1:25

We

2:00

probably haven't made this connection, but she

2:03

was the opinion section editor of the

2:05

Davidson newspaper like you Oh,

2:07

I think you met her a couple

2:09

of years ago and took a picture

2:10

and shared it on Twitter Anyway,

2:13

I remember that you yeah, and

2:15

I asked her I said she said because she put

2:17

this in the prep and I said Did you tell him did your

2:20

mind? She said no, so I want you to

2:22

know that

2:22

is and now she works for you Yeah, and she's

2:24

on this line somewhere. Yeah That's

2:27

phenomenal. Yeah, it's very exciting. Hello.

2:29

Hello. Oh That's so

2:31

cool. Yeah, I know I got such a kick out

2:33

of that. Yeah, it was Five

2:35

or six years ago now. Yeah, I think that

2:37

I couldn't find the tweet anymore But yeah,

2:40

it was it feels like a nice personal connection

2:42

here. So we're

2:43

excited and we're all excited

2:47

So I think you know, I never um, I

2:50

Never quite know what the shape of

2:53

an interview will be until I actually

2:55

do the prep even though I might think I know

2:57

and this Time something really emerged

2:59

that may be a little different from

3:02

what I thought or from what you've done before But I

3:04

I think we I hope we can have a

3:05

little adventure here. I will follow you

3:08

wherever we go. Okay

3:08

So, I mean

3:10

as you know, you know, basically what

3:13

we do is, you know Our

3:16

lens on everything is the human condition

3:18

and then we can pick up any subject and look at

3:20

it in that way And we just started

3:22

this, you know, we went off the radio last

3:25

year. So now we're doing two podcast

3:27

seasons a year and we just started the second

3:29

one and We're

3:32

kind of having this twin. So one

3:34

of the things I'm I'm interested

3:37

in and what we're circling around is How

3:40

this moment in the life of the world is

3:42

calling us to get more conscious and

3:44

claim the fullness of our of what

3:46

it means to be human and of our agency

3:49

as human beings and that has

3:52

been coming at us in all

3:55

the reckonings that have just become

3:57

more insistent and existential

3:59

And also, I think this new

4:03

AI and the way our lives with technology

4:05

is evolving also can be a thing

4:07

that just really presses

4:10

us to a new kind of clarity about what it

4:12

means to be human and how we want to live

4:15

and who we will be to each other and what

4:17

we want for all of our children. And

4:19

I think it gets at, you know, can

4:22

we, you know,

4:24

get a new kind of clarity on the

4:27

fullest meaning of intelligence in

4:29

human life and also how embodied

4:33

that is, which is something that is

4:35

not actually accessible to

4:38

AI and even the physicality

4:40

of memory and language. And I feel like this is

4:42

something that is so vibrant

4:45

in all of your work and

4:47

how you go about your research

4:50

and how you write this connection

4:53

between language and words

4:55

and physicality in place and

4:57

the body and also how poetry

5:00

distinctively gets at this. So

5:02

I think I'm kind of first and

5:04

foremost speaking to you as a poet

5:06

and seeing how that sensibility

5:09

as well as a way with words

5:12

really infuses everything you do,

5:14

including

5:14

how you write about history. And

5:19

yeah, so how does that sound? I will lead. But

5:23

I hope

5:23

you're up for that.

5:25

OK,

5:27

so yeah,

5:29

and I just I feel like you're

5:33

you've kept working with this in different

5:36

aspects of your life that I almost started to think of

5:38

as kind of different laboratories

5:39

for investigation.

5:40

So a high school classroom, prisons

5:43

are communal reckoning around the history

5:46

of this country, our history of slavery, our

5:48

racial presence. And

5:51

I feel like your contribution to that

5:53

is kind of consistently transcending this realm

5:56

of arguments and mere idea and

5:58

kind of calling us back.

8:00

ordinary in our

8:01

world.

8:04

But I just, I kind of have

8:06

this picture of you, yeah, three days into your

8:09

senior

8:09

year, in this

8:11

place where you and your family were so

8:14

rooted, and then you end

8:16

up in Houston, in a new world and

8:18

new school, at that moment

8:20

in your life when we're all on a kind of hospice

8:23

catharsis anyway.

8:25

I don't know, I know sometimes you

8:27

invoke physics and you're as interested in those

8:29

things as I am, and honestly, it's like you kind of

8:32

stepped into this multiverse version

8:34

of what your life might have been. I wonder

8:36

how that felt to you,

8:38

that drama. Yeah, I think in

8:41

so many ways I'm still sort

8:44

of understanding and unpacking the

8:49

sort of repercussions and implications

8:51

of what Katrina meant in

8:54

my own life, and the life of my family, and the

8:56

life of my city. And

9:00

I just recently turned 35. Hurricane

9:03

Katrina was when I was 17, so this past year I

9:06

had been thinking a lot about how it

9:09

sort of bifurcated my life, and that

9:12

it was half a lifetime ago, that

9:15

I was displaced in that way. And

9:18

I think having been removed

9:20

from New Orleans, so suddenly,

9:25

so unexpectedly, so violently,

9:29

in many ways, what

9:32

I do think it did was sort of give

9:35

me a deeper appreciation for the way that the

9:37

sensibilities of New Orleans, the texture

9:40

of New Orleans, the culture of New Orleans, remained

9:44

a part of me, even when I felt

9:49

as if, even when I didn't know it was still a

9:51

part of me, because it felt like I never

9:53

got almost a sense of closure.

9:56

Like, you know, my group

9:58

of friends and I from high school talk off... about

10:00

just like what our senior year would

10:02

have been or could have been. It's

10:05

the culmination of this lifetime

10:08

of childhood memories

10:10

and opportunities. It

10:14

felt like we were moving into our fullest

10:17

selves, that we had a sort of more

10:19

grounded sense of who we were, who we

10:22

wanted to be. Again, your

10:24

senior year is supposed to be the sort of culmination of

10:26

all that came before and we

10:29

never got to live that way. I

10:31

do think sometimes about what, you

10:35

mentioned the sort of multiverse, sometimes

10:37

I imagine what an alternative

10:39

reality in which there

10:41

was no Katrina, what sort

10:44

of shape my life would have taken on. It's

10:48

obviously impossible to know, but it

10:50

is something I sort of think about, not

10:52

with any sort of regret, mostly

10:54

with just a sense of curiosity.

10:57

I actually want to,

10:59

at the end, you continue to write about

11:02

this, so clearly as you say, it's

11:04

something that's with you and I suspect

11:06

that you'll be processing it for

11:09

all of your days. And

11:11

I think I want to, and you

11:13

have written two

11:15

volumes of poetry. I

11:17

think near the end I want you to read one of the newer

11:20

poems you've written about Katrina. But one thing that's

11:22

interesting to me is

11:23

you've also written essays about

11:26

it, but I think that

11:28

in this story, this

11:30

part of you is such

11:32

an amazing example of how much poetry

11:35

can convey in so few words. So

11:38

I was wondering if you might read this poem from

11:41

Counting Dissent, which

11:44

is on page 45, on

11:47

observing my home after this storm. Again,

11:49

like you wrote

11:49

an article called

11:52

Strangers in Our Home, Why Writing About Hurricane Katrina

11:55

Is Both Impossible and Necessary, and

11:58

some of this poem.

12:00

gets it so much of that. Would you

12:02

set the scene for this poem?

12:05

It's so interesting to return to

12:08

old collections and old books.

12:11

And to think about where you

12:13

were when you wrote this. I wrote

12:15

so many of these poems over

12:17

a decade ago. And

12:20

I can't remember the last time I read

12:22

this poem either to myself or out loud. But

12:24

when we returned

12:26

to my home, in

12:30

New Orleans for the first time, it was

12:35

in October, I believe, October or November,

12:37

following the storm that happened in August. And

12:41

for weeks, for months, 80% of the

12:43

city had been underwater.

12:47

And our home was included in that. I

12:50

remember sitting on the couch in

12:52

my aunt and uncle's house in Houston, Texas,

12:54

watching as the grocery

12:57

store. We went to the church. We

12:59

went to school. I went to

13:01

seeing images of these places under

13:04

eight, nine, ten, eleven feet

13:06

of water. And spending

13:09

weeks imagining what the

13:12

inside of my own home would have looked like. And

13:16

we eventually went when it became

13:19

clear that we wouldn't be returning

13:21

in any meaningful way. But

13:25

as soon as the water receded, we

13:27

did go back to see

13:30

what we could retrieve, if anything. And

13:34

I just always remember, we were

13:36

wearing these almost sort of, what

13:39

felt to me like chemical suits, almost

13:42

as if I was

13:45

watching myself in a sort of zombie apocalypse

13:49

sort of experience with

13:51

the mask and everything.

13:55

But I'll always remember

13:57

that smell. I think that that is

13:59

memory. is a funny thing. And I think that,

14:02

you know, so much of my memory is also tied to pictures

14:04

that we have. And, you

14:07

know, there's one photo of a

14:09

chair in our dining room hanging from the

14:12

chandelier in our dining room.

14:14

And it sort of, I

14:16

think,

14:18

represents and embodies the chaos

14:20

that existed. But you open the door and there was

14:22

mold everywhere. And, you know, our home

14:25

had been sitting in 10 feet

14:27

of water and, you know,

14:29

kitchen plates, China that have been part

14:31

of our family, are sort

14:33

of broken in pieces across

14:36

the floor. There's mold growing across

14:38

the wall. And the smell

14:40

just kind of, I think it took me a few

14:42

minutes before I was able to actually step inside because

14:45

it was so pungent.

14:47

It was so forceful, almost

14:50

as if somebody was, like an

14:52

invisible hand, was pushing me out of the

14:54

door. And so,

14:56

you know, writing for me is and always has been

14:59

an attempt to sort

15:02

of capture a moment in time, to capture

15:04

a feeling, capture an observation, capture

15:07

a conversation that

15:10

served as this one of the time counsel that

15:12

allows me to remember who

15:15

I've been, what I've seen, who

15:18

I have been in relationship to the world around me. And

15:21

this poem is

15:24

an attempt to have done so.

15:28

On observing my home after the storm. One,

15:33

the smell so pungent

15:36

you can see it. The fermentation

15:38

of sky prickling at your skin. An

15:41

alloy of brackish and sewer water stinging

15:44

nostrils. The residue

15:46

of cries for help. Eyes

15:49

unprepared for this sort of wreckage. The

15:52

maggot to demarcate the space between

15:54

what was and what never

15:56

will be again. Steel

15:59

door hinges. split at the seam. Every

16:02

wall a groundswell of

16:04

lustreless green. Glass

16:07

has meandered across the floor, a cacophony

16:10

of shattered skin. The

16:12

overturned dinner table sits on its side

16:15

as if to protect the rest of the house from the

16:17

night it knows will come. The

16:20

floorboards do not creak. They

16:22

whimper, distraught by all

16:25

they could not prevent.

16:28

Two.

16:30

But what are these words but an empty lyric? What

16:32

then is anything beyond the

16:34

language we give it? What else do we have to

16:38

describe the carnage we see? But all that

16:41

is woefully inadequate?

16:46

You know, that line, that question,

16:49

and of course poetry is such

16:51

a wonderful container for questions. What

16:54

then is anything beyond the language

16:57

we give it? Such

16:58

a striking question and I just

17:01

wonder, like, how do you, what does

17:04

that question mean to you? How do you start to answer

17:07

it?

17:08

I think it's something I sort of wrestle with,

17:11

you know, all the time. As

17:13

I said, sort of writing is almost an act

17:16

of mindfulness for me.

17:19

It's an act of being present, of being

17:21

present with my memories, of being present with

17:23

that which is in front of me, and

17:26

attempting to use language as

17:28

a way to sort

17:31

of home in on the specificity,

17:34

on the granularity, on the

17:37

minutia, the specific

17:38

texture of what

17:40

a feeling is, what a moment is, what an observation

17:42

is, and at the same time,

17:45

sort of wrestling with

17:48

if that very act can

17:52

ever, if the act of writing

17:54

about such an image or such a memory

17:56

can ever be commensurate with the image. image

18:00

or memory or feeling itself. And

18:03

I think it's something that I'm interested in, both in

18:05

the context of language, but also in the context

18:08

of art and a lot of my nonfiction work,

18:12

my journalistic work. I've been thinking

18:14

a lot about monuments and memorials and museums.

18:18

And I think in a similar way, one

18:20

of the questions that sort of undergird

18:24

my exploration and examination of these

18:27

spaces is if a

18:29

memorial to a tragedy, a

18:32

monument to an act of

18:34

violence, if those things

18:37

can ever

18:39

capture

18:40

the horror

18:44

and the violence and the distress

18:47

and the despair that

18:50

it is attempting to remember, or

18:53

if it is inevitably never

18:57

going to do so. And I

18:59

think whether it be sort of visual

19:01

art, whether it be language, I'm always

19:03

interested in the extent to which our

19:06

efforts to remember

19:10

our past,

19:12

our efforts to understand what we see in front

19:14

of us, if those attempts

19:17

at language or attempts at art can ever fully

19:20

capture what

19:22

these things are, what these things have been. And I

19:24

don't know that they

19:26

can, but I also don't know that that

19:28

means that we stop trying.

19:31

You know, if

19:34

I think about some of the different places you've

19:37

inhabited

19:39

in your professional

19:41

life, and if I think about them as kind of laboratories

19:44

where you're working through some of these questions that you've

19:46

already been surfacing, you

19:47

know, you're

19:48

becoming a high school teacher,

19:52

feels like it continues to be something

19:54

that is just absolutely central to your identity,

19:56

how it kind of set you off on everything you did after

19:59

that.

19:59

And I wonder,

20:03

I would love for you to just introduce

20:05

Apollo Frere, to those of us

20:07

who is a really, a Brazilian educator

20:10

and philosopher who's really formative, in,

20:13

in, I think, a way of, you

20:15

know, not just thinking about, about

20:18

educating, but thinking about life and everything

20:21

you, you continued to,

20:24

have continued to do. But what,

20:26

what, what was that formation for you?

20:30

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you're spot on

20:32

being a high school English teacher is, it

20:36

helps shape everything for me. I mean, I don't,

20:38

I wouldn't be a writer, at

20:41

least not in the way that I am. I wouldn't

20:43

think about my work, what my

20:45

sort of responsibilities are, what

20:47

my commitments are, what

20:50

these sort of ethics of my work should

20:52

look like. Being

20:55

a high school teacher shaped everything. I mean,

20:57

it is, I feel very lucky to,

21:00

to, to read and write and

21:02

think and for, for a living.

21:06

But man, like sitting in a high school

21:08

classroom with a bunch of teenagers and just

21:10

talking about books was, it

21:13

was the best job I ever had. It was

21:15

so fulfilling. It was

21:18

so remarkable

21:21

to sit with a group of 15 and 16

21:23

year olds talking about the

21:25

way that a book is

21:28

in conversation with the various facets of

21:30

their own lives and to see that

21:32

that could serve as an entry point

21:35

for them to understand the way that their

21:37

lives are in conversation with one another in

21:39

ways that might've never been possible without

21:42

that text in ways that might've never been possible

21:44

without that one sentence and that one paragraph

21:48

that somebody was able,

21:50

that one student pointed out in

21:52

a way that illuminated something for everybody

21:55

else in that classroom. Those

21:57

specific moments of magic were so. I

22:00

mean, there's nothing like it. And I think that that

22:03

is one of the remarkable

22:05

things about teaching. And

22:08

one of the remarkable things about teaching that

22:10

age group of young

22:13

people who are sort of coming

22:15

into themselves and developing

22:18

a more acute, a

22:21

fuller, more

22:23

nuanced sense of the world around

22:25

them. And Paulo Freire,

22:27

he is a Brazilian

22:29

scholar and educator who,

22:32

as you say, was incredibly formative for me. I

22:35

read his book, perhaps his

22:37

most popular text, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

22:41

And the essence of that book

22:43

is thinking about how part

22:45

of the role of education

22:49

is to help people who

22:53

have been subjected to violence, who

22:55

have been subjected to oppression,

22:57

who has been subjected to despair

23:03

or resource

23:06

extraction at the hands of the state, at the

23:09

hands of the government, how

23:12

education can be a way to help them

23:14

understand that the

23:16

world is social construction and

23:19

thus can be reconstructed and deconstructed and

23:21

made into something new and that the reality

23:23

of the world around us is not inevitability.

23:26

It is the result of decisions

23:28

that have been made often by people in power, often

23:30

by people who look a certain way

23:33

or move in a certain way or speak in a certain

23:35

way or have access to certain resources

23:38

that they prevent others from having access to. And

23:40

that is what shapes the material landscape

23:43

that we all move through. And once you

23:45

understand that, part

23:47

of what Freire talks about is it helps you, it helps disabuse

23:50

you of the idea that your station

23:53

in life is something that

23:55

is sort

23:57

of inevitably a facet of who you are. but

24:00

rather as the result of decisions that have been made

24:02

over generations, over decades, over

24:04

centuries. And for

24:06

me, that idea

24:09

is so freeing. It's so profound. Because

24:13

I remember, I remember being a kid growing up in

24:15

New Orleans in the 80s

24:17

and 90s and just

24:19

being inundated with messages about

24:22

all the things that were wrong with black people. And

24:24

that, you know, the reason New Orleans had so much crime

24:26

and so much poverty and so much violence

24:29

and so many people in prison were

24:31

because of things that were wrong with black people

24:34

and things that black people had failed to do.

24:37

And I knew it was wrong,

24:39

but I didn't know how to say it was wrong. I didn't

24:41

have the language. I didn't have the toolkit. I didn't

24:43

have the historical context with which

24:46

to push back against it. And

24:49

as a result, I think part of what happened is I began to

24:51

sort of internalize these messages.

24:55

And because when somebody keeps telling

24:57

you something about yourself or your community,

25:01

and you don't have the language with which to push back against it,

25:04

it can be a sort of, it was a sense of paralysis

25:07

almost. And it wasn't until I read certain

25:10

books and was introduced to certain art

25:12

and watched certain films or documentaries

25:16

and studies that helped, again, disabuse

25:19

me of this idea that

25:22

there was something inherent to any

25:24

community

25:25

that

25:26

made their, position

25:29

static, but that instead the

25:31

reason one community looks one way and another community

25:33

looks another way, it's not because of the people in those

25:35

communities, but because of what has been done to those communities,

25:38

generation after generation after generation. And I wanted

25:40

to, I knew the way that books

25:43

had freed me in that way. And

25:46

I wanted to bring that

25:48

to my students to the extent

25:50

that I could. I taught in Prince George's County, Maryland, a

25:54

school that was predominantly

25:58

black and Latino, a school that was... predominantly

26:01

students on free and reduced lunch, students who

26:05

were undocumented, students who were

26:07

in and out of the criminal legal system. And

26:11

I wanted the conversations

26:15

we had in our class and the

26:17

books we read and the lessons

26:19

we collectively learned to help them

26:21

understand that the

26:24

reason their community looked the way that they did, again,

26:27

were not inevitable. But were the result

26:29

of decisions that people had made.

26:31

And also, I feel like what's coming through

26:33

here is

26:35

language as more than mere

26:36

words, right? Language as

26:39

power, right?

26:42

To have the language to name something

26:44

or not to have it is

26:48

also about how

26:51

one can move through the world and

26:53

move the world.

26:55

You've written and spoken about

26:58

an interesting kind of transition

27:00

you made. You're

27:03

following on how that approach

27:05

you were taking to seeing the world

27:09

that your students inhabited and how

27:12

it constricted them. And you've talked about

27:14

how you, for a while, you

27:17

wanted to go head on to the

27:19

issues, to these societal problems

27:22

and these societal constructions. And

27:24

you started to find that that actually

27:27

wasn't the way or

27:29

the only way for them to do

27:30

the work to

27:33

actually step into that agency.

27:36

Like you've talked, you've

27:38

talked about, you found that you had to actually

27:40

draw out their identities and

27:45

that for them to, you

27:48

said, in order to do the work of understanding what

27:50

you're politically committed to, you have to understand who

27:53

and what you are committed to as a person.

27:54

And so you need some interesting

27:56

language that demands a sort of stealth

27:59

reflexivity.

27:59

a lot of identity work.

28:02

Would you say some more about that?

28:05

Yeah, I mean, I think another way of putting

28:07

that is that I came in real hot. Okay. I

28:10

read a lot of Paulo Freire and I

28:13

was a young 22-year-old teacher and

28:15

I was, I came

28:17

into my 10th grade English

28:19

class and I think

28:23

I was so committed

28:25

to going in and immediately sort

28:28

of creating this classroom of

28:30

like freedom fighters and revolutionaries

28:32

who were going to look around them, their

28:35

school and their community and see things that were

28:37

wrong and they were going to be marching and they were going

28:39

to be picketing and they were going to be leading

28:43

demonstrations and rallies and they were going

28:46

to develop this sense of

28:49

their political, the

28:51

political landscape around them and march

28:54

to Capitol Hill and march

28:56

to the political landscape

28:59

of Prince George's County and Maryland and the

29:01

whole country and

29:04

I think I came, you know, I remember there was this

29:06

moment where

29:09

my students were walking into the classroom on

29:11

the first day and everybody

29:14

sat down and I went to

29:17

the board and I very dramatically grabbed a piece

29:19

of chalk. I think I had watched

29:21

like too many Denzel Washington movies

29:23

and I grabbed a piece of chalk and I wrote

29:26

like on the board mass incarceration,

29:29

school to prison pipeline, immigration

29:32

reform, climate change

29:35

and just like kept writing all these different things

29:37

and I turned around and I put

29:39

the chalk on the very dramatically like

29:41

kind of threw it on the ground and I was like this

29:43

year we're

29:44

going to solve all that and

29:47

they just looked at me and were like, like

29:49

man where's the worksheet? Like what are

29:51

you talking about? Like who is this

29:53

kid who is like not that many years older than

29:56

us in here doing a terrible

29:58

Denzel Washington impression? And

30:01

I think that was the beginning of me realizing

30:03

that like, you know, these kids are

30:05

kids, which is to say that they're

30:07

human, and they are full of

30:10

complexity and three

30:13

dimensionality, and that like they are not

30:16

simply avatars

30:18

of political ideology,

30:21

or they are not simply people who will

30:24

like, you know, look

30:26

at an issue and see it exactly in

30:28

the same way that I do. And so I think that

30:31

part of what I realized as I wrote

30:33

there was I had to step back.

30:36

And before, you

30:39

know, books and literature and history

30:42

could be used as a way to politicize

30:45

or radicalize young

30:49

people, that books had the opportunity

30:51

to

30:52

help young people understand who they were. And

30:54

that is, and whatever comes after

30:57

that is what will come, right? Because part

31:03

of what I learned is that

31:05

that is my job in that classroom. My job was

31:07

to bring literature

31:10

and to bring ideas across,

31:13

you know, contemporary literature, you know, sort

31:17

of literature of the past,

31:21

and to put it in front of them to help guide

31:23

them and facilitate conversations

31:26

around these books that

31:29

help them better understand who they were in relationship to

31:32

the world that is in front of them in relationship

31:35

to their history, in relationship to the future that

31:37

they want to step into and the future they want

31:40

to build. And the

31:42

sort of sense of

31:45

a political identity is merely

31:47

one part of a much broader,

31:52

you know, ecosystem of the self

31:56

that would develop over the course of,

31:58

you know, our time together. and obviously

32:01

throughout the course of their lives.

32:02

You know, there's such wisdom

32:04

in

32:04

that and intelligence, right,

32:07

about

32:07

not how we want to

32:11

be able to teach or to think that we grow

32:13

or we can help other people grow, but how it

32:16

actually works. You know, I mean,

32:18

one thing I'm

32:19

impatient

32:21

in our culture a bit with

32:23

this kind of pedestal

32:25

that telling a story is upon. And

32:29

yet what you're talking about

32:31

is drawing

32:33

forth the story and the question of so

32:36

what, right, the story

32:39

and then the ability to think in

32:41

a more complex and conscious way about

32:45

so what, that in relationship

32:46

to the world, right?

32:48

And

32:50

there's so much in what you just said that

32:53

could be learned in terms of how we culturally

32:55

are about advocacy and, you

32:58

know, arguing for things

33:01

or against things.

33:04

And kind of getting at this idea of like, what is intelligence

33:07

and what is education and, you

33:09

know, how do we learn

33:10

and grow and what the point of that is,

33:13

right? This is all of this was kind of brewing

33:15

in this story. And then so you

33:17

ended up,

33:21

you ended up

33:24

taking yourself out of the classroom and

33:27

to graduate school.

33:29

But my sense is as

33:31

much to live more

33:33

fully into what that was teaching you

33:36

and calling you to.

33:39

And then also what interests me is when you did

33:41

go to graduate school and you went

33:43

to graduate school at Harvard, I

33:45

feel like you there have this

33:47

pull back to needing

33:50

to have your hands and your heart

33:52

in life,

33:54

real life on the ground. And

33:56

then you also started teaching in prisons. Is

33:59

that is that a fair? encapsulation

34:01

of that particular exhibit.

34:04

Yeah, I mean, so I was

34:06

in the classroom and part of what

34:08

I kept thinking about was the sort

34:11

of larger landscape

34:14

of social and historical and economic

34:18

realities that shaped the lives of

34:20

my students. I realized that

34:22

my school was, you know, the school where

34:25

I taught in any school is

34:27

merely one island

34:30

in a sort of much longer

34:33

and larger archipelago that

34:37

shaped what, how my students

34:39

moved through the world and it is an essential

34:41

space and it is an incredibly

34:45

formative space. But I also wanted

34:47

to gain a deeper understanding for myself about

34:49

the sort of interconnectedness of

34:52

all of those different parts

34:54

of the sort of social

34:56

ecosystem. And

34:58

I wanted to understand, you know,

35:01

particularly in more depth

35:03

the relationship between our education

35:06

system and our prison system. And

35:09

so I went to graduate school and

35:12

it's interesting because my entire graduate school experience

35:15

was very animated by

35:17

the Black Lives Matter

35:19

movement. And

35:22

that's in part because of the same week

35:24

that I started grad school, Mike Brown

35:26

was killed in Ferguson. And

35:29

so in those, you know,

35:31

that first year and that second year, you

35:34

know, in the sort of

35:37

what felt like a sort of an endless

35:40

cascade of images and videos that

35:42

so many of us remember, people

35:45

being killed at the hands of police, people being

35:47

killed at the hands of vigilante, people

35:51

being brutalized in

35:54

front of us in a way that perhaps

35:56

had never gained

35:59

so much. consistent

36:01

social and political traction. I was

36:05

there and I was sitting in the library

36:07

for 12 hours a day, as PhD

36:09

students do, and I

36:12

was reading these books that sort

36:15

of

36:16

explained and gave historical context

36:20

to help understand why so

36:22

much of what we were seeing happen

36:25

in front of us was happening. Like what are

36:28

the judicial, the legislative,

36:31

the public policy realities

36:34

that sort of are undergirding

36:38

so much of the unrest that

36:40

was bubbling at the surface. And

36:43

I also came to

36:45

realize that

36:48

I'm someone who, unless I

36:50

am

36:54

placing myself in proximity

36:57

to the thing that I am studying

36:59

and thinking about, then I

37:02

can lose touch with the humanity

37:04

of it. I can lose touch with the

37:07

urgency of it. And

37:09

so for me, you know, if I'm sitting around, you

37:11

know, studying prisons and studying racism

37:13

and studying inequality, studying mass

37:16

incarceration, but not making myself

37:18

proximate to incarcerated people,

37:21

then it can very quickly become an intellectual

37:25

exercise, not in any sort of

37:27

malevolent sort of way, but just,

37:30

you know, you sit around reading Michel

37:33

Foucault all day, but don't spend time in

37:35

conversation with people who are actually suffering

37:38

at the hands of the system that he describes.

37:41

Then I just

37:43

didn't want to live

37:46

only in the world of theory and ideas.

37:48

I wanted to, you know, place my

37:50

feet in those spaces. And so I started teaching

37:53

at a prison in Massachusetts. And,

37:56

you know, it was the most important

37:58

thing that I did, I think, in my entire graduate.

37:59

in a graduate group. What did

38:02

you,

38:03

how would you talk about what, how

38:05

that further deepened

38:07

and nuanced

38:07

your understanding of what

38:10

intelligence and education

38:13

are and what they are for? How we

38:15

seek knowledge and learn and go and what is the point

38:17

of that?

38:19

So the first group of folks

38:23

I worked with when I was teaching at the prison

38:25

were a group of men since who were serving

38:28

life, life sentences without parole.

38:32

And it was the first time I'd ever been

38:36

in an adult prison. I had been in some juvenile detention

38:38

facilities before. I'd done some writing and poetry

38:41

workshops, but I'd never been

38:43

inside of an adult prison and

38:48

spent time with people who were currently incarcerated

38:51

in said prison. And I, you know,

38:53

I kind of mentioned this before in the context of my students.

38:56

And I feel like this is a recurring theme

38:58

in my life and emerges in

39:00

much of my work. But you're

39:03

just reminded of the three

39:06

dimensionality and the complexity

39:09

and the humanity of

39:12

people. And that,

39:14

you know, the men I was working with were,

39:17

were fathers and sons and

39:20

brothers and husbands and,

39:23

and friends.

39:26

And that they were, some

39:28

of them were incredibly funny. Some

39:30

of them were incredibly serious.

39:33

Some of them were incredibly brilliant,

39:38

you know, just brilliant. But I also think

39:42

that some

39:45

of them, that they were people

39:48

who

39:50

had

39:51

done things or made mistakes that

39:54

remind all of us

39:57

of the

40:01

messiness of what it means to be human. And almost all

40:03

of them grew up in situations

40:07

that were shaped by poverty, that

40:09

were shaped by violence. And

40:11

one of the things I kept thinking about the whole

40:13

time I was in there was like, but

40:16

for the arbitrary nature of birth and circumstance,

40:20

it very easily could have been me inside

40:22

of this prison rather than somebody

40:24

who gets to walk in and out of it

40:26

with a notebook to teach a class. It

40:30

was very clear to me in the stories

40:32

that they told about their lives and the things that

40:34

they wrote about their lives

40:37

that had I been born

40:40

into similar circumstances that

40:42

some of these men had been born into, it

40:44

would have been very difficult for

40:47

me not to come in contact with the criminal legal

40:49

system. It would have been very difficult for me not

40:52

to experience a sense

40:54

of fear that

40:57

creates a sense of desperation. It

41:00

would have been very difficult for me not to

41:03

bear witness to a sense of incessant

41:06

violence that

41:09

social scientists tell us impacts

41:12

the sort of brain chemistry of

41:14

young people. And that's not to say, I wanna

41:18

be clear that it's not to say that there is an inevitable

41:21

trajectory

41:22

for

41:23

young people who grow up in poverty or

41:25

in situations surrounded by violence. That's not the case.

41:28

But it is important for us to take seriously the

41:31

way that so many people who

41:33

end up in prison are

41:35

growing up in scenarios and they're growing

41:38

up in circumstances that are shaped by

41:40

those realities. And I think it was just, so it was just

41:42

really humbling

41:45

for me. And it was an important reminder again

41:48

of the sort of the

41:50

way that birth and circumstance

41:52

and things that are beyond our

41:54

control, things that are beyond our decisions

41:57

shape the trajectory.

42:00

of our lives. And that reminder,

42:03

I think for me, kept

42:08

allowed there to remain a sense of urgency

42:12

to the academic work that I was doing,

42:14

the scholarly work that I was doing, and

42:17

a sense of responsibility, you know,

42:19

as someone who could have

42:21

been in that scenario, but

42:25

was not, you know, what responsibility do I have

42:28

to sort of examine the carceral

42:33

landscape that they are

42:35

a part of, and also to bring attention

42:38

to the stories and the complexities

42:41

of who these men are, which isn't

42:43

to say that they are perfect, because they're not, because none of us

42:45

are perfect, but to talk about who

42:48

they are and the stories they tell me as a

42:51

way to remind folks that these are not, folks

42:55

in prisons are not monsters, or are not,

42:57

you know, as Bryan Stevenson

42:59

always talks about, how people are not,

43:02

should not be defined by the worst thing they've ever done.

43:04

And that's what

43:06

that experience did for me.

43:07

And I think also at a place

43:09

like Harvard, and

43:12

a lot of the way school is

43:15

conceived of

43:16

in the US,

43:18

the purpose of learning

43:20

and education is towards this trajectory

43:23

forward,

43:23

right? And so you're

43:25

teaching, you know, you

43:28

were teaching people who might never move

43:31

beyond those walls.

43:36

But

43:38

yeah, there's something,

43:41

you know, even talking

43:42

about people growing up

43:44

in

43:45

an atmosphere of fear,

43:46

which led to despair is to pay an appropriate

43:50

reverence to

43:52

the power of fear in the human body,

43:56

which we're learning by way of science, it's

43:58

not, that's not just an idea.

43:59

I mean, what is...

44:02

Yeah,

44:05

how did you think about the

44:08

value of education in a context

44:10

like that, which was not going to lead

44:12

to the kind

44:13

of trajectory,

44:14

which is always just so fanciful

44:17

and right, illusory

44:20

in many ways.

44:22

Yeah, and even just intelligence,

44:26

what that means in that kind of life.

44:29

Yeah, and this is what I ended up writing

44:31

my dissertation about, thinking

44:34

about what does education mean to

44:38

someone who was told as

44:40

a child that they

44:43

were going to spend the rest of their life in prison. For

44:45

those who might not be familiar, the

44:48

United States is the only country in the world that

44:51

sentences children to life without the possibility

44:53

of parole. While mandatory

44:56

life without parole has been rendered unconstitutional

44:59

by the Supreme Court, life

45:01

without parole will still exist as

45:04

an option. There

45:07

are thousands of people who are incarcerated

45:10

across this country who were

45:12

sentenced to life without parole as

45:15

children. For

45:18

me, I was thinking a lot about, and it

45:21

began when I was spending time

45:23

with these men who were in their

45:25

forties, fifties, sixties, seventies.

45:29

And you're looking around and you

45:31

see these men who've been

45:34

in prison since they were 15, 16, 17 years

45:38

old, and who have been offered no,

45:44

for so long, who were offered no opportunity

45:48

to ever be

45:50

released. And so I was interested

45:52

in this idea, what

45:54

motivates someone to learn? What

45:57

motivates someone to learn?

46:00

read poetry, to

46:03

write a novel, to learn geometry,

46:06

to learn physics, to get a degree. What

46:08

motivates people

46:11

to do so,

46:13

even when

46:15

the,

46:16

and you alluded to this, the

46:18

sort of social utilities

46:20

that we

46:23

often associate education with. You

46:26

get the degree so that you can get a good job, that

46:28

you can buy a house and a car

46:31

and feed your family and go

46:33

on vacation. When those things

46:38

are stripped away from you, what

46:40

is the thing that motivates people? As

46:42

you can imagine, people

46:46

are not homogenous and it means a lot of

46:48

different things to a lot of different people. In my conversations

46:51

and research, I

46:54

discovered that there were a range of

46:56

motivations for folks, but one thing that was

46:58

interesting and

47:01

maybe that I didn't expect was

47:04

that so many of these folks that

47:06

I spent time with and observed

47:08

and interviewed, they

47:12

still, even in

47:14

the face of, you

47:16

know, constitutional realities

47:21

that told them something different, still

47:23

believed that there

47:26

was the chance that

47:28

they might get out of prison one

47:30

day. And they had to hold

47:33

on to this sense of hope. They

47:35

had to hold on to this, even,

47:37

you know, this 0.0001%

47:41

possibility that they might

47:43

get out one day. And so part of what initially

47:47

motivates people to participate in some of these prison

47:49

education programs is,

47:52

and some of the programs, you know,

47:54

and I'm defining education broadly here

47:56

because there's, you know, programs

47:59

where you can get a degree. and then there's programs where you can

48:01

learn to trade and programs. But

48:03

what is true is that the people who

48:07

ultimately have or are pardoned

48:10

or have their sentence commuted by a governor

48:13

or who do get out, whether

48:18

it's 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years later, are

48:20

the people who participated in

48:23

those programs as a way to demonstrate

48:25

that they remain committed, remain

48:27

motivated, that they have a certain set of skills

48:30

that could be used as justification

48:34

for them upon release.

48:38

The problem is that that happens so

48:40

rarely. But

48:43

even if it happened to one out of 1,000 incarcerated

48:48

people,

48:52

you had to believe that you could be that one. Because

48:56

that is what sustains you. Because

48:59

otherwise, it becomes difficult. But what's interesting

49:01

is that that is the motivation of so many

49:04

of them when they were young men. And

49:06

if you're 17, 18 years old, you're like,

49:10

I just need to figure out how I can get out of here. And

49:12

so they start participating in these programs. And then what happens

49:14

as they begin to participate in these programs is

49:17

that it doesn't not become about

49:20

hoping to get out one day. But it also

49:22

becomes about the experience of learning

49:25

itself and the experience

49:28

of education, sometimes

49:30

for the first time in many of these guys'

49:32

lives, being used as a way

49:34

to better understand who you are in relationship

49:36

to the world. There it is. That

49:38

same place you found you had to take your high school

49:40

students. Exactly. Who you are.

49:43

OK.

49:44

There's so much to talk about. I want to talk

49:46

about how the word was passed. Where,

49:50

again, we've been talking about word and body and language

49:54

and who you are and story and

49:56

how all of that is a very important

49:59

part of the conversation. intertwined

50:01

and

50:02

you know one of the kind of distinctive contributions

50:05

of this book I mean I don't know that I saw

50:07

this word to you but to me it's

50:09

it's kind of a pilgrimage that you took to

50:14

places and and

50:18

you know you mentioned monuments a little while

50:20

ago and and it was kind of sparked it's kind

50:22

of gestated in your mind as statues started

50:25

coming down which

50:27

were you know symbolic and of course

50:29

not just symbolic but this these physical

50:32

things

50:35

and

50:36

so this was really a pilgrimage you

50:38

know you know it was it

50:40

was about history but it was about

50:42

standing on certain ground right it

50:44

was about being physically present to it

50:50

and you know I was so interested

50:52

to find that well first of all would you talk about this

50:55

just this phrase how the word was passed

50:59

where that came from what that why

51:01

that is the title of the book

51:04

yeah I think maybe for some context

51:07

for folks it might be helpful to understand

51:09

that the origin story for

51:11

this book was in 2017

51:14

when I watched several Confederate statues

51:17

come down in my hometown in New Orleans statues

51:19

of PGT Beauregard, Jefferson Davis,

51:21

Robert E Lee and as I was watching

51:23

these statues come down I was thinking about what it meant

51:25

that I grew up in a majority black city in

51:28

which there were more homages to enslavers

51:30

than there were to enslave people and thinking

51:32

about what what are the implications of that was it mean

51:34

that to get to school I had to go down Robert E Lee Boulevard

51:37

to get to the grocery store I had to go down Jefferson Davis

51:39

Parkway my middle school was named

51:41

after a leader of the Confederacy my parents

51:43

still live on a street named after someone

51:46

who owned over 150 enslaved people because you know the thing

51:50

is that we know that symbols and names and

51:52

iconography aren't just symbols but

51:54

are reflective of the stories that people tell and

51:57

those stories shaped the narratives that communities

51:59

carry and those narratives shape public policy,

52:01

and public policy shapes the material

52:04

conditions of people's lives. Which doesn't mean

52:06

that if you just take down a statue

52:08

of Robert E. Lee or Race to Racial Wealth gap, or

52:10

you change the name of a Jefferson Davis

52:13

sign, you create more economically

52:15

egalitarian schools. But I think it does

52:18

help us understand the

52:20

ways that certain communities have

52:23

been harmed throughout

52:25

American history, and helps us understand how certain

52:27

stories are told

52:32

through the images

52:36

and the narratives that are represented and

52:38

embodied. And therefore the import of

52:41

starting to shift those. Absolutely,

52:43

and so I did sort of, I had this moment

52:46

where I was like, I am the

52:48

descendant of enslaved people. My

52:51

grandfather's grandfather was

52:53

enslaved. I

52:55

grew up in a city that was the heart of the domestic

52:57

slave trade. And I don't know

52:59

enough about the history of slavery

53:02

in a way that feels commensurate to the

53:04

impact and legacy that it's had on this country.

53:06

And so I did feel

53:08

like I had to go on a sort of pilgrimage.

53:11

I had to, I wanted to go visit

53:14

monuments, and memorials, and museums,

53:16

and cemeteries, and prisons, and

53:18

these places that told the story

53:21

of this history in their

53:23

bars, in their soil, in

53:26

the buildings that still stood from that period

53:28

of time. And so yeah, I traveled across

53:30

the country visiting all of these different

53:32

places and examining

53:35

to what extent these places were reckoning

53:37

with that history, to what extent they were failing

53:40

to reckon with that history, and to what extent they were

53:42

kind of doing something in between. And

53:46

for me, the

53:48

title, How the Word is Passed, comes from, well,

53:52

one of the first places I went was Monticello Plantation,

53:55

which is Thomas Jefferson's home in

53:58

Virginia.

53:59

And

54:01

they've done a lot of work on trying

54:03

to excavate the histories and stories

54:05

of the enslaved people who were held there.

54:07

Thomas Jefferson

54:10

owned over 600 enslaved people over the course of

54:12

his lifetime. And part of what

54:14

is so fascinating about Monticello is that there's

54:18

such an incredible example of how if

54:22

you are a historical site or a museum, that

54:24

the story you told yourself about yourself,

54:27

what story you told the world about yourself, you

54:30

know, five, 10, 20, 30 years ago, doesn't have

54:34

to be the same story you tell about yourself today,

54:37

that you can learn and learn

54:39

about your own history and recognize

54:41

that you have a set of responsibilities

54:43

to tell a set of stories that maybe you

54:45

hadn't told. And

54:46

you know, just the way you said that, that's also

54:48

a description of a life where

54:49

you are growing more mature and

54:52

more wise, right?

54:53

Absolutely. I

54:54

wouldn't tell the same. And I'm almost 30

54:56

years older than you, but yeah, I would tell a completely

54:59

different story of myself now than

55:01

I would

55:01

have 20, 30, 20 years ago. Absolutely.

55:04

And I think sometimes we think about that, that feels intuitive

55:06

for us with regard to individuals.

55:09

Individuals, yeah. But I

55:11

think what I wanted to convey in part

55:13

in the chapter about Monticello is that institutions

55:17

can do it too.

55:18

Yeah, I think it's human. It

55:21

is the same pattern at the

55:23

collective level that it is at the individual

55:25

level.

55:26

It is. And so the descendants,

55:29

they have something called the Getting Word Oral History Project

55:32

in which the public

55:34

historian and researchers

55:36

at Monticello look for people

55:39

who are the descendants of folks who were enslaved

55:41

at Monticello. And

55:46

I was reading an interview with one of the descendants and

55:48

he has a phrase where he talks about because

55:51

black people and the enslaved people

55:53

were systemically prevented from learning how to read

55:55

and write. And so there was very little literacy.

55:58

And so there's not a lot of written documentation. and

56:00

this is a broader issue with the sort of historiography

56:03

of slavery more broadly, is

56:06

that so many of the primary source documents we have are

56:08

from enslavers. We have very little

56:10

from enslaved people because

56:13

they weren't allowed to read and write. But what we

56:15

do have are stories. What we do have are

56:17

oral histories that have been passed down through

56:19

generations. And one of the descendants of

56:24

someone who was enslaved at Monticello said, this is how

56:26

the word is passed down. And

56:29

you kind of have these moments as a writer where

56:32

you just you see the title and it's almost like you're

56:34

reading something, you're reading this long transcript

56:37

and it's just kind of like stars start

56:39

to sparkle around it. And again,

56:41

it's like the word, it's

56:45

so much more than a word.

56:47

It is the reality. It is the

56:50

truth that has been passed. There's

56:57

something so interesting about

57:00

the arc of

57:02

this pilgrimage and the book.

57:06

It feels to me like at some

57:08

point, you kind

57:10

of personally went through the same

57:12

kind of transition in yourself that you made with

57:14

your students all those years ago, that

57:17

you went to all these places

57:19

and you kind of looked at the history from all these

57:22

different directions. And

57:24

you ended up going back to your

57:26

own grandparents at the end of the journey.

57:30

You wrote, I had forgotten that the best

57:33

primary

57:33

sources are often sitting right next

57:35

to

57:35

us.

57:38

I just I thought that was I don't know,

57:40

I wonder and I wonder and I feel like you asked

57:42

them you have two living grandparents

57:44

and I thought you asked them

57:47

questions that you'd never asked them before

57:49

and I wonder if you just share a little bit of maybe

57:52

some of what you learned that you were astonished

57:54

you'd never heard

57:55

or known or internalized

57:57

before.

57:58

Yeah, I you know, I'd I visited all

58:01

of these places, I mean dozens of places, many

58:03

of which didn't end up in the book, but

58:07

certainly informed the way I wrote about the

58:09

places that did end up in the book. And

58:12

I ended up going, I did

58:15

have this sort of realization that

58:18

I spent these years traveling across the country.

58:20

Across the ocean, because I also went

58:22

to West Africa. Asking

58:26

strangers.

58:27

People I had never met and people that I

58:29

may never see again.

58:31

To tell me these personal,

58:34

in-depth, intimate stories about their lives

58:37

and their histories. And

58:39

I realized that I was doing

58:41

so with a level of intentionality that

58:44

I had never brought to my own family. And

58:47

so it felt incumbent upon me to

58:51

bring that same

58:53

sort of energy that I was bringing to a tour

58:57

guide at Monticello or to a confederate

59:01

reenactor at a confederate

59:03

cemetery in Virginia or

59:06

to the descendant of

59:09

the person

59:11

who founded Juneteenth in Calveston,

59:14

Texas. That

59:16

I asked those same sort of questions

59:19

to the people who had been around me my entire

59:21

life. I ended up going to the

59:23

National Museum of African American History and Culture

59:25

with my grandparents. My grandfather

59:27

was born in 1930, Jim

59:30

Crow, Mississippi. My grandmother was born in 1939, Jim Crow, Florida.

59:34

And we're walking through the museum and

59:36

I'm pushing my grandfather in his wheelchair. His cane

59:39

is laying across his lap.

59:42

And my grandmother is walking a few paces

59:44

ahead of us. And

59:46

I have this moment where I'm looking at them,

59:49

look at the exhibits in this museum

59:52

and realizing that so many of the things that are documented

59:55

in this museum are

59:57

things that they experienced firsthand. And

1:00:00

I talked to my grandmother after the museum

1:00:03

after we left.

1:00:05

And she kept using this refrain. She kept saying, I

1:00:08

lived it. I lived

1:00:10

it. I lived it. And

1:00:13

I think about the woman who opened the

1:00:15

National Museum of African American History and Culture,

1:00:18

a woman named Ruth Bonner, who sort

1:00:20

of rang the bell to signal the opening of the museum

1:00:23

alongside the Obama family in 2016. And

1:00:28

she was the daughter of an enslaved person. Not

1:00:31

the granddaughter, not the great-granddaughter. The

1:00:34

woman who opened the National Museum of African

1:00:36

American History and Culture in 2016

1:00:40

was the daughter of a man who was born into

1:00:42

slavery. As I said, my grandfather's

1:00:45

grandfather was enslaved. So

1:00:47

when my six-year-old or

1:00:49

my four-year-old sit on my grandfather's lap,

1:00:51

I imagine my grandfather sitting on his grandfather's

1:00:54

lap.

1:00:55

And I'm just reminded that this history we tell

1:00:57

ourselves was a long time ago. It just wasn't

1:00:59

that long ago. We can touch it. We can

1:01:01

literally touch it. There are people alive

1:01:03

today who knew, who loved,

1:01:07

who were raised by people

1:01:09

who were born into American chattel

1:01:11

slavery. And so the idea that

1:01:14

anyone would suggest that this

1:01:16

history has nothing to do with

1:01:19

our contemporary landscape of inequality, the

1:01:21

idea that anyone would suggest that

1:01:23

it has nothing to do with what our social, political

1:01:25

and economic infrastructure in

1:01:27

this country look like is

1:01:30

being morally and intellectually disingenuous.

1:01:33

Because this history and the scope of human history

1:01:36

was just yesterday.

1:01:38

And I think the contribution you're helping

1:01:41

to make to this reckoning that

1:01:42

is before us,

1:01:44

just to this telling of the truth,

1:01:49

is also to help, you

1:01:51

know, there's this phrase that recurs in your writing,

1:01:53

in the marrow of our bones, right? It's

1:01:55

this phrase in English that

1:01:57

we feel something in your gut. You feel it in the marrow

1:01:59

of your bones.

1:01:59

and you know

1:02:02

it's actually language that points at how we're

1:02:04

learning,

1:02:06

how emotion

1:02:08

and memory actually work that they are

1:02:10

embedded physically. But it's

1:02:14

like the language, it's like the words knew it before

1:02:16

we had the science for it. And I feel

1:02:19

like you know we are in this

1:02:21

time of

1:02:23

where, well there are all these levels

1:02:25

that we

1:02:26

have to bring forward, right? We do have to bring

1:02:27

forward the ideas and the stories and the history

1:02:29

and the facts and all of that. But there's also

1:02:32

this level of us being able to

1:02:34

internalize it as a human level, whoever

1:02:36

we are on whatever side

1:02:37

of this history our ancestors

1:02:40

stood and participated.

1:02:41

And I feel like

1:02:43

that's you know that thing we're talking about here,

1:02:45

this connection

1:02:48

between word and story and

1:02:50

embodied reality, I feel like that's what

1:02:53

your work kind of helps people, it

1:02:55

helps it sink into that level. I wondered

1:02:57

if you would read, I was also so struck

1:03:00

with that her grandmother kept saying I lived it,

1:03:02

I lived it. And I wondered if you would

1:03:04

read in how the word was passed

1:03:07

this section in the epilogue kind of at the

1:03:09

end of that where I'm starting with

1:03:12

on page 287. This

1:03:15

is also a good example of poetry

1:03:18

as narrative non-fiction, I feel. So

1:03:21

it's the line, it's the paragraph that starts

1:03:23

a silence settled between us. And

1:03:26

then going through to the end of that section on

1:03:28

the next page what I heard was I'm still

1:03:31

alive.

1:03:36

A silence settled between us and

1:03:39

I kept thinking about her refrain. I

1:03:42

lived it, I lived

1:03:44

it, I lived it. It

1:03:48

echoed throughout the room and

1:03:50

became the gravity around us. It

1:03:53

crept into my ears and

1:03:55

made a home in there. I

1:03:58

watched the realization wash over.

1:03:59

her

1:04:01

like a tide had risen around her body. There

1:04:04

was so much I had not known about my grandmother's

1:04:07

life until this moment, so

1:04:09

many painful experiences that she still

1:04:12

carried deep in the marrow of her bones. I

1:04:15

thought of how easily these memories might have slipped

1:04:17

away from her had we not sat down.

1:04:20

These stories might have remained grains of sand

1:04:23

at the bottom of an hourglass. I

1:04:26

thought about all the ways the world today

1:04:28

is at once so different and

1:04:30

not so different at all. The

1:04:33

exhibits at the museum were

1:04:36

not abstractions from my grandparents. They

1:04:39

were affirmations that what they had experienced

1:04:42

was not of their imagination and

1:04:45

harrowing reminders that

1:04:47

the scars of that era had

1:04:49

not been self-inflicted. When

1:04:52

my grandmother said, I lived it,

1:04:55

what I heard was, this museum

1:04:58

is a mirror. When my grandmother

1:05:00

said, I lived it, what

1:05:02

I heard was, my memories

1:05:05

are an exhibit of their own. When

1:05:07

my grandmother said, I lived it, what

1:05:10

I heard was, always remember

1:05:13

what this country did to us. When

1:05:15

my grandmother said, I lived it, what

1:05:18

I heard was, don't let them tell

1:05:20

you we didn't fight back. When

1:05:23

my grandmother said, I lived it, what

1:05:26

I heard was, I

1:05:28

did not know.

1:05:30

I have somehow made it here when

1:05:32

so many did not. I

1:05:35

escaped the jaws of the cruel thing and

1:05:38

lived to tell this story. When

1:05:41

my grandmother said, I lived it, what

1:05:44

I heard was, I am

1:05:46

still alive.

1:05:51

That's an incredible passage.

1:05:54

When I was reading that, I was also feeling

1:05:56

like as a

1:05:56

writer, that I mean, I don't

1:05:59

know, I may be imagining.

1:05:59

I just feel like that must have been an incredible, must

1:06:02

have been an incredible for your paragraph for you to write.

1:06:06

Yeah, it's, you know,

1:06:10

I just never done anything like that before.

1:06:13

I just had never, you

1:06:16

spend your time, you know, you spend your whole life

1:06:19

surrounded by someone, surrounded

1:06:22

by people you love. And

1:06:26

then you realize that you've

1:06:29

only ever known, like

1:06:34

a very brief part of

1:06:36

their story. And

1:06:40

I think that it's something

1:06:43

I tell educators all the time now. I mean,

1:06:45

I, you know, if I had a magic wand, you

1:06:47

know, other than paying teachers much more money

1:06:50

than they make and, you know, giving school all the resources

1:06:52

they need, if I had a magic education

1:06:54

wand, I would wish that every

1:06:58

history in social studies class would

1:07:01

have students interview

1:07:04

their elder, whether it

1:07:06

be their parents or their grandparents, their

1:07:08

great grandparents or the, the

1:07:11

neighbor who, you know, is always sitting on her porch. I

1:07:15

mean, there was, I just

1:07:18

understood, I feel

1:07:20

like I understood my grandparents in a way that I

1:07:23

simply couldn't

1:07:26

have otherwise. And I remember,

1:07:28

you know, talking to my grandmother

1:07:31

and that she described, you

1:07:33

know, what she was subjected

1:07:35

to in the, you know, there's

1:07:38

this moment where she talks about how as a little girl,

1:07:40

she's walking, you know, walking to

1:07:43

school on the sort of red clay

1:07:45

in Florida. And these

1:07:48

white students are passing by.

1:07:51

On a bus and, and

1:07:54

they start to, to spit at her.

1:07:57

They start to throw food at her.

1:07:59

call her the N-word.

1:08:03

And you know, this woman who is a

1:08:05

sort of magisterial

1:08:10

figure in my life who

1:08:14

is sort of the embodiments of grace

1:08:17

and elegance and generosity and

1:08:20

kindness, you

1:08:23

suddenly, you know, it's not this, you

1:08:26

know, 80-something year old woman sitting in front of me anymore,

1:08:28

suddenly it's this nine-year-old

1:08:31

girl.

1:08:34

And, you know,

1:08:37

I can't feel we, we kind of have

1:08:39

these recurring things that keep coming up in our conversation,

1:08:41

but like it allowed me to see the humanity of my

1:08:43

grandmother and the totality

1:08:46

of her and the complexity of her in

1:08:49

a different way. And the same thing

1:08:52

with my grandfather. And I feel very lucky

1:08:54

to have been able to do, had these conversations

1:08:56

with them. You know, I only

1:08:58

wish that I had the opportunity to have had this

1:09:01

conversation with their respective spouses

1:09:03

before they passed away.

1:09:06

I found as

1:09:08

I was reading into you that you and I have

1:09:10

a shared,

1:09:13

something we're interested in which is this question

1:09:15

of public memory. And I'm

1:09:19

currently writing a book about, that was

1:09:22

Germany. I spent most of my twenties,

1:09:24

most of the 1980s in divided Berlin

1:09:27

and I'm also

1:09:29

pondering how

1:09:31

I saw that country reckoning

1:09:34

with its history 40 years on from the war and

1:09:37

now 40 years from that and being able

1:09:39

to look at that entire arc. And

1:09:42

also being

1:09:43

so aware of

1:09:45

myself in my twenties in

1:09:48

Germany and the grappling

1:09:51

they were doing with that burden of history was very

1:09:54

messy at that point and complicated,

1:09:56

but it was ever

1:09:57

present, right? It was in every color.

1:09:59

It was in every room.

1:10:01

And I'm so struck at how

1:10:05

I was

1:10:07

so, both to them and to myself,

1:10:11

was from this much more innocent country,

1:10:13

right? They were from

1:10:15

the country that had this crushing

1:10:18

guilt of history. And

1:10:21

I was from the country as

1:10:23

we all understood it and

1:10:25

had all learned it from that, you know, that

1:10:28

wasn't perfect but was always getting better.

1:10:32

And you ask a question that is similar

1:10:34

to a question I keep finding myself asking

1:10:36

as I'm looking back at crossing 75,

1:10:39

80 years how the Germans have wrestled

1:10:41

with this. You

1:10:43

know, you also note the

1:10:46

Germans were walked through the camps,

1:10:48

right? Walked through the concentration

1:10:51

camps. They were made to bear witness. They were made

1:10:53

to remember. There's a

1:10:54

lot of complexity to how

1:10:57

the whole world was also watching

1:10:59

for them to grapple with this history. But

1:11:02

it has a card to me and I feel like you asked a very

1:11:04

similar question. You know, if

1:11:07

there were these concentrated places

1:11:09

of where this atrocity had happened in

1:11:11

a concentration of years,

1:11:14

but

1:11:16

lynchings were kind of town by

1:11:18

town and tree by tree. There's

1:11:20

no single place to walk through.

1:11:24

There's not that concentration of place

1:11:26

and of years, but there's an accumulation

1:11:28

across many generations. And

1:11:33

what would be our equivalent, right,

1:11:36

of that kind of reckoning that they've done?

1:11:39

Just kind

1:11:42

of free flowing with you. Yeah, no,

1:11:44

that's the, it's

1:11:48

an important question and one that I've been thinking about

1:11:50

a lot. And then thinking about a lot now

1:11:53

is I'm

1:11:55

working on a book project that

1:11:58

has sort of grown out. of my trip to Germany.

1:12:02

And my trip to Germany grew out of my

1:12:04

examination of, you know, monuments

1:12:07

and memorials here in the United States, and I wanted

1:12:09

to understand how, you

1:12:12

know, Germany is often lifted up, you know, as

1:12:14

the sort of exemplar of

1:12:18

memory, with an exemplar

1:12:20

of a nation-state that

1:12:23

has accounted for and has come

1:12:27

to terms with, has

1:12:30

demonstrated a sense

1:12:34

of regret for what they've

1:12:36

done and

1:12:40

what they did during the Holocaust and World War

1:12:42

II more broadly. And

1:12:46

so I went there because I wanted to understand

1:12:50

what that looked like. And as I'm

1:12:52

sure you know, probably even better than me having

1:12:54

lived there for so long, it is

1:12:57

not a singular story. It is not a story

1:13:00

of like, wow, Germany is so

1:13:02

great at this, like we should be like Germany, which I think

1:13:05

is how sometimes in the United States

1:13:07

the narrative exists, right? I think sometimes from

1:13:09

this vantage point, people look

1:13:12

at Germany and say, why don't we just do it like Germany?

1:13:14

Why don't we, without thinking

1:13:16

about the complexities

1:13:18

and the unevenness

1:13:21

and the sense

1:13:24

of disagreement

1:13:26

that exist among communities

1:13:29

in Germany about how this

1:13:32

has been done? But I think one of the things that

1:13:34

motivated me, there's this essay that

1:13:38

W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about

1:13:40

his trip that he took to Warsaw,

1:13:43

Warsaw, Poland in 1949. And

1:13:46

Du Bois is the most

1:13:48

preeminent Black scholar of the day,

1:13:51

perhaps of all time. He

1:13:53

is someone who spent his life

1:13:55

thinking about these specific contours

1:13:59

and manifestation of the Holocaust. anti-blackness

1:14:01

in the United States. And he goes

1:14:03

to Warsaw and he goes to the land where

1:14:05

the Warsaw, the

1:14:08

former Warsaw ghetto, where the Warsaw uprising

1:14:10

happened. And he's standing on

1:14:13

this land where thousands

1:14:15

of Jewish people fought back against

1:14:18

the Nazis. He's standing in this country

1:14:22

where 3 million Jewish people were

1:14:25

killed. 98% of

1:14:28

the Jewish population in Poland killed

1:14:31

in a matter of years. And

1:14:34

he's standing there

1:14:37

and he's like, I've

1:14:39

stood on the

1:14:41

land where the KKK

1:14:43

has burned crosses. I

1:14:45

have stood under the trees

1:14:48

where black bodies have been lynched.

1:14:53

I have worked my entire life thinking

1:14:55

about

1:14:57

this question of what white people in America

1:15:00

do to black people and

1:15:02

how we can overcome it. He

1:15:08

talks about how he never experienced the

1:15:11

kind of feeling that he did when

1:15:14

he was standing on that land in Warsaw. And

1:15:17

he talks about how it stripped him of a sort of what

1:15:20

he calls a sense of social provincialism.

1:15:22

And it expanded his

1:15:25

understanding of the interrelatedness

1:15:28

between anti-blackness

1:15:30

in the United States and anti-Semitism in Europe.

1:15:33

And allowed him to more fully understand

1:15:36

the global contours

1:15:40

of state sanctioned violence and all the various

1:15:42

forms that it takes on. And

1:15:44

I feel like I've had a very similar

1:15:47

experience. That's what going to Berlin and going

1:15:49

to Munich, going to Dachau, that's

1:15:52

what those experiences were for me. I've

1:15:57

stood on plantations, I've stood in

1:15:59

execution. chambers, I've stood, you know,

1:16:02

put my hand on the

1:16:05

poles where enslaved people were held,

1:16:08

where they were beaten within an inch

1:16:10

of their lives. I

1:16:12

put my hands in the soil

1:16:16

where lynchings happened. But

1:16:19

the feeling I felt when I stood in a gas

1:16:21

chamber in Dachau was

1:16:25

unlike anything that I had ever experienced before.

1:16:28

And I think it was a very sort of Du Boisian

1:16:31

moment for me because I think it also expanded

1:16:34

my understanding of

1:16:36

the interrelatedness and the

1:16:38

relationship between, you

1:16:40

know,

1:16:41

the various forms of violence that happened

1:16:43

in different geopolitical contexts

1:16:47

and expanded my, almost

1:16:49

my historical empathy. It

1:16:52

made me feel more proximate to

1:16:54

that history. It made that history more intimate.

1:16:57

It made it less of a historical abstraction

1:16:59

and more

1:17:02

real, more tactile, more personal.

1:17:05

And I think that for me, that is why this has become

1:17:07

a sort of larger project for me, whether

1:17:10

it be in the context of slavery or in the context of World

1:17:12

War II or anything else. There's

1:17:14

something about putting your body in

1:17:17

the place where history happened

1:17:19

that

1:17:21

reduces the gap between

1:17:24

you and that period of time that creates

1:17:27

this sort of temporal proximity

1:17:31

between you and that history.

1:17:35

That's such a strong summation, I think, of

1:17:37

the core of this work that you do. I

1:17:39

mean, I do also, though,

1:17:43

want to just raise up this

1:17:46

very stunning and shameful reality

1:17:50

that you also have lifted up in

1:17:53

the context of this discussion that

1:17:55

Angola Prison, which is also a place

1:17:57

of pilgrimage for you, I would say.

1:17:59

is built on

1:18:03

the land of a former plantation. And

1:18:06

you have pointed out, in

1:18:08

the book, if in Germany today there

1:18:10

were a prison built on top of a former

1:18:12

concentration camp, and

1:18:14

that prison disproportionately

1:18:15

incarcerated Jewish people,

1:18:18

it would provoke outrage throughout the world.

1:18:21

This is not something that is

1:18:23

in American awareness.

1:18:26

It's not. It's not. I think it reflects

1:18:29

a failure of our collective

1:18:32

memory around what slavery

1:18:34

was, and

1:18:36

the sort of reverberations of

1:18:40

how it continues to shape our lives today.

1:18:43

The scholar, Sadaiah Hartman,

1:18:46

she talks about this idea of the afterlife

1:18:49

of slavery. How

1:18:52

the, again, the sort of

1:18:54

reverberations, the residue, the

1:18:57

ripples of slavery continue

1:19:00

to shape so much of what

1:19:02

our world and our society looks like

1:19:05

today. And oftentimes

1:19:08

I think we fail, and

1:19:10

we have failed for many times, and that is not

1:19:13

by accident, it is reflective of an

1:19:15

intentional effort to

1:19:18

prevent a collective remembrance

1:19:21

of what slavery was in the

1:19:24

mid 19th, early 20th century, via

1:19:26

the lost cause, which distorted

1:19:30

our collective sense of what

1:19:34

happened during enslavement, and what happened during

1:19:36

the Civil War, what the Civil War was even fought about,

1:19:40

to the point where you have, there

1:19:43

was a study not too long ago that talked about how

1:19:47

most high school seniors, when

1:19:50

asked what the Civil War was about,

1:19:54

only a small handful of them

1:19:56

said slavery. Yeah, that was shocking to

1:19:58

me. And, you know,

1:19:59

all you have to do is look at the declarations of Confederate

1:20:02

secession. Whereas a state like Mississippi

1:20:05

in 1861 says, our position

1:20:07

is thoroughly identified with the institution

1:20:09

of slavery, the greatest material interest

1:20:11

in the world. So they're not vague

1:20:14

about why they're seceding from the Union. They're very clear about

1:20:16

it. But again, you know, part

1:20:18

of what I learned in this journey is that for so

1:20:20

many people, history

1:20:23

is not about primary source

1:20:25

documents or empirical evidence. It's

1:20:27

a story that they're told. And

1:20:29

it's a story that they tell. It's an heirloom that's passed

1:20:32

down across generations. It's something where loyalty

1:20:35

to an idea, to a family, to a community,

1:20:37

to a sense of self takes precedence

1:20:41

over truth.

1:20:42

And I think that that

1:20:45

prevents us from

1:20:50

collectively remembering what slavery

1:20:52

was in a way that would

1:20:54

prevent us from building a prison on

1:20:58

top of land that was once

1:21:01

a plantation, a prison

1:21:03

that disproportionately, in

1:21:05

which 70% of the people who were held there

1:21:07

are black men, and 70%

1:21:10

of the people held there are serving life sentences.

1:21:15

And, you know, in a way that

1:21:17

we would never allow in a different

1:21:19

geopolitical context. So

1:21:21

there's a specific sort of American failure that

1:21:26

allows that place to exist in that way.

1:21:28

Yeah, again, I mean, you've mentioned the way you

1:21:30

said that it gets again at how language ultimately

1:21:33

builds world, shapes

1:21:36

world, and sustains world. I

1:21:39

just, do you have a couple, we started a couple

1:21:41

minutes late. Can we go a

1:21:44

few minutes after?

1:21:44

Yeah, I have time.

1:21:47

So as we, there's

1:21:48

so much I'd like to talk

1:21:50

to you about. I

1:21:54

wanted, you are now the

1:21:56

father of two children.

1:22:01

of young children in this world.

1:22:05

And of course parenting is

1:22:08

the ultimate whole body, whole mind,

1:22:10

whole spirit, occupation, word,

1:22:12

deed, thought and emotion are all just

1:22:15

utterly physical. You've

1:22:19

written, my children are both respite

1:22:21

from all the tragedy transpiring in the

1:22:24

world. And a reminder

1:22:26

of how high the stakes are. Wonder if you'd

1:22:28

say some more about that.

1:22:32

Yeah, I think about these trips

1:22:34

that I took when

1:22:38

I was writing How the Word is Passed. And

1:22:42

we were just talking about Angola. I think

1:22:44

about how I would come

1:22:47

back from Angola or come back

1:22:49

from the Whitney plantation or

1:22:53

come back from the

1:22:56

Confederate cemetery

1:22:58

or come back from Onachella. And I'd be inevitably

1:23:01

in all of these places. And I think it comes up in the book.

1:23:04

I,

1:23:05

part of what I think about are my own

1:23:07

kids and going back to what

1:23:09

we mentioned earlier in the conversation, this sort

1:23:12

of arbitrary nature of birth and circumstance.

1:23:14

I think it applies when examining

1:23:17

like contemporary realities, but also

1:23:20

thinking about history, right? Like that

1:23:24

I was, I just happened to

1:23:26

be born at a specific

1:23:28

period in time. And that had I

1:23:30

been born 20, 50, 100, 150 years

1:23:32

ago, the

1:23:37

nature of my life

1:23:39

would have been fundamentally different

1:23:41

than it is today. And I think about that both in the

1:23:43

context of myself, but also in the context of

1:23:46

my children. So, when I leave

1:23:48

a Whitney plantation and

1:23:51

I spent time standing in a cabin

1:23:54

where enslaved people lived, I

1:23:56

spent time walking through the fields

1:23:58

and slave people.

1:24:00

I

1:24:01

spend time

1:24:03

looking at the names of enslaved children

1:24:06

who didn't make it past their fifth birthday.

1:24:11

I think of my kids and I think about how...

1:24:17

What responsibility I have to them

1:24:22

to tell these stories

1:24:24

and to honor these histories. So

1:24:27

they have a better sense of who they are in relationship

1:24:29

to their history, but also so this country

1:24:32

can better situate the

1:24:35

lives of my children and

1:24:38

the lives of each of us more

1:24:41

accurately and more humanely. I'll

1:24:44

be thinking about that and then I will

1:24:47

come home and I open the door. I

1:24:49

think when I came back from there, maybe

1:24:51

my kids were three and

1:24:53

one. I

1:24:57

opened the door and a three-year-old, he

1:24:59

doesn't say, like, man, dad, come

1:25:01

sit down, have a cup of tea.

1:25:04

He seems

1:25:06

like you're processing a lot right now. You

1:25:09

just had this really profound and dramatic

1:25:12

and jarring experience, like,

1:25:14

let's sit,

1:25:15

let's process. No,

1:25:17

I come through the door and he's like, where

1:25:20

you been? Get on the ground and be a brachiosaur.

1:25:23

It's time to play. I'm

1:25:25

so grateful for those moments

1:25:27

like that where

1:25:30

my kids sort of take me out of my own

1:25:32

head. My kids have made me

1:25:34

a much sillier person. They've

1:25:36

made me a more present

1:25:39

person, which isn't

1:25:42

to say it happened automatically. I think I had to proactively

1:25:46

remind myself to sit in that presence and

1:25:49

not to simply allow the things that are sort

1:25:52

of moving through my head all the time

1:25:54

to preoccupy me to

1:25:57

the point that I don't fully appreciate what's directly

1:25:59

in front of me.

1:26:00

I want to ask you a couple more questions about

1:26:02

this and then ask you to read some more poems. But

1:26:05

I wonder if just right here if you would read this ode

1:26:07

to those first 15 minutes after the kids

1:26:09

fall asleep, which is in the above ground

1:26:12

book. We used to switch. So

1:26:14

like before you're a parent, you

1:26:16

know, the meaning of bedtime, getting

1:26:20

to bedtime and post

1:26:21

bedtime. No, man. Page 101. You

1:26:24

don't fully appreciate like how

1:26:27

sleep deprivation is a torture

1:26:29

tactic until you have

1:26:35

kids. So the poem that precedes

1:26:37

this is Ode

1:26:39

to Bedtime. And then this one

1:26:41

is Ode to Those First 15 Minutes

1:26:44

After the Kids Are Finally Asleep. Praise

1:26:50

the couch that welcomes you back

1:26:52

into its embrace

1:26:53

as it does every night around this time.

1:26:57

Praise the loose cereal that crunches

1:26:59

beneath your weight, the whole grain

1:27:01

golden dust that now shimmers on the backside

1:27:04

of your pants.

1:27:05

Praise the cushion,

1:27:07

the one in the middle that sinks like a lifeboat

1:27:09

leaking air and the ottoman

1:27:12

covered in crayon stains that you have now

1:27:14

accepted as aesthetic.

1:27:16

Praise your knees

1:27:18

and the evening respite they receive from a day

1:27:20

of choo-choo training along the carpet with

1:27:23

two eager passengers in tow. Praise

1:27:26

the silence. O, the silence,

1:27:29

how it washes over you like a warm bed

1:27:31

sheet. Praise the walls for

1:27:34

the way they stand there

1:27:36

and don't ask for anything.

1:27:38

Praise the seduction of slumber that tiptoes

1:27:41

across your eyelids, the way it tempts

1:27:43

you to curl up right there and drift away

1:27:45

even though it's only 7.30pm. Praise

1:27:49

the phone you scroll through without even

1:27:52

realizing that you're scrolling. Praise

1:27:54

the video you scroll past

1:27:56

of the man teaching his dog how to dance

1:27:58

merengue.

1:27:59

Praise the way it makes you laugh, the way someone

1:28:02

laughs when they are so tired, they don't know

1:28:04

if they will ever stand up again. Praise

1:28:07

the toys scattered across the floor, the

1:28:10

way you wonder if it might be okay to just

1:28:12

leave them there for now. Since

1:28:14

you know that tomorrow, they

1:28:17

will simply end up there again.

1:28:19

So, you

1:28:21

know, this,

1:28:22

this, um,

1:28:24

this phrase, like, what I want for my

1:28:26

children, what we want for our children, I

1:28:28

wonder. Given how

1:28:31

much you're steeped in

1:28:33

the language we use communally,

1:28:36

the

1:28:37

work we're doing and not doing communally, the

1:28:39

way we educate and impart knowledge around American

1:28:41

history and history of slavery and our racial identities

1:28:44

and, you know, who we can be to each other in this

1:28:47

future. How,

1:28:51

how would you start to talk about what,

1:28:53

what I want for my children?

1:28:56

Disregard.

1:29:02

I want them.

1:29:06

Hmm.

1:29:10

I just want them to be

1:29:13

joyous. I want them

1:29:15

to be joyous.

1:29:19

And I want them to

1:29:21

recognize

1:29:24

the sort of larger

1:29:28

responsibility. That

1:29:31

they, that

1:29:32

they have, which is to say, you know,

1:29:35

I think all the time.

1:29:37

About how the first enslaved

1:29:39

people who came in this country,

1:29:41

you know, they came

1:29:43

to the British colonies that would become the United

1:29:45

States in 1619 slavery wasn't.

1:29:50

Eradicated until 1865 formally anyway.

1:29:55

But what's also true is that from the moment enslaved

1:29:57

people arrived on these shores, they

1:29:59

were fighting for the for freedom. They

1:30:01

were fighting for emancipation. They

1:30:03

were fighting for liberation.

1:30:06

And what that means is that the majority of

1:30:08

people who fought for freedom

1:30:10

never got a chance to experience for themselves.

1:30:15

But so many of them fought for it anyway, because

1:30:17

they knew that someday someone would.

1:30:20

And I think about how my life is only possible,

1:30:23

how my children's lives are only possible.

1:30:26

Because of generations of people who fought for

1:30:28

something they knew they might never see, but

1:30:31

who fought for it anyway because they knew that someday

1:30:33

someone would.

1:30:36

And I want my children

1:30:37

to recognize that.

1:30:39

I want them to hold that. I

1:30:42

want them to sit with that. Not in a way

1:30:44

that's meant to overwhelm them, not

1:30:46

in a way that's meant to cause

1:30:49

them despair,

1:30:51

but in a way that is meant to help them

1:30:55

accurately situate themselves

1:30:58

in this sort of long lineage,

1:31:02

this long historical arc that

1:31:05

they are a part of.

1:31:06

And to remember that

1:31:09

that is a part of what

1:31:12

should animate how we move through the world and

1:31:15

what decisions we make and

1:31:17

how we treat people

1:31:19

and

1:31:20

what we work toward.

1:31:22

And that does not come at the exclusion

1:31:25

of or the expense of joy

1:31:29

and love and laughter and

1:31:31

levity. But

1:31:34

part of what I think about all the time is the simultaneity

1:31:38

of the human experience, how our

1:31:40

lives are both defined by that love, that

1:31:42

joy, that laughter, but also

1:31:45

defined by anxiety,

1:31:49

fear, despair, and

1:31:51

somewhere between those is, I think, a responsibility,

1:31:55

both recognizing the truth.

1:32:00

of our past and all that has preceded us,

1:32:03

not in a way that's meant to paralyze

1:32:06

us or overwhelm us

1:32:08

or

1:32:10

trap us in a sense

1:32:12

of despair, but

1:32:14

in a way that is

1:32:16

meant to help us recognize and

1:32:19

remember our own agency. Yeah, and I

1:32:21

feel like the way you're describing that would also

1:32:24

be true of what you

1:32:25

would want for the white children that they're growing up

1:32:27

with.

1:32:29

Absolutely. I mean, I think that's

1:32:31

what I want for,

1:32:33

you know, what I want for my children, but it's what I want for all

1:32:36

of us. It's what I want for

1:32:38

all of us. I want all of us

1:32:40

to understand that our, what

1:32:42

our lives look like are only because of people

1:32:46

who've created the circumstances

1:32:48

that have given rise to

1:32:50

our lives today

1:32:53

in ways that are generative

1:32:56

and wonderful and in ways

1:32:58

that we're grateful for

1:33:00

and in ways that we recognize

1:33:02

are profoundly unjust and in

1:33:04

ways that are profoundly unfair and

1:33:06

in ways that

1:33:08

should not exist

1:33:11

in the way that they do. And I think it's about

1:33:14

holding and

1:33:15

recognizing and sitting with both of those

1:33:18

and figuring out how we move forward collectively.

1:33:23

So

1:33:23

just one more question before I ask you to read some

1:33:26

poems,

1:33:27

just kind of circling back to this

1:33:29

inquiry in our life together with

1:33:31

this technology that is going to reshape

1:33:33

so much. It's going to, it's somehow going

1:33:35

to shape these reckonings we're in and

1:33:38

this question of what intelligence is. I just

1:33:40

wonder as you, as you live with these

1:33:42

new humans in your life and you

1:33:44

see them grow and learn organically,

1:33:49

how does, how do, how are you, you know, how

1:33:51

would you think about what you, how they make

1:33:53

you, how they expand your understanding of the

1:33:55

fullness of what intelligence is in a human

1:33:58

life, in a human body.

1:34:03

I think

1:34:06

that

1:34:11

intelligence comes in multiple

1:34:14

forms. When

1:34:17

I was in graduate school, I was at

1:34:20

an institution where there

1:34:23

were scholars thinking about this idea of

1:34:25

multiple intelligences and

1:34:28

the way that,

1:34:31

how important it was for us to move away from a

1:34:34

myopic singular definition of

1:34:36

what intelligence looked like or what

1:34:38

constitutes as

1:34:40

being smart and to

1:34:42

recognize that that exists

1:34:45

in all different ways for all

1:34:47

sorts of different people. And so I

1:34:50

want my kids

1:34:53

to understand

1:34:55

that for themselves, to understand that

1:35:02

for how they understand and observe

1:35:04

people and

1:35:06

make sense of other people in the world.

1:35:10

And I want them to

1:35:15

recognize

1:35:21

that the way that

1:35:24

we tell the story

1:35:27

of our world can

1:35:31

take on so many different

1:35:34

forms and that

1:35:38

there are so many different ways to

1:35:42

learn about the

1:35:44

world that they live in that exists

1:35:46

beyond it. And this is almost going

1:35:49

back to some of the questions that I was thinking about. My

1:35:53

prison work

1:35:54

is that there's like the, and also

1:35:57

in the context of my teaching of high school,

1:35:59

which I guess is just a,

1:35:59

I guess it's a through line through

1:36:02

my life and my work, but education

1:36:04

is

1:36:05

not something that just happens in formal settings,

1:36:08

that the cultivation of intelligence

1:36:10

is not something that only happens

1:36:12

in formal settings or that can

1:36:14

manifest itself through

1:36:18

specific metrics or on a specific test.

1:36:22

But

1:36:22

it's far more vast and far more expansive

1:36:25

and far more beautiful

1:36:28

and kaleidoscopic

1:36:30

than the way that we have understood

1:36:33

it. And so I want my kids' definitions

1:36:36

of themselves and definitions

1:36:38

of others to be as

1:36:40

broad and expansive

1:36:45

and kaleidoscopic as we know the world

1:36:47

is.

1:36:50

So I have chosen

1:36:52

four poems I'd love for you to read. If

1:36:54

there's anything you want to read, I'd love

1:36:56

that. One of them actually is, you

1:36:59

know, you touched, especially

1:37:01

in these last few minutes, on this

1:37:04

fact of

1:37:07

what is terrible and what is potentially

1:37:09

more generative coexisting and

1:37:12

that it's not

1:37:14

that even having hope

1:37:17

or seeing

1:37:19

agency to reshape the world is

1:37:21

not to

1:37:23

be able to unsee what

1:37:26

makes no sense, is not to be able to tie it up. There's

1:37:28

a poem in Above Ground.

1:37:33

We have made it through worst before, page 12.

1:37:37

I found this one helpful because I feel this way

1:37:39

a lot myself.

1:37:44

Yeah, I...

1:37:48

Oftentimes the poems I write

1:37:52

almost serve

1:37:55

as like memos to myself, you

1:37:58

know, almost the kind of like...

1:37:59

sometimes you need to write something down,

1:38:02

the voice in my head, being like, sometimes you need to write something

1:38:04

down to remind you of

1:38:07

its truth, to hold

1:38:09

you accountable.

1:38:12

So as

1:38:14

much as this poem says, like begins

1:38:17

when people say we have made it through words before,

1:38:19

it could very easily say

1:38:21

when I have said we

1:38:23

will make it through words before, or something

1:38:26

that I am implicate.

1:38:28

What I'm trying to say is that I am also implicated

1:38:31

in the people. Right. Right. Yeah.

1:38:34

And I think that that's the case for so many

1:38:36

of my poems. I'm rarely trying

1:38:38

to singularly look

1:38:41

outwards when making

1:38:43

sort of societal

1:38:45

observations without also

1:38:47

recognizing the way that I am complicit

1:38:50

in or indicted

1:38:52

in or part of the very thing that

1:38:54

I am critiquing or

1:39:00

examining or, you know,

1:39:02

wrestling

1:39:05

with. And I think that that's absolutely

1:39:07

the case here.

1:39:10

When people say we have made it through words before.

1:39:14

All I hear is the wind slapping against

1:39:17

all the gravestones of those who did not

1:39:19

make it.

1:39:20

Those who did not survive to see the confetti

1:39:23

fall from the sky.

1:39:25

Those who did not live to watch the parade

1:39:27

roll down the street.

1:39:30

I've grown accustomed to a lifetime of aphorisms

1:39:33

meant to assuage my fears. Pithy

1:39:36

sayings meant to convey that all ends

1:39:38

up fine in the end. But

1:39:41

there is no solace in rearranging language

1:39:43

to make a different word tell the same line.

1:39:46

Sometimes the moral arc of the universe does

1:39:49

not bend in a direction that comforts us. Sometimes

1:39:52

it bends in ways we don't expect. And

1:39:54

there are people who fall off in the process.

1:39:58

Please. Dear reader,

1:40:01

do not say that I am hopeless.

1:40:03

I believe there is a better future to fight for.

1:40:06

I simply accept the possibility that I may

1:40:08

not live to see it.

1:40:10

I have grown weary of telling myself lies

1:40:13

that I might one day begin to believe.

1:40:16

We are not all left standing after the

1:40:18

war has ended.

1:40:20

Some of us have become ghosts.

1:40:22

By the time the dust has settled.

1:40:27

And I wonder

1:40:29

also in this book, this above ground book,

1:40:31

which is your most recent book, you also, it's

1:40:33

another poem about New Orleans.

1:40:36

Again, another kind of documenting your

1:40:38

ongoing grappling

1:40:41

with that. Such

1:40:44

deep proves that city has a near here nor there,

1:40:46

page 41.

1:40:53

Here nor there. I've

1:40:56

tried to write these poems before,

1:40:59

you know,

1:41:00

the ones about the infamous storm and its

1:41:02

majestic violence, the flood

1:41:05

water that swallowed a city then sat

1:41:07

still as night. I

1:41:09

think often of the things it took from us that

1:41:12

we'll never know we could have had. Nostalgia

1:41:15

is a well-intentioned wound. Counterfactuals

1:41:19

are a bed of thorns in a room with nowhere

1:41:21

else to lay your head. I

1:41:24

imagine what could have been, but

1:41:26

never was the Christmases

1:41:29

with my children in the home where

1:41:31

I once opened presents, taking

1:41:33

a soccer ball with my daughter

1:41:35

against the same playground where I imagined

1:41:38

a life of goals and glory. At

1:41:41

home is now silent as a sky of

1:41:43

smoke.

1:41:45

That wall is no longer a wall, but

1:41:48

a pile of wood in a lonely field. I

1:41:51

tremble at what I already know, that

1:41:54

my children will not know the city beyond

1:41:56

the holidays and funerals that bring them

1:41:58

here.

1:42:00

That I no longer know this city. I have

1:42:03

always worn like a tattoo. I

1:42:06

still remember the city as

1:42:08

something it was kept from becoming. I'm

1:42:12

still looking for a language that

1:42:14

is not covered in mud.

1:42:17

That last line, I'm still looking for

1:42:19

a language not covered in mud and also

1:42:22

nostalgia is a well-impensioned

1:42:23

wound. So

1:42:31

maybe just

1:42:32

the final one

1:42:34

that I pulled out which feels like

1:42:36

a good way to end

1:42:39

just with this back and forth of what

1:42:41

is terrible and and

1:42:44

what is beautiful and how

1:42:46

they exist and are always in interplay

1:42:48

with each other.

1:42:50

This is from the first from from

1:42:53

Counting to Sense page 56 no

1:42:56

more elegies today, but I do want to ask

1:42:58

if there's anything you want to read that if you feel like

1:43:00

this is in a full and I feel like I'm really keeping you and

1:43:02

this is heroic now at this point this interview.

1:43:04

No, it's okay. Page 56.

1:43:07

Maybe I'll read. Yeah,

1:43:09

is there another one you'd like to read? I

1:43:13

think

1:43:14

if because we've been talking about the

1:43:18

sort of you know, we've been talking about

1:43:21

a lot of heavy stuff, but I also you

1:43:23

know want to

1:43:24

to name and reaffirm

1:43:27

like the joy. Yeah in

1:43:29

the levity and the laughter. So I was thinking maybe

1:43:31

a dance party. Yeah But

1:43:34

I can read that after no more elegy. Okay

1:43:40

No more elegy today. Today

1:43:43

I will write a poem about

1:43:46

a little girl jumping rope. It

1:43:48

will not be a metaphor for dodging bullets.

1:43:51

It will not be an allegory for skipping past

1:43:54

despair. But

1:43:55

rather about the back and fourth bob

1:43:57

of her head as she waits for.

1:43:59

the right moment to insert herself into

1:44:02

the blinking flashes of bound hemp, but

1:44:05

rather about her friends on either end of

1:44:07

the rope, who turn their

1:44:09

wrists into small flashing windmills

1:44:12

cultivating an energy of their own,

1:44:15

but rather about the way the beads in her

1:44:17

hair bounce against the back of her neck,

1:44:21

but rather the way her feet barely touch

1:44:23

the ground,

1:44:25

how the rope skipping across the concrete

1:44:28

sounds like the entire world is giving her

1:44:31

a round of applause.

1:44:33

So interesting, I haven't read this

1:44:35

poem in a while.

1:44:37

It's taking me down memory lane. Well,

1:44:39

it's interesting, you know, I wrote this before, many years

1:44:42

before my daughter was

1:44:44

born. Yeah. And

1:44:47

I think about the beads

1:44:49

in her own hair now. We

1:44:51

were... The round of applause that

1:44:54

the world is giving her. Yeah.

1:44:56

Yeah.

1:44:59

It's like imagining her in that.

1:45:08

I see it on page 89, is that right? In

1:45:10

the above ground? Dance parties? Yes.

1:45:14

So, you know, I talked about how,

1:45:17

for me, poetry is

1:45:20

the act of paying attention,

1:45:22

the act of capturing a moment, a feeling. And

1:45:26

you know, a lot of what we've talked about has been on

1:45:30

the heavier side and things

1:45:32

that have been

1:45:34

capturing those moments, observations, feelings,

1:45:37

histories that might

1:45:40

elicit anxiety, despair,

1:45:43

fear,

1:45:44

or speak to violence

1:45:47

or oppression. But

1:45:49

that's only part of the human experience.

1:45:53

And there are other parts that are worthy of

1:45:55

our attention

1:45:58

and our gratitude. And

1:46:00

one of those things for me is that we

1:46:03

have dance parties after

1:46:06

we finish our dinner sometimes in our house. And

1:46:09

it's a delight. Unfortunately, my

1:46:11

children have no rhythm, which is

1:46:13

like, it's, you

1:46:16

know, it's fine for a six and a four year old, but

1:46:18

if it continues through

1:46:21

their adolescence, it'll be devastating for

1:46:23

all of us. So to everybody listening,

1:46:26

please pray for my, my rhythm,

1:46:28

this children, they can get it together.

1:46:31

But, but this poem is called dance party.

1:46:36

Sometimes in the evenings after dinner, after

1:46:39

the spaghetti has been slurped and I've bribed

1:46:41

the broccoli into their bellies.

1:46:43

I give both of my children

1:46:45

the look. When my eyes meet

1:46:47

theirs, they know what time it is. They

1:46:50

push in their chairs, they stretch their legs.

1:46:52

And we move the table to the far end of the dining

1:46:55

room to clear space for what we all know is coming.

1:46:58

Alexa,

1:46:59

play the post dinner dance party playlist. And

1:47:01

within seconds, Martha washes booming

1:47:04

voice rolls like thunder over our bodies.

1:47:06

Everybody dance now. The

1:47:09

electronic keyboard and the drums meet in the middle

1:47:11

of the room, like two dinosaurs ready

1:47:13

to claim the kitchen as their own. Immediately,

1:47:16

the jumping begins and my daughter is flinging

1:47:18

her limbs like an offbeat octopus, and

1:47:20

slapping the air behind her as if she is trying to smack

1:47:23

anyone who enters her sacred space.

1:47:26

I turn around and my son is doing the robot,

1:47:29

where he's being eaten by a robot, or

1:47:31

he's trapped in a universe where robots take over the

1:47:33

bodies of little boys in peanut butter pajamas.

1:47:36

Nonetheless, there was a robot somewhere.

1:47:39

And my children,

1:47:40

bless them,

1:47:41

have not yet learned how to clap on the two and

1:47:43

four. So I laugh, but also

1:47:45

cringe as their small hands make a mockery

1:47:48

of the melody around them.

1:47:50

Now, halfway through the song,

1:47:52

everyone is jumping, and I,

1:47:54

caught up in the ecstasy of this moment, fall

1:47:57

to the ground and convince this no longer young

1:47:59

body that it is a good idea to start doing the worm,

1:48:01

and when my children see me, their eyes become

1:48:03

pools of possibility, and it is clear they

1:48:05

see this as a clarion call to climb onto my

1:48:08

back. And now, here we are,

1:48:10

this strange trifecta, this unlikely

1:48:12

trio, a robot and an octopus riding

1:48:14

on the back of a worm who will certainly need some

1:48:17

Tylenol before bed. And

1:48:19

it is in this moment that their mother comes home, and

1:48:22

when she opens the door everyone is screaming, the

1:48:24

speakers are blasting, and the percussion

1:48:27

is shaking every wall around us. We

1:48:30

look up at her,

1:48:31

and she looks down at us,

1:48:33

and we have no explanation for this strange

1:48:36

scene, only an invitation

1:48:38

for her to join.

1:48:41

All right, thank you so much

1:48:43

for that. Thank you for

1:48:45

all that you do, and for this beautiful

1:48:47

conversation. We'll

1:48:49

be producing it in the next few weeks, and we'll let you

1:48:52

know well in advance. And

1:48:54

yeah, it's just been a joy to talk to you. Maybe someday

1:48:56

we can have coffee and talk about Germany.

1:48:58

I would love that. Are you on the West Coast?

1:49:00

I'm in Minnesota, but I get to the East

1:49:02

Coast a lot.

1:49:03

Okay, well yeah, please look me up.

1:49:05

Okay, thank you so much. Thank you

1:49:07

for all the time. I had

1:49:09

way too many notes. I still had to skip over

1:49:11

all kinds of things. That's all we were talking about.