>> Recorder: From the Library
of Congress in Washington DC. >> Karen Jaffe: Jason Reynolds
was tricked into becoming a reader and writer when his aunt gave him
many books that went unappreciated for years until he discovered poetry
and the pull of the written word. He is a graduate of the University
of Maryland with a BA in English and a concentration in
writing and rhetoric. He moved to Brooklyn
after graduation and he published his first book
in 2009, "My name is Jason. Mine too," co-written
with his friend and artist Jason Douglas Griffin. Reynolds won the Coretta Scott
King award, the John Steptoe Award for New Talent for his 2014
novel "When I was the Greatest." And received the Coretta Scott King
honor for "Boy in the Black Suit" and also "All-American Boys"
co-written with Brendan Kiely. That book was also the first Walter
Award given by the organization, We Need Diverse Books,
named for the Ambassador for Young People's
Literature, Walter Dean Myers. He is a writer who practices
every day and strives to improve his powerful stories
that never bore young readers. His stories are crazy and
all about and above all real. You can find his self described
ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com. We know Jason well at
the Young Reader Center. We've been privileged to have him and I know you will
enjoy his remarks. Thank you. [ Clapping ] >> Jason Reynolds: Thanks Karen. Hey everybody. What's happening? You're good? >> Crowd: Yeah. >> Jason Reynolds: All right. So, you know, it's funny I
don't have anything prepared so we're just going to wing it. [laughs] and see what happens. And it's being taped, which
makes it even funnier. [laughs] Sorry. What I want to say though,
most importantly is I want to give just a bit of background
about why it is I'm here today. How it is I came to all this stuff. And then I'm going
to touch on "Ghost." The new book "Ghost." Anybody had heard about it? No about it? All right. If you don't know about it
think about knowing about it. This is what it looks like. And then we'll take some
questions and then we out of here. Nothing major. All right. So this is poem. Right. It starts off "When my love
swears that she is made of truth. I do believe her, though
I know she lies. That she may see me as
some untutored youth. Unlearned in the world's
false subtleties." That is William Shakespeare. That is not what I grew up on. Right. So, like, I know William
Shakespeare now and we can run, all the William Shakespeare's plays and I can tell you all the
William Shakespeare's sonnets and I can we recite all of the
characters and all this that and a third, but when I was
15, 14, 13, 12, 11 years old, nobody checking for
William Shakespeare. All my teachers were like
"Yo, we got to get you on this Shakespeare thing." And I'm like "Shakespeare
don't sound nothing like me and furthermore Shakespeare
ain't speaking English." And my teachers are
like "No, no, no. This is English." And I'm like "The word just
ain't spelled J-V-S-T." And my teachers are like, "No, no,
the B Shakespearean English is a U." And I'm like "Well that
seems a little silly because that spells jvst and jvst
ain't no word I've ever heard." Right. Another poem. "Well, son, I'll tell you life for
me ain't been no crystal stair. There are tacks in it,
splinters, you know, places where there
is no carpet, bare." Right. So we all know
that's "Mother to Son." Some of us know. All of us should know. "Mother to Son," Langston Hughes. I ain't grew up on that either. Right. I'd like to
tell you that I did, but the truth of the
matter is I didn't. I love Langston Hughes
now, obviously. But when I was young, when I was 10,
11, 12 years old I wasn't checking for Langston Hughes either. What I was sort of into was, you
know, a poem that went like this "Once upon a time not long ago. When people wore pajamas
and lived life slow. When laws were stern
and justice stood and people were behaving
like they ought to good. There was a little boy that was
misled by another little boy and this is what he said. 'Me and you, Ty, we
going to make some cash by robbing old folks
and making a dash." Now, that was a poem that I loved. It was written by a
man named Slick Rick. And Slick Rick, for those
who don't know is a rapper. Hip-Hop saved my life. Hip-Hop saved the lives
of an entire generation. And all of our parents
during this time were saying that hip-hop was the thing
that was going to ruin us. They were steamrolling our
cassette tapes on television, banding our music, telling us that hip-hop was only
going to last five years. You couldn't win an award for it. There were no music videos. If you were on MTV, which
is a brand new thing, you were Michael Jackson
and/or Prince and that was it. Right. Eventually, of course, we
know the hip-hop became the thing that is driving young youth
culture around the entire world. A thing that they said would last
five years is driving youth culture around the world. The biggest play right now in,
arguably in Broadway history, we'll wait and see is Hamilton. A historic play driven by hip-hop. The biggest bio pic in history
is Straight Out Of Compton, which is the story of the most
controversial rap group in history. Right. It can no longer
be denied and fortunately for me it was the thing that gave
me everything that I have today because they were the YA
authors of my generation. The rappers were telling the stories
of the kids who grew up like me. You think of the 1980s
and early 1990s when all the three major
prongs of my generation. Specific if you were growing
up in a community of color or a lower income community. You had drugs, specifically
crack cocaine, which I know we're all aware of. For the young folks in the room, I'm so glad that you were
born in this generation. The second thing was the beginning of what we now know
was HIV and AIDS. And I'm sure, for the
old people in the room, you remember how frightening it was. How they thought that
it was airborne. My next door neighbor passed
away from it and my father went to go see him and had to
put on a quarantine suit because they were afraid
you could get it by touching anything
that he touched. Right. And the third thing that happened during this
generation were the beginning of what we now know as hip-hop
music, which was a direct answer to the issues that were
happening in the community. Now for young Jason, a kid who's
growing up in this neighborhood and in these communities,
when I would go to school and the teacher says "You got
to read To Kill a Mockingbird." A kid like me says "There are no
Atticus Finch's in my neighborhood. I'm not interested." The teacher says "You
got to read Moby Dick." And a guy like me says "Captain
Ahab does not exist in my world. I have never even seen a whale. I've never even seen a boat." Right. "Why would I
want to read that?" The teacher says "We want you
to read Lord of the Flies." And I say, "Lord of the Flies? I live Lord of the Flies. Ain't no point in me
reading that book." The teacher say, "We want
you to read "Don Quixote." I remember back in the day
the textbooks had excerpts. Right. "We want you
to read Don Quixote." And I say "Oh, man, this is about a knight who's imagining
a windmill is a dragon." And I think to myself "But
I know dragons in real life. Real live people who
breathe fire on my block. Why would I want to read that?" But what the rappers did was they
created imagery around my life. They created a framework for
us to deal with and interact with to synthesize our realities. So what I did is I
went to this store. This is where my life changed. I went to this store. I bought a cassette tape, because
back in a day, for the young folks in room, you had to go to
the store to buy music. Right. That - you had to
be active to buy music. And I walked in and I bought
Queen Latifah's, Black Reign. Right. I know many of us know Queen
Latifah as, like, a personality or an actress or talk
show host, a model now. Right. But when I grew up
Queen Latifah was a rapper and not only was she a rapper,
she was one of the best rappers of all time, still is one of
the best rappers of all time. And so I go to the store and I buy
Queen's Latifah's, Black Reign. And I get home and I have an older
brother and for older siblings in a room, you know how you
don't like your younger sibling to touch any of your stuff. For the young kids who
have younger siblings, take it easy on your little
brother or your little sister. I had an older brother. He wasn't home. And I had my new cassette tape. My first one that I bought with my
own money, saved up my lunch money. And I walked into his room
and I took his Walkman. Now for the kids in the room, the
Walkman was basically the iPod Pre. Right. We're talking
about that before, before. When we had a little box,
you put it on your hip. It was like this. You put it on your hip. Put the tape in there. Put your headphones on. And I had my cassette
tape and I opened it up, there was a plastic on it. Ya'll remember, and it took, like,
45 minutes to get the plastic. You like, trying to get
the plastic off of it. It's like when you buy
scissors and you've got to have scissors to
open up scissors. This is a strange, like
the strange sort of thing that nobody really wants you
to have what you just bought. So I'm like trying to
get the plastic off and I finally get the
plastic off and I open it up and I'm like here it is. It's like the Holy Grail. There's light coming out of it. Right. And I'm like staring at
it and I pull out my liner notes, because the liner notes,
for the kids in the room, the liner notes are a pamphlet
that came with every single album that had the lyrics written
on it for every single song. So I pull it out and open
it up and it's this big and you unfold it and
it's this long. And I sit down and I
push "play," and I listen to Queen Latifah start rapping and I start reading along
to every single lyric. And after the album was over
I read the lyrics again, but this time without the music. And then I realize that Queen
Latifah was writing poetry, that Tupac was writing poetry, that
Nas and Slick Rick and Public Enemy and NWA were all writing poems. And then I could figure out then how
to take the academic part of my life and the leisure part of my life to
connect them by saying Queen Latifah and Maya Angelou are doing
the exact same thing. It just sounds a little different, but the intention is
exactly the same. And that Tupac and Langston Hughes
are doing the exact same thing for the exact same reason, it
just sounds a little difference. It's written for me and I decided,
then, perhaps I'll write poems. I ain't going to read these books
though, but I will write poems. I did not read a novel
until I was 17 years old. None. Not proud of it, but it
speaks to where, what was happening in the industry from 1980 to 1999. There's a gap there. For the kids in my
community, there's a gap. We had Walter Dean
Myers, thankfully. But most of the books that we read
were about the 1970s and the 1960s. There were no books in
the '80s about the '80s. No books in the '90s about the '90s. Now kids today have an opportunity
to see themselves as they're living. See their lives as they're
living their lives today. That's all I want to do. That's all I've been trying to do. That's all my comrades
are trying to do. That's what I'm here for. That's it. Now, for this book, Ghost. Here's the thing, I wrote
it for a few reasons. Number one, kids all around
the world, specifically, kids of color do more than play
basketball, first thing first. And that was important
for me to say. I wanted to write a sports book. The easy default was to say "I'm
going to write a basketball book." But I figured Kwame got it covered. All right. [ Laughs ] Shake it off, right. It's like, that box
has been checked. Kwame's holding that
down pretty good. So I say well, look, let's figure
out a way to tell a different story, because I was on the track team. And I always found it
funny when I would talk to all my athlete friends,
like the football players, the basketball players, my buddies
now who are in the gym every day, because we're getting older
and they're feeling insecure, and so they get in
there pumping it up. Right. And I always tell them,
because you always see these cats and he's like "Oh, you got like -
you got all these muscles up here and you got these little stick legs. Why you ain't working
out in your leg? Why you ain't running? Uh, yeah, how's your wind?" And they say "Man, ain't
nobody trying to run us." "And why you don't want to run?" And they say "Man,
running is too hard. It's too hard to run." And I say, what it really is,
is that running is basically about you being comfortable
with the feeling of suffocation. [ Laughs ] Like that's what running is about. Running is the most mental activity
of all the sports, because in order for you to win or in order for
you to even complete a race, you have got to come to grips
with the fact that you are going to feel like you are dying. You won't die, but you are
going to feel like you are. The reason that most of us
don't like to work out is because once you run, like the first
15 steps, it starts burning, right. And you're like "Lord, I
can't pass out here on this. I got kids. I got, like, can't
pass out on the track." But the truth is the human body is
incredible, because what happens is after a while the lungs
learn to expand. Your body adapts to the discomfort. And you can push through. And then you're all good. And so what I wanted to do is
tell a story about a young man who had dealt with some
trauma in his life, a young man who had gotten used
to the feeling of suffocation. Right. Literally there are
kids in your communities, all over the country no matter
where you are, where you're from or where you live, whose
normalcy is trauma. Who have gotten used to it and
who don't know that it's trauma, because it's normative behavior. It's Tuesday. It's Wednesday. Right. I always talk
about police brutality, because I wrote a book
called All-American Boys. I hope you've heard of it. I hope you read it. But there's a story that
Brendan and I always tell about when I experience
an issue with the police. And the end of that story I
always say the hardest part about that experience is to
come to grips with the fact that I never ever spoke about it. Never told my mother, never told
my siblings, never told my pops until last year, 16
years after it happened. And the reason why is because
for us it was just Tuesday. Right. I had a 25 year
buddy recently tell me "Man, I just realized that
I've been living - my entire life has been traumatic. Grew up in Brooklyn. My whole life has been traumatic
and I did not know that. And so the decisions that I make
and the things that I do are coming from a place of trauma, because I've
never had the opportunity to deal with it or even know
that this wasn't normal, that this wasn't healthy." And so what I wanted to do is
say "What if I took a character who experiences trauma early,
who chalks it up to this life and then finds himself
on a track team." Now he has an opportunity
to run and there are kids in your communities
where running is normal. And so how can I put this character
in a situation where a coach, his new friends, the people around
him can bump him to the left and say "Look we can decide
what we're running for. We can be running from or
we can be running toward." And now we have an
opportunity to make up our minds about what that's going to be. That's what Ghost is about. That's what the entire - this is the
first book of a four book series. That's what the whole
track series is about, following four middle schoolers
as they deal with this concept of running and what running means
to each of them individually based around their experiences in their
homes and in their communities. And that's it. That's all. That's all I'm going to say. So we going to take some questions. I hope that was all right for ya'll. I like to get in and get out. We ain't about to drag
it out, you know. [ Laughs ] Any questions? Yeah? Female: Can I have that book? >> Jason Reynolds: You say what? >> Audience Member: Can I have it? >> Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, you can have it. Any other questions? [ Laughs ] >> Jason Reynolds:
You know what I mean? Male: Yeah. >> Jason Reynolds: Close
mouth don't get fed. Close mouth don't get fed. >> Male: Over here. [ Inaudible ] Male: There you go. [ Cheering and Clapping ] >> Jason Reynolds:
What you got, brother? >> Joey: Who's your favorite.. >> Jason Reynolds: Your
name's, Joey ain't it? Hey, my man Joey. Let's hear it. >> Joey: Who's your favorite
hip-hop artist today? >> Jason Reynolds: Who's my
favorite hip-hop artist today? From your generation
or from generation? >> Joey: My generation. >> Jason Reynolds:
From your generation. Oh man, it's tough. I like a lot of people
in your generation. Honestly, I'm not one of these
old people who would like "Eh." Right. Because that's
what they did to us. Right. I like Kendrick. I like J. Cole. I think Drake makes jams. I don't know if we could put
him in the hip-hop category, but he makes good songs,
that's for sure. The brother make jams. I don't know, you know. I like - there's a guy named Joey. I can't say his last name though
because it's a curse word. >> Joey: Joey Ba-dollar sign? >> Jason Reynolds: What you say? There you get. My man. [ Laughs ] >> Jason Reynolds: My man Joey. Joey's good. [laughs] Who you like? Joey, you like Joey? >> Joey: Yeah, Drake and Joey. >> Jason Reynolds: Good man,
you've got good taste, Joey. You got good taste. You my man. I appreciate you, man. Any other questions? Yeah? [ Inaudible ] >> Jason Reynolds: You're
going to have to pass it up. We got to play community. Right. So everybody got pass
it up if she say something. Let's act like we're family in here. >> Female: Sequel to
All-American Boys? >> Jason Reynolds: Okay. >> Female: You left
me hanging at the end. >> Jason Reynolds: Oh. Okay. So let's address it. Let's address it. So the question is "Is there going
to be a sequel to All-American Boys, because I left her
hanging at the end?" Brendan and I left her
hanging at the end. So here's the answer "No." And there's not. And the reason why is because the
sequel is not for us to write. The sequel is for you to write. Right. What happens
next is on everybody in this room, which is the point. Right. It's like we led you
there, but whatever is happening on the page after that is up to
the people in here and the people out there and the people
in this country, the people at the White House. It's about all of us figuring
out what's going to happen, what's the next page of that story. So we got to figure out
what that's going to be. We all got to write
that one together. Any other question? Yes, sir. >> Male: If someone refers to as a hip-hop artist,
is that okay with you? Do you feel that's
complex or do you just say "Yeah I am a hip hop artist."? >> Jason Reynolds: I
think it's complex. >> Male: Okay. >> Jason Reynolds: I think I
am of the hip-hop community. I am of the hip-hop generation. And I'm a hip-hop enthusiast, and so hip-hop influences
every single thing that I do, especially when it comes to my art. But there are people who put in a
lot of work, specifically as emcees. So that - we - if this -
this is going to complicated. Right. So think we can sort
of stratify that as like, are you a hip hop artist,
umbrella wise? Are you an emcee? Are you a breaker? Are you this, that and a third? So I guess for the umbrella
level I would say, yes. I guess from the umbrella standpoint
I'd say I'm a hip-hop artist in terms of I'm an artist that
came through the hip-hop vessel and the hip-hop generation. I'm just not an emcee and
I would never claim that, because there are people who
work way too hard at that. The same way that I wouldn't
claim that I'm a poet anymore, because there are people
who work very hard who don't get the credit
they deserve, who are - who had dedicate themselves to
poetry and I'm out of practice. And so that's sort of how I feel. >> Male: And they can't
[inaudible] you write it too. >> Jason Reynolds:
Exactly, here you go. Here you go. >> Male: Except maybe
graffiti writers. >> Jason Reynolds: Exactly, I
worked too hard for you just jump up and be like, you do what I do. I mean you can do it, but,
like, I've sacrificed 14 years of my life to be on this stage. [ Laughs ] [ Clapping ] >> Jason Reynolds: All right. Shoot. Worked hard to get here. Yes sir. >> Male: I'm sorry. I wasn't right here
at the beginning. I might have missed some
of the introduction, but I'm an English teacher in
middle school and I was wondering if you give me advice on how
to reach some of these kids, of maybe a background like yours
or not, but they're in my room and I want them to be involved
and I want to get to them. >> Jason Reynolds: Yeah, for sure. How can I help you
reach some of the kids? So here's the thing, I,
first of all, I don't know. You know, I try to be
as honest as possible about not having any answers. Right. But I will say this. And I was just talking about this
yesterday to a group of librarians. When I was growing up we
all hated Brussels sprouts. Like the worst thing in the world
were steamed Brussels sprouts. First of all they smell
like poop and second of all they taste even worse. And then I got older and my mother
started putting Brussels sprouts in grease, which is how you
get them at restaurants now. Brussels sprouts is always a feature
item on every restaurant menu now. There's a revolution of the Brussels
sprout and the reason why is because people have
started to fry them. People put them in grease now
and fry them up, well, you know, they put them - make
sauces for them. You know, they put bacon in it. Right. All this stuff. And I'm going to ask
my mother, like, "Well, shoot after you done fried
up the Brussels sprouts, all the nutritious
value of it is gone." And my mother say, "Well maybe I'm
not trying to give you nutrition, maybe I'm trying to change the way
you think about Brussels sprouts." Right. And so what I would say
to you is our job sometimes is to divorce ourselves from
the fact that I've got to constantly be gifting young
people with tools and equip them with - I'm imparting
lessons upon them. Sometimes it about, look you hate
reading, my job is to figure out how to help you not hate reading. The rest of it we can get
to, but I got to figure out how to get you engaged. In order to do that sometimes
you got to pull back. Right. You got to put a
little grease in the pot. Right. So if that means you've got
to have them reading rap lyrics in your class, then
that's what it is. If that means you got to
have them reading comic books or the athletes reading Sports
Illustrated and the sports section in ESPN Magazine, then
that's what it is. Our job is not just - it's not to just promote literature,
which is what we all do. Our job is to promote literacy
and there's a difference. Right. There's a difference. Literacy is what will help them way
more than what literature will do. [ Clapping ] All right. Any other question? Thank you for your
question, brother. I appreciate you. Yes? Female: Well thank you
for bringing [Inaudible]. >> Jason Reynolds: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. >> Female: I just wanted to ask another [inaudible] How
do you feel about [inaudible]? >> Jason Reynolds: Right. Right. [ Inaudible ] >> Jason Reynolds: Man. Man. [ Inaudible ] >> Jason Reynolds: So the
question is basically on, the own voices question. How do - what do I think about
writers writing outside of the - outside of their identity,
et cetera, et cetera? Here's the thing. So this is a super complicated
issue, but it's also an issue that we all take different
stances on. And honestly, to be
completely honest with you where I stand is I'm never going
to tell nobody what they can and can't write, because
ain't nobody ever going to tell me what I can
or can't write. I refuse. So I'm very careful. What I will say is if you decide
to write outside of your identity, do not - you have to
understand that what that does is that it opens you up for critique. Right. So just because you
decide to make that leap, do it. It is your art. It's your craft. Right. Do your work. Do your research. Show some respect to the identity
in which you are trying to portray. Right. I found that [inaudible]
human beings, especially writers, we'll sit down and we'll dig
through every single part of a - if I'm trying to describe
a car from the 1930s, I will give you every
single detail and research, the detail about the
car from the 1930s, but I won't research the culture
in which I'm writing about. Right. Which is a strange,
strange thing to me. So I think we have to do more work
in taking care and being careful of what it is we're
trying to portray. But understanding that
you will get it wrong and when you do there's a way
for us to have healthy critique. And you have to be game
for healthy critique. Don't close up. Be game for a healthy critique so that you don't make
the mistake twice. But we all have to do what
we have to do as artists. I'm never going to tell nobody
they can't do what they want to do. So, thank you for your question. That's a tough one. I'm sure right now
my friends are like, that's not what you're
supposed to tell her. [laughs] You know,
but it is what it is. Any other question? Yes ma'am? [ Inaudible ] >> Jason Reynolds: What was
my favorite book to write? Oh my God, it's like asking your
mama who her favorite child is. [ Laughs ] >> Jason Reynolds: You know
what, okay, so here's the truth, the truth is my favorite books to
write - well okay, this is separate. My favorite book that I've written
is "The Boy in the Black Suit," which is a book that
most people haven't read. But it's my favorite of the lot, because the whole book
is about a boy who feels. That's it. I think for me, if anyone's read
all of my books, which you - the one true line you would see is that it's always a
deconstruction of masculinity. I'm constantly trying to poke and
prod at what it means what this sort of image of masculinity in
our country and in our world. And so the books are
always about boys who, like, or I'm chipping away
at some of that. I'm trying to chip away
at some of that stuff in every single book that I write. And Boy in the Black Suit, I
think, was an opportunity for me to just talk about a boy who's
in pain and who's hurting and who doesn't know what to
do with the emotion of grief. And no one is around
him to help him. And so all he can do is
feel, constantly feeling, 300 pages of feeling around a boy,
which I think is just important. We need to see that. So, like, that's my favorite book. Now my favorite book that I wrote. I don't know. All-American boys was -
man, it took us six weeks. I wrote that book in six
weeks and printed it out. That was up there and Ghost
was really, really fun just because it's different
than all the other books. And it's a very different
kind of story. And so I love writing. And, I mean, this is hard. I mean, come on, "As
Brave As You," is fun, because it's about me
and my older brother. Right. So if anybody read it,
that's all - most of that's true. So, yeah, they're all different. That's the safe answer. They're all different and
especially in their own way. [ Laughs ] >> Jason Reynolds: You know. Any other questions? Any other? Yes ma'am? >> Female: Whenever I talk
about When I Was the Greatest, kids check it out right away. And I'm hoping that
you're not shifting to permanently middle
school character. >> Jason Reynolds: Na, na, na, na. >> Female: Go back
to high school kids? >> Jason Reynolds: Na, na. >> Female: Okay, just checking. >> Jason Reynolds: That's a good,
you know what I was thinking about that yesterday,
because I'm working on some other middle grade stuff. And people - I'm like I wonder
if people think that I'm like not going to be back to the YA. So there's a YA coming
out next year. It's called "Long Way Down,"
and it's really, really cool. It's a novel in verse and
it's really fun and cool. I don't want to give too much
away and then there's Spider-Man. I don't know if you guys heard
that news but I'm writing. So Black Spider-Man is coming out. [ Cheering and Clapping ] >> Jason Reynolds: And
that comes out in August, of I think August,
oh, this is on camera. There like, Marvels
going to be like "Dude." But I think it's August. I think it's August of
2017 and that's also YA. So that's - and then I've got
some other stuff in the pipeline. So the YA thing is,
I'm working for sure. For sure. Yeah? >> Female: What are
you reading right now? >> Jason Reynolds: What
am I reading right now? Okay. So, a bunch of stuff. So [inaudible], I mean, Cosin, is
Cousin and [inaudible] here and so. I'm reading Underground Railroad. Yo, it's crazy. There was wow. And so that's amazing. And it's nominated for
a National Book Award, long list and for Curcis I think. And I'm reading Yaa
Gyasi's Homegoing. She's also here somewhere. And it's also amazing. These are all, like, adult
books, but [inaudible] novels. And I'm reading, I just finished
this book called The Vegetarian. Wild. Has anybody read that? It won the Man Booker. Crazy, wild though. And I'm also reading Sarah Czar's
new book I'm reading, Brittany and Kylie's new book, again
now that's it's actually out. I just finished another Brooklyn. I wish I read - I wish I finished
a month ago and I've read it, probably three or four
times since Jackie Woodson. A bunch. I'm reading
like five or six. I try to read as many
as at the time. You know, it's kind of go
through and figure out. Because all I do is
read for stealing. Right. I'm - you know,
you read to steal. [ Laughs ] So I'm always trying like pick. So I'm reading on a
whole different reason. I'm like, what are people doing
that I think is working so I can, like, put it in my own stuff. So, yeah. You got any
suggestions for me? What are you reading? [ Inaudible ] >> Jason Reynolds: What is it? [ Inaudible ] >> Jason Reynolds: Oh,
you're reading Hampton. That's what up. C.S. Lewis. Word. That's right. I should go back and
read some C.S. Lewis. His essays are my favorite though. You know, for sure. Yeah? [ Inaudible ] >> Jason Reynolds: Man, you know
what, you know, I'm a old school. So here's the thing, I believe
that writing and I believe that everything that we do, everything that we're
great at is about habit. If LeBron James was here. Right. If he'd walked in
the door, I'd be like, "Yo, so what you do this morning." And it'd be rhetorical,
because the truth is that I know what he
did this morning. Right. He was at the gym and
he's probably shooting thousands of jumpers. And so for me I have,
I'm extremely habitual. So I get up at 6:30, 7:00
o'clock every single morning. I have the same cup of coffee. I have the same breakfast. I do all the same things. I sit there, I sit down
around 7:30, 8:00 o'clock. I work until about 2:00
o'clock, 2:30 every single day. And the reason why is
because I believe that, like, if I'm LeBron James and
I'm shooting jump shots, around jump shot number 50 my
body is going to know what to do. It's going to adjust itself
to shooting a jump shot. Right. So, every time I miss,
my body will make an adjustment and eventually my body will activate
its muscle memory to do its job. The same goes for the brain. Right. If the brain is the muscle,
then my belief is that if I get up and do the same thing every
single day, that I don't have to go searching for my creativity at
9:00 'o'clock in the morning, like, "Oh, God, I'm banging my head. I got writer's block." For me it's like, no, I wake up. The brain knows what to do. The creative part of
myself turns itself on and I get busy every single day. But it's about habit. It's about routine. And it's about discipline. And so inspiration need
not enter my space, because practicing
craft dwell there. And that's sort of how I do
it, which is also why there's so many books coming out. Because there's so many
books being written. You know, so, got you. We got one more question. Listen, I got, in the back. [ Inaudible ] 7 >> Jason Reynolds:
Who am I listening to? Travis Scott. I know everyone's like. Like it's funny, Right. Because whenever you're in a room like this people are
like "Listening to? Who are you reading?" Right. I'm listening
to Travis Scott, I'm listening to a
lot of reggae music. I listen to a bunches, like
'70s soul stuff and like funk. I really think that
the biggest disservice in American music has been the
under-rated, the under-rating of funk music, the history of
funk music in this country. Seriously, everybody should
go back and listen to all of Parliament stuff, all
the George Clinton stuff, really listen to what they were
doing, talking about geniuses. And so I listened to a lot of
like war and George Clinton. All the '70s funk music because
I think that they were tapping into something that I think
we have all grossly overlooked for a very, very long time. Good question. All right you all. I hope you had a good time. [Clapping] Later. [ Clapping ] >> Recorder: This has
been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
