♪♪ Today, on "Generational Anxiety," would someone, anyone, please sing a love song?

Today we begin the show where all great things begin -- in love, how we talk about it, how we think about it, and how the digital age has changed how we love.

♪♪ Giovanni: And that's what love is.

Love's got your back.

Woman: It's a reaching.

It's a yearning.

It's an aching.

♪♪ Man #1: I think silence prohibits expectations.

Man #2: Are we being heard?

Are we being seen?

Woman: I think people feel safe when they can define you.

Vivion: We created this show because the world is changing.

♪♪ I'm joined by two incredible women, both of whom have influenced how I think about love a great deal.

My first guest could easily be called the greatest living American poet.

She's a legendary wordsmith, changemaker and literary icon, the winner of an astounding seven NAACP Awards, author of three New York Times best sellers, a distinguished university professor at Virginia Tech, and my personal literary hero, Ms. Nikki Giovanni.

Thank you for joining us.

It's my pleasure.

I take no issue in calling my next guest the smartest person in print.

A prolific, young culture critic and writer named a Forbes "30 Under 30" Emerging Figure in Media and a National Magazine award winner, and now a columnist for The New Yorker.

Please welcome Ms. Doreen St. Felix.

Thank you for having me, Bianca.

I'm so happy to be with you, Nikki.

It's a pleasure.

I subscribe to your magazine.

Oh, thank you.

Yes.

[ Laughs ] You're the reason I can eat.

Today, we're talking about love.

And Ms. Giovanni, I would be so remiss if I passed up the chance to say I love you.

In fact, I built this show around you back in the summer of 2018.

I had just finished at Columbia, and I saw that it had gone viral, the video that you did in 1971 with James Baldwin.

And you were 28, you were Doreen and I's age, and he was about 52, and you all had this incredibly prolific, revolutionary conversation about love, tenderness, revolution.

And I thought, we should have conversations like that all the time.

A guy is going with a girl.

Mm-hmm.

You going with Maybelle, and Maybelle gets pregnant.

All of a sudden, you can't speak to Maybelle, because you don't have the money for a crib.

Mm-hmm.

She doesn't need a crib.

The baby's going to sleep some place.

But what she needs is a man to come by and say, "Hey, baby, you look good."

And Black men refuse to function like that, because they say, "I want to bring the crib when I come."

You're never going to get the crib.

Baby, baby.

In this civilization, a man who cannot support his wife and his child is not a man.

There was this passion that you had -- you know, youthful passion, and he was so patient with you.

And so I thought to myself, we need intergenerational conversations like that.

And I said, my first guest has to be Nikki Giovanni.

And so, thank you for being here today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, it's totally my pleasure.

But I was patient with Jimmy.

[ Laughter ] Yeah.

I know he was patient with me, but I was patient.

Doreen, you've seen the conversation.

Absolutely.

So many times I can't even count.

There's a time when you tell him that you wished that the lies that a man goes out and tells to the world in order to survive, in order to, you know, bring back money to the family, that those same lies you wish he could just tell you.

"Lie to me."

Of course you can lie to me, and you will.

If you love me and you're going off with Maddie someplace, you're lying to me.

Yeah, that's the famous line.

"Lie to me."

And Jimmy is speechless in that moment.

And he's stuck.

I had never seen James Baldwin stuck in my life.

And I said, "This is something special."

And so that's really where this show came about, is I was like, we need young people coming together with the legends and the icons and really talking about the state of the world today.

And so I wanted to start it with love, because that's where it started for me.

In that -- I just -- I just wrote a poem for a book that I work with.

It's a nonprofit.

They do poetry.

Right.

And she asked me -- her name is Jerri -- Jerri said, you know, "We need a poem to open it."

And I said, "Okay," and I wrote a poem, "Fall in Love," But you have to fall in love with a book, because it's the only thing that will fall back in love with you.

Mm.

Mm.

I love that.

I love that, too.

You can count on a book.

A man comes and goes.

A woman comes and goes.

But a book, to have it, it's there all the time.

Yeah.

There's no two-way street, you know?

It's just -- Yeah.

You show up for it.

I love the term, "Meet me on the page."

Right.

"Meet me on the page tonight."

And I feel like, yeah, a lot of my love life, especially my early romantic life in, like, seventh grade, eighth grade, it was just reading romantic novels, thinking that's exactly how it was going to be, and that was nothing of how it ended up being.

And I realized it was because I could write the lines for the other person, you know?

Right.

I was like, "I'll do your lines, and then I'll do my lines."

And then in real life, you do your lines, and then the other person does theirs, and they're way off script, and I was pretty pissed.

I was like, 18.

In that interview with James Baldwin, you say, "Love is a tremendous responsibility."

To which Baldwin replies, "It's the only responsibility to take.

There isn't any other."

This may be very meta, so interpret it however you will, but have we failed in that responsibility?

I think that we confuse love with sex, basically.

And I don't know -- I have not -- I don't go back and look at what I've done, so I'm probably the only person here that hasn't gone back to look at what Jimmy and I did.

But it's an easy thing to do, because sex is really, you know, totally a lot of fun.

I certainly recommend it.

Not a lot of it, but, you know, every now and then, it's a good idea.

And a lot of it is a responsibility, because you make a commitment.

When you love someone, you make a commitment, whether it's my grandmother -- I love my grandfather, but my commitment was always with grandmother, and anything that I needed to do, I was going to do, and that's what love is.

Love is that, "I'm here for you."

Or as our friend -- and we were talking about her earlier, and we all miss her -- Toni Morrison said, you know, "Love is a bench."

I don't think she said it exactly that way.

I wish Toni was here with us, but love is a bench, and a bench is something that no matter what, when you're tired, when you're sad, you can sit.

It's going to be right there and it's got your back.

And that's what love is.

Love's got your back.

You know, another thing that Toni said that I love -- "Love is unmotivated respect."

And I think also James Baldwin said, "Love is a growing up.

Love is a battle.

Love is a war."

And I think all of those things, we have great difficulty with.

The growing up part, for me, though, especially.

-Doreen, what do you think?

-So it's so interesting.

My first encounter with love was within religion, which is not where anyone should meet the idea of love, because in that case, love is coercion.

I was raised in the Catholic Church.

My family is West Indian.

They're from Haiti.

And so we have a very complicated relationship with the church in that it was the cipher through which a lot of the indigenous practices that have been brought back from the continent could be kind of, you know, funneled through some of the sacraments.

You know, so you have people who are praying to the Virgin Mary, but it's not really the Virgin Mary.

She's a representation of a goddess that we haven't been allowed to to praise outright.

And that's all to say that for me, growing up, love was something that I thought I always had to give to an entity with nothing in return.

I was very much raised in that tradition of love is conditional, right?

So you have to be good enough in order to be loved.

And so at this point in my life, just turned 30, I'm still doing that unlearning, and I'm still kind of convincing myself that I am worthy of love, just as I am, not necessarily in the context of earning it.

Which, you know, when I was a child, I had no idea how deeply I was being indoctrinated by the church.

And it's taken a very long time to even notice that that indoctrination isn't natural, because it can feel so natural, I think.

Well, one thing you said about earning it -- for me, that's really where it comes in for millennials and Gen Z, I feel like we're a city girls generation.

You know, we're very transactional when it comes to love, and I think it's because patriarchy still very much exists, but a lot of the responsibilities of patriarchy where, you know, a man was supposed to bring the bread home and the dinner and, you know, work and be present, we don't even have that part of patriarchy anymore.

So now it's kind of like, especially among black women, I think it's one of those, what are you going to do for me if you come into my life?

Because we have all the freedom of feminism and we don't even have equal pay yet but we're looking for -- I mean, at least with my friends, a lot of times, I feel like women are asking, "What are you going to do for me?"

Like, I can earn so much for myself.

Yeah, besides a warm bed and, you know, maybe some fleeting romanticism, where is your part?

What are you bringing to the -- what are you bringing to the table, is a question I hear constantly and constantly.

So when you think about earning it, I think that that's very, very poignant.

But don't you think that that fantasy of, you know, the 1950s relationship that was toxic, but the man did bring something to the table, Don't you think that was a fantasy in some ways?

Oh, I reject it entirely.

I don't even -- I don't know if...

But that was, maybe not even historically really true?

No, it wasn't.

But I think that's the thing.

It's the popular fantasy that's now, especially with social media, where people, they want picture portrait love, picture portrait marriage.

You know, they fall in love with the fantasy of, "Oh, someone's going to come and rescue me."

And it's something that you see even more so, probably, now in popular media.

This idea that, you know, a rich guy rescues a beautiful damsel in distress, like, these are cliches that we have repurchased into.

I feel like, in the modern era.

And I know for your generation, Ms. Giovanni, that was an oppressive idea, this idea that a man would, you know, buy -- My grandma, she used to say, "Be careful, because a bracelet can quickly turn into a handcuff."

And I think, you know, you all were very much more Vigilant over your sense of love and over your sense of self.

But I find that at least for heterosexual women in Manhattan, like, cosmopolitan, elite, educated women, a lot of them are just like, "What are you going to do for me that I couldn't do for myself?"

And I feel like that that's a very constricting way to think about love.

You know, for me, I think that it's -- I mean, of course, get your needs met every time, and people always talk about that and self-care.

But what do you think?

Yeah, I think the whole conversation we're having is interesting because, I mean -- I'm interested in what you...

I'm older than everybody here.

I recommend old age.

We're just talking, you know, fairy tales.

Mm-hmm.

We're just talking fairy tales.

We forget.

Everybody said, you know, Snow White is out there.

Mm-hmm.

And the prince comes along and kisses her.

that's not what happened.

If you study the fairy tale, Snow White didn't wake up until she had the baby.

Which means she was raped.

Of course.

That's what happened.

I really totally hate the way we have now treated Little Red Riding Hood, because we forget that was about the plague.

That could have been done right here, "Little Red Riding Hood."

It was about the plague in Europe.

And we know that her mother -- and it almost makes me cry it brings tears to my eyes.

We know her mother gave the last bread and the last meat.

This was a Polish dried meat to this child and said, "Go to your grandmother."

Because all of us went to our grandmothers.

I did.

I don't know about you.

I'm not asking.

But we went to our grandmother's.

When my father and mother fought so much that I couldn't take it anymore, I went to my grandmother, and that's who I lived with.

But Little Red Riding Hood took the last of what her mother had to give and went to the forest, to her grandmother, who if the people, the Nazis said known that her grandmother was there, they would have called her a witch and burned her.

We've got some history that nobody wants to deal with.

I don't believe that some wolf came along and all of a sudden she was like, "Oh, I'm so excited."

No.

She did what her mother told her to do.

And we don't hear about her mother any more, because her mother died, and she was in one of those holes that nobody knows where she is.

But if you want the sex of it, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair."

Let down your hair.

I mean, there's some history going on here.

And you young ladies are telling me something that -- I'm just sitting and I'm like, whoa.

This is 2,000 years ago.

You know, what is this fantasy you're living in?

And you said heterosexual, but what's that got to do with it?

I mean, I know speaking from my experience, I know that for sure.

I think that with a lot of queer communities, the idea of love and the liberation that they're -- I'm not gonna fight with that, any of this for a minute.

Right.

But I don't like the world "queer," because I don't think there's anything queer about who you want to sleep with, who you want to make love to, who you want to be in love, I don't think anything's queer about it.

So you don't think that reclamation is valid?

I think it's a terrible, terrible word to use.

I do.

I just think it's a terrible word.

"Oh, you queer."

I think the queerest thing in the world is some white man who's old shooting some Black 14-year-old in the back and killing him.

That's queer.

I think it's queer that Donald Trump got to be -- He lied to be president of the United States.

You're talking about queers and aliens.

I think that's queer.

And then he also was going to overthrow the United States.

That's queer.

What is normal about that?

And I know that the sex that he purchased, he paid a lot of money for it, because we know a lot of -- we know at least a couple of the women, he paid $100,000 for, because we got the checks.

This is history, right?

That's queer.

And I don't know if you all pay for your sex, but I didn't.

And so I think that's normal.

Hmm.

You're going to get a lot of letters on this one.

[ Laughter ] I think so.

I hope so.

I think so, because you know, even just last week, I was having dinner with a friend who is a man, identifies as a man and only sleeps with men, but would never call himself "gay."

He only calls himself "queer," because for him, that's more of an expansive term.

It's a liminal space.

It's like, it's the in-betweenness of it that I think people have embraced, that they say "gay" meant one thing in the media, in society, in the way that you were treated.

And a lot of what that meant or how it's been proliferated is racialized, is class-based.

And I think that especially for a lot of young, Black people exploring love for the first time, they think, "Oh, I don't feel what 'gay' looks like in the media or what 'lesbian' looks like.

I feel this in-between."

And I think, you know, the fuzzy feeling of in-between is something that even as someone that is heterosexual, I completely relate to.

Like, when you're 16 and you feel like, you're getting those feelings for the first time, you're like, "This is something I really can't pinpoint."

And even at this age, at 25, I can't pinpoint what that was.

And I think people run with that, that, I don't know if I'll ever be able to pinpoint exactly.

But I think it's also, there are some people who would say, to hell with those poles, to hell with that binary of, you know, you're straight or you're gay, and queerness is not necessarily a liminal space to them.

It's more of a way of shirking that, that line all together.

Yeah.

Which is to say, I think that's slightly different from feeling like you are in relationship to the heterosexual.

I see what you're saying.

So it's not stepping outside of it.

It's stepping beyond it, is what I understand.

Or flying or swimming.

Or flying or leaping.

Right.

Yeah.

I think you... To me, coming through segregation, because mind you, I think that the most important thing that's happening right now is the transgender movement.

And I'm really very, very proud of the transgender youngsters, because they have decided that they will decide who they are and what they want to be called.

And it's only fair that we respect them.

And I'm a big space freak.

So I see that the transgender youngsters, because they are all of the races and race, as you know, is a construct.

But I see that transgender youngsters are the ones who are helping to take planet Earth into the galaxy, because we're going to run into other life forms that our gender does not matter.

So two things happening for me on this stage with you right now, you two, is that I think that the transgender kids get to call themselves what they want to call themselves.

Excuse "the kids," but they're younger than I am.

I think that women who want to have abortions have a right to their bodies, and to do whatever it is that they want to do with it.

And I think everybody else has a right to call themselves what they want to call themselves.

Right.

I just think that that's... you have a right to name yourself.

And we came through slavery, and so there's a song, and I'm a big fan of spirituals.

There's a song that says, "If anybody asks you who you are" -- your grandmother, your mother would tell you that when they sold you away from her -- "If anybody asks you who you are, tell them you a child of God."

And that's probably the last thing that you heard your mother say to you when some alien, queer son of a bitch sold you away from her.

There was another word I almost used, but we're on television.

You have to have a right to yourself.

That's what we're saying here, and love is a part of that.

You have to have not just the right to give love, but the right to receive it however you want to do it.

And I want to intervene here, because I think what you're saying that's self naming, so much of authorship, it's about authority and taking authority.

And so I'll maybe I'll ask you, Doreen, direct it to you first.

Where does love fit into your process of maybe self-authority, but also actual authorship, Like, when you're writing about culture, about society, about the way things are moving, is love at the origin of it, or is it the achievement of it?

Because I know it's there, because I'm a big fan and I've read so much of your work, and I can tell there's this subtle, you know, coming together of things that feels like love, something pushing people at least to be smarter, at the very least, which for me, is so big on love, is asking people, "Think a little bit harder than you're used to."

That's a huge process of love for me.

So where is it for you?

I think being in the position of the critic, it's so funny, because the critic has a terrible rap, out of all the writers that exist.

And people tend to think that critics write from a place that is maybe closer to hate or a place that's closer to pomposity.

And for me, it's all about a kind of uncontrollable adulation for the arts.

Like, I am obsessed with people who make art.

I'm obsessed with people who are willing to put their opinion in some shape or form and put it out into the world.

And I kind of think of the critic as, if anything, providing a service -- nominally, that service is to the reader.

Maybe it's to the artist, but really, the service is to your own self.

It's that I have been so moved -- whether you feel negatively or positively about the work, I don't think actually matters.

But you feel so moved that you have to extract what you think about this thing on the page.

And so I don't even know if process -- "Process" is a word that if I'm using it, I'm not being honest about what my writing life is like.

When I think of process, process for me, as a writer, literally means sitting in front of a computer or a notebook and then typing.

Like, that's it for me.

I don't sip tea or, you know, put on mood lighting.

That was never -- I'm not -- I'm not whatever people's version of that.

You're not professionalizing something.

Yeah, it's very -- for me, it's like, it's an urge.

I mean not like sex, but close to it, where it's like, "Oh, I got something to say."

It's not unlike sex.

It's not unlike sex.

I mean, it is like, the ecstasy of finishing it is definitely something.

I have another question, as an old woman sitting here.

Being Haitian... Mm-hmm?

You're talking about smart.

One of the great writers in the world is Edwidge Danticat, who is Haitian.

And I'm wondering, what's the water you people are drinking?

[ Laughter ] Right, right.

Because we're getting some brilliant folks out of Haiti.

You know, there's... Don't you think?

I mean, look at what you're producing.

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, I can't look at you while you tell me... Don't tell you that, right?

It's too much.

I'm doing good work.

But, I don't know.

I think Haitians were artists as a people, and we're also fighters, we're warriors.

Oh, right.

I don't know if you saw a couple of days ago -- I take issue with the way it was presented, because it's the New York Times, which we all know is a colonialist project.

But they did this huge package on the debt that France forced Haiti to pay over the past two centuries.

And they make this estimation that C.L.R.

James, so many people have made before, but the Times has to act like they figured it out.

$115 billion, or something like that.

So you have to imagine that weight -- if you can, like, transfer that amount of money into psychological duress, that's what Haitians are raised under.

So I can't -- obviously, there's not a 1-to-1 explanation, but I just associate my people with a real drive to survive, to the point that, you know, it's driven some people to insanity.

And Danticat was the example that I think made my parents okay with me becoming a writer because they were like, "Okay, she could do that."

Like, when "Krik?

Krak!"

came out -- It's really fascinating about the language that Haitian people speak, it's a Creole, right?

And there are some Haitians who can't necessarily read it or write it, because it hasn't been -- There are efforts to codify it, you know, in the past half century, but for people like my mother -- my mother is in her early 70s.

She couldn't read her language in school.

You have to imagine that split.

It's horrifying to be speaking this language at home, to be speaking it when you're walking home from school, but you're learning, reading and writing in French, which is also kind of the mother language of how the Creole came to be.

And so the way that Haitians adapt, I think is unique to any other culture in the world.

And...yeah.

I don't even know why I got on this train of thought.

No, I think that that's a very powerful thing, because when I think of Haiti, all the Haitians I know, I think, "This is a serious people."

And the fact that, like... We like to dance, too, and we like to party.

Oh -- I was telling you backstage about dancing with Haitians, it's a little bit different.

But when I say serious, I mean, like, I feel like Westerners and even American Black people, we utilize the word "revolution" and "radical" even now, not necessarily carelessly, but it's definitely, especially for our generation, the word "radical" has definitely shifted its meaning.

When I think of someone just saying, love is a radical act -- I don't think getting up, you know, having sex, going to bed, cooking dinner, there's nothing to me like that that's inherently radical, even if it's loving.

But when I think of radical love, I think of intervention for the other.

Like, I am going to put myself on the line for you in some way to love you.

And so I think when I think of Haitians just connecting the two, I really think "revolution" to Haiti is a word that means something.

"Radical" is a word that deeply means something.

And I think even for you, Ms. Giovanni, "radical" is a word that meant something very serious to your generation.

You know, to my generation, we use "radical" literally at breakfast, lunch and dinner, as far as I know.

I recently saw this musical called "A Strange Loop" by Michael R. Jackson, and it's a meta musical about a young, gay, Black man who's trying to write a musical while working as an usher on Broadway.

It's really -- It's fascinating.

You should see it if you have the chance.

But there's a lot of commentary about kind of like The Chitlin Circuit and how it makes this playwright, the playwright on stage, insecure about the kind of work that he would like to produce to the market.

Because the market wants Tyler Perry.

He don't want to be Tyler Perry, and he's a snob, right?

But there's also some truth to what he's saying.

And in one scene, he imagines a conversation with his mother, who's Southern, she's very churchy, and he tells her what his play is going to be.

And she says, "That's very radical."

And what was interesting is that the audience, which was a predominantly white audience, because it's on Broadway now and the tickets are like, $100, they did not understand that "radical" coming from this woman's mouth, coming from her history, was a pejorative.

She meant to say that this is not a good thing, right?

This is against the norm and her, you know, tragedy as a mother is that she can't understand the worth of her son and his gayness.

And so I think it's interesting that our generation doesn't necessarily fully understand the origin of that word and what it used to mean and what it used to signal to Black people.

It signaled danger.

Danger.

You know, generations ago and I have to say, I empathize with people who maybe use words in ways that I wouldn't use them, because what it is, is it's a reaching, it's a yearning, it's an aching.

People do want to feel that they are important.

They do want to feel that the love that they're giving to someone, even if it's broken, even if it's, you know, mangled, is doing something for that person.

And so maybe that's why they reach for words where, if we want to be linguists or we want to be technicians about it, we would say, "Hey, maybe that's not the right framework to apply what you're you're thinking about."

You're nicer than me, because I think -- It's not niceness, though, it's just -- You're more tender than me, I would say.

I think it's curiosity.

I'm curious about what makes people -- Me, it bothers me.

It bothers me deeply, because for me, words are so serious, and I feel like they've become less serious over time.

And when I think about what the word "radical" meant when referencing Assata Shakur or what radical means when referencing Angela Davis, it means for me, like, people that were stepping out on a very serious kind of love or, you know, scared and young, young as us, scared as us, but yet really were like, I'm putting myself on the line.

So I think when you use it as casual breakfast talk, for me, it diminishes people that that is the word when you think of them, that they're associated with.

And so I totally get it, and I think that's, you know, it's it's generous, but it bothers me.

I mean, Ms. Giovanni, you're a professor.

How how do you feel about it?

No, I'm a poet.

Yes, right.

I mean, for me, it's like, you know, you use "radical" the wrong way, it's like, F on the paper.

But you know, words are like -- words are alive.

Yeah.

And so words grow.

And so if we're looking at words, my generation, but if we look at words, it was radical in the 1800s, or maybe it's the 1700s, to run away from slavery.

But it was also radical to stay.

Mm.

Right?

And when I think of -- I live in Virginia now -- when I think of the peanut, which is a wonderful thing.

Virginia calls itself The Peanut State, and Virginia didn't know diddly squat about peanuts.

And I always think of it as a boy, as a black boy who was sold by Africans, because we have to remember that the slave trade that there was a trade running.

Yep.

And so the Africans sold to the Europeans, who sold to other Europeans, who got us here, right?

That's a long story.

I'm not going to carry through that.

But I always think of the grandmother -- because to me, everything is a grandmother -- putting a peanut in the hands of this boy and saying, "Don't forget me."

Hmm.

Mm.

And somehow going through all of it, going down that tunnel in Ghana, going through Middle Passage, coming to Richmond, being stood naked on a podium, being sold, he held onto that peanut, and in holding onto it, he finally is sent to a plantation where he's going to work for the rest of his life.

He's going to die there.

But he plants his peanut.

Now he's like all the Black men that we know in Harlem or in Bronx or anyplace else, right?

They just Black men being foolish.

But he pinched that peanut.

So when his friends say, "We're going to run away tonight.

Harriet's coming.

Come on, you can come with us."

He said, "I gave him my word I'm going to be here."

And he doesn't try to explain to them that "I put this peanut in the ground, and I'll be here until it grows."

But he stays, and that's radical.

They call him a coward.

They laugh at him, when they finally get wherever they can get, they sit and drink a beer or whatever it is they drink and they say, "Oh, we left this fool down in slavery.

He wanted to be in slavery."

And then some white fool comes along and writes a book, "Yeah, they enjoyed slavery."

But what he did was he gave his word to his grandmother that he would plant this where he was and he would be there when it grew.

And this was a radical man, but this was a great man.

And the woman that he married and that he had children with, he couldn't marry her then, because they weren't allowed to be married, but they were in his heart, and they stayed and they watched that peanut grow, and they told their children, "This is our home.

If anybody asks you who you are, tell them you you a child of God."

These were great people.

This changes me.

Honestly, this changed me so instantly, because now that does makes, like, sitting at the dinner table radical, coming home to a wife and a kid radical.

You know, the things that -- I think now, I just hear it and it sounds sometimes so trite, but when I think about how hard it's been and how hard it even is now to live a normal life, to go home and come back every day, like that's not a guarantee.

You know, that could be radical.

It seems even in the last few weeks, like, that is a radical thing, to go to the grocery store and come home.

I feel like what you're reacting to is the market.

You're reacting to the commercialization of people's experiences.

Exactly.

It's like, when you go on the subway and you see a billboard for some... "Black is beautiful."

Yes.

And they're selling you some hair conditioner.

Right.

I don't feel love.

Right.

You're being pandered to.

Pandered, but I also feel like people have made something -- "Black is beautiful" was a very radical thing to say at a point in time.

You know, that was alike in the '70s, you said that and it was like, "Is it?"

And even Black people, Black people especially, would be the people that would push back on those notions.

But I think now it's like, don't make that history into a gimmick, you know?

Don't sell me back to me, like the parts of me I like the most, the parts of me I see in the mirror, and I'm like, "You know what?

I'm getting the hang of this whole woman thing."

Don't then sell it to me as razors or tampons.

It's like, I just want to be -- if you call me radical, it's like -- I love your poem, "A Revolutionary Woman."

That is my favorite poem.

Thank you.

Can I just say that?

That is one of my favorites, where she says, "I used to think"...

I don't know if you want to quote it yourself.

Oh, no.

[ Laughter ] Nikki doesn't know it.

I mean, I'm going to butcher it, obviously, but you basically say, like, "I used to think that I was going to be the one to start the revolution, to stop the gun.

But then I dug," she says.

"Then I dug that if I could be a natural woman doing what a natural woman does, I would have a revolution."

And that changed me.

And that, for me, when I think of being as a radical act, it's really that poem.

Oh, thank you.

It's embodied.

Oh, I'm definitely a student.

I just think it's so important -- and I say this as a grandmother, as an older woman here, and I do recommend old age, I really love it.

That you like yourself, and what worries me about your generation is that most of you don't.

Yeah.

Most of you are not fond of, you know, when you wake up in the morning, and I laugh at my students about that -- and you're brushing your teeth, the first thing you have to say is, "I love you," because it may be the only time you hear "I love you" in the day.

Say it to yourself.

The first thing you do is smile to yourself.

And then if somebody else, no matter what their so-called religion, race, whatever it is, if somebody is trying to be friendly, you can be friendly.

Somebody will say, "I don't know why you're friendly with that Jew.

Look at what they did to..." And they'll go on.

That's not your problem.

Your problem is theirs.

And I had the experience of giving a lecture -- which I got to tell you, it was really wonderful.

And I'm not allowed to mention anything, but there were a bunch of women who worked in a big corporation and they were trying to deal with, you know, "Everybody says that we shouldn't be here."

And I said, you know, you're talking to an old woman.

Do you realize that almost everybody that you're talking to wishes they were in your place?

That the reason that they're laughing at you is that they can't be?

That you're walking into a boardroom and sitting down.

Now, the next thing you have to do is to recognize that you didn't used to always be doing that, so you may as well say what you want to say.

Well, I feel, for me, I spent my whole life wanting to be somebody else besides myself, and people wanted to be me, and I wanted to be somebody else.

And it was a product of a generation that, love is just so hard to find.

It was hard to find in the house.

Like, between my mother and father, it was hard to find.

When my body started changing and it didn't look like the Beyoncé or whoever they were marketing at the time, it became very difficult to be like, "This is the person that I love."

And then, I don't even -- I can't even imagine, you know, my younger cousins that are teenagers, and I speak in high schools a lot, that searching of being like, "Where do I find love?

Where I look for it?"

I'll direct it back as a question, like, where do you find it?

You don't find it.

You give it.

Mm.

It isn't lost.

You give it.

I mean, that's what amazes me.

Love is something you give, and somebody will take it.

But your job is to...

But what if someone takes it and doesn't give it back?

I know people are watching and wondering that.

That's their loss.

That's not yours.

That that comes back to that transactional thing that I was mentioning earlier.

It's a generation that they say, if I give it, where am I going to get it?

And it's kind of like a fix, you know, "Where do I get it?"

You're going to be twice happy giving somebody, and if they don't give, that's their loss.

Are we talking about two different things, though?

Are we talking about desire and then we're talking about love?

She's talking about love.

I'm talking about little old ladies like me running into girls like you and talking to you.

We may never, as the song says, never see each other again.

Or you may call me and say, "I'm having a hard time."

My job is to listen.

I don't have to like you, let alone love you, but you're offering me some love because you know that you need something and that I might be able to give it.

When my mother died, I called Toni, because we were friends.

Toni Morrison, and she listened, and Toni wasn't a great listener.

I don't know if you knew Toni, but she wasn't a great listener.

She didn't waste her time like that.

And I'd talk for about an hour because I was sad, And she finally said, "Nikki, write."

She said, "I have to go now."

You go write."

Which was good advice.

But Toni loved me and I love Toni, and that's the way we showed it.

And I don't know what you're saying here that you expect of love.

You give love, and when people ask you for something, you do that.

You help.

Love is a responsibility.

And you take on that responsibility 'cause you a grown person.

You know, you're not supposed to be at 8 years old, feeding the family.

But you're grown.

You're supposed to be doing.

So this is love.

Now, somebody might say, "Oh, you're too fat.

You're too brown.

You're too Black."

It might be anything.

That's their problem.

And so you don't want to be bothered with that person, because they're a fool.

And that's what I like about Jesus.

And I'm a Christian, but I like the fact that the man on the right, he tried to comfort him, didn't he?

We all know the story.

We all know.

He tried to comfort him.

And the man said, "You say you God, but you up here just like the rest of us."

And I like the fact that Jesus said, "This is a fool, and I am not going to waste my time on him."

He moves to the left.

And he went to the left.

Yeah.

Right?

And that's what we have to remember.

There's always somebody on the left who needs and wants and will give us love.

And I really like the fact that when he rested, because you rested for those three days and we all need rest.

And when he came up, he went to see Mary Magdalene.

He didn't go to Peter, because he knew Peter was was not right.

None of those people.

He didn't go to your first Pope.

He went to Mary and he said, you know, "I'm your bench.

When you need something, you call on me."

Didn't he?

Yeah.

I like Jesus for that.

Do you want to speak on it?

Do I want to speak on...?

You said, was I mixing up desire and -- No, I guess I just mean to say sometimes there are situations I'm in where I realize, what makes love love is that it's you stepping out of yourself in order to relate to another person.

Right?

And if our generation is plagued by something, it's that it's very difficult to step out of yourself, because we live in a hall of mirrors.

You look at your phone, you're looking at yourself.

You go on Instagram, you're looking at yourself looking at yourself, and then on and on and on.

And so sometimes, you know, I'll be talking to a girlfriend or theyfriend who has met someone, and they feel like they're giving of themselves to them.

But in reality, you hear the story, you hear all the interactions, and they're not really interactions, because they've been filtered by so many filters.

Projections, assumptions.

Exactly, and so sometimes I have to catch myself and really consider if the emotion that I'm experiencing is something that is, you know, a channel to love or is it a channel to desire?

Am I making... Is the feeling that I'm feeling really just inside of myself and therefore it's just about me relating to myself and using this person as a surface for projection.

And it more often than not, a lot of like, the crazy-making crushes that I experience or whatever, it's just me.

That person hasn't actually done anything for me, because I won't let them, because I'm so stuck in my head.

and had like, this hall of mirrors.

There was so many times where I thought that I was in love with a man, and then I find out that I really wanted to be like him.

And I would, you know, venture deeper and deeper, and I'm like, "Oh, he's so successful.

Oh, he's so handsome.

Oh, he's so wealthy."

And the more I achieve things for myself, the more I realize, I'm like, "Did I even love you at all?

Or was I looking for something in me?"

And I think a lot of people, they're searching outside of themselves so long.

You're laughing.

What are you thinking?

Oh, I'm smiling because there's just -- one of the songs I love so much, and I've never met her.

A woman, Bonnie Raitt wrote it.

"A friend of mine, she cries at night and calls me on the phone.

She sees babies everywhere, and she wants one of her own.

She's waited long enough, she says, and still, she can't decide.

She's scared, scared to run out of time."

Yeah.

And I think that it is funny, because I'm at least 20 years, probably more than that, 30 years older.

I'm not scared of running out of time, but you all are.

And that's the way you treat your life.

You're scared.

I love Bonnie Raitt, and I've never met her.

I love that song.

"Nick of Time."

We do feel like we're running out of time.

Well, that is so you much of it.

You all feel that you're running out of time.

Because there's so much, you're surrounded by such an apocalyptic feeling.

The Doomsday Clock has been ticking, I feel like, since I was born.

I was born in '96, and in 2000, they said that the computers were going to shut off, the world was going to end.

2012, the movie comes out and they say that the tide is going to change.

You know, now, 2020, the pandemic, everyone's like, is the world actually ending?

And then you get Donald Trump elected as president, might as well end, because I was ready to end it.

And, you know, so on and so forth.

And so it's like, for you to tell me, I mean, it's a wonderful thing to hear from you that you're not running out of time.

But I think that's why we feel this caginess towards love.

"I need it now."

The thing about the apocalypse, though, is that it's an ending, but it's also a beginning, right?

It's the end of the old world, which gives us an opportunity to rebuild.

And so there's a way in which a lot of that apocalyptic pop culture energy is the yearning in the urging for something new.

It's still scary.

I think it could be both.

I think there could be that heart-thumping fear of endings and also the desire.

But fear is good.

We're back to the transgenders, because I am I'm totally convinced there's life someplace else.

I know that if this earth is all of life, then a great mistake was made, and I can't believe that that big a mistake was made, so there has to be life someplace else.

And I love the idea that the transgender students, youngsters, just like we, the anti-segregationists, my group was the anti, that they are preparing us for another world.

Which is so much like our old world, too, our pre-colonial world.

Well, transness was, gender -- I guess we learned to be more gentle with each other, Right.

But again, as we learn to accept the fact that we name ourselves.

And that's the steps that we're taking, that we took.

We're not going to be called -- "You can't call me a slave.

I'm a child of God."

When we worked to be our own free person.

Everybody knows that -- What's free?

We think about freedom as, Black people are not free, but you're not free if you're white, because then you have to spend all of your time making sure that the person you hate is Black.

Absolutely.

You know what I'm saying?

Hate takes a lot of time, too.

Yeah, Ms. Morrison said it was a distraction.

"Racism is foremost a distraction," yeah.

So it's just really... Well, I think it's -- I know we're not out of time.

That I do know.

Your generation has to know that.

We are not.

In the nick of time, something will -- For we Christians -- I'm not Catholic, but I grew up in the Baptist and AME Church.

We know that He may not come when you call him, but he always comes on time.

Well, you know, one thing that you mentioned that I want to dig into more is hate, because you can't really have any kind of prolific conversation about love without talking about hate.

And I think, you know, it's abundant now, and I know it was abundant before.

And so, when I think about hatred, I don't even want to think about, you know, the us versus them mentality that has entrenched itself in our world that is so pervasive today.

But I do want to think about the fact that it seems like even amongst one another, even amongst Black people, even amongst the left, even amongst you know, however you identify, there's not -- I won't even call it hatred, but sometimes I feel a desire now to see one another suffer, to see humiliation happen.

Thinking of cancel culture, thinking of wanting people to be punished for mistakes or shortcomings that often are very human.

Do you see that, and how do we deal with that?

I mean, I wouldn't sit here and say we're more hateful now than we were 100 years ago, because that would be, you know, disrespectful to anybody living in the 1920s.

That's ridiculous.

But I will say that there seems to be this thing that happens even amongst your community, you know, a sort of sneering or hurt people hurt people.

I think that Clarence Thomas should be in jail.

And so should his wife.

Well, I was going to say, that was my next -- [ Laughter ] Because the idea of America was a good idea, and we all have to fight for it.

And one of the one of the advantages of being Black is that Black people have continued to believe in the Constitution.

We have continued to believe that there is some goodness someplace, and I like that about us.

But you say, you know, but looking at Clarence, and then he's married to Virginia, and they tried to overthrow a dream that my people, we three sitting here on stage, have had of a better -- not a great, but a better world.

Now, if Martin was here, if he was the fourth person sitting here, he'd say, "Well, we have to love Brother Thomas because..." No.

No, Martin.

We have to hate him, because he hates us.

And you can't love everybody.

You have to pick and choose.

You can't love everybody.

You can't love everybody.

It's too many fools out there.

June Jordan said, "I need to be a menace to my enemies."

That's what she said.

I knew June.

I met her.

I'm sure.

You know, what's sad to me is that -- and I say that to my students.

I've just retired, by the way.

What's sad to me is that I pick up -- I used to read the obits.

I don't read obits anymore, because now it's my friends.

And I used to collect and I still do, those Black stamps.

When I started collecting stamps, it was, you know, seven stamps.

Martin, Booker T. Washington, very, very few.

And now, my latest stamp was Maya, who was a friend.

And I said, I can't have this.

Something comes up, it's a friend.

My student said to me when Maya's stamp came out, they said, "Oh, don't worry, Nikki," because they like me.

"Oh, don't worry, Nikki.

We'll get you.

You'll be on a stamp."

You said, "I don't want to be on a stamp."

I said, "No, no, no.

To be on a stamp, you have to be dead."

And they got it.

"Oh, okay."

Well, yeah.

Don't head out yet.

You know, you have to...

I think -- and this is what started it, and I'll shut up.

I think love is important.

I think we have to know the difference between love and sex.

And I think that sex, as I say again, I think that sex is important.

Anybody that tells you it's not has had bad sex and need to go and find some good sex.

And the only way you're gonna find that is that you step outside of yourself and that you quit judging who somebody else thinks had... Everybody thinks everybody else had better sex.

I don't do Facebook or Twitter.

I don't do any of these things.

But you know your friends are, "Oh, girl, it was so good last night."

Then why you telling me?

[ Laughter ] Why do I got to...?

Right.

I mean, it's that kind of foolishness.

And what you want is something that you can count on.

Yeah.

You want something... You want a sex that requires vulnerability.

And it is very easy to have non-vulnerable sex these days.

You just download an app, you see somebody, you swipe, ten text messages, they're at your apartment, that's it.

And so I think because we already have a culture that believes it's taboo to talk about sex, period.

So then we're not even at the point where we're talking about pleasure, right?

We're talking about it as a mechanical exchange versus the things that you might need as someone who identifies as a woman having sex with someone who identifies as a man, right?

That's a dynamic.

And then it changes if you're a woman having sex with a woman.

And there isn't a readily accessible vocabulary around pleasure, I think, for, like, the everyday woman who's just waking up at 7:30, going to work, coming back home, right?

There are certainly communities of people who are really affirmative and do spend a lot of time and take a lot of space to make sure that pleasure is at, it's the prime point of their lives.

But for a lot of people, because of the way -- I hate to use the word, but capitalism works, they haven't been able to unlock that part of themselves.

Well, I think part of that is that people, you know, they're not having good sex.

A lot of millennials and Gen Z years, they don't even have private space.

You know, I think about it, I grew up in the hood, like I grew up in East Atlanta and then East Oakland, and I remember when you were thinking about sex at 15, 16 years old, it was quick, fast, in a hurry, because it was in secret.

You know, it was like, where am I going to have sex?

Fast forward to my 20s and living in New York, and I would meet young men, you know, that I was like, "Oh, this person is gonna -- they're so handsome.

They're moving easy."

And they would be so stiff and so, like, you know, they'd want to get dressed right after.

And I'm like, "Damn, is it me?"

But then I realized, like, this is someone that has lived with their parents, has never had a room of their own.

This is someone that, the partner that they're with has never had a space of their own.

You know, when they're in the bathroom, they're worried that someone's going to walk in on them.

There's not even that self-awareness, that space to just be, you know?

I look at Spike Lee films of "She's Gotta Have It" or "Waiting to Exhale," and everyone has all this space and they're lighting candles and they're having, you know, there's so much.

You have your own personal sanctuary to feel safe and to feel like, "Oh, now I'm going to put on some music."

The average millennial, Gen Zer, they're not going into some safe haven of 1,200 square feet and lighting candles and having a bathtub and inviting a man over on the phone.

They are literally typing on the phone like, "My roommate's not home.

Can you come over quickly?"

That's such a different world, you know?

I don't know if you need space to have, you know, good love, but it sure is nice, isn't it?

It sure is nice.

When we were talking about that, I was thinking about "Fences."

I'm sure you've seen -- Denzel Washington, yeah.

Oh, well, you saw the...

But you remember that Denzel finally got a girlfriend, when he got the girlfriend, and she finally, he was saying, you know, "I need her.

I need my mistress," or whatever she was, the other woman.

"I need her because she makes me feel better."

And Viola Davis, the wife, said, "You think it's been fun for me?

You think I've enjoyed you coming home on Friday, getting drunk and getting in --" I just love that, because I just thought, yeah, he's thinking, "I need this to make me whole," and she's thinking, "You think that this has been fun?"

Right.

Right.

That because I say to you, you know, "Oh, this is so good," you think I meant it?

I lied to you.

And she had means that she could have gone out on him and satisfied, which also women have historically done.

Yeah.

You know?

There might not be an archive about it in the way that there is for men kind of stepping out.

Women have always got theirs.

Always have had a piece.

Always have had a piece.

Yeah.

And that's partially because we have to separate love and romance and marriage.

Marriage is an institution, right?

It's an institution that, for some reason, people still want to participate in.

Not me, but... [ Laughter ] Noted, for millions of people, it's like, "not me."

That doesn't mean you can't message me, but I just don't want to get married.

But... marriage often kills romance.

It often strangles love, because it puts people in these really strict positions where you can only move, you know, it's like being on checkerboard.

You can only move in four directions, right?

Because you have this hole that you're stuck into, and the radius is so short.

And so I think a lot of, you know, for my friends who are women and who are straight, often, the things that they're complaining about, I'm like, this is a choice.

I understand that you feel like this is a script that we all have to follow, but you can get off the page.

You can, you know, write on the desk instead of staying on the loose leaf all the time.

And so, I don't know.

It's interesting, having turned 30, I'm seeing -- Not to say that my lifestyle is necessarily all rosy.

It's very difficult to be a single woman in her 30s, especially in New York City.

But I do see people making choices that feel enforced, and that the choice doesn't necessarily come from inside of themselves, as opposed to a knowledge that in order to reach a certain status in society, there's things that you have to do, although those things might not be what you want to do, they might not give you pleasure.

Carolyn Franklin, who was a way better songwriter than people give her credit for, and she wrote it for Aretha, "I know that a woman's duty is to help and to love a man.

And that's the way it was planned."

Right.

Carolyn's a great old gal.

Did you know her?

Not well, because I was living in New York.

I lived on 92nd Street, but she was a Village person.

Of course, she was Aretha's sister, which put a burden on her.

But she was a heck of a fine writer.

And I think that we're only beginning to recognize that Carolyn Franklin was a good songwriter.

Right.

Well, I want to to intervene on what you just said about marriage, because I know that that is a very popular notion amongst our generation, that marriage is a prison and being partnered to one person ad infinitum in the institution of marriage is daunting and it is hellish.

It is something that we don't necessarily, I mean, popularly across Gen Zers and millennials, we don't necessarily want to participate in.

What do you think about that?

Well, I think most people still do want to get married, though.

Well, I would say that our generation, as far as, I mean, let's just say artists.

Let's just even say artists, when people talk about partnered love -- Like, Jagged Edge, which was a very popular R&B group.

I mean, they were top of the charts.

They wrote the song "Let's Get Married."

You had popular singers singing like, "It's time for us to lock this down and be serious."

You don't have the top R&B artists now singing anything about "Let's get married."

Typically, now, when you hear love songs, it's about breaking up or getting over or, you know, it's about escaping matrimony or escaping chosen partnership.

It's about moving from one person to the next.

And really, it's centralized on like, what am I?

What happened to me or what is going to happen with me?

It's not about the other person.

It's almost like in love songs now, you know, the other person is just a figment, and really, the singer is like, "This is what love is for me," you know?

It's not about partnership.

It's not, "meet e at the altar," which was literally the lyrics.

So I think that it is a popular notion in our generation that marriage is a prison more so -- not necessarily completely, you know, across everybody, but it definitely is a growing notion of like, what is it good for?

So one of the origins of the pop love song is the gospel song, which is to say that a lot of what the pop love song wants to achieve for the listener is what, you know, church hymns want to achieve for the person who has come to praise.

And so I think...

I love that you're kind of like focusing on the way messaging in pop music has changed over the past 20-30 years, because in some ways, I think if it is true that there is an increased focus on the tumult of romantic love, that's really us going back to the blues, right?

So it's kind of like the century looping back on itself.

Wow, right.

Which I think is really fascinating.

And the thing about... whenever I'm thinking about what our generation thinks and what our generation does, there's always such a large gap between our love of rhetoric, our love for talking about the things that we want, talking about the things that we want to do, and the way we actually live our lives, which is often in extreme conflict with each other.

I feel like that's true, but one thing that's also true is that we are longing.

Absolutely.

I feel like our generation is incredibly lonely, and post-pandemic, even more so.

We're deeply isolated.

So I think, in some ways, when we listen to music about longing and about quick love, you know, you get everything you need from it and then you're alone again, it's based in a lot of people's lived experiences.

And I think, I mean, if you all want to comment on that, on the isolation that we feel, the loneliness.

I mean, I feel like your generation even just had more friends.

You know, you had a neighborhood of friends, you had neighbors.

A lot of people don't know their neighbors.

I know my neighbors, but I've made it a real point, and honestly, a lot of times against their will.

"Let me carry your groceries.

I want to know you.

I live with you.

I need to be able to knock on your door."

And a lot of people, that's gone, or it's going.

It's going even now.

You know what I'd like to see you do sometimes, if you have a minute.

I'd like to see you right on the front porch, because I think the thing that is most missing in -- and again, now, there's so many years between us, but the thing that is most missing between your generation and mine really is the front porch.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Because you sit on the front porch, you knew everybody, they walked by.

The world was walking right by.

You could reach out and touch it and yell and flirt and yeah.

The deck, you don't see anybody.

My neighbors, we create it, though.

The sidewalk on my block is the front porch.

Yes, Flatbush.

Yesterday...Yes!

But you guys live in real cities.

I live on a mountain.

That's true.

And again, not all through the years, but where I live, it's not a city.

And when I lived in New York, it was really different.

But I haven't lived in New York in 30-35 years.

No, but even in New York, I mean, the metaphor of the front porch, even if you take it like -- we're deeply afraid of one another, like, that's real.

I mean, you know, people are... And I mean, for good reason.

The violence, the random violence that exists in America.

But also for not good reason, too.

Exactly.

I completely agree.

Because of Reagan, because of Giuliani.

You know, so much of these things that you're supposed to be afraid of, they do exist, but they also don't exist.

Yeah, they're specters, they're ghosts.

But even across the country, I would say.

One time I did this interview with a young woman.

She was from Mexico City.

She was climate activist.

And she says, point blank, if you can find the interview, "social media is my country."

That's what she said.

And I mean, that is something that a lot of Gen Zers, you know, people even just a little bit younger than me, my younger sister's generation, they really believe that online is the place to socialize and outside of online is a dangerous place where, one, you can't decide exactly how people perceive you.

You can't control that notion.

And you can't choose whatever echo chamber.

You might hear something that you don't like.

You might see something.

So it's best to just stay in the bubbles I create, because the world is a scary place.

Whereas my mom's generation, you know, she was coming up in '80s New York.

She wanted to be outside.

I mean, the outside that we think we have in the city girls generation has nothing on my mother, who was like, "We're gonna be outside all the time."

In fact, inside was really just an idea.

She like, if we could be out at the club, out at the market, out at the park.

She's like, "I used to go to the park on Sundays and read The New York Times and just talk to strangers."

Stranger, now, the stranger is a very dangerous, dangerous thing in our mind.

And I feel like that's a change.

That's a shift.

Yeah, I think it is.

But I mean, there's just, it's all -- for lack of a better word, growing up, and you're saying they loop around, but it's all... How different?

Well, I'm 78, and you all are, like, 25.

I'm 30.

You're 30.

She has to speak on it.

That's two generations.

Right.

Yeah.

And so it definitely... And people like me, I don't want to speak for my generation, but one of the things that I like about me is, is that I've done my job, so I don't feel like I have to try to tell you all how to live or what to do.

I can only tell you what works for me and how I wish to be treated.

So when we sat down here, you said, "What do you want to call me?"

I said, "My name is Nikki.

Everybody calls me Nikki."

I don't even know why now, because all of my family is dead and I should have asked, "Why did you all start calling me Nikki?"

Because I was born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Junior, because I'm named after my mother.

I should have asked why, but I didn't.

So now I'm stuck with, as it were, Nikki.

It suits me, but if you say what to call me, you call me Nikki, because that's what everybody calls me, and I'm not afraid of being called by my name.

I just don't like to be called out of my name.

I heard that.

It's just so basic.

And so I think that people like me, my generation -- and I think that most of us need to think about that.

We've done our job, and we need to get out of the way of you youngsters.

We need to let you know we're a bench.

You can come sit.

No, I feel like I would just have to say about that, so much of why I created this show and wanted to bring intergenerations together is because my generation, I feel -- you know, I'm right on the cusp of millennial-Gen Z.

We're a proud generation, and I think that we have a vision for the world, but I still think that there's so many questions that people have.

There's a real sort of longing and lostness.

And I feel like your generation, you know, you're still living, you're not a stamp.

You know, I want to be able to ask you and I will just ask you now, how do you cure heartbreak?

Like, how do you get over the hard, hard things?

Because now with this pandemic, we're going through a hard time.

And you can't just sit on the front porch, you know, and I can't, you know, call up my grandma who lives across the country.

Whereas, you know, generations ago, that was unheard of, to be separate from your family.

You stayed in the same neighborhood.

It's like, how do you deal with that?

You know, and I want to give you space for whatever you want to say.

Oh, no, it's fine.

I guess what I was just going to -- I can't believe I'm going to add to something that Nikki Giovanni said, but if I may.

Yes.

I think there are people, though, of your generation who won't stay benched.

It's the wrong people, right?

There are so many people I think, of, you know, even our government.

They won't bow out.

Our government in America is a gerontocracy.

The youngest politician in America is not going to be younger than late 50s, early 60s, right?

You have Dianne Feinstein, who is possibly not even able to do her job because of mental decline.

And that's something that, the way the government works is such that young people aren't cycled in at the proper age in order to have that kind of interfacing, to have that transfer of knowledge.

I'm not going to say it's wisdom, because Lord knows, politics in America is a mess.

I think the government -- yeah, what you're saying, the government, a lot of them need to bow, and should have actually probably never entered politics.

They entered politics in a different world.

But for me, when I think about the artist, it's really about the artists and how so many artists, I think, you know, you see them in a movie and it moves you, their performance, or you hear poetry, and then after a while, they get their accolades or they collect their check or they get comfy with the world and they bow out and people don't reach back to say, "Please come back and let us know what you're thinking, because you're still living.

Let us know what you're thinking about politics.

Let us know what you're thinking about love."

And we still, I feel, need to know, especially because so many people especially in the Black community, that intergenerational exchange is gone.

I know I don't have that connection with even my grandparents to call them up and be like, "Can you tell me about what it means to live?

Can you tell me about what I see going on the news?"

We don't have that, and a lot of people, I know they miss that.

And so we want to be able to call you up and ask you, what do you think about what you read now?

We welcome the call.

And you're here.

You're welcome to call, and I'm happy to answer, because I've got stories.

I mean, that's what I do.

But I have enough sense to know I'm not going to stand up in front of some podium with a microphone and tell you what to do.

And my generation, the generation of segregation, we had to hear from people like Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP.

We had to hear him say that Martin was wrong.

Right.

You know, it just goes on, everybody.

Martin, Mr. -- Dr. King -- we got Southerners here.

Dr. King.

was saying, you know, that SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was wrong.

John Lewis was one of the great men, and John did the right thing.

He said, "I've taken my last march, I've taken my last beating.

I'm going to run for Congress and I'm going to make a difference there."

And having John... What would have happened if Martin had run for Senate?

Mm-hmm.

People you all's age need to be thinking about the politicians of it.

And I like that young lady in Georgia.

Stacey Abrams.

Yeah.

I just think she's wonderful.

But I love the three women who started Black Lives Matter and they just got together, and so I'm very proud of them, but they don't need me to tell them what to do.

Right.

You know?

And I'm glad that sometimes they like to know the little old ladies are proud of them, and I have my Black Lives Matter t-shirt.

I went and I saw them at a festival, and it just brought tears to my eyes, because I was so -- really just so proud of them.

But they don't need my generation to tell you all what to do.

We need to just let you know we're here.

We're your friends.

If you need a meal, we got one.

Come and sit at our table.

If you need to hear a story, if you need a laugh, dammit, we can do that.

But so many of even my generation is still trying to lead.

They haven't gotten over the fact that your day came.

Go get some goldfish, which I do.

I have.

And I have a glass of champagne, so on the days that it's not too cold or too windy, I go out and sit at my bench and watch my goldfish and have a glass of champagne.

And that's my job, is to get out of the way.

I don't mind telling or trying to tell the story, but I'm not here to lead you.

You're here to lead us, to take those next steps yourself, and that's your responsibility.

Yeah, well, actually, bringing it back to your 1971 interview with James Baldwin, in it, you call yourself a pessimist, and he said, "You can't be a pessimist, because to be a pessimist is to stop hoping, and you still have something to say."

He said, "When you're a pessimist, you have nothing left to say.

You stop hoping."

So I want to ask, how do you feel about that now?

Now that you're even beyond the age he was then, are you still a pessimist?

No, no, I think it's a good idea to be alive.

I'm really very, very fond of space, and because I had lung cancer, I'm not able to go, because I can leave gravity, but I can't come back in, because my organs would move and it would kill me.

I'm going to die one day anyway.

So if, for example, I could go to the space station, I would spend the rest of my life there, because how much longer am I going to live?

And I would be delighted.

I always laugh and say, you know, and then what I would want is when I pass, just open the door.

Just open the door.

And now people can look up and some kid, some little kid in Knoxville, Tennessee, where I was born, can look up and say, "There goes Nikki."

And that's all you want to be.

That's a star, when all you are is sitting in space, and somebody is dreaming about joining you.

And that's love.

And that's love.

That is love.

Being in the atmosphere.

Being the atmosphere.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I'll turn the question to you now, and then we can reflect on this in 50-odd years.

Are you a pessimist?

Do you feel hopeful about the state of affairs, about love?

I don't think I'm a pessimist, but I do think if you asked me that question five years ago, I probably would have been like, "Yeah!"

I would have been like, "F Obama.

F the liberals."

And now I realize, at the wise age of 30 years old, what I do find -- I don't know, Nikki, if you felt this way as you were getting a little bit older as a woman -- I just find myself -- my default posture is curiosity.

I'm so much more curious about people's motivations, their behaviors, why they say they do one thing and then they do the opposite, then I am judgmental, and judgment had been such an invigorating force to me when I first began writing because it was like, you know, I felt like God and I was handing down, "This is good.

This is bad.

I'm right."

And there is such liberation in not knowing whether you are right about something.

And I think to be a pessimist is to be certain, and I don't have that certainty any longer.

And that's freeing for me.

It's made life a little bit easier to live.

In fact, I've been focusing more on living than even writing now, which is of course, a kind of writing.

When we were talking about process earlier, I was thinking, my process is not even sitting in front of the computer or the notebook.

It's going for a run or it's going on that date or getting that drink.

They always say, the writing is in the living.

People ask me all the time, "Where do you start writing?"

The writing is in the living, and the loving is in the living.

Whew, yeah.

I think when you say that about curiosity, just to say what I said earlier about people feeling like there's just danger on the other side -- me, I'm looking for the miracle.

I say that all the time.

I'm like, just around the corner, there could be something incredible that happens to you.

And I feel like the more I welcome that, the more truer it becomes.

And I think looking out in the world, I'm looking for the miracle.

I think so, and I think that it's obviously so alluring to think of yourself in the matrix of self-pity, to think about everything bad that's happened to you, all your trauma.

If there is a prevailing discourse of our generation, it's self-care to reparate all the trauma that you've been through.

And I think, what if you just skew it slightly?

I don't mean to negate all the pain that we experience in this world, but what if we think of that pain as being in larger context of pleasure, of excitement, of uncertainty, all the other emotions that we experience, but we don't think are as lofty or as important as being someone who suffers, as someone who has suffered.

I've suffered greatly in my life and I've watched people suffer.

I believe you.

And I think...

I don't want to get on my Iyanla Vanzant, kind of, you know.

No, I mean, yeah.

I think being welcoming towards tomorrow, and I think honestly, bringing this conversation full circle, thinking of how you were in that interview, you know, you were so angry.

You were kind of angry.

But I mean, from the outside looking in, but also, you were so young and hopeful and it seems now you're even brighter.

You know, you're happier, You're looking and you're like, "I'm sure that it gets better."

I always, every time, every day when I wake up, I say, "God, you say that it gets better, so show me how it gets better.

I think of that all the time.

God's got other things to do beside look at you.

[ Laughter ] But... Know.

I'm not on God's side on that, but he does.

I'm gonna end my conversation with this.

There are two turkeys.

There always are.

And the so-called president does something called forgives one, which is foolish.

They're going to eat it.

I've always loved the turkey that had to live on, because this is a turkey that lost its friend, and it's going to have to find a way to be happy and content.

It comes to the school at which I've taught for 32 years, Virginia Tech.

We get the turkeys.

Really?

I didn't know that.

Yes, we do.

What a fraternity.

And they have to find a way.

They're all in the same level of pain, but then they have to say, there's more to it than pain, and they have to go through it.

And we study the turkeys, but we are the turkeys that didn't get chosen, is the way I look at it.

Because the other turkey knew, "I'm here to be eaten.

What the hell?"

But we're the turkeys that have to live on.

We have to live on.

And that's what... My grandma used to say, "You got put on the Wake-Up List today."

We all showed up on the Wake-Up List.

See, you've been talking to your grandmother.

Listen!

Grandmothers are the most important people on earth.

I miss mine.

I don't care what anybody says, grandmothers are the most important people.

As a last question, I just want to give space and ask, what are you working on now?

Well, I was talking about this before we started, but I'm working on my garden.

That's where all my energy is going.

I don't want to talk about a book.

Don't want to talk about a film, an article.

That is the thing that is giving me the most joy and the most material results, you know?

Every couple of weeks I'm like, "Oh, that bud wasn't there.

That's here."

Well, that's why I'm planting peanuts.

You are?

It's really funny.

Yeah, because my soil, its acidity, it's weak.

And I've been studying a little bit.

You know, you read and it says if you could get -- your peanuts give to the soil.

Right.

Right?

And so I'm planting peanuts.

Well, now I'm going to plant something and then live on.

You should plant okra.

My okra didn't turn out.

It didn't?

For two years, my okra didn't turn out.

I realized that the soil is tired.

Okay.

And so though I can't hear the soil, the soil is saying, "Bitch, don't you know I'm tired?

Can't you see?"

So you got to do the peanut first, get some of those nutrients and then try the... That's what we're doing now.

We're putting it in.

The peanut will revive.

Well, I'm going to plant mine and live on.

Thank you both so much for being here with me today.

Thank you, Bianca.

This has been so wonderful.

We'll join you in a second with a poem from Ms. Nikki Giovanni.

I only want to be there to kiss you as you want to be kissed, when you need to be kissed, where I want to kiss you, 'cause it's my house, and I plan to live in it.

I really need to hug you when I want to hug you as you like to hug me.

Does this sound like a silly poem?

I mean, it's my house, and I want to fry pork chops and make sweet potatoes and call them yams, 'cause I run the kitchen and I can stand the heat.

I spent all winter in carpet, stores, gathering patches so I could make a quilt.

Does this really sound like a silly poem?

I mean, I want to keep you warm.

And my windows might be dirty, but it's my house, and if I can't see out sometimes, they can't see in either.

English isn't a good language to express emotion through.

Mostly, I imagine, because people try to speak English instead of trying to speak through it.

I don't know.

Maybe this is a silly poem.

I'm saying, it's my house and I'll make fudge and call it love and touch my lips to the chocolate warmth and smile at old men and call that revolution, 'cause what's real is really real.

And I still like men in tight pants, 'cause everybody has something to give and more important, needs something to take.

And this is my house and you make me happy.

So this is your poem.

[ Cheers and applause ]