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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi, it's me Glory Adam, and I'm back with

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Speaker 1: some extra special goodness from our recent Well Read Black

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Speaker 1: Girl Festival. Last month was wild. I released a book,

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Speaker 1: moved across the country, and became a podcaster. But the

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Speaker 1: highlight of the month was our five year anniversary with

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Speaker 1: thousands of people gathered from all over the world. This

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Speaker 1: year's festival was our biggest yet with so many the

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Speaker 1: amazing talks and panels that reminded us how we can

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Speaker 1: shape the world through reading. Y'all came through and showed

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Speaker 1: out and showed up for our community of authors, thinkers,

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Speaker 1: and activists as we sat in conversation with women like

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Speaker 1: Gabrielle Union. I firmly believe that that balance is an

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Speaker 1: arm of the patriarchy meant to keep women off balance

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Speaker 1: and feeling like a perpetual failure at all times. If

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Speaker 1: you have a full life, you're not going to be

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Speaker 1: able to be superwoman at work and at home. That's

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Speaker 1: just it's just it's that's not on the table. And

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Speaker 1: Heather McGee, Black women have the highest educational attainment of

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Speaker 1: any group, of the highest labor force participation of any women.

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Speaker 1: Right we are doing it all in playing by the rules.

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Speaker 1: But we are today still haying interest on racist decisions

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Speaker 1: that were made long before we were born, and even

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Speaker 1: Michelle Obama are forever first Lady. A few years ago,

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Speaker 1: when I began the process of writing my memoir, I

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Speaker 1: didn't know what the final product would look like. I

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Speaker 1: just knew I wanted to tell a full story of

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Speaker 1: all my life, all the messy parts in everything. But

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Speaker 1: now that Becoming has been out for almost three years,

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Speaker 1: I realized again and again that it's so much more

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Speaker 1: than just a manuscript. In the last five years, I've

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Speaker 1: continued to cultivate a community of thoughtful, passionate readers, and

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Speaker 1: I'm so thankful that you all have inspired such wonderful dialogue.

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Speaker 1: This year, we have this incredible panel Becoming an Abolitionist.

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Speaker 1: Here's a bit from panelists Dereka Parnell. There's more than

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Speaker 1: one hundred years of literature on abolition or reduces the

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Speaker 1: police or in closing prisons. So I encourage people to read,

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Speaker 1: to be in conversation with other people about the campaigns

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Speaker 1: that can reduce power from the prison industrial complex and

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Speaker 1: invest power in people, and to fireside chat with writer

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Speaker 1: Ashley c Ford when it comes to writing about memory.

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think I can't write

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Speaker 1: about this if I don't remember exactly what was said

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Speaker 1: or exactly what happened. But you remember a lot of

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Speaker 1: the feelings and emotions that you experienced in certain moments

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Speaker 1: as a child, so you can write the whole in

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Speaker 1: your memory into the piece. You can say. You can

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Speaker 1: literally write down I don't remember this, I don't remember this,

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Speaker 1: but what I do remember is feeling like this, I

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Speaker 1: mean so powerful. And we heard from writers like Eddie

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Speaker 1: s Claude Junior and Fara Jasmine Griffin on how they

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Speaker 1: honed their craft when I started grappling with my own wound,

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Speaker 1: my own sense of being a fragile little boy who

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Speaker 1: still has daddy issues, where I began to insert my

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Speaker 1: own personal journey into the thinking that the questions took

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Speaker 1: on a different kind of gravitas, that I was able

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Speaker 1: to take risks as a writer on the page and

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Speaker 1: to press up against what I was feeling about the

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Speaker 1: moment and trying to approximate that on the page. I

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Speaker 1: think all writers should be aware that they are building slowly.

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Speaker 1: They aren't writing into the void, They're writing into the future.

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Speaker 1: They're writing into people who are already trying to imagine

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Speaker 1: it differently. I think we see ourselves as girls for

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Speaker 1: the first time, fully dimensional in the work of black

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Speaker 1: women writers. It's the first time we see each other ourselves.

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Speaker 1: We started these gatherings as a place for us to

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Speaker 1: see ourselves in these spaces, and our new podcasts will

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Speaker 1: be doing the same, connecting us further with intimate conversations

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Speaker 1: and exploring how we can all see ourselves as well read.

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Speaker 1: We had so much fun with y'all and fully planned

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Speaker 1: to keep the party going. There's plenty more to come

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Speaker 1: on my new podcasts, so stay tuned to the feed.

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Speaker 1: I'll be dropping a sneak peak of my show on

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Speaker 1: January eighteenth, and dropping the first episode on February First,

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Speaker 1: tell your friends to tell their friends so we can

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Speaker 1: all be friends. Well read black Girl coming soon from

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Speaker 1: Puschikin Industries