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I must say that Ive been speaking since I was three years old in churches.
Im never nervous or intimidated, but writers are rock stars to me.
And thank you, Errol McDonald for inviting me to be here today.
My head and my heart were swirling.
Every time I looked at her, I couldnt even speak.
I had to catch my breath.
And Maya said, Sit down.
We have people here to do that.
So I sat down, I obeyed of course.
I felt like I was all of seven years old.
Cause after all, she was there.
And so many others, that day.
Mari Evans, Sister Angela Davis was there, Nikki Giovanni was there, Rita Dove was there….
It was a writers mecca.
And I was there, sitting at the table, taking it all in.
And as I look back, that day remains one of the great thrills of my life.
You know, I didnt really get to speak to Toni Morrison that day.
I was just too bedazzled.
There was no distance between Toni Morrison and her words.
And this: Facts can exist without human intelligence, but truth cannot.
She believed it was a writers job to rip the veil off to bore down to the truth.
She took the canon, she broke it open.
Toni Morrison was her words, she is her words, for her words often were confrontational.
She spoke the unspoken, she probed the unexplored.
To be among them.
To be among all people.
Her words dont permit the reader to down them quickly and forget them, we know that.
They refuse to be skimmed.
They will not be ignored.
They can gut you, turn you upside down, make you think you just dont get it.
A liberation, an ascension to another level of understanding.
Who even knows they are gallant?
Well, her gallantry remains always to help us navigate our way through.
Sixteen years later he had one of the best farms in Montour County.
A farm that colored their lives like a paintbrush and spoke to them like a sermon.
the farm said to them.
See what it’s possible for you to do?
Stop sniveling, it said.
Stop picking around the edges of the world.
Take advantage, and if you cant take advantage, take disadvantage.
On this planet, in this nation, in this country right here.Nowhere else!
We got a home in this rock, dont you see!
