>> Hello, I'm Dr. Ben Vinson III, the 18th president of Howard University.

And it is my pleasure to welcome you to this program, one of many we plan to bring to you as part of the "@Howard" series.

Howard University has the distinct pleasure of being the only HBCU to hold the license of a public television station across the country.

This special relationship allows WHUT to have unique access to the breadth and depth of academic content that is being produced on our campus, from stimulating lecture series and panel discussions on a wide range of topics to one-on-one conversations with captains of industry and international leaders of business, politics and the arts.

From time to time, we will broadcast some of that content in the form of full programs to short excerpts that we believe will surely stimulate and engage you.

So sit back and enjoy.

We're proud to share with you some of what makes Howard University so special.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Um, a number of people, of course, are reading either "Black Liturgies" and/or "This Here Flesh."

So we're so excited to have joining us today for this communal conversation Cole Arthur Riley.

Please give her a hand.

[ Applause ] Welcome to Howard, Cole.

And as we tell everyone who comes to Howard, welcome home.

Welcome home.

>> Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

>> Where do we start?

I really appreciated Dean Richardson saying, "Let's just all pause and take a breath."

And he's so good at that.

I'm usually somewhere running, going like five places, trying to be in multiple places at one time.

And he says, "Are you taking care of yourself?"

And I slow down well enough.

And that's so much of what this book does.

So as I was thinking, like, where do we start?

You're the author of "This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us."

And we'll talk about the title at some point.

And then "Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human."

Tell us a little bit about the context for both books, and you can start wherever you choose.

>> Yes.

So "This Here Flesh" is the first book.

Um, but it was not the book I was supposed to write first.

So I had started "Black Liturgies," the digital project, in the summer of 2020, and I didn't -- and still to this day don't bring too much of myself to that space.

I try to keep it as communal as I can and don't share a lot about who I am.

And when I, um, was reached out to to write a book, it was kind of meant to be born out of that -- that project.

And, um, two things occurred to me at once, which is, I didn't know quite if I wanted people to encounter me in book form, like a liturgist or a spiritual leader of any kind, if they were unfamiliar with who I am as a person.

I think there's a really easy tendency to kind of idealize people that seem or appear mysterious online.

And I think there's a reverence that -- that people had for me that, um, not to sound self-deprecating, I just don't think I had really earned.

And I wanted people to encounter my work for who I am, 33 years old, messy sometimes.

You know.

I eat chips for breakfast.

I'm not some kind of distant sage.

Um... And so I want people to encounter my words with that in mind, to kind of lift the veil a bit.

Um, but also at the same time, I'd been interviewing people in my family, um, for about a year at the time that the publisher reached out, as a personal project, just trying to collect stories and, um, what memories I could.

We don't have a lot of physical artifacts.

And when I went to write, it was very difficult to write, um, kind of spiritual reflections.

It was hard to write about dignity without writing about my father greasing our scalps in the morning.

Like, their stories were so alive in me that, um, they needed to show up on the page.

So "This Here Flesh" kind of, uh, braids together the stories of my grandma, my father and myself, and then "Black Liturgies," which is the latest book, is kind of the freedom that "This Here Flesh" let me write out of, the freedom to kind of believe I could dare to write for a kind of collective voice, um, not a monolithic voice, but a collective one.

And that is more closely tied to the digital project.

>> So "Black Liturgies," I've heard many people say, really got them through the pandemic.

Um, and as challenging as that can be, and as heavy of a load as it can be, you understand liturgy in a way that even churched folks don't.

I know I had a sense of what I thought a liturgy was, but I don't know that I thought that it could be personal or broken.

I thought liturgies were like hymns.

They must be this thing.

So there's a difference between this hymn and gospel music, like gospel music can grow and evolve, but hymns must stay where they are.

So, like, back up and tell us a little bit about how you understand liturgies, and then what kinds of things gave you permission to say, "That liturgy doesn't work.

And I must create my own.

Our own."

>> Yeah, I was with you in that perception.

So I wasn't raised in a Christian tradition or any religious tradition and had this impression of liturgy being -- that it needed to be static and completely kind of, um, rooted in, you know, some kind of tradition.

Um, and I had begun attending an Anglican Episcopal church out of college.

actually, I got a job with one, so I had to attend.

And I fell in love with the beauty of liturgy.

So for people who aren't familiar, um, you might think of kind of a Catholic rite, or a Catholic service or an Anglican rite.

Those are kind of the most obvious "liturgies."

It's a form, a structure, a written form for kind of connecting with God or the divine.

Um, but there's a very narrow way, a narrow imagination for that within kind of Episcopal, Anglican and Catholic traditions and other traditions as well.

But the actual word "liturgy," the Greek of it, translates to, like, "work of the people," "work of/for the people."

And it's pretty simple in that translation.

And I think over time I've realized it's less about, um, it needing to be written, it needing to be static.

And it's much more about this collective form that we're trusting in.

And I think everyone has one, whether we know it or not.

We're all existing in different liturgies, these rhythms and these forms and these ways of being in the world and with each other.

And it's just a matter of if we recognize them.

Um, and so I would say every church has a liturgy, they have a structure, and it's just how much attention they give to it.

Um, but liturgy for me, I've been trying to peel it back to its most simple forms of, like, work of the people.

Is it something that's helping people to approach the divine in a way that feels honest to them?

I don't think it necessarily needs to be written.

I don't think it necessarily needs to be all breath.

I think we can complicate it and continue to reimagine that form.

>> So when you begin to write "Black Liturgies," it was because there was a gap.

It reminded me, and I know you evoke Toni Morrison with some frequency, especially with the title, but, um, it reminds me of that Morrison quote that says if there isn't a book -- the book that you want to read has not been written, then write it.

It is that kind of thing that made you say, "This isn't working.

I have to do something else for myself and for others"?

>> Yes, in a way, I think.

I mean, I think Black people have been writing prayers for, you know, as long as we've used them and have had liturgies.

It's a matter of if we've had the privilege of having them kind of collected and preserved in a, um, in a way for ongoing use.

They're not always preserved, as, you know, artifacts or certainly artifacts that you can publish.

So it's hard.

It's not impossible, but it is hard to find prayer books written exclusively out of the Black interior life.

Um, but I don't think what I'm doing is altogether new.

Like I said, I trace it back to people who have long had -- I mean, people like Howard Thurman, who, um, you know, had these practices of written prayer and written connection to God.

And, um, but yes, so I said I started to attend this Episcopal church, um, in Philly and work for it.

And there's so much beauty.

So the Episcopal Church uses the Book of Common Prayer.

Of course, there's a lot of beauty in it.

I'm a writer, so the beauty of the liturgy really spoke to me.

I was also exhausted and didn't feel like I could do the work of articulation and trust myself to articulate a prayer or words, spiritual words to God in that season.

So I found a lot of good and rest in them.

But in a season like the summer of 2020, I say there are just seasons where it's hard to pray words written by a white man.

It just is, and I think we have to be free to name that.

And for all its beauty, I know what was happening to my ancestors when Thomas Cranmer wrote the Book of Common Prayer and the 15th, 16th century.

Um, and I don't -- it's okay, I think, for me to have a little bit of skepticism and a little bit of distrust as to, is he really capable of speaking to Black interiority, even if his words are beautiful?

And certain seasons, you know, the Book of Common Prayer might feel sufficient.

And other days it just feels insincere to kind of speak those words as my own.

And, um, that's how "Black Liturgies" was born.

>> I especially appreciate, um, the clarity with which and the confidence with which you approach the notion that some things don't work in certain times and to uncover at a very difficult moment also the ways that white supremacy is just embedded in natural -- like no one even thinks about it.

It's like, "What do you mean this is a 'racist' text, or that this text, the Book of Common Prayer, really reinscribes white supremacy without saying so?"

What spoke to that boldness or what speaks to that boldness?

What makes you say someone has to say this aloud so that it's a transparent thing that everything doesn't always work for everybody?

>> I mean, I've witnessed that boldness in, I mean, in my grandma.

She's since passed but she shows up a lot in "This Here Flesh."

And in a lot of artists honestly.

I had a professor in college who, um, I don't exactly remember what she said, but something along the lines of it taking a kind of arrogance to write, to write anything at all.

To believe that you have something to actually contribute and add to, you have to muster some kind of, I don't know, mysterious belief in oneself.

>> But is it really mysterious, or is it your grandmother?

>> Yeah.

That's true.

Or is it mysterious that somehow that's in me?

>> It showed up in you.

>> Right.

And I don't remember when or where.

Um, because I am quite timid.

I am quite reserved.

And then, um, something happens to me on the page where I'm able to be the most honest version of myself.

And I do think that the mystery is in her.

And I just absorbed it in unknown -- unknown ways.

Yeah.

>> One of the things that we do as we talk about the book, chapter by chapter in, um, the Radical Reads, but then also at Metropolitan, is to ask people certain kinds of questions so that there are direct answers -- like there's a "What did she say about this?

How did she define rage?"

But then there's also like this category that we call "sitting questions."

Questions you just got to sit with.

There is no immediate answer to it.

And then the conjuring questions -- "What does this make you conjure in your memory and in your imagination?"

And then questions of lore?

What stories need to be told and how do you tell them?

So I want to sit with the -- I didn't mean to even say "sit with," but I want to spend some time thinking about the lore questions and how you make stories.

Because there are stories that need to be told, but we try to pay a lot of attention to, without being nerdy about it, and without like, letting my African-American literature teacher come out too much, I try to, like, push the conversation around what rhetorical devices is she using?

How is she telling this story?

So it's really exciting to get to ask you directly.

How do you make determinations and how do you put stories together?

>> I'm most interested in -- I say "minor," but not in a, you know, um, not in a pejorative sense, but in minor, kind of mundane stories.

And I think when there's a lack or if there's a void in some way in the ability to like, retain and preserve stories sometimes -- and not even just that, but sometimes you can become kind of obsessed or most interested in kind of the grand and the, like, overarcing stories of one's life.

And, you know, and we think those are going to be like the Oscar nominees, you know, when in reality, when you look at the Oscar nominees, it's actually stories that have a lot of kind of minor and almost mundane moments.

And certainly the Oscars isn't a measure of good storytelling.

But you know what I mean?

When we think about stories that really have the power to connect with people, I think there is something about the simple and the everyday, um, and the slow collection of those tiny fragments of moments.

So "This Here Flesh," it's a lot of fragmented storytelling and it doesn't resonate with everyone.

Um, I stay away from reviews mostly, but I know enough to know that that fragmentation, um, there's a disconnect in terms of whether or not some people can approach it.

And then for others, there's a real approachability.

There's a real, um, ability to approach it because it's not trying to drag you into the deepest trauma and then tie it up with some bow at the end.

But it's just putting these fragments of what it means to be human on the page.

And slowly you get a sense of who my grandma was and who my father was.

So I'm interested in fragments.

I'm also interested in myth, in lore itself.

Um, I entwine myth with a lot of my stories, and, um, I like blending the, like, imagination with the real.

And I think there's beauty in kind of being able to dream out of a moment that seems ordinary and add some kind of magical element to it.

So I deal in a little bit of magical realism.

You have my father kind of levitating and, um, and his friend as a comet.

And of course, these things are, um, of the imagination, but no less real.

>> Because they're metaphors.

Tell us a little bit.

Just the one that comes to mind most immediately of the story that you tell of your father finding his body as a dancer.

>> Yeah, so I, um... My father did some kind of summer program with Alvin Ailey.

He grew up in New York and, um, had only really known his body as labor.

He started working.

He started grind-- He's a hustler through and through.

Started, um, grinding, knocking on people's doors when he was in fifth grade, you know, asking, "What can I do?

How can I make money?"

And he had this, um, real awakening of the body when he was young and was given the opportunity to do this short summer or some short-term project with Alvin Ailey and kind of discover the power and the beauty of his body outside of, um, those who only can imagine how much labor it can produce.

And so I tell the story of him doing a jeté, which is a kind of leap, for the first time, and kind of suspending in the air and having this encounter in the mirror with himself and seeing his body do something, um, for beauty and not for product, you know, and that kind of stirring something in him.

>> And the fact that he makes that recognition himself, um, such that it is not consumption, that is this kind of self-realization, this moment of beauty that he can glimpse.

It's not that people are watching him.

So that gaze is absent.

But now that made me think about the story around the mirror.

So the way that no one ever sees one's own reflection.

I mean, all you ever see is the reflection.

You don't really know what you look like.

>> Yes.

>> I can give a little bit of background, but I think you'll do it better.

So you tell it, please.

>> So I was, I mean, I don't know if any of you have had this experience, but when you see someone else's reflection in the mirror for them and you just know, for you, you're like, that's not actually what you look like.

And you have that moment where you're looking at them through the mirror, you're looking at them in the face.

I had that moment as a little girl with my father.

Um, and his face is not very symmetrical, so the mirrored version of him is very jarring.

Um, and so I had this moment where I look at him and I was like, "That's not your face.

Do you think that's your face?"

And of course, years later, you know, many, many years later, I encountered James Baldwin, who talks about "mirrors can only lie," you know?

>> And pictures.

>> Yes, and pictures.

>> I'm always thicker in pictures.

That's not me.

>> Yes, I feel you.

Um, but yeah, James Baldwin says mirrors can only lie.

I mean, he's talking about whiteness and why white people need to be released from the tyranny of the mirror because it's not actually -- you need someone else to encounter you.

You need someone else.

So anyways, I write out of both of those experiences, the child who sees my father and thinks you need other people to really witness you, to even understand your own face.

I can, for all the self-love and self-exploration and interior work that I do, we're deeply communal creatures, and to understand my face, I need to be in relationship to someone else.

>> Yeah.

That's a beautiful concept, that you can only imagine yourself fully in relation to others.

It reminds me of at Howard in the first-year writing program and really the humanities in a general sense.

We really gravitate around W.E.B.

Du Bois's notion of broad sympathy, which is knowledge of the world that was, knowledge of the world that is.

And then what is our relation to it?

Not someone else's relation, not someone else's view of it, but what is in a standing, flat-footed Black reality?

What is our relation to the world, not the opposite, but being aware of that knowledge of the world that we can only come to know who we are in a kind of 360 view in relation to the world?

You noted earlier, and it's clear in your writing that you are a part of a tradition of Black contemplatives and then other people who wouldn't necessarily designate themselves as contemplatives.

But tell us who are some of the writers and thinkers that you see yourself in conversation with, or try to be in conversation with.

>> Um, certainly Howard Thurman comes to mind.

I think he was the first -- again, I wasn't raised in kind of a Christian context.

And, um, my first kind of, yeah, my first experiences with that was -- well, I guess my very first experience with that was with the Black church.

We would get free lunches from this Black church.

But my first experience with Christian theology at least, was very white dominated Christian theology.

And I needed to, I don't know -- well, I didn't need to, but I did what I could to survive that place by adapting to what that context demanded of my spirituality, demanded of, um, my contemplation.

And so it reduced things like the contemplative life to just sitting by yourself in solitude and being quiet.

And I took that on and thought, okay, this is what it means to be a contemplative.

And Howard Thurman, for me, um, was a bit of a -- a reclaiming of and a reimagining of, okay, he was interested in the contemplative life, but completely disinterested in being detached from the very real present physical injustices around him.

And, um, so deeply formed by Howard Thurman, who, you know, was speaking to trees and doing all this strange, mystical stuff.

But also, um, Black fiction, I think.

So, you know, again, people who might not call themselves mystics or contemplatives, but I think of people like Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, and I certainly hope my work is at least in conversation with them on some level.

Um, Audre Lorde certainly.

Um, and then poets.

June Jordan and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Yeah.

Ada Limón.

And poets who are disinterested in resolution and more interested in kind of conveying what it means to be human, however imprecise that is, I want my work to be in conversation with.

>> Inquiry and messiness and being okay with it, like the tendency of Hollywood or whatever mainstream thing we're after, um, really pressuring us almost, or certainly directing and suggesting that you can tie your life up neatly in a bow and it's going to be just fine is something that you're pushing back against and saying the messiness really is okay, and there's beauty in that messiness.

Um, I just really appreciate your willingness to give us permission for that.

We talked a little bit about your grandmother being a source of inspiration for that.

But as you're talking about the ways that you came into spirituality in different traditions, what would you say in terms of training, um, or like academic training or, um, theological training um, informs your fullness?

>> I mean, very little theological training.

People think I've been to seminary or something.

Very little.

I'm just strictly a lay learner.

And, um, so in college I began attending a white, Presbyterian, very conservative and, um, hyperintellectual space.

But simultaneously, I was encountering a lot of Black fiction writers in the classroom for the first time.

Um, sadly enough, I hadn't -- I hadn't encountered Toni Morrison's work until college.

Um, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, all of this for me was -- and I'd been in predominantly Black schools my whole life, Pittsburgh Public Schools, um, and still it was a dual kind of awakening in college.

And all of it was new to me.

And I couldn't separate what was happening in the theology, that whiteness, a particular kind of whiteness, was, um, demanding of me in a church pew with the kind of freedom and expansiveness of the Black novel.

And so I say that I experience a lot of Black novels as sacred text, in that there's often a kind of spirituality in them that's not demanding.

I acquiesce.

It's not like -- Toni Morrison isn't telling me, you know, what to believe about the sermon in the clearing, about Baby Suggs' sermon in the clearing.

She's leading us into this cry of the body, this intergenerational, emotional, um, experience, a collective experience in the clearing and is just interested if we're going to go, are we going to go to the center when, you know, Baby Suggs calls us forward.

And I find a lot of freedom in that.

So when I left that kind of white-dominated, um, Christian space in college, I fled -- I really fled to the artists.

I fled to literature, to poets.

I didn't necessarily find myself trying to reclaim theology in Christian spaces or in spaces where there was theological training.

Not to discredit that journey, it just isn't what I did.

I just fled altogether and went to stranger places and really the places that your belonging isn't at stake, you know?

If I would have went immediately into a different theological space, there would be a high chance that I would end up in another place where my belonging was dependent on what I said -- what I claimed to believe about God or didn't believe.

And that was not going to be healthy for me in that season.

>> Do you see those intersections, though, where there is the moment of theological awareness and spiritual calling?

And I'm not saying calling like I'm called to do something, but spirit is calling after me.

>> Do you see those intersections between, like, an expansive theology, the mystic in Thurman, and then that moment of there's something that's calling me and I can't quite name it because I don't know what it is?

>> I mean, I struggle with this.

I struggle with, like, the concept of calling, or feeling, um, that sense of purpose that other people -- that some people feel, some people don't.

Um, so, I mean, I'll say I want to feel that.

I want to feel that sense of calling and believe that there's something happening in the fact that I'm experiencing spirituality or I'm having these, um, I don't know, really journeys into myself through Black literature.

I want to believe that part of that is my calling.

But do I have a sense of something outside of me or in me making that call, or who is calling?

I guess the truest answer is no.

Um, and this is where I, um, kind of can rub some people -- or maybe just disrupt some people because I, um, have never felt a strong sense of God.

I mean, I wrote a prayer book.

At the end of the day, I have to contend with the fact that I wrote a prayer book to a God I'm not convinced exists.

And I've never felt a strong feeling that there was a divine presence on the other end of my words.

And still I think there's beauty in the attempt.

I hope that there's beauty in the attempt and the want to be called.

>> And just to clarify a little bit, part of that calling, I think about calling beyond purpose and vision of "I am supposed to be in this place in this moment."

I think about it as, um, "Something's not right here."

Like instinct.

like something that's calling me away from a thing or calling me to a thing, saying, "Take a step to the left, take a step to the right."

Or, "Pick up this book," which I think to some degree, you might say, like African American literature was calling to you because you had been in Black school systems, but somehow not experienced the literature in the same way.

And then you go to a school where I'm sure you weren't required to take courses in African American literature, but you end up there.

So I was thinking about "calling" very expansively, but also want to ask what did ultimately push you towards "I think I'll take this course in African American literature.

I think I'll begin reading this book"?

How did you go from, "I wasn't exposed to it" to "This is the thing I want to sit and do"?

>> Um, well, I had read some-- I'd read Richard Wright in my intro.

I didn't even go to college as a writing major.

I went as a physics major, and like many Black girls right now, I think -- >> Should all be English majors.

>> Right, the sciences are being -- >> Are "calling" to us.

Except they're being told to go.

>> Right.

That's how I can afford to go to college.

And so I was among that percent of people who was like, you can have this STEM scholarship or, you know.

Anyways, um, so I was very hesitant to take any courses and slowly just started to take more and more and didn't, um, declare writing as a major until my junior -- my third year.

Um, but in my freshman seminar, like, literature seminar, I had read Richard Wright and I had this just very cool professor, um, Black woman, shaved head, combat boots, and I adored her.

I just thought she cared so little about making the people around her comfortable, and, um, her name is C.M.

Burroughs, and, um -- or that's her writing name -- and I just became fascinated with whatever had formed her into that, I knew I wanted to be formed by, and so began to kind of have an affinity.

I took one more course with her and then branched into other African American literature courses and, um, yeah, felt right.

>> Yeah.

I appreciate especially the candor, and I think, through the books, we are now accustomed to your transparency and your willingness to share life.

But I especially appreciate how, um, you're speaking to thinking that you're supposed to do a thing because everybody's supposed to do her thing, or this is my gateway into a thing, but being willing to say, "Eh, maybe I should do something else."

So I want to take a couple of questions or think about some of the questions that we have from our audience that is around writing specifically.

Would you please talk a bit about your -- well, let me back up.

The person says your book "This Here Flesh" has been such a blessing.

Would you please talk a bit about your writing process and, more specifically, how did you get started writing?

>> Um... >> As physics major.

No, I'm kidding.

>> So, I mean, my family, the things that they say about me -- among like the three kind of "family roles" I have, the family stories they say, is that I wrote more than I spoke growing up.

I was not a very verbal child at all.

I had something called selective mutism, which is an anxiety disorder typically found in children, where in certain settings the child will feel unable to speak.

It's not always children.

Um, and so I had a lot of speech delays, a lot of speech impediments.

And for me it was, um, quite severe.

Early on, I wouldn't speak in the presence of anyone other than kind of my immediate household.

So I would write and pass notes if anyone else was around.

And my father was, um, a very young father, was terrified by my kind of disconnect with the exterior world.

And I think he was looking for a way to kind of draw me in to life and out of, um, the literal closet I would hide in reading books and writing notes to myself.

And so he began to have us do all of these kind of writing exercises.

He would have these contests and to have my siblings and I -- who were very verbal and outgoing, but he kind of made it a communal thing, a household thing.

We could, um, kind of compete and write poems, or I could either, you know, clean the baseboards, or I could write a poem on the color yellow.

So it was like always this kind of negotiation with words in our house that I think deeply formed me.

We all had to journal every day.

No one ever read our journals.

It was just, did you write, you know, at least one page?

And so my father is a huge reason why, um, writing, for me, was calling.

Yeah.

What was that intuition?

My writing process used to look like every single day I would write.

I had a professor who told me to do that, and I took it very seriously for about a decade.

I think it's in my bio on my first book, and it's taken out of my bio for my second book because I no longer have that practice.

I do still tend to write a little bit every day, but I'm trying to be less, I don't know, driven by kind of like capitalist formation that tells me to produce, produce something.

Um, but also I live with chronic illness.

So my writing process, really I no longer write out of ritual.

I write out of mercy.

You know, whenever my body says you can do this today or tonight, whether that's 3:00 in the morning or whatever.

>> Yeah, you mentioned before, so I don't feel uncomfortable having the conversation, you talked about being like essentially unable to do very much at all during the pandemic, spending most of the time on your back.

How do you, um, find inspiration even in that?

There's a celebration of life in that.

Like, "I'm alive, so, okay, I can do something."

>> I think...

I mean, being sick, I think really does take you to places in yourself.

Anyone that kind of has the experience of, um, occupying a body that feels like a stranger to you, or there's some kind of mystery happening in the body that doctors can't -- it's terrifying.

And also I think the stillness that it requires takes you to places in your own interior world that I probably myself would have avoided for decades longer if I hadn't been sick.

And, um, one of those places it took me, I think, was into a kind of, um, reclamation of my voice as a writer.

And I had been not drawn out of writing, but I had gotten to a place where I kind of not lost hope, but lost appetite, you know, lost the appetite for creative endeavors and for feeling like I could ever share that with the world.

And I think being sick gave me a kind of mentality that was about letting go.

And I mean, not to sound too morbid, but you know, when you're existing in that kind of sickness, again, you go to kind of the worst scenario and you realize time is time and is going to do what it's going to do.

And so you're going to have to locate whatever it is in you that would allow you to become free with a little more urgency.

And I think that urgency led me to the page.

>> Yeah.

That is a beginning response to a question from, um, Kendal McBroom, who might trouble me for calling him Reverend Kendal McBroom, but that's just the reality.

Not that it matters.

It's just some contextualization.

He says, with a constant violent response to freedom -- Black freedom and Black liberation, specifically -- what are some ways communities can protect themselves, their histories, and their well-being and the well-being of their souls?

>> Um... >> We will talk about rage, too.

>> Yes.

I mean, the first thing that came to mind, I watched an interview with, um, the scholar Imani Perry, and she says, "You never tell all the secrets when you're trying to get free."

And, um... >> My friends tell me that.

I don't know that I believe it completely, though.

So I'm big tent, and I believe, like, everybody should be able to go, and my friends are like, "Listen, that's what got Nat Turner in trouble.

Stop.

Like, you have to be more discreet."

And I think like, "Everybody's got to get free."

It's like, "Everybody ain't trying to get free."

And it was only at that moment when she says -- bless her heart, it's Ebony Lumumba -- she's like, "Listen, everybody ain't trying to get free."

So you have to be -- so... >> Yes.

Yes.

I have that written, that Imani quote -- I have that written in my journal to know that I think there's a kind of withholding that is sacred, that certainly, I mean, certainly our ancestors would have practiced a kind of sacred withholding, a kind of shrewdness and a negotiation with how much you're going to give away.

I mean, of course, we're trying to teach, we're trying to express, we're trying to emote and, you know, be people of honesty.

But, um, but again, yeah, not everything is for everyone.

And not all stories are for everyone.

And so communities or people who are kind of feeling the pressure of resistance, I think that withholding sometimes can really be what sustains you on the journey.

You know, um, if you're giving away everything, if you're trying to save everyone, everyone you come across in the process, I don't think you're going to be saved, ultimately.

I think, um, that's how we have people operating out of deep, deep, deep traumatic exhaustion because they're taught they're supposed to save the world, that, you know, we're the light, when, um, sometimes we're the dark, sometimes we need to be the dark and to disclose and hide and realize there's safety and rest and protection in things not always being so clear and observable.

>> So that makes me think about two things.

One, a question from Carlos Botts about how you got your family to allow you to tell their story because he says his family would say, um, "I will tell you at some point," and then they take it to the grave.

So there's that one point of how do you get your family to disclose, but you also talk a lot about the difficulty of being a public person, having conversations that other people are trying to figure out whether or not it's appropriate for them to be there or not.

So you're definitively, declaratively, unashamedly, unapologetically Black in the space and about how Blackness influences, but then there's always the -- or that you're saying that this is a definitively Black thing that has to be processed in a particular way, but also having to negotiate -- or not negotiate -- manage -- and I think that's probably the word, because it's a burden -- manage when people are saying, "Is it okay for me to be in this space?"

Um, and the caveat has to be, you can be in the space as long as you're not trying to center yourself or center whiteness.

So the question from Carlos, how did you get your family to tell you?

And then how do you manage other people trying to, um, take, take, take, and the exhaustion, how do you how do you manage that?

>> Yes.

So the interviews I had been doing with my family, and the first interviews were with my grandma and my father.

Initially that was strictly a personal project.

So I said, "Our kids will see it, our kids' kids."

"It will stay in the family" kind of thing.

So there are places we went in those interviews that I honestly didn't think that they would go, and conversations we had that are not the kind of stories -- It's not the kind of story exchange we would have at the dinner table.

And stories I'd heard all my life in kind of diluted ways.

I feel like something about the questions was opening them up to go deeper, so I had to do a lot of work to ask -- learn how to ask a good question again.

My ability to ask meaningful questions I think had really atrophied, and I was going for the most obvious kind of reduction of their stories, as opposed to kind of those mundane fragments that collect on oneself.

And, um, so I -- yes, I then afterwards had to go to them and say, "You know how you told me all those stories?

I'm writing and they keep showing up.

I keep wanting to write."

And was very, very -- I mean, I'm indebted to them.

Very grateful that they both were all in.

And my family is very private.

I mean, people think I'm a private person.

My family is very outgoing and, like, and lovely and charismatic and charming.

I'm not that.

One thing we share is that we're very secretive and they're just better about their secretive nature, so you think you're getting everything.

And, um, so yeah, it wasn't easy for them.

But as we slowly -- I think their love for me, first of all, is so profound that when they heard I could -- I could write a book and they know I've been writing since I was a little girl, they kind of were like, "We'll do anything," you know?

Um, and so that helped, um, kind of transcend the fear of it.

But, um, but also, I think, as they started to tell their stories, they became a lot more free with them to the point where I had to defend and say, "No, I'm not putting that in."

And both of them, but especially my grandma, she would say, "Put that in."

And I'm like, "No way, Grandma.

I'm not telling that story."

And so I found myself to be almost more protective of their stories.

So, you know, people encounter them in truth, but they're encountering, you know, particular very highly curated stories about their life, um, to protect in some ways.

And there are all kinds of feelings about protecting people in writing.

But, um, I think it is a responsibility at times.

So I was very withholding and kind of holding them back and not letting some things on the page.

And then for myself, I -- you know, I have that written at the front of my journal.

"You never tell the secrets when you're trying to get free."

I, um -- I have a list of things I don't -- I'm so secretive.

I have a list of things I won't disclose in public because I don't want to forget.

I don't want to give it all away.

I'm like, what if I have ten more years of this and I'm doing ten more years of interviews?

I mean, God willing.

I don't want to give it all away slowly.

So I'm like, here are places I'll never go.

And writing that down with clarity helps me when I encounter something casually, to know, no, an alarm goes off, and I'm like, try to, you know, divert, change paths, change course.

And I think that's good as far as white people feeling possession or, you know, that hunger, that level of consumption.

Or other people in general.

I just -- I don't want to say I try to ignore the white people in the digital space, but I certainly have to keep reminding myself not to adjust who's in the room with me as I'm writing?

You know, I'm always trying to ask myself when I'm writing lately -- that's a part of my writing process.

I ask myself, "Who's in the room with you?"

like about once every hour to realize there's all these other voices I've let in, you know, um, that just don't serve me and don't serve honesty.

And so I'm trying to exorcise those voices habitually to remind myself somehow they'll find a way, you know, in -- you know, the white gaze, if you want to call it that -- they'll find a way in, and you have to, you know, evict them regularly and not think you've done it once.

Um, but yes, I tell white people, if you can come to the words and not center yourself, then sure, but I'm trying to spend less and less time even giving them that because it requires energy, it requires validation, it requires some -- so I don't even -- I get asked about once a week at least by someone in my DMs saying, "Is it okay that I repost this?

Is it okay that I'm in this space?"

And, um, I think I'm not interested in being a gate.

That's exhausting, you know?

And that's an exhaustion I didn't want when I started the project.

So I just let them answer that for themselves.

>> So I try to convince, um, young people all the time that, um, success comes in large part out of hard work, persistence, yes, but a big part of it is talent.

We don't talk about the talent as much as we should because, you know, the whole, like, "Waking up is half the battle."

It is.

But you need talent.

So how did you go from a relatively private person, thinking, writing regularly, not always sharing it, to a moment where you move from friends who are followers on social media to becoming -- I can't say Cole Arthur Riley because that's unfair because you've always been Cole Arthur Riley, right?

-- to becoming -- I'll say "the."

I'll just put a -- not a preposition, an article in front of it Becoming "the" Cole Arthur Riley.

What's that journey?

I know a lot of it is talent.

>> Yes, I -- I hope and think so.

Um, and a lot of it is -- Well, I'll say, when I started "Black Liturgies," I did it anonymously.

So initially what it was, was -- well, initially it was, is I felt so desperate to say a thing, and I know that I'm most honest in writing.

And that's always been true for me personally.

That's not true for everyone.

Um, and so I wanted to say it in the most honest way.

So I started "Black Liturgies" completely anonymously because I didn't trust myself to say what I wanted to say if people knew it was attached to me and my body and my name.

Um, and about three weeks, a month into the project, I realized that's not -- that's not sustainable, that people need to know in order to trust.

And I think that there's -- there's, you know, something credible in that.

Um, so, you know, it's a slow, slow transition of first something in me feeling so desperate to get something out and feeling that kind of holy arrogance that maybe I could have something to contribute here in some way.

Um, and then slowly feeling like, oh, I could bring myself into the space and it will be terrifying, but it will -- it will call me to a different kind of honesty, you know, one that's a little less about hiding and, um, yeah, that involves a little more story and a little more who I am.

Again, I don't always do that well of, like, showing who I am, but I'm trying.

>> Did anything about your personality shift in this process?

Because you indicate a certain level of shyness, but the kind of... privilege of shyness or the benefit -- like, you don't necessarily have it anymore.

>> I, um -- I still am very shy, so I've learned that I have the ability, when I need to do a job, to shift.

>> That's fair.

>> To shift.

It's like, you have a job to do.

You have a responsibility.

I think this is true when I was doing, like, childcare and babysitting, of, like, something shifts just by necessity.

But in my day-to-day life, I still am very shy and struggle with, um, conversation.

But I think the people who know me, I mean, if they were here, I mean, they just cannot conceive of the fact that I'm on stages in front of people.

I mean, people I went to high school with hearing that I stand and speak in front of -- I didn't speak in class.

I took the L in every class that required mandatory speaking.

Yes, in college, and my grades suffered for it.

I wanted to come to Howard.

I could never get in.

Part of that is because my participation grades would have never -- did not do my GPA justice.

Um, so I still have that in me.

But I've slowly been -- I mean, slowly you learn to practice your voice and realize you're going to survive after it, you know?

>> Yeah.

There are a couple of things that I thought about as you were describing that.

Like, one, there is this moment when Toni Morrison says -- her birth name is Chloe Wofford, and she says, uh, "Toni Morrison went to Norway to accept the Nobel.

Chloe stayed at home."

Like, Chloe bakes, uh, really wonderful carrot cakes.

Toni Morrison writes whatever.

So that notion that I can come to this persona that's incredibly authentic, um, you wouldn't be able to do the work that you do so well if it that authenticity wasn't there.

So it's not like a separation of personality.

It's just I can rise up and, like, step outside of personality, um, for a public kind of display of thing and a willingness to be used for a thing, um, creates the energy and the courage that it takes, really.

And it does take courage to, like, stand in front of people and be vulnerable with ideas.

Staying away from reviews is helpful, obviously, but, um, you have to have a sense of, what if this doesn't land?

Some care about it, but in more instances than not, if it resonates well with people you trust then it makes a difference.

So another question, this one from Jolene Carter.

How has your own faith evolved since starting "Black Liturgies," and how do you combat pessimism?

And you can separate them, the questions.

I was debating about whether or not to keep them together, because at some point we'll talk about, um, what keeps you optimistic.

But your faith evolving, and then how do you combat pessimism when dealing with, like, really heavy topics in your writing?

>> Yes.

For me, I think my faith or my kind of relationship with God or the divine, um, it really took a shift when I found new places, different people near to me that, again, weren't threatened by my disbelief.

And I think I found that a lot in "Black Liturgies."

And maybe the reason why it resonates with people of different kind of faith communities, or no faith at all, is because I'm trying my best not to ask anything of any-- I'm not trying to ask anyone to think what I think or believe what I think.

And, um, I think there's a kind of exhale in that place to breathe.

And I experienced that myself of, I mean, especially when I was writing "This Here Flesh," I felt like I could be more honest about what I don't really know.

Um, the beliefs that maybe I would have once professed with confidence, there's a lot of ifs and maybes and, you know, "if there is a God," and, um, and I think that can disrupt people.

But that kind of candid way of speaking was good for me to just get out loud, um, to say I'm not a person of a lot of certainty.

I actually probably contain more doubt than certainty, but I'm still interested in this kind of connection.

I'm still interested in the kind of process and life of faith.

Um, so that's changed for me.

And then the second question, how do I combat pessimism?

Um, so the other story my family says about me is Cole was born a skeptic, and I think skepticism is maybe a close sister to cynicism.

And I personally have to resist that, um, pretty deeply.

I'm not someone who sees the positive.

I've never seen a silver lining in anything.

>> Is the cup always half empty?

>> Truly.

More than half empty.

>> That sounds like me, like I'm telling people -- Ron Hopson, who's in the audience, will appreciate this.

I was like, "If 12:00 is the world is about to end, it's like 11:45!"

What are we doing?

It's 2024!

This election could be the end of democracy as we know it.

So, not to bring you down.

>> No, that...

In no way.

>> We can be down together.

>> Yes.

That is my interior life heard out loud.

I have a real, you know, tendency towards doom.

And I have since I was little.

And, um, so it's a -- it's a lot of practice for me and kind of humility.

There's a poet, Cornelius Eady, who says cynicism is a form of obedience.

Um, and of course, he joins others who talk about cynicism and despair really being in service to the oppressor in any society.

The tyrant, the oppressor, in any society has everything to gain from people feeling hopeless, from people feeling like this is the way it will always be.

Um, and so I've had to recognize that the heart of the cynic in me, that is, you know, in kind of secret alliance with the same powers that want to destroy me.

You know, that serves them.

It doesn't serve me.

There's an interview with James Baldwin where the interviewer says, "Are you still in despair of the world?"

And James Baldwin looks at her and he's like, "Despair?

No, I've never been in despair of the world.

Enraged.

I've been enraged by the world."

>> Clear-eyed and enraged.

>> Yes, but never despair.

He says, "You can't tell the children there's no hope."

And he gives his little smile.

And he says, "I can't afford despair."

We can't afford despair.

And I think that is a very necessary check for me to make with regularity, to think I don't possess the privilege of this in the way that I've been tricked to think I can afford cynicism, I can afford hopelessness.

And, um, we just can't.

>> Thank you so much for resting for us all.

Thank you.

Cole Arthur Riley, ladies and gentlemen.

>> This program was produced by WHUT and made possible by contributions from viewers like you.

For more information on this program or any other program, please visit our website at whut.org.

Thank you.