprisings on Sunday, May 24, before the MPD murdered George Floyd.
Douglas Kearney:There's a part of me that wants to simply send you all of what I've already written, not as some authority, but to point out simply that this is a changing saying that I and many others are always thinking about the conditions under which George Floyd and so many, many others are subject. The combination of these as features, not bugs in systemic modes of violence that are part of the purview of policing. As my wife and I explained to our 10 year olds who learned to assist me about it, then contemporaneous application of this constant historic killing when Saint Anthony Police Officer Jeron Williams murdered Philando Castile. It isn't that law enforcement is simply just interested in protecting black people, for The US culture law dictates that our very presence is a thing they are meant to protect against! That white company has come to define itself as dependent on methodological control of everyone they deem other is true.
Douglas Kearney:Secular colonialism, slavery, racism, forced displacement within the country, deportations, xenophobia, lynching, segregation, official exclusionary acts, internment, redlining, underemployment, food deserts, compromised health care access, the prison industry, genocidal networks, and on and on and on and on. In this, black people have the horrifying underprivilege of being mass mediaization's most consistent public base of a comfort control equation involving law enforcement and murder. And as such, we, along with everyone else, see black people murdered and assaulted by police and terror police vigilantes again and again across the country's news cycle with the sure shot frequency. That white supremacy put me in a position to make this a reasonable conversation to have with my then six year olds is a violence I will never forget. I will go to work carrying it.
Douglas Kearney:I will share social space carrying it. I will form friendships carrying it, yet I will not forgive it. But back to the invitation. I'm gonna have you with your request because, you see, I wonder, at what point does another piece triggered in response to the to the changing state become a part of the control comfort ecosystem? This is complex in that writing such things is not cathartic for me and I'd imagine many others.
Douglas Kearney:Many different kinds of people could read what I've written, including people who are on the short end of the control. Comfort stick. I wonder, and I wonder this honestly. When is writing about violence against black people not a prediction? By which I mean, this bias is always happening.
Douglas Kearney:So when I wrote the poem I mentioned above, was I reacting to Watts? Refracted through the historical pattern of changing same? Was I acting in anticipation or response to the same thing happening again, or was I like the pastoral poet, not set on waiting for the event of fall in order to write about the redness in the arbor, but simply looking out my window and some October and watching the cycle continue? Understand. I am angry that you're not with the invitation precisely.
Douglas Kearney:I'm angry that a policeman murdered George Floyd. I'm angry that members of my community must risk their safety for more violence and a pandemic to demonstrate against this changing saying. But for this matter, dear editor, I am angry that despite all I've written alongside the contemporaries who've written even better, add into a tradition, we carry on because it is the cycle in which our ancestors fell suddenly red to the ground and those who could wrote about it also better than I. That what seems to be the case is that maybe if we try again, maybe we write it more clearly and passionately. Too passionately perhaps more passionately or with more nuance or perhaps with uneventful statements or more musically, maybe with greater eloquence.
Douglas Kearney:No, no, no, plain speech, that maybe if we do that, just right. Do it new and do it now. Speed nursing. For those moments they are paying attention, white people will finally realize that they are responsible for changing themselves. And via their massive, more sacrosanct voting power, disproportionately large economic resources, gross over representation in positions of power, and most importantly, crime access to their own psyches for speedily and urgently dismantling the systems that exist for them and their privilege.
Douglas Kearney:And yes, class is critical this, but more fluid than perceived race. Please don't check your credit rating before they shoot, club, rough ride, or strangle your life away because, you see, they already know what they think you're worth. So I don't know what to write about this other than a police officer named Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. And Chauvin apparently had never done anything so unbecoming of an officer as to be permanently relieved of duty prior. Well, because several other police officers were present as he murdered George Floyd over the course of about nine minutes, Apparently, he didn't seem to be doing anything unbecoming of an officer Monday, May twenty fifth either.
Douglas Kearney:I will write that black people are being asked to be patient again and show faith that maybe this time will be the one that really makes a difference even as the same old narrative about property damage rolled out from the owners of stolen land. I will write that again. My children are terrified because this is terrorism. I will write that the president's vile white supremacy doesn't let the brakes off white supremacy at large, or to suggest so, or to suggest so, will require the ridiculous fancy that the trade was built with any thought that it should ever have to stop.
Douglas Kearney:I will
Douglas Kearney:write that if Derek Chauvin, George Floyd's murderer, is acquitted, the jury has agreed that $20 is the price of a black man. I will write that police will murder other black people. Some will be named Brianna, and some will be named Tony. Some will be children, some will be elders. It will fall across the spectrum of gender identities.
Douglas Kearney:Many will be poor, and almost all will be poorer than their white counterparts. The police will do this on and off camera. They will do it on the street and in the victims' homes, in parks and parking lots. They will do it, editor, and paint will do it for white people, whether white people want to claim to claim to want it done or not. I would like to invite more white people to do something material about not wanting it.
Douglas Kearney:I would like to invite more white people to critically engage their sabotaging of our efforts through thoughtless opportunistic acts of catharsis and self serving gaslighting. I would like to invite more white people to stop preferring that we keep producing new work when it's they who have work to do. Is it that desire, the very condition that sailed many black people here?
Kao Kalia Yang:Thank you, Douglas.
Carolyn Holbrook:So our next reader is Melissa Olsen. She is an indigenous person of mixed Anishinaabe and Euro American American heritage, tribal citizen of the Beach Lake Band of Ojibwe. For several years, Melissa Melissa has worked as a fighter and producer of independent public media, serving as the co managing editor of the miniculture program at KFAI Fresh Air Community Radio in Minneapolis.
Melissa Olson:Thanks so much, Carolyn, for your introduction. And thank you so much for being such a great friend and huge support. And thank you, David, for that moment, which I remember you kind of throwing up your hands on this new call.
Douglas Kearney:You should
Melissa Olson:just write and then keep keep writing.
Kao Kalia Yang:And if it were not for that,
Melissa Olson:which also stuck in my head, I don't think
Carolyn Holbrook:I would be standing here tonight in such great company.
Melissa Olson:Thanks to clear and thanks to Dan for amazing amazing piece. I wanna give a few details about this this piece before before I begin. What you should know is that, at this moment, I have been working on a project with Megizzy Communications, which is a native, nonprofit here in Minneapolis for about six months. Megizzy, archive had been stored in boxes in this space at 301720 Seventh Avenue, for for many years, and I traveled with the organization for as many years as it's been around. It's been around for about forty five years.
Melissa Olson:It was important to me, to begin the project in November of twenty nineteen, and I didn't know much more about it. I didn't know much more than what was written on the tape covers only that I recognized the names of so many people that I admired, that I knew, you know, from from either school or from from from our community here in Minneapolis and for that reason, wanted to to preserve them.
Kao Kalia Yang:The next thing
Melissa Olson:you should know is that I live in Northeast Minneapolis and I live about ten minutes away from where McGizzi's building was, which is to say, it was also about ten minutes from the Third Precinct. The tapes are in because he's building. The Third Precinct has been set on fire the night before. And, I'm waking up, the next morning, and I can't sort of do anything except think about what state the building's in. We jumped into John's van and drove from our home in Northeast Minneapolis.
Melissa Olson:As we get closer to the building, the chaos was palpable. The air was thick with smoke, and I remember that smelled like oil paint. We parked five blocks away and walked to New Jersey as fast as we could. When we got there, we saw minor tagging on the building on the building's south facing wall. Thankfully, it was otherwise untouched by fire, a fact we marveled at as we walked past the smashing smashed in window of Conding Hall, the restaurant next door.
Melissa Olson:People everywhere watched slowly in twos and threes to survey the damage. Some snap in photos of the property jam damage. Fuck 12 in ragged hand and brown youth zipped around on their bikes observing people wandering around in shock and disbelief. It felt like a kind of rude shock because nothing in the neighborhood resembled the orderly commercial corridor that had been just the day before. Debris was strewn everywhere we looked, and what was left of burned out buildings was covered in soot.
Melissa Olson:The streets were wet, not from water, from fire hose trucks, but from spray. There's a broken window where sprinkler systems had been set off. We stood for a few minutes at the corner directly across from the police station and watched a man standing on the other corner yelling into a bullhorn pointed at the charred Third Precinct. Am I a man? Am I a man?
Melissa Olson:We walked back to the van and slowly cut through alleys and side streets to find a way through the crowd that was beginning to reassemble. Once inside the van, John leaned against the door, lowered his shoulders, and set his chin. Then he looked over at me and said, building's not going to survive tonight. If you're going to get the tapes up, you need to do it now. Thankfully, it was only 10:00 in the morning, so we knew we had time.
Melissa Olson:When we got home, I called and made plans to move the archive. Next, I called KFAI and was given permission to store the boxes in an empty studio where they could remain through the night. John and I returned to the gazee an hour later with the boxes. Undeterred by detours and traffic barriers, we drove up to museum parked at the back door. With the help of staff members and teams from the first person youth production program, we were able to quickly pack up tapes and stack the boxes into the van.
Melissa Olson:Then we took off and made our way the 20 some blocks to KFAI. One of the teens came with us and helped us haul boxes up to the Third Floor to the studio that we were giving me so for the night. Young man was unusually quiet. Later, I learned that his brother had
Carolyn Holbrook:been killed by police a year before.
Melissa Olson:By the time we finished moving the boxes to KFAI, the adrenaline had started to wear off, and we were all hungry. We bought lunch at such shop on the block from KFAI then drove another block over to the Augsburg University campus. We found a picnic table and sat down to eat. While we were eating, John looked up and pointed to a bald eagle that was passing overhead, having flown from the direction of the River. I have never considered myself an especially spiritual person, but seeing the bald eagle at that moment, the bird for whom Megizzy named itself, left the three of us feeling reassured that we had accomplished our work that day.
Melissa Olson:Just as John predicted, Migizi's building caught fire that night as embers from fires on either side of the building flew onto the roof. The executive director, Kelly Drummer, and her husband, Sam, and their daughter stayed in the building as long as they could. They called 911, but fire trucks never came. Soon, they were told to evacuate.
Carolyn Holbrook:The next morning, I returned to
Melissa Olson:the radio station to check on the boxes and to make sure the room wasn't too hot or too humid. The sun was shining directly from the window, so I covered the windows with newspaper to avoid potential damage. When I learned from the station staff that volunteers were forming a neighborhood group to keep watching the roof to guard the building throughout the coming night, I decided to move the archive a second time, this time to my house in Northeast Minneapolis. We moved the boxes again later that afternoon, and for the next five weeks, those 33 boxes of McGizzey's archive took up 20 square feet in our small house between the living room window and my desk. It gave everyone at Legacy peace of mind.
Melissa Olson:The boxes had traveled with the organization each time it had moved in its forty year history. Some of those years, the boxes must have been stored in basement cellars. They were caked in dust and smell of decay. I thought of the stories held on those reels and of the journalists whose many hundreds of hours are recorded there. And I thought of community members, many of whom I've known as a younger person, whose voices are preserved there.
Melissa Olson:So as the weeks rolled on, I started to think of the tapes like an auntie or an uncle who had come for a long visit. Minnesota stay at home orders and continued curtis meant that I rarely ventured outside. Home had become a place of refuge from the pandemic. The boxes stacked between my desk and the window remained a physical reminder of the violence that took George George Floyd's life and the violence of the fires that had destroyed parts of the city. A librarian from Augsburg University reached out immediately following the loss of building and asked what he could do to help.
Melissa Olson:Appreciated of his offer, we decided to move the archive to Augsburg's library. It took me several weeks, but eventually, I was able to create a basic inventory. I reboxed all the tapes and drove them over to Oxford's library. The precautions in place for the pandemic meant there was an empty classroom where they could be stored. The Mamedi lecture that had been set to air on Thursday, May 28, was understandably pushed back and did eventually air the week of June on NPR.
Melissa Olson:I listened again and again, and each time I hear it a little differently. There is Mameday in his booming voice quoting his fellow writer Isaac Denison reminding us all sorrows can be born out if you put them into a story. I'm fond of telling stories. Let me tell you a story.
David Mura:I think you're getting a sense of how powerful this anthology is. And, you know, I I feel like we should get four nights. We have a great reading from the anthology. So, just amazing stuff. I'm gonna introduce Saeed Shaheed, who's a Somali writer who calls Minneapolis his home now.
David Mura:He's working on his MFA degree at the University of Minnesota and his debut book, Are You Cybert Now? His debut book has been called an experimental memoir and a deeply personal self interrogation that flourished genre and form to examine how intersections between culture, race, class, gender, and nationality shape one's identity. And this is what Doug Kearney says about the book. You gotta find reflections of yourself however you can to survive this country, right side Shaikh, in this innovative Afrofuturist memoir. Are you bored now cybers with trauma through a poetics of refusal via hard and beautiful language?
David Mura:Finding vigor in Islam and mirrors himself, Star Trek, Voyager, Shailesh shifts achively between memory and improvisation. This is a serious debut. And I I I think the fact that Sayid is getting his MFA from, University of Minnesota, those are something I wanna ask him later about it. And the fact that, Kyle and Doug are now teaching marks a new shift, I think, for for that that program. And I I'd asked, Sayed to just talk about, you know, he talked in his writing, he talks about being black, Muslims, Somali, and he's recently been diagnosed with autism.
David Mura:And as I mentioned in in intro, his book has been described as a a work which integrates in trying to interweave and understand his various different identities. So I wonder if you could just talk about the ways your this book and your identities have sort of intermoved with your your writing.
Said Shaiye:I was actually just gonna do some poetry. Okay. Go ahead. But, I mean, we can talk about that later. Yeah.
Said Shaiye:Yeah. This is, you know, so part of being autistic means being really sensitive to everything. Being alive in this world comes with no shortage of trauma no matter what your background is. And so this anthology, I feel, is absolutely critical and necessary, reading for everybody, but I but I also recognize that it's it deals with very traumatic things. And, the essay that I wrote initially in the piece is extremely traumatic, so I did not wanna read that.
Said Shaiye:I was trying to have two weeks of, pain. So I'm gonna just read some poetry instead, dance around the trauma, which is something I do in the book. This first one is called until you learn the meaning of death or love. Attire of gatekeepers standing at the gates of hell's paths as if hell hell is some place to desire entry to. Who am I?
Said Shaiye:Nine five motherfucker. Ready to live motherfucker. Transatlantic railroad roots, dicks, cream omelette, and from the nostrils of high hopes comes low pie brought to you by the people who killed you and I. 7AM breath drinking of 3AM double shots. Eyes leaking blood red like grapefruit cantaloupe.
Said Shaiye:Hold your head up high. Turn your lights down low. My next writing project would be the one to save me. Until you learn to call writing what it is whimsical notions of the mind do not when I reach flow state, I stop worrying about anything I don't want to be. When I reach flow state, I stop thinking how allistics think.
Said Shaiye:This is my autistic life, but can you fill me up? I paid the ball bearer six pence, and he was none the richer. I rich palled my way into being a Richard Porter. How Richard Milley, my plane jammed into the Lambo ghosted me. Shouts to Freddie Gibbs manager Lambo for ghosting me.
Said Shaiye:Until you see the ways this world keeps us separate, until you see the structure of the song before it's set in stone, don't fear the end because the end is near. The end of fear is the end of fear. The end of not is the big I need. There can only be one way out of life instead. If you live the right life, we'll call you back.
Said Shaiye:Sing sweet melodies as you drift away. Sing rapturous tunes as the angels descend. Your family in the corners of eyes now wave. Your ancestors beckoning, smiling warmly, saying, we'll guide you. We'll get you there.
Said Shaiye:Where you are headed there is no fear. Only warmth, glowing radiance. Only peace. No strive. No suffrage.
Said Shaiye:Until your life is complete. Do not be alarmed at the ways your TV phases. In and out of tune with the universe. Melting like the stuff they put in thermometers to measure heat with until the heat melted until all that's left is silver fluid, poisonous stuff in your hand. Snow dress snow dress etched inside eyelids.
Said Shaiye:Kilimanjaro, how do I know? Kilimanjaro with our songs, party lips, even more softly. Two people meant for each other must first overcome years of resistances. All the ways they were taught love's unreachable. That love costs too much.
Said Shaiye:That it is unworthwhile of time. Before they can have each other in life or death, they must first overcome. Until you learn the meaning of life, your life will be lived incomplete. Until you die, you won't know what it will have meant to be loved. Until the last snow is melted in the eyes of glass statues, nothing you say will mean much of anything, really.
Said Shaiye:This second piece and final piece, has two names. I wrote this for a very special friend who's watching. Shouts to my friend. First title is Where the Hoes At. Second title is A Poem in the Voice of My Autistic Twitter Friend.
Said Shaiye:This is a poem in the voice of my autistic Twitter friend. If she were here, she'd have written the thing. But I'm here by proxy. I'll write for her. A writer borrowing.
Said Shaiye:Borrowed hands to write this poetry with. If a writer is separated from their craft, the bones begin to shift and shutter until kaleidoscopic visions of heaven meeting Earth shroud their peripheral vision. Lately, my days run into my nights, so my nights keep me up at night. My fights keep me booking new shows to perform this poetry for. I'm my tour writer, please.
Said Shaiye:No questions. I need three dozen soft bagels, Tom's brand, one pound of honey, three shots of whiskey. Don't pour them, though, because I don't drink. Pour them down the kitchen sink. Hoa used to drink more than a kitchen sink.
Said Shaiye:Now I write poems on the voices of people I've never met, but who feel closer than people I've known my whole life. What's the price of a life these days? What does it mean to slow down and play the record and back time? This is not a poem. This is a grocery list of things I've forgotten to write down so I didn't forget to write them down.
Said Shaiye:So I forgot the thought of forgotten things before they were forgotten, never fretted I'm autistic but you should jump off my public stick jump around with my party people that most deaf shirt Yacine Bay gave me an education in just one of his bars more potent in twelve years of public schooling the boondocks taught me more about this country than this country has I sit in the four panel rooms of psych wards past. I walked down the gray at Down Slauson down Shatsak. I walk on walls and fences on the edge of half combs I never used. I comb my hair if I had any hair left to comb, so I shave. I wonder how I'll survive my first winter as a bug man or how I'll face the music when the tall man comes to take me home.
Said Shaiye:Brother man, please bless me with that soft pack. I don't need it now. I don't need the loud. Brother man, help me overcome these addictions, the ones too secretive for me to even talk about. The ones that exist only in my mind the people I've left behind and friends have buried.
Said Shaiye:Pour out an ounce of liquor if liquor was measured and ounces if liquor was permissible for Muslim hands to handle. It said that in heaven we'll all be able to drink so in a so on earth we abstain from that
Melissa Olson:shit. I
Said Shaiye:know a lot of alcoholics. They don't even drink. I know people dying alive who've never walked the cops beat. I know propositions number 12, Minneapolis City Sample, city council, repeal the police. I wear the number 12 on my hat.
Said Shaiye:That doesn't represent police, represents Seattle where I'm from. Besides, pork is against my religion. I peeled back the layers of onions in the city, and there'll be enough black hands to do it. I peel back the layers of onions in this city, and I wonder if there'll be enough black hands to do it because the white hands keep layering it on. They could stew it.
Said Shaiye:And I should mention that none of this means anything. This poetry is meant to free us, but sometimes I feel like I'm freezing up, frozen down. Freddie Gibbs helped me get through this comedown. Coming down off of what? Off of life institutionalized.
Said Shaiye:And I can't tell if the prison cell or the academic hall have any difference. They both kill you, imprison you, make you want to die. This country has so many ways to make you want to die. So my greatest act of resistance and for my next trick, I'll need a member from the audience to still exist. To survive the game.
Said Shaiye:Jesus said, survive the game, homie. Survivor's our greatest form of hope. I still pray to get my soul right. I'm in Home Depot right now. Okay.
Said Shaiye:Where the hose at?
Carolyn Holbrook:Thank you, guys. So now we're just going to gather the writers up front here and just have a minor q and a with D and David and the writers and then, question from the audience. I have the first one for Calcutta Yang. All right. Your essay centers around growing up on the East Side Of Saint Paul in a racially diverse community and about some of the things that happened with your siblings, especially while your parents were at work.
Carolyn Holbrook:There are some harrowing moments of peace, like the man attempting to break into your home but being stopped by your next door neighbor, another man trying to break in through the front door, and a woman whose language was so abusive to you and your siblings in the supermarket parking lot. In each of these incidents, you and your sister show phenomenal courage. Can you say a little bit about where you think that ease and courage came from?
Kao Kalia Yang:Thank you for that lovely question. It's lovely because I get to contemplate the sources of strength in my life, which is not generally what happens. Everything's Carolyn, so thank you. You know, my grandpa died when my when my father was just two years old. It was a war, the secret war in Laos.
Kao Kalia Yang:A third of them all had been massacred, and then another third was slaughtered in the genocide of its aftermath. My grandma taught seven little boys how to become it, and she raised two phenomenal women. She was the matriarch of our family. And we saw her in conditions that a lot of if she could help it, if any, my mother would help it, they wouldn't have chosen. You know?
Kao Kalia Yang:But my grandma, Carolyn, all of our lives up there, she carried all of these keys. There was no luck in our lives at all. In the refugee camps and even here in America, she never had a room of her own. You know, she moved from a house of one child to the next, but she carried all of these keys. And I once asked her, I once said, grandma, where would you why why would you carry all these keys?
Kao Kalia Yang:And she said, because there's still so much more of life to unlock. And I I think about my grandmother all the time. You know? There is so much more of life to unlock. By the time I came along, she was an old woman down to her last single tooth.
Kao Kalia Yang:You know, the last one that she refused to take out because it would be the last if we took it out by force, it'd be the last gift the last gift that we take from her mom, the thing standing from her mom and dad. I think about her, Carolyn, and I'm like, people don't know about her hands. Those incredible, beautiful hands are still holding me up. Me too, I'm able to sit so straight because the back of this chair is so far back. My legs are so sharp.
Kao Kalia Yang:You certainly need other forces that work here, people.
David Mura:Douglas, there's a whole controversy now about critical race theory, but people don't actually understand what it is. But one of the aspects of critical race theory is it is which aligns with its school theory called Afro pessimism. Is that just is American racism a permanent feature of America? And in your piece, Doug, you write about how inevitable in stopping police on stopping police violence an anti Black animus has been historically, continues in the present, and will continue in the future. You ask what's the proper necessary response to this violence and animus is writing an adequate or necessary response.
David Mura:You also state that this violence occurs on behalf of and for white people, even white people who do not endorse this violence. Can you make a specific address to white people and what do you think they should do? So I'm asking, can you speak a little more on both sides of this, both the task of writers facing something as horrible as, Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd and your address for white people?
Douglas Kearney:Thank you, David. So a part of the question is, is writing an adequate response? Not by itself. I think many artists I know this is something I said before. Many artists I know believe that the world is best served by interdependence.
Douglas Kearney:And yet many of us are tempted to assume that our individual piece should do the work. Like, all of a sudden, we're, like, you know, entrepreneurs trying to hit upon, like, a a great new product. We'll solve all the problems. Right? So so nothing when I say how both writing is adequate, that is not to put down writing.
Douglas Kearney:It is to put down the idea that one person doing one thing, no matter how much tradition they've been informed by, is going to be enough. We can't wait for that one person to do it for us. We all have to do it. And so on that on that level, is writing adequate? No.
Douglas Kearney:Is writing important? Yes. As part of a network of activities, as part of a network of ways that people connect to each other, as part of a network of making plain or making more complex that which we that some of us would like to forget. Making present things that have happened that are happening that may very well happen again if they help us to see more clearly who we are in this. There's a there's a thing that happens whenever you know, it's usually it's usually whenever a bunch of black people do something terrible.
Douglas Kearney:This is not who we are. This is not who we are. Like, since when? Like, since when? This is the equivalent of watching somebody assemble and then activate a gaslight before your very eyes.
Douglas Kearney:And you can go and, yeah, I've done it. But we have to remind ourselves because sometimes seeing it on the street isn't enough. Sometimes people need it in a book or present it in a bookstore. What do I think white people should do? And I laugh at that because there's a book I read.
Douglas Kearney:Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together? Beverly. Beverly Tatum. Thank you. Doctor Beverly Tatum.
Douglas Kearney:Thank god I remember that. Beast the last name. Makes me sound like a new one. Doctor Tatum. But she said that privilege works like this.
Douglas Kearney:And privilege. No adjective before it. Just privilege. So imagine you're on, you're at the airport, and there's one of those people movers. And there are people who embrace their privilege.
Douglas Kearney:They get on that people mover there and walking with it. They're suddenly biotic. You've seen that people are late for a flight. They're going faster, better, stronger. Then there are those who resist their privilege.
Douglas Kearney:So they actually are on the the treadmill. You cannot be able to trade with you. If you've got privilege, you're on the treadmill. And those people turn around and walk against the treadmill. It's harder than walking forward.
Douglas Kearney:But with enough effort, you could do it. People who don't think much about their privilege either way, stand. They don't get there as fast as the people who are, like, gimme mines, but they sure as hell do get there. Whatever you look at and see as being a part of your treatment, if you really don't want it, it's gonna be harder than getting it. That's how it's designed.
Douglas Kearney:It's designed so you don't have to think about it. But that's it. That's that's one of those magic odd things. It'd be like a pattern of things. You looked at it.
Douglas Kearney:You see the red. You've never seen the fucking wind. But here here's a here's a clue. Turn Turn to the back of the book. You don't have to ask for it.
Douglas Kearney:You just have to not do anything about it. So do something about it. If you feel that you don't want this, if it bothers you, if it disturbs you, then you actually have to do something against it. And I would say that same thing as a straight cisgender dude, if I am not if I'm pushing I'm uncomfortable with heterosexism. I can't just be, oh, I just
Said Shaiye:don't like the way that feels.
Douglas Kearney:You gotta do something about it. So that's what I'd say.
Carolyn Holbrook:Melissa, your essay is later than funny. You're wanting to do something while the contest is going on following George Floyd's murder yet because you're taking care of your elderly mother, you're not comfortable joining the protests, but you're deeply concerned about rescuing the tapes that helped make you see communications fifteen plus years of radio programming that you were digitizing. If you weren't able to retrieve those tapes, Migazy's first person radio program would have been lost forever. Through your wonderful partner, John, he's back there. Hey, John.
Carolyn Holbrook:Through his intuition and through teamwork with you and the staff at Migizi, wow. You you were able to to rescue those tapes just hours before the building caught fire. And I remember that you had moments when you felt stuck while writing this heart stopping yet heartwarming essay, but you made it through. You mentioned what David said to you during that Zoom call. So can you say a little bit about your approach and your process for writing?
Melissa Olson:Sure. In the end, I think, I bow to a feeling that for this particular project, because it is about because this story is about because It should be more about that than it should be about myself. So where I started, and I think we're, you know, at the
Carolyn Holbrook:point that David threw his hands up literally.
Melissa Olson:There was a lot of just sticking.
Carolyn Holbrook:I think I remember that.
Melissa Olson:I was, like, you know, we go and get the boxes. The boxes are there at that moment. They're in the house. They're living. You know, they're blocking the window.
Melissa Olson:So there's, you know, that and the smell. And it's it's it was intense. And so we can't really go out, and to to stay in means to stay committed to, you know, living with sort of the boxes, smell, the, how ragged they are in a way. You know, they they just survived thirty five years from being moved place to place, most of them in their original boxes and that kind of thing. I felt pretty comfortable writing about that and less about myself.
Melissa Olson:I will say, like, I there were several attempts. I made several attempts thinking about writing about the pandemic. That was a little bit easier, and it was probably equally the most difficult thing. I made a choice a couple of different times. I I had the opportunity to go to New York for work at the start of the pandemic, and I love New York.
Melissa Olson:I love visiting you. It was a wonderful opportunity, and I I remember the sinking feeling knowing that I would not go because if I went and I got sick, I, you know, I I don't know who or what at that point, you know, comes to her aid, my mom's aid. So I I stay home, and I was really glad that I did. My colleague who was in New York at that time was sick with COVID. You know, they've they they were both so kind and saying, you know, good to follow your gut.
Melissa Olson:And I didn't, it wasn't about following my gut. It was more about my mom had suffered upper respiratory illness as a baby. And since then, there was always this this sort of story in my family about severity of how sick you can get, but that it's life threatening. That story, probably as much as anything, was the one that stuck in my head. You know, my mom, she's she's a tough woman.
Melissa Olson:She had pneumonia twice as a baby. She went through the whole thing. She had pertussis. I mean, the the same story is also the story of of incredible resilience. Right?
Melissa Olson:How do you get through that is also a story of resilience. So staying home, I knew that was the right thing to do. And that essay is a little bit tougher. It it takes a little bit more vulnerability to write that, and this is certainly not easy. But there are there are sort of more layers to ask excavate there than than I think I had the head space to at the time.
David Mura:So in your writing, you address the fact that your black and Muslim Somali identities, are important to you and you've been diagnosed with autism. Your book, Are You Cyborg Now, has been described as a deeply personal self interrogation that blurges genre and form to examine how intersections between culture, race, class, gender, and nationality shape one's identity. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the intersections of your identity in your writing and your mixing of forms, you know. And I also wonder, did you know Doug's work before you came to the MFA program? But but I I just you you mentioned to me how important Doug has been.
David Mura:So Yeah.
Said Shaiye:It was. While I was thinking, he was like, behind. Honestly, no. But I did meet Doug at a, they got this, like, MFA, pre event, like, when people are deciding after they're accepted if they're gonna actually come or not. And you get to meet the faculty and stuff.
Said Shaiye:You know, sat down with who's at the, the Weisman. Right? The the art gallery, and we got to talk for a while. And I was just like I was like, listen, man. I have this desire to always run from anything that I'm doing.
Said Shaiye:And I know that this is gonna be a hard road. So I was basically like, can I count on you to, like, you know, in a way hold me accountable, but also, like, to serve as the anchor, to hold me down, and to, like, to to show me that that that I deserve to be here, not just in a writing program, but on this earth? And he was like, and this is someone I just met right then and there. This is another thing about being autistic. That doesn't mean, like, we prefer depth over small talk.
Said Shaiye:I would rather tell you my life story as a stranger than ask you what time it is or ask you about the weather. So I told him that, and he was like, of course, bro. I've got you. And I'm like, alright. That's all I need.
Said Shaiye:One black faculty member,
Douglas Kearney:so hold me down.
Said Shaiye:He has indeed helped me down. I wrote a thing, but I don't know if I should read it or not. Might give me trouble.
Kao Kalia Yang:I'm full of creditable. I
Said Shaiye:I don't know if it's good trouble. Why did you mean just trouble? I'm trying to graduate. Well alright. So I only just found out I'm autistic about four months ago.
Said Shaiye:I'm still processing a lot of it, but I'm also looking back at my last two years in the program and seeing why I've had so many traumatic moments, not just because I'm black and Muslim in a university that hasn't been kind to either one of those identities, but because of the autism. You see, I was masking in so many ways without realizing it. And I was encouraged to, quote, unquote, just push through and dwell on more and more dramatic moments in my writing for the consumption and often vicious critique of my peers. I think I'll need years of therapy to unpack all this, but it's one of the reasons why I've pivoted so quickly away from the kind of confessional trauma writing that's displayed in my essay, Did Eat Dreams, which is an anthology. In fact, a need to protect myself is brought about my book, Are You Borg Now?
Said Shaiye:It's spelled b o r g, Borg as in the I'm a nerd, Star Trek. The format I came up with, which is the backbone of the book, is one that allowed me to tiptoe around trauma without ever confronting it or divulging anything I wasn't ready to share with anyone. The back and forth conversation between my inner child and my adult self, which is the basic premise of the book, that's what allowed me to gauge my body's response to trauma in real time as I wrote about what I was feeling, both in the present under pressure and MFA program, while also remembering similar traumas from my past. I wrote that book as a means of survival. Otherwise, I would have self imploded and dropped out.
Said Shaiye:And that process of writing, it led me to seek new ways of writing, which is when I started focusing so heavily on a return on my poetic roots. So now nowadays, I'm trying to write into a more joyous and hopeful future, one where I can write about the tall grass like white girls do and get paid for it. Sunshine. And, so I could also write about autism, soft sweaters, and even softer bagels because that is a lot more enjoyable and worthwhile to me than performing my pain for cheap applause for people who may never understand me. Good for you, and you're so brave.
Said Shaiye:Those things will not hit my pain. Well,
Carolyn Holbrook:thank you,
Douglas Kearney:Simon, everybody.
Carolyn Holbrook:We're
Melissa Olson:running later than we anticipate everybody.
Carolyn Holbrook:I think we have time for maybe one or two questions.
Kao Kalia Yang:I do have one audience question. Writing is often seen as an isolated introverted art form, but each of you are also beautiful performers. How are you able to make the shift from writing to presenting your work?
Douglas Kearney:Besides, sort of personal interest in, performance, and taking classes and things like that, I am aware that there is a there's a heightened level of expectation performance. For some folks, I don't think, like, black people have the exclusive, you know, have the exclusive access to that. But one of the things that people oftentimes talk about, the history or ideas of sociology around that, is, you know, people talk about W. E. B.
Douglas Kearney:Du Bois double consciousness. It's always like the African and the American are in this dead wrestling sort of thing. But the thing that I think people don't talk about as much is the idea that oftentimes, this is Du Bois' organization that, Black folks have to be aware of how they're being seen even at the same time that they're being themselves. So, like, I don't see myself in that formulation. I don't see myself without thinking about how everybody in this room is looking at me, how you're seeing me, which means that I always have, like, a little cinematographer.
Douglas Kearney:Right? But the cinematographer is generally not making me have these awesome, like, slow motion John Woo types of things. No. No.
Said Shaiye:No. It's oftentimes what's more
Douglas Kearney:like a surveillance camera or or something like that, like, you know, like, you know, close circuit TV. So, like, if you lean into that, then it's sort of like every minute of your life, you're perfecting this crap. I am in this fabulous, fabulous, fabulous repertory theater that is called this American culture. And I And I didn't have to pay, like, actual money, pay other things, but pay extra money to get in it. And, like, the lessons are coming, and you're all here.
Douglas Kearney:This is community teaching community education. So when I think about performance, I take the actual things that I have researched and studied in many kinds of the actual programs and all that kind of stuff, experience I have singing, all these kinds of things. My original singing, I was great. I was raised Lutheran, ELCA Lutheran. Right?
Douglas Kearney:Right? So this is, this is the backup for me. Black Lutherans. So my, my, my, my singing was I learned that to pass with a boy's choir. So when I say my singing, don't assume that I was at the concert.
Douglas Kearney:Right? I learned that I was saying Ave Maria. So I guess I'm saying that all of those things combined work to doing this thing. And I don't talk for a long time, but, you know, I gave you the mic. It's your phone.
Douglas Kearney:I don't know what's gonna happen when I pick up the page of whatever I'm about to read. It's whatever I feel is necessary in that moment. Like Saeed making that decision about what he was going to read and whether he was going to say it, that is a calculus. One thing I oftentimes do is I just do what I think I'm supposed to do in that moment because if I think too much about it, I probably won't. Oh, can I just say one last thing?
Douglas Kearney:Sorry. I might be misremembering. Doctor Beverly Tatum might have said specifically my privilege, but I was thinking about it as privilege.
Said Shaiye:So autism. Fun fact, difficulties with memory. Another fun fact, sensitivity, sensitivity to light and noise, which is why I'm wearing the sunglasses. I'm not trying to be that cool guy. Why I have the AirPods in, so we're just, the amount of overstimulation that I face at the event so that I can have a good night tonight.
Said Shaiye:So I was a poet long time ago, and performance is kinda in my roots. So even before that, like, it's also in my blood. It's, you know, somebody is known as the nation of poets or whatever, and so we have a rich oral poetic tradition. Several of my grandfathers were well known poets back in the day. This is something I only found out, like, much later in life.
Said Shaiye:In fact, when I was trying to be a spoken word poet, my parents were, like, trying to dissuade me from it. I ran to some random distant uncle, and he was like, oh, you do a poetry now? Oh, yeah. You know, several several hundred thousand several hundred people have your grandfather's poetry memorized. I was like,
Douglas Kearney:why why do I have the fuck with
Said Shaiye:my family hiding this for me? You need to dissuade me from pursuing poetry. You know? Like, so I used to do this book more. Like, it was my life.
Said Shaiye:I even dropped out of college to do it full time. True story. And, so performance is kinda kinda something I'm used to doing. I took a long break away from it. But, also, in a lot of ways, like, being on stage is one of the most freeing things for me.
Said Shaiye:As painful as it is of a process to prepare for and the entire day of anxiety leading up to it and I have to order some of that great stuff, like, actually allowing myself to fully free myself without judgment or or expectation. Like, when I was on stage, I was doing something that's called stimming, which is something that, I recently found out. Even children do. Everybody does. But it's, the body's way of, like, getting rid of excess energy.
Said Shaiye:And I was, like, tapping on the, on the stage rhythmically. It helped me keep the beat to that I was, like, spinning to, but it also helped me bent off excess energy. And I saw this Twitter thing. It said, children all children do this, like, up until, like, age two. But society beats it out of them because it tells them that it's weird.
Said Shaiye:They don't say it with so many words, but they society tells us this with, with body language. And so we all need to do it to some extent, but autistic people especially need to do it. Otherwise, we get overloaded and have a meltdown and a shutdown, and we can't do anything for several days. It's not a good time. Break up with people.
Said Shaiye:It's not a good time. And so, like, yeah, being on stage, like, I can do whatever my body naturally does, and people are like, wow. What an amazing performance. And I'm like, no. I'm just being myself.
Said Shaiye:You know? Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa Olson:I was gonna get the quick answer, which is this is exactly why I choose radio. That's that's and that is, that is about, 70% of it. But I have to add because Doug mentioned Ave Maria. I would be remiss if I did not say I owe it to my mom to be able to stand up in front of anybody and do anything. I remember the moment it sort of overtook me, and that was, my mom who sings as a singer, professional singers, you know, national anthems, weddings, was practicing the Ave Maria, in the bathroom.
Melissa Olson:I was 13, and she had a chip sing an acapella for a Catholic wedding. My mom is, you know, she's five foot two, but she's got this huge, beautiful voice. And she would sing it a cappella over and over and over, and it's been on for a couple months because she's preparing for this wedding. And at the time, I, you know, I didn't really, you know, understand. And then I would just, you know, I would find myself singing it later, and it just made me that much more comfortable.
Melissa Olson:And later when I saw her actually perform it, you know, I realized that it just took work.
Carolyn Holbrook:We've just been notified that the store's about to close. So when's the last time I shut something down?
Kao Kalia Yang:Well, thank you. The last word. I I wanna say this. I grew up as a selective mute in English. I have no problem speaking all wrong up.
Kao Kalia Yang:But in English, I didn't talk. The first public talk I did, the first time I spoke to be heard was at the port knowledge of the late homecomer in 02/2008, April '10 '2 thousand and '8. I got up and I couldn't do it. Got up and I couldn't do it. Finally, my dad walks from the back of the room, and he's wearing his nicest jacket, which he has no occasion to wear.
Kao Kalia Yang:I bought a fellowship dollars my last semester at Columbia. The Brooks Brothers jacket that fit in real well. It walks right up and he says to me, because my hands are shaking so bad, my dad puts out his hand. And I put mine on top of his. I have the soft hands of a writer.
Kao Kalia Yang:My father has spent his life in America as a machinist. His hands are so hard, it hurts when he brushes his hands in the long gesture above. When he puts on his hand, I put mine on top, and my dad says to me, if volunteers can reincarnate, we will reign the world with our sorrow. But they cannot. They can only grieve the mountains of Cumbia.
Kao Kalia Yang:If you speak, if the winds of humanity blow, then maybe our lives are not lost. And I always thought one day that whenever I spoke, it would come from this hard place inside of me, this place of strength. I didn't know that it will come from the tempest part of me, the part that had been watered by my tears all through the years, the softest, fluttering part of me. So when I talk, you can't see the tears fall, but you hear them in my voice. When I talk, I have the strength again always of my grandmother of the two who died so I could be here guiding me.
Kao Kalia Yang:Have to live a life that is bigger than my own. Have to do work that is worthy of their falling so that I might stand. And I believe that each and every single one of us were the dream of a future, somebody's happy ending. Somewhere in time, we were their only dream, and here we are living that dream. I wanna be worthy of that.
Kao Kalia Yang:Then there's the simple fact, everybody has an expectation of what they would hear when they see something like me. I never write my speeches down because I want the freedom to say what I think and what I feel about the world I'm in. A lot of people who hear me would never pick up my books, and not and a lot of people who meet me would never be able to hear me talk. It's a different arm. It just sort of allows me to hold.
Kao Kalia Yang:If writing is the leg, then the speaking is my arm, and together, we make our way into the world.
Carolyn Holbrook:We're coming. There are books for sale, and there's also some refreshments in the back, but I guess we kinda have to anyway, thank you, everybody.
David Mura:Thank you for next chapter for hosting us. Please buy books.
Said Shaiye:Thank you, David.