← Velshi Banned Book Club
Velshi Banned Book Club
The Power of Poetry
00:41:34
Featuring “Brown Girl Dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson
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Ali Velshi
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Ali Velshi
Welcome to the Velshi Band Book Club. I'm Ali Velshi. How can you capture the wild, fleeting feelings of first love in a few lines? How can you explain the hollow pain of death with a few words? How can you walk through the searing frustration of a community that won't accept you on a single page through poetry? From nursery rhymes as children to Shakespeare in high school to your favorite Taylor Swift album, poetry is all around us. It's part of our world and our life in ways we might not even notice or appreciate unless we're looking. And today we're going to look. This meeting of the Valshi Band Book Club will explore the power of verse through one critically acclaimed and hugely important book of poems. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. Let's get started. Quote the revolution is always going to be happening. I want to write this down. That revolution is like a merry go round, history always being made somewhere. And maybe for a short time, we're part of that history. And then the ride stops and our turn is over. We walk slowly toward the park where I can already see the big swings empty and waiting for me. And after I write it down, maybe I'll end this way. My name is Jacqueline Woodson and I am ready for the ride. End quote. Told through lyrical poems and haikus that heavily incorporate blank space and specific line breaks, Brown Girl Dreaming is a memoir chronicling Jacqueline Woodson's very real childhood in the late 60s and 70s. Woodson's early years were split between segregated Greenville, South Carolina and New York City. Feeling quote in the middle of a road, her arms out, fingers pointing north and south. End quote at its core, Brown Girl Dreaming is a coming of age narrative. Young Jacqueline grapples with her growing awareness of the civil rights movement, her unfolding identity and individuality as well as the power and necessity of community. Woodson vividly and skillfully captures the mind of a young person searching for sure footing in a fragmented world. This is a story of self acceptance and self discovery. This is a story that examines and celebrates the realities of what it means to be a young black woman. I don't know if these hands will become Malcolm's raised and fisted, or Martens, open and asking, or James's curled around a pen. I do not know if these hands will be roses or rubies, gently gloved and fiercely folded calmly in a lap on a desk around a book, ready to change the world. End quote. Brown Girl Dreaming masterfully veils its words with the innocence of childhood and then slowly lifts it. Woodson's language is sparing and specific, cutting as close to the core of the narrative as possible. There isn't a wasted sentence or an unnecessary metaphor. The result is writing. You can't ignore writing that feels incredibly urgent. Woodson's skill as a poet and a storyteller is clear from the first stanza, but she uses Brown Girl Dreaming as a vehicle to prove to us, the reader, how important and how joyful poetry and storytelling are. Nothing in the world is like this. A bright white page with pale blue lines, the smell of a newly sharpened pencil, the soft hush of it moving finally one day into letters. End quote. We've talked before about the inherent truth to fiction books, the way they shine a spotlight. Poetry does that too, but it's more of a partial shade. The truth finds you in a poem. In just a few lines and some carefully placed indentations, a poem can put words to the pain of adolescence, the waves of love and the ache of racism. A poem illustrates the biggest feelings you've ever felt but could never properly draw yourself. A good poem is both universal and deeply personal at the same time. Brown Girl Dreaming proves that again and again, from Allen Ginsberg's seminal Howl, the anthem of the Beat generation, to Shel Silverstein's iconic A Light in the Attic, celebrated by generations of children to Brown Girl Dreaming. There's a tradition of banning poetry in this country and around the world. Brown Girl Dreaming, both a stirring poetry memoir and an exploration of racism in America, has two targets on its back. Since its publication a decade ago, Brown Girl Dreaming has been targeted for removal in at least Texas and Florida. The memoir's exploration of race, sexism, religion and social class made sure of that. Well, I'm thrilled to be joined by the award winning Jacqueline Woodson, the Young People's poet laureate from 2015 to 2017, author of numerous literary works including today's Velshi Band Book Club feature, the National Book Award winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming.
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Chris Hayes
Stay connected with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live, read live blogs and in depth essays and listen to coverage as it unfolds. Visit msnbc.comapp to download hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes.
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Ali Velshi
This week on my podcast, why Is this Happening?
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Nordstrom Rack Customer
New York Times tech reporter Kate Conger.
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Ali Velshi
On Elon Musk in the Trump 2.0 era.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
I think a lot of other tech leadership is looking now at what Musk has been able to accomplish by aligning himself so closely with Trump and wanting to follow suit. And it is this very kind of transparent favor trading that's going on throughout the industry right now where people are feeling like, okay, I can cozy up to the President and that's gonna have a beneficial impact for my business.
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Ali Velshi
That's this week on why Is this Happening? Search for why is this Happening? Wherever you're listening right now and follow Jacqueline welcome to the Welsh Band Book Club.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
It's so good to be here.
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Ali Velshi
You talk to people about getting into poetry because for some people it feels like an advanced class, that you've gotta be a really sophisticated reader before you take on poetry.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
I mean, our first words are poetry. They're words put together that have to be figured out but are so innately a part of us. And deeply understood parents understand when their kids say what bottle I tired? And there's something about those two words together that say so much and evoke so much feeling. And going back to the simplicity of that language is what poetry allows us to do. I think we don't have to read deeply into poems. We can read them deeply. That's the beauty also of poetry. You can read a poem many ways and get many different meanings out of it depending on how you enter it. And I think that's what makes it so accessible. That's what makes it for all people. That's what makes it, as Audre Lorde said, not a luxury is part of our everyday living.
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Ali Velshi
So I guess losing the intimidation factor is important because sometimes when I don't see those words in between, I think to myself, I'm deficient. Because I don't know what the words in between should be or what that should mean. And you're sort of saying, that's okay. Read it as you read it.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
Yes, it's yours. It belongs to you. And it's up to your interpretation. And any great poet sets a poem on the page so that it can do that. It can be interpreted by people from many different spaces. So I can look at a poem and come to it from my experience as this kid growing up in Brooklyn in the 70s and understand it one way, as some kid from Oklahoma can look at it as a kid growing up in 90s and understand it a different way. And that's what was so surprising to me about Brown Girl Dreaming was getting these letters from kids all over the country and then eventually all over the world for a book that I was like, but this is so specific to me. And, you know, obviously it wasn't.
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Ali Velshi
That's the beauty of so many of these books. Writers write them for whatever reason, they write them, and then they get feedback from readers who see something entirely different in that or see it as almost having been written for them or about them. And that's probably, probably our best argument for why books shouldn't be banned 100%.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
I always talk about how Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, who basically was the godmother of multicultural literature, said that kids need both mirrors and windows in their literature. They need mirrors so that they can see reflections of themselves, and they need windows to see into worlds they might not otherwise ever be a part of except in the space of that narrative. And to take those experiences away from them. And because of your adult fear of what it means to have them understand something more deeply than they do now, it just blows my mind. Don't get me started.
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Ali Velshi
Well, let's get started with the book. Right at the beginning of Brown Girl Dreaming, the epigraph starts with a Langston Hughes poem called Dreams. Quote, hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life Is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow. Why did you open your book with this?
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
I think it's so important that we do exactly that. That we hold on to what we feel is or have been told is impossible. And I think that so many of us have these dreams, and I know dreams sounds cliche almost, but we have these dreams of what we want to do, who we want to be. And somewhere in the course of our life, that can get erased and someone can tell us we're not smart enough, we're not talented enough, we're not strong enough. And little by little, it chips away at the dream. I think about when I used to go into schools and I asked kindergartners and first graders what they wanted to be, and all these hands would go up. I want to be a dancer. I want to be a singer. I want to be a basketball player. And then when I got to middle school and started asking kids the same question, they always said, we don't know. Or, I wanna be a doctor or a banker. Well, why do you wanna be a doctor? Because that's a good job and I wanna heal people. And it's like there was some truth in that, but someone had told them that that was the right thing to say. I always say, if you had to do something for the rest of your life, what would that thing look like? And people get really confused. Not first graders, but older people do.
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Ali Velshi
Because the kindergartners, first graders have not yet been exposed to what people think their limitations are.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
Exactly.
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Ali Velshi
Is that a greater challenge for a person of color? Because at that point, society imposes a need for you to make safer decisions as you get older toward that point where you have to decide what your career is going to be, I think.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
That it used to be. I love seeing the shirts that say, I am my ancestors wildest dreams. Because I think for so much of the work that our ancestors did with the civil rights movement, with trying to get out of enslavement, all the ways in which they resisted, they resisted so that we could rest, so that we could have our dreams. When I look at someone like my mom who is like, okay, writing is a good hobby, but what are you going to do to earn a living? Like, there is that safety net. And I think that's the case for so many people who didn't come from generational wealth because it was stolen from them, you know, that they want their kids to be safe and they want them to not have to struggle as hard as they did. So I think there is that message that we want you to do something that's going to earn you a living and eventually get you out of our house. But. But at the same time, there has always been, even in my case as a child, my mother was like, read, read, read. And in saying, read, read, read, she was saying, look at all these other worlds. Look at all of these other options. Look at all these other opportunities you.
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Ali Velshi
Explore in the book. Growing up as a Jehovah's Witness. In Brown Girl Dreaving at one point writing, quote, we pray for my grandfather, ask God to spare him, even though he's a non believer. We ask that Jehovah look into his heart, see the goodness there. But my grandfather says he doesn't need our prayers. I work hard, he says. I treat people like I want to be treated. God sees this. God knows. At the end of the day, he lights a cigarette, unlaces his dusty brogans, stretches his legs. God sees my good, he says, do all the preaching and praying you want, but no need to do it for me. End quote. Talk to me about this. This is beautiful.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
I love my grandfather so much. He really taught me another side. And what he taught me, I deeply believe that a deep goodness gets seen even now. When you were reading the part about him lighting his cigarette, I was like, ooh, that's right. He smoked because it was so against the religion to smoke or drink alcohol. But there was something about the way he was so grounded in his goodness and the fact that he knew that what he was doing was right, that he was going to be a good ancestor, that he was living biblically in some way, right? Like following the Ten Commandments, some of them. And he was also finding his joy. And I think for me, as a kid growing up in both a very religious household and having a relative who was like, there's another way. Like, there's a way you can do this and still have your joy and not think about all the ways in which you're supposedly doing something, quote, unquote, wrong. I couldn't have written Brown Girl dreaming at all without having my grandfather, who, as you know, we call Daddy, who was my favorite relative. I just remember as a young person, every time he opened his mouth, I was there listening, you know, as often as I could be because he just had such a grace about all that he said to me. Maybe that's just my memory of it.
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Ali Velshi
I referenced this briefly in the introduction, but let's talk more about it. Identity, the idea of feeling at home in two places. Let me read the rest of Halfway Home. Number one, quote, New York. My mother says soon I'll find us a place there, come back and bring you all home. She wants a place of her own that is not the Nelsonville house, the Columbus house, the Greenville house, looking for her next place, our next place. Right now, our mother says we're only halfway home. And I imagine her standing in the middle of a road, her arms out, fingers pointing north and south. I want to ask, will there always be a road? Will there always be a bus? Will we always have to choose between home and home? End quote. Tell me about this.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
Well, the answer is yes, I do think there is a way. So many of us, even through travel, feel that we leave some parts of ourselves in another place and that place becomes in some way, home. And I think for us, as people of the Great migration, whose parent brought us here in the 70s from a place that was wretched in its Jim Crow laws and also home and its physical beauty, we always called Greenville, South Carolina, home. Every summer we would go home again. And even now, when I think of Greenville, I think of home. But I have a necklace that says Brooklyn, and I am Brooklyn to the bone. I've always existed in those two worlds.
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Ali Velshi
There's one poem that really stuck with me called the Almost Friends, in which you write in part quote, these are our almost friends, the people we think about when we're tired of playing with each other, end quote. Talk to me about this. When you're a child, friends are the first community you really pick for yourself. It's so critical to your belonging and identity. What do you mean by the Almost Friends?
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
So first and foremost, whenever we wanted to go out to play or go to our friend's house, my mother's like, you have friends right here talking about my siblings. And so that was our first cohort. My older sister, my older brother, and eventually my younger brother. But then we had our Southern friends that made fun of us a lot because we had New York accents. There was a divide between the people who left South Carolina and the people who didn't. So while they were curious about us often, they were also not always nice to us, especially once we moved away for good and would come back. But they were the only kids we had. We had a swing set and we had an above ground pool. And so they definitely were attracted to our backyard, but not necessarily to us. We were the kids with a ball, basically.
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Ali Velshi
But you know what? When you're, when you're a kid, if somebody's got an above ground pool and a swing set, doesn't really matter whether you like them or not. That's what you're going to be doing. I recently wrote something of a memoir. And it's barely grammatically correct, let alone poetry. It wouldn't have even occurred to me to think about using poetry and memoir in the same place. Tell me about that thought process.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
I couldn't think of another way to write Brown Girl Dreaming because that's how memory comes to me. It comes to me as these small moments with all of this white space around it, right? All of this unknown. There are these places. You didn't know what happened between point A and point B, but you knew that there was a connection and you knew there was a point that came after that. And this is what that point looked like. So writing Brown Girl Dreaming, I knew I was gonna write it in verse. I was gonna write those memories down. I started writing just on slips of paper, wherever I could. Just every time a memory came to me or I asked my siblings about something, or I asked my mother about something, I looked at photos and just started to write it. It wouldn't have worked as chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, because that's not the narrative. The narrative is memory by memory by memory until it becomes something almost like a chain link. You know, it's connected and it also stands on its own.
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Ali Velshi
There's a theme that comes up again and again in the book, and it's about finding your voice through storytelling. And that's interesting. There is something to that, right? In the process of storytelling, you're discovering things about yourself and your identity and your voice. How did that manifest for you?
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
It started as a lie. My earliest memories of storytelling are getting in trouble for lying and just making up stories. Because I really entertained myself by imagining something different. And I would get in trouble all the time. And my mother was really perplexed. She's like, why are you lying?
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Ali Velshi
And I'm like, I'm just making a story.
- [20:28]
Nordstrom Rack Representative
No, I didn't even know how to articulate. Yeah, but that didn't exist. My family didn't understand where that part of my brain came from. I always told stories. And then I had a teacher who said, instead of lying, write it down. Because if you write it down, it's fiction, you know, it's not a lie anymore. And that was such a mind blowing moment for me. Like, this can be legitimized. Like, I'm not going to be on punishment. I'm not going to, you know, get in trouble for it. And I would tell my friends stories and I would always start, I just made this up. I just made this up. And they would be entertained by it. And I would start writing shorter stories. But it was just such an organic process from understanding all the things that were happening in my head that were not necessarily happening to me and trying to understand how they got to my head, to realizing that this was a path, that thing I was put here to do. Write those stories down and entertain folks with them or get them out of your head so that the world made more sense to you. I think a lot of my writing is about making the world make sense.
- [21:31]
Ali Velshi
Well, that takes me to a question I've got. I've been to Ukraine now three times since the war broke out. At the outset of the war, it almost seemed like everything had shut down. But one thing that doesn't shut down, even in conflict or oppression, is art forms. The New York Times published a story called Battle Hardened Poets Fuel a Literary Revival in Ukraine. Let me read a little of this article to you. Quote. In the battered eastern city of Kharkiv, poems have been inscribed on wooden planks covering windows, shattered by explosions. Videos of poets, soldiers reading verses from the trenches are popular on social networks, and public readings have drawn crowds even in dangerous places. End quote. Talk to me about that. Poetry in the worst times, you know.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
That completely brings tears to my eyes because it's what poetry can do and does and has always done. It's about survival, it's about connecting people. I think there's something about poetry that shows a certain compassion and empathy and humanity to say that, you know what? They can't kill the spirit. And someone standing up and reading a poem against the backdrop of chaos is doing exactly that, saying, we are still here. I think about James Baldwin, who says, you think your pain is unprecedented in the history of the world. And then you read. And I think that is what poetry does. It shows us that there is something beyond the pain, there is something beyond the worry, there is something beyond the chaos that is healing. I'm sure it's happening all over the world, that the poet is still speaking, the painter is still painting, the singer is still singing, because what else do we have?
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Ali Velshi
The poet will still be a poet, the artist will still be an artist, the dancer will dance in their own home if they have to, but they will not stop. You can't stop the production of art and the outpouring of emotion and thought through art.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
I completely agree. I Think of myself when I started doing this, I didn't think anyone was gonna pay me for it. I didn't think I was gonna get awards for it. You know, I didn't think all these people would be reading my writing. I knew I had to write. I knew that I had to tell story and that that was it. That was the reason that the books became a part of the world. And they. Even if they weren't going to be books, even if they were gonna be a bunch of journals that are just filled with writing, then that's what they were going to be.
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Ali Velshi
You didn't think you'd be recognized and get awards. You didn't think people would pay to read your stuff. I assume you didn't think you would be challenged and banned either. Were you surprised that people would challenge your work?
- [24:15]
Nordstrom Rack Representative
I was surprised at what they challenged about my work. I was surprised that they challenged if you come softly, which is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet because it was an interracial love story. I was surprised that they challenged Brown girl Dreaming because I talk about the civil rights movement. So I think that the ways that they have come from my work have surprised me. And I never thought. And this is why I think it's so important to email your representatives, report censorship, go to school board meetings, because I never dreamed that censorship would get legislated the way it has.
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Ali Velshi
You've written a lot of books, mostly for middle grade readers, but also for adults. Talk to me about that. How does your headspace change to write for these different demographics and audiences?
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
All the different audiences live in my head. And I think also what lives in my head is that all the audiences can read all the books. So I know that when I'm writing picture books, I'm writing poetry. And so it's just a question of where the line breaks and how accessible the language is to a younger person, how much it moves, how visual the language is to a young person. But I think adults should read picture books, not just to their children because it teaches them so much about writing. But when I'm writing for adults, I feel like I have a much bigger canvas and I can play with time in a way that adults can follow. I can play with the future perfect in a way that adults can follow. When I'm writing for kids, I know my stories have to be more immediate so they can feel like they're in it from where they live inside their 10 to 15 year old bodies.
- [25:53]
Ali Velshi
Jacqueline Woodson, I appreciate your time again today.
- [25:55]
Nordstrom Rack Representative
Oh, it's always so great to talk to you. Thanks for having me on.
- [26:00]
Ali Velshi
Jacqueline Woodson is the former Young People's Poet Laureate and award winning author of today's Velshi Band Book Club feature Brown Girl Dreaming.
- [26:17]
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Chris Hayes
MSNBC is now available as a podcast. Every Saturday and Sunday, host Amon Mohadin reads between the lines of the week's biggest stories spotlighting the pressing issues facing our country, our world and those fighting to solve them.
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
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Chris Hayes
Tonight, search for Eamon wherever you're listening and follow. And for ad free listening to this show and other MSNBC podcasts, subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. Donald Trump is heading back to the White House.
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Ali Velshi
Together we can truly make America great again. We are in for an unpredictable but fascinating four years and we're going to.
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Chris Hayes
Be following every twist and turn for.
- [27:30]
Ali Velshi
The first 100 days.
- [27:32]
Chris Hayes
We'll be bringing you the latest updates.
- [27:34]
Ali Velshi
And analysis first thing every morning. So join me, James Matthews, me, Martha Kelnick and me, Mark Stone for Trump 100 every weekday at 6:00am, wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now is Hannah Holland, our literary editor and the producer of Veli Band Book Club. And I can't, as you know, get enough of talking to and about Jacqueline Woodson, largely because I am one of those people, right? I'm, I'm talking about the if you don't really understand poetry, you don't really like poetry. I'm one of those guys, right? I can never read it, right? I don't really understand it. And Jacqueline Woodson reminded me that that's bs, right? That we all like poetry. What did you call it? Our first language. It's the first thing we learn. It's the rhymes that we look that's poetry. I used to love writing limericks. It's poetry. Like, you tend to think with poetry that once it gets to a certain level, it's beyond you, but it's not. She said, it's our first language.
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Nordstrom Rack Customer
I am about to out myself as someone that has really just, like, the most liberal arts degree in the history of the world. But I was a poetry major in college.
- [28:41]
Ali Velshi
Wow.
- [28:42]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Yes. No one thought that would amount to anything, but look at me now.
- [28:46]
Ali Velshi
That makes sense because a lot of poetry gets snuck into our conversations with these authors, and it makes me seem very erudite and it blows their mind. Right. We were talking to Tim O'Brien about his book about war, and you suggested you weren't there that day. And you suggested that I read him hear Bullet. And I. You know, I trust you so much, Hannah, that I had no idea whether you had had a discussion with him about here, Bullet, or whether he'd say, that's neat. So I read it. Can I read it? Because I just. I think it's important to read. I couldn't even. I had trouble getting through it. If a body is what you want, then here is bone and gristle and flesh. Here is the clavicle snapped wish the aorta's opened valves, the leap thought makes at the synaptic gap. Here is the adrenaline rush you crave, that inexorable flight, that insane puncture into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish what you've started. Because here, Bullet, here is where I complete the word you bring hissing through the air. Here is where I moan the barrel's cold esophagus triggering my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have inside of me, each twist of the round spun deeper. Because here, Bullet, here is where the world ends every time. And Tim, who is a remarkable writer, was so moved by that, and he's so moved by it every time he's ever heard it, because it captures the type of story that he's written as a book. Jacqueline's point is you can say things in poetry that you cannot say in prose.
- [30:18]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Yeah. I mean, both Jacqueline Woodson and Brian Turner will make you a believer, that's for sure. But what I think is so amazing about all good poetry is that in such a short amount of words, right, like 15 lines, you can convey the biggest feelings you've ever felt in your whole life in the best possible way that sometimes a whole book can't even do. It's amazing. I think in school, people get lost with poetry because you're given a classic and you're supposed to read it and annotate it and say, what is this saying? So when you start to get kind of bogged down line by line, it can become. You're like, I have no idea. Like, this is so laden in metaphor.
- [31:01]
Ali Velshi
It's the out of context idea. It's what we were talking about with Romeo and Juliet. Read it, but don't read it. Out of context poetry. I'm not sure, maybe for a PhD student in poetry, reading poetry line by line might be helpful. To the rest of us, the entirety is what is helpful, right?
- [31:17]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Like just let yourself read it and feel what you feel. And that is the real poetry experience. I think if you're a person who has this rote memory, like, oh yes, like this line is clearly in reference to this work of literature, then great. But just the feeling behind it, I think is enough to make you really love poetry. You know, don't go into it with this, oh, I don't get it. Or this even desire to fully understand every line. If you just go into it reading it, like Jacqueline pointed out, like a child would read a nursery rhyme. But I think everyone would really like it.
- [31:51]
Ali Velshi
One of the things about poetry that's different from literature is it can have a lack of specificity that allows it to be universal. And Jacqueline Woodson talked about the fact that really this book is about her growing up in both Oklahoma and then in Brooklyn, New York. And she's so surprised by the number of people who write to her who relate to it, who know nothing not only of those two places, but whose life experiences are not shared by her. So poetry does allow, in its sometimes its vagueness to be non specific and universal in its appeal.
- [32:24]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Right? And you can read this book perhaps never having stepped foot in New York City, or like, I've never been to Oklahoma, where the rest of this book takes place. But the idea, the concepts that she explores through poetry are universal, or at least the emotions she's able to convey is especially the idea of being two places at once. Even if you've never moved, everyone experiences that. Everyone feels that. A lot of the poems talk about how she was not a great reader as a young student. Which now to reflect on that for someone who is the young people's poet laureate is pretty amazing. But again, it's like this idea of struggling through something and coming out on the other side really successful, even if you're not a little girl who's not that good at reading. Like, who amongst us can't understand what that's like. So she just. She does it again and again, and it is really amazing.
- [33:16]
Ali Velshi
I've learned this in my travels around the world that artistic expression outside of prose or nonfiction plays a remarkable role. It's almost like the more people feel contained and oppressed or threatened, the greater their output of creativity will be.
- [33:31]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
You went somewhere, I think in Iran.
- [33:32]
Ali Velshi
You said in Iran. It was in Tehran. Somebody invited me to an art gallery opening. And I'm thinking, I'm from New York. Am I really going to an art gallery opening in Iran? And it blew my mind. And it made me understand that people are creative no matter what. Even in a closed society where you are limited as to what your expression can be, artists will not be limited. End of story.
- [33:54]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Dare I say that people who live in an oppressed society or an oppressed segment of society are the best creators and the most amazing creators, arguably, because.
- [34:05]
Ali Velshi
It'S necessary, it's crafty, it's the way you have to get around the system. Or it's your form of protest that is so deeply rooted in your emotion.
- [34:14]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
And you have to work through feelings in some capacity. And I'm not suggesting that everyone on earth needs to be a creative. Right. But then you do it through talking to others or whatever. You get a good therapist. But distilling the way you're feeling and what you're going through, that's what art is for. And poetry lends itself to that. I think that's part of the reason why it's become so huge in Ukraine. How else, when you have a limited amount of time and perhaps limited resources. Right. Then, of course, what a great way to work through these huge feelings that you have in just a short amount of line. You know, here is these huge feelings in this, you know, terrible situation. And poetry is a way to work through that.
- [34:58]
Ali Velshi
The words you're equipped with may not be enough to work through. Right. One of the things. And I've covered Ukraine, and I've covered Israel, Gaza, and I've covered tragedies, and I've covered school shootings and other conflicts. Sometimes the words we have, and we're in the words business, it's just hard to convey the feeling. I can convey the accuracy of the scene. I can tell you everything that happened. I can interview people. I can let them convey their feelings, which is what I typically tend to do. I bump up against my capacity and my limitations in prose and in talking to people. That's where poetry can come in.
- [35:29]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
When I got my first news job, I remember in the interview, the person was like, oh, you have this liberal arts degree. And I was like, well, I think writing a new script and writing a poem isn't so dissimilar because you need to home in on the most important detail and explain it in a way that everyone can understand in a finite number of words. So in my brain, those things are all kind of connected, right?
- [35:55]
Ali Velshi
It is expression of a bigger idea than the finite number of words that you're given. One of the things that Jacqueline said, which I thought was great because it comes up so much, some authors see their books as windows into another world for the reader, and some see it as mirrors where readers can look at it and see themselves.
- [36:15]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
I think poetry is amazing because it's probably like a little bit of both. It allows you to see parts of yourself in the poem, regardless of what the topic might be. And it's also a window. And I think that's part of what makes Brown Girl Dreaming and all of Jacqueline Woodson's amazing body of work so successful. These different concepts, like the mirror and window metaphor, are one of a million things that came up in this book that we have talked about all season long. We didn't plan for this to be last for any particular reason other than she's amazing, but how unbelievable that she's touching on all of these themes.
- [36:53]
Ali Velshi
She was raised a Jehovah's Witness, and she was coming to terms with how religion can exist in her modern life. That's a theme that was also explored in Bridge to Terabithia.
- [37:04]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
This idea of, where can religion fit into my life as a modern person? Comes up again and again, no matter who you are. And it goes back to exactly what Katherine Patterson said. I'm gonna misquote her now, but if you're really religious, you're constantly questioning God.
- [37:22]
Ali Velshi
She said, if you have real faith, you're going to argue with God.
- [37:25]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
That's what it is, you know. So this is just, yet again, another kind of universal idea.
- [37:31]
Ali Velshi
Another one of Jacqueline Woodson's works is called if you Come Softly, which, believe it or not, is an interracial retelling of Romeo and Juliet.
- [37:41]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
My favorite favorite book. But we have talked to a lot of people who. It came up with 1984, and, of course, with Romeo and Juliet, this idea of retelling classic literature. And I love that. I think it's something that's really important, you know, to use this source material that everyone in some capacity is familiar with to build on these stories. Something that gets into a lot of Introduction scripts, because it is just part and parcel with good literature, right? And this idea of identity. Everyone is searching for their identity, and not only healthy, but normal. To start embracing different parts of your personhood and your characteristics as you grow up, that should be something that we think is very positive.
- [38:26]
Ali Velshi
You know, we had just recently interviewed Ken Burns. He's such a wise guy, and he says a lot of interesting things, but he said something that stood out to me. He said, when you are preoccupied with. By the dialectic, you crowd out the nuance.
- [38:38]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Oh, I love that.
- [38:39]
Ali Velshi
And we live in a society where we are. We are preoccupied by the dialectic, right? This party versus that party, right versus wrong, you know, this ideology versus that ideology. It's just how we learn. But the world doesn't exist in that fashion. And I think when you write in the beginning of these introductions, which you write so beautifully to these interviews about the multiple struggles of identity in each book, what you are saying is that we do not live in the dialectic.
- [39:05]
Nordstrom Rack Representative
No.
- [39:05]
Ali Velshi
These authors who are being banned are being banned because they are not in the dialectic. What the groups who wish to ban books want everybody to do is live in the dialectic. This is your color. This is your race. This is your culture. This is your religion. This is your sexual orientation. This is your history. And if you try mixing that up, you're going to get in trouble.
- [39:24]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Ken Burns should make merch. I think that would be good on a Tuesday.
- [39:28]
Ali Velshi
I loved it. I thought that very rarely when somebody says something do I write it down. I wrote that down thinking, wow, that's true. We struggle in the dialectic all the time. And if there's nothing that this book club does better than to remind people, forget the dialectic. It's too simple. Life is complicated. People have multiple identities and they can get through them just fine. But give them a few tools, like good books.
- [39:50]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Give them a couple books.
- [39:51]
Ali Velshi
Yeah, give them a couple books. They'll. They'll do just fine with that.
- [39:55]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Can I ask you a question about writing your memoir? Because you know Jacqueline Woodson, she chose to write hers through poetry. Did you.
- [40:02]
Ali Velshi
I didn't have that struggle. I was not. I was not considering writing.
- [40:05]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
You're like I was gonna do.
- [40:07]
Ali Velshi
I will say, you don't know this about me. I am quite an accomplished limbicist. I. I'm really, really good at lim. I've got a weird brain. You know, everybody's got like four or five mental tricks that they can. They can pull. I've got a couple of really interesting Ones that apply nowhere in life. And one of them is. Is limericks. Like, I'm like the guy. Somebody will say, I've got a party or I've got a bar mitzvah or something. Can you write me a. A limerick about the subject? So I will say I don't eschew poetry, but, no, I did not consider writing my memoir in poetry, if that's what you were about to ask.
- [40:40]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
I. Okay, I'm not gonna firmly hold you to this, but for season three of the Velchi Van Book Club podcast, please.
- [40:48]
Ali Velshi
There'S gonna be a limerick.
- [40:49]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
Yes, I would like a limerick in there for at least one episode. As if you don't have enough to do.
- [40:54]
Ali Velshi
No, but it's mind clearing for me. I enjoy that.
- [40:58]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
But, yeah, I was gonna ask, did you consider writing it? Not chronologically or like, when you were planning it. Come at it at different points, different ideas, different ways, before you sort of.
- [41:08]
Ali Velshi
Landed in the sophisticated way. Some of our authors have done so where it seems deliberate. Mine has parts that are not chronological. For instance, it starts, you know, in the recent past in. In 2020, and then goes back in history, but it moves chronologically from that point. I did think about that. It's kind of Forrest Gump, right? Forrest Gump's just running his life, but he keeps showing up in these. In these moments of history that are important. All of our. Like that, right? We're all living our lives at a time when things are happening in society that are so big. Right. If you're telling your kids or maybe grandkids a story in 25 years, Hannah, and they're going to ask you about the year 2024 in American politics. It's going to be a year. They're going to talk about one way or the other. This is going to be a year. And they're going to wonder what you thought and what you were thinking, what you were doing and. And how you were talking about it. With that, season two of the Welsh Band Book Club is finished. Over the course of these eight meetings, while speaking with different authors and exploring all sorts of different subject matters and writing styles, more books have been removed from classrooms and library shelves. Across America, censorship efforts are getting worse. Our friends at PEN America, a nonprofit that supports free speech, have been collecting data on censorship for years. According to them, There were over 10,000 books banned at public schools in the 2023-2024 school year. 10,000. That's 10,000 times a reader might not have had access to Jeanette Wall's story of Resistance in the glass Castle, Tim O'Brien's amazing storytelling in the Things They Carried or the life saving messages in Stephen Chbosky's the Perks of Being a Wallflower. So when season three premieres, and there will be a season three, we will have a new president. We could be living in a totally different world. A world where books, libraries, education and freedom of speech are valued and uplifted.
- [43:05]
Nordstrom Rack Representative
Or more.
- [43:07]
Ali Velshi
We could be living in a world where 10,000 books challenged and banned in a single school year feels paltry. A world that could only be imagined in 1984. 4. The Giver or the Handmaid's Tale it's up to us members of the Velshi Band Book Club to read as Resistance. Okay, and having said all of that, we do have one more episode of the Velshi Band Book Club. It is featuring two novels I really loved and that tell their stories in a totally different way through pictures. I'm talking about a wardrobe winning graphic novels Maus by Art Spiegelman and Persepolis by Marjan Satrapi. Combining historical accuracy with powerful illustrations. Both novels in this bonus episode of the Velshi Band Book Club tell the story of what happens when a country crosses an ideological, political and cultural threshold that cannot be uncrossed. You can subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts for exclusive access to this bonus episode. Until then, keep reading as Resistance. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. When you do, you'll be able to listen to the Belshi Band Book Club Podcast ad free, along with other MSNBC originals like Prosecuting Donald Trump, how to win 2024 and why is this Happening with Chris Hayes without ads? As well as exclusive bonus content from this and other podcasts. Sign up now on Apple Podcasts. I'm the host of the Velshi Band Book Club, Ali Velshi. Our producer and literary editor is Hannah Holland. Our Executive producer is Rebecca Dryden, alongside our senior producers Jared Blake and Dina Moss, with production support from Associate producer Nicole McReynolds. Our coordinating producer is Lily Korva. The executive producer of MSNBC Audio is Aisha Turner. The head of Audio production is Bryson Barnes, alongside our audio engineers Katherine Anderson, Katie Lau, and Bob mallory.
- [45:18]
Chris Hayes
The first 100 days bills are passed, executive orders are signed, and presidencies are defined and forgotten. Donald Trump's first 100 days Rachel Maddow is on MSNBC five nights a week.
- [45:30]
Ali Velshi
Now is the time, so we're gonna do it.
- [45:32]
Chris Hayes
Providing her unique insight and analysis during this critical time.
- [45:36]
Nordstrom Rack Customer
How do we strategically align ourselves to this moment of information, this moment of transition in our country?
- [45:42]
Chris Hayes
The Rachel Maddow show, weeknights at 9pm Eastern on MSNBC.