Jason Reynolds: National Book Festival 2021

[Music] sponsored by the institute of museum and library services hi everyone and welcome to the national book festival my name is courtney kim and i'm a senior at rich montgomery high school in maryland and i'm brandon marshall i'm a senior at duke ellington school of the arts in washington d.c we're excited to be joined today by jason reynolds he's the author of 14 books including look both ways a tale told in 10 blocks and a fourth common graphic novel stunt boy in the meantime which will be out in november jason is also the current national ambassador for young people's literature jason will take some of your questions today so it'd be great if you could start thinking about what you'd like to ask him please put your questions in the q a feature below we'd also love to know your first name and what you're watching from so if you feel comfortable sharing please include that information in your question as well now before we get started we'd like to ask you first jason um what does your role entail as national ambassador for young people's literature what have you been up to during your term um what have i been up to first of all i want to say good let's see what is it afternoon to yeah i'm happy you're all here it's good to see everybody what what does the job entail you know what have i been up to you know to be completely honest with you courtney um okay first i'll tell you what the job is and then i'll tell you what i've been up to and how complicated it's been so the job itself is basically uh to be the cheerleader for literature for this country right that's basically what it is my job is just to encourage everybody to read and write into and to lean into storytelling to lean into literature to lean into the literature that exists from the outside of themselves to lean into the stories that exist on the inside of of all of us to connect um by using these stories right the most human thing about us all is that we all have a story and what's even more human is that most of our stories are probably closer more closely related than we think we just don't share them enough uh now that's sort of the job and that's sort of the the goal of what it is that i'm doing but i'm also just a human being living through the pandemic right so so because i'm just a person living through the pandemic i've had to pivot and think about how i can make that job happen how i can can fulfill my responsibilities um while doing it digitally how can i make sure that i'm i'm with the young folks digitally how can i make sure that they know that i'm there and that i'm rooting for them and that i'm still pushing what i'm pushing and and and trying to foster a love of story but doing all of that digitally so what i'm hoping moving forward in the next year that i'll be able to get out there and actually touch the street and shake a few hands and have some real human connection with some young folks i think that perfectly defines the role of an ambassador so we're really happy to see you active in our world as well no i appreciate that thank you claire i'll pay you later courtney i'll get you your check later [Music] thank you for that okay so i wanted to ask so a lot of your books delve into the lives of you know young black kids and i really wanted to ask can you tell us about the first time you realize that people might see or teach you differently because of the color of your skin truth good question man gosh you know what it's funny and brandon you're from here so well both of you are from here but but brandon as a young black man you're from here and that and i know um and we say from here by the way we're talking about dc or diesel metropolitan area and what was tricky for me growing up is that i grew up around all black people right so like it's complicated for me i don't think i really knew that i was different different i didn't because i'm not different but i don't think i knew that people might treat me differently until i got to college because my life in general had been around i was around black folks my whole life black family black community black neighborhood like schools um but when i got to college i think things became drastically different uh i'll tell you i tell you one of the most obvious ways i noticed was that in my classrooms you know thinking about my classrooms and showing up and realizing that everyone had read things that i hadn't read and everyone seemed to be enthusiastic about things that i was not enthusiastic about because my community and my culture was just very different and also recognizing that my college professors um did not recognize my culture and the and the traditions the literary traditions or the sociological anthropo anthropological traditions or any of those things they didn't recognize them as anything worth studying right like imagine imagine having like okay i gotta take an african-american studies class right which is a wonderful thing by the way but think about the fact that if i don't take this african-american studies class my culture and my history which is woven into american history will never be taught i'll never know it which is weird because we were there every step of the way so i think looking back on it now i think college was when i really started to like realize that um that my experiences were different that my childhood experiences were different than my roommates or within my classmates uh and that and that my life was not a life apparently deemed worthy of studying or thinking about or intellectualizing or or celebrating or praising or something that was high literature or high art or even though to me it was and it is right and i think that's the way it was but i grew up around all black folks i ain't even know i ain't even i didn't know until i knew you know thank you on a similar note to what brandon asked a little maybe a little broader i also noticed that as i read more of your interviews and your books it becomes clear that you're a big loving advocate for children and teens and as a teen who is nearing her 20s myself too i was really eager to ask you what does youth mean to you and feel free to take any direction with this question i would love to know like what's the magic that draws you into children how did you view children first when you were a child versus now that you're an adult an accomplished author writing to children so what does like what does childhood mean to you oh this is good right because this is a good question i think i think for me youth like youth as so okay so the word the word youth to me is an energy right it's a particular kind of like it's a feeling more so than it is an age range um which is the way that i try to stay connected right that energy that that the look when i think of young people right when i think of the youth i think of human beings who um who are learning things for the first time and because they're learning them for the first time in the context of their own lives they're changing the way the meaning of those things right or what does that mean it means that like if if let's pick music if you ask if you ask your your grandmother what music is she'll define that music based on the context of her childhood right where she was when she first heard it so like if it's my mom it's like oh the 1950s or 1960s so to her music is motown right because that music literally sat within the context of her childhood and it changed based on where they were in that space in that particular time in the country and in the world right the same goes for music today if i say what's music you may be like oh music is you know lil nas x right music is doji cat music is taylor swift music whatever it is right based on the context of your lives and how you all are changing it to fit that context and so for me when i think of like young people in the energy of youth i'm thinking about taking something that we all think we know and changing it moving it pushing it forward disrupting it uh you know agitating it right like so that it can become a new thing that we can then claim and rename as our own that's a special thing that i never actually want to let go of because what it allows me to do is to continue to grow if you lose your youth you stop growing because that those young years are usually when you're growing the most because you're having new experiences my point in life my mission in life is to be having new experiences or to be taking old experiences and giving them new context based on where i am at this particular time in my life and pushing the line forward right that's the beauty that's also the reason why i only want to be around y'all and why i spend so much time with y'all is because i think that like what i'm what i love to witness young people shaking the table i love the fact that y'all are upset i love the fact that y'all are a little annoyed by everything i love the fact that you all are challenging the adults and saying we need new language and we need new new codes for for the way we choose to live our lives and the many identities that we all possess right i love that i think it's i think that it's it's powerful and that there's growth in the and the discomfort that so many adults feel around it but also i'm kind of like how else we gonna grow and change how is the world going continue to move forward if we don't allow ourselves to listen to our young people who are saying this is the way that i want to live my life and this is the world that i envision for myself and and this is what you all are going to have to do unless you're going to if you're not going to move out the way then you're going to have to sort of acquiesce to what it is that we need for the world that we're building especially if all of y'all adults be talking all this smack about how we are quote-unquote the future then allow the future to come into fruition and in order to do so you're gonna have to let your hands up off the rain sometimes i love that energy i love it right and i think i don't know i think this is why i'm i'm i'm a little obsessed with you all and a little um enamored and really just inspired by everything that you are like it don't mean that y'all don't get on my nerves and drive me up the wall because you do uh but that's also natural it's a part of it right it's a part of it but i can look through all the noise and see that there's so much genius and potential in all of you that was an amazing answer i thought think about this question myself a lot and i really wish i could type down part of what you said but i can't do that right now but thank you so much i think that really put things into perspective now we do need to move on to the live q a because people have been sending in questions for you so our first question comes from dennis uh she asks uh would you share some contemporary authors work that excites or inspires you oh yeah there's so many there's so many uh there's let's see who am i thinking about right this moment uh there's a woman she has a debut and a debut novel out her name is amber mcbride and her novel is called me moth i just got along with it for the national book award it's probably the most beautiful book i've read in a while um just amazing check out check out amber mcbride check out mahogany brown she wrote a chlorine sky she has a new one coming out called vinyl moon these are really cool books candice elo she wrote everybody looking uh brilliant so far these are all black women just because i think we should be reading the book works of black women i think it's important but there's tons of other i mean randy rebay um everything that he's written i think is genius um i'm thinking about case and calendar uh king of the dragonflies genius i'm thinking about um tracy chee tracy batiste uh evie zuboy daniel clayton kwami umbalya uh george george johnson um i mean i could go on and on there's just it's a it's an amazing time for for literature and there's all i mean and then there's you know jasmine ward uh ocean vuong you know because i think we we categorize things in funny ways right we say like i'm the i'm the ambassador for young people's literature but the truth of the matter is that literature can be for like all literature can be for young people we create categories and it's all very weird to me because the truth is some of you would love to read savage the bones by jasmine ward right some of you would love uh ocean voong's um on earth we're briefly gorgeous some of you would love uh julian torres julian torres poof i'm gonna mess up his name but um he wrote we the animals brilliant brilliant book um i mean you know right now i'm reading you know stephen king the body which became stand by me the movie's name i mean so i could go on and on and on but there's there's tons and tons and tons of great literature out there for sure open your mind read widely don't be afraid to read things that you're not used to reading give things a try lots of japanese literature i love you know like banana yoshimoto's short stories uh i mean this dishes yeah read everything all right we now have a question coming from nadia from detroit and she wants to know i also want to know this too what do you inspire yourself what do you do to inspire yourself to write nadia from the d child to detroit one of the best cities in america first and foremost one of the last great american cities shout out to nadia um what do i do to inspire myself you know your your this is the way i think about it inspiration typically is a part of your imagination right like i'm inspired by the things that i'm able to imagine but my imagination can only be fueled through my curiosity right so what does this mean this means that like in order for me to continue to be inspired i have to live an inspired life and the only way that you can live an inspired life is if you're curious about the world around you you got to be wide open right wide open now i think sometimes you grow up especially depending upon your environment you were often taught to be closed right to be to be protective of what we allow into our space into our minds into our spirits and our bodies and all this right where it's like you got to be careful you got to protect yourselves because you don't know if someone's so trying to get you i mean not of you from the d you know what i mean depending upon what part of detroit you from you know exactly what i'm talking about right it's like you got to kind of move a certain way to be protected and we always look at it as like protecting the body but you really are also sort of closing up parts of the mind in certain ways because the person that you need to know with the idea that might change your life or the experience that might change your life will require you to be a little bit more open and a little bit more trusting not necessarily always of people but about the process itself of living right and and that's the way i think about my own life is that like i gotta trust the process of living which means i gotta allow my mind to be as open to receive whatever it is that's out here in the world i wanna know about people's different ways of of of you know different faith practices right i want to hear about not because and the thing is i get to choose what i want to keep and not keep but it doesn't harm me to know everything because it's there for me to know i want to know about like what does it mean to to grow up in in detroit right what can i learn from what it means to grow up in detroit um what does it mean to um learn an instrument even if i don't get good at it i'm curious or make a piece of furniture or take a photograph or watch a documentary on birds or you know who was the first bus driver in my town how does you know how does dc become dc how does the subway system work who started the smithsonian who whatever right like i live a curious life and i think that's what keeps me inspired on top of all of that though i also get to be around young folks all the time and y'all keep me inspired too i think um you know even over the last year watching the resilience of young people push through kovid that's inspiring right being able to adapt to new school systems right and i know this was difficult for all of us and i know that young folks a lot of you all struggle with school and through zoom and all this that in the third but we're still here and that's inspiring because i don't know if i could have done this as a 16 year old i don't know you know what i mean like i'm inspired by that too to see some of your some of your grit and resilience that we claim ain't there but it is there because y'all still here you made it through this moment so you know these are the things that keep me fresh as a quick response to what you just said i definitely completely agree and i do also encourage all the young audience watching today to be curious keep questioning and appreciate the little things around you there's a lot of things to gain inspiration from around your life so we have our next question from jack he says that i love your right right right sorry i can't differ the pronunciation video series last year uh they were great for use in the classroom will you be doing any more of these i don't know i don't know maybe i mean that's up to the library congress what they want to do you know what i mean like i'm i'm open to doing more of those i enjoyed making those um and for those who don't know the right right right series was a it's like i guess 30 prompts or something that it's on the library of congress's website and uh just these quick prompts to get the mind working right to get the imagination working i think they're being used as sort of writing prompts but the truth is is that they're just imagination prompts um how do we get the how can we make sure that we continue to turn young people's minds on and keep them sort of firing off so that they can grow up to be creators and not just workers and that's that's what i'm always thinking about um but check those out maybe there'll be more we'll see we'll see thank you actually i hope i hope you make some more because i don't need a chance to look at some all right our next question comes from robin and they want to know your stories have layers and symbolism do you ever think you'll need a reader's guide to go along with your books to make sure readers see it all they all have reader scouts as far as i know as far as i know all the books most of the books have reader's guides that are available um if it's a book published by simon schuster reach out to simon schuster or go on the simon schuster website i'm sure that the reader's guides are available there uh and if it's published by anybody else like if it's stamped and it's published by little brown same thing you can always find the reader's guides um the other thing though since you brought up the layers is that what i'm also hoping is that you know if you're 14 or 15 or 16 and you're reading these books i i hope you go back and you revisit them when you're like 25 and 26 and 27 and i think that the books will read a little differently because of all those layers because of all those sort of hidden codes and symbolisms and metaphors and all that stuff that are sort of woven into the stories i mean that was always my goal is to write the books that that can be read at multiple points in life and and can read differently based on your age and experience um and so you know as you guys get older go back and read long way down when you're like 25 or when you're 35 right or go back and read ghosts when you're like 25 26 and those books should be completely different books we have an interesting question from john what literary pilgrimages have you gone on oh that's a good one man that no one's ever asked that what literary pilgrimages have i gone on it depends it depends on what the what you mean by literary pilgrimage i mean if you mean physical pilgrimages uh i'd say that like i remember going to italy and going to like dante's house right like that's a physical pilgrimage right you go and you're like man this is where dante wrote the inferno right like you know that's intense or or you know but at the same time i remember going up the street to baltimore and and you know seeing edgar allen poses i mean here i mean you know for all of y'all who are in the dc area or if you're in the or even if you're in baltimore just know that like baltimore's the city of baltimore has a huge literary heritage right there it's right there everything is right there um or in dc you know going in up fifth street in langston hughes's house you know like these are things that i could do right here in my own city in my own town um you know it's like when you yeah there's tons of that kind of stuff now if you mean like literary pilgrimages mentally you know that's that's a whole other thing is that because that that would mean that i i mean for me i've been on those every time i write a book into literary pilgrimage every time i sit down and make anything it's a journey and the word pilgrimage for those listening there's just a you know a journey that is meant to um create clarity right make things feel clear a journey where you're going to seek something that might not be a physical thing but it might be something that is a little more uh intrinsic and something that you learn about yourself and i think every single book is a literary pilgrimage for me you know i think about long way down and what i had to go through to write that book the journey of self that i had to go through to write that book or stamped the journey of self or as brave as you to dig through my childhood in that way and think about all the time i spent with my blind grandfather and my my my older brother or boy in a black suit dealing with grief the pilgrimage of grief right and so i think it's a two-pronged question and it could go either way but that those are the things that come to mind at the moment you know i had no idea baltimore you know some place that's like only a train right away from here it's so much uh literary history to it yeah think about how they teach edgar allen poe our whole lives and don't tell us that his house is up the street [Laughter] our next question comes from michaela uh she wants to know what point did you figure out that writing was what you wanted to do with your life you know what michaela i'm still trying to figure out if writing is what i want to do with my life you know i mean i i just happen to be here and things are working out but you know it's tricky i think i was a young person when i realized i loved to write i say that i was a 10 year old when i realized writing is my thing i was a 16 year old when i started well 15 year old when i started to take it really seriously uh i was published at 2021 um and then i was successful at 30 31. um the reason why i'm always careful about like oh writing is what i want to do with my life i mean it's what i'm doing with my life obviously and i love it but i'll tell you this when i stop loving it i'll stop i am more than what i do michaela and i think we have to remember that like be careful about sort of associating our identities with the things that we do i'm a writer right as a profession but i don't like to consider myself a writer as a human just because that would mean that it's attached to like my identity in a way that i'm not comfortable with because one day i might wake up and feel like i'm done telling these stories i've told every story i want to tell and if that's the only thing attached to my identity then who am i when the writing is over right i think about whitney houston all the time right whitney houston they used to call it a voice and she used to call herself the voice and it was like well if all you are is the voice then what happens when the voice goes and when the voice goes it's like well who am i now right um so i don't know today i'm a writer tomorrow i might be a writer next year i might not be we'll see our next question comes from lucia she's our fifth grade teacher in mcps uh in a focused school in downtown silver spring she wants to ask what's your advice for 10 or 11 year olds honing their writing skills for 10 or 11 year olds honing their writing skills well my first piece of advice is i think for the teacher which is we got to make sure that when we teach in language arts we remember the art part we always teach the language part but we will never teach the art part and i think what happens is sometimes young folks 10 11 years old creative writing is sometimes stripped away from them because they're learning how to write book reports right which is important right but i'm just saying the creative part goes away and so for the 10 and 11 year who wants to hone their writing craft their writing ability i think one you have to read and so and i'm obligated excuse me and i'm obligated to make sure you know that you do have to read it's important for your vocabulary uh and for your ability to sort of to sort of understand how to take an idea and put it on the page but more importantly i think that like you should do away with all the rules don't worry about the rules man i i know y'all are at this point where you're learning how to use commas at 10 or 11 you know how to use commas and this and all the punctuation and sometimes that stuff and it's important to know those rules but sometimes those rules can get in the way of making something creative and brilliant and honest and yours right something that feels like your voice and i think it's okay for you to sometimes forget the rules and just write just write it down just get it out write it in a way that makes it feel good for you right not for your teacher not for your mama not how does how does it how could you do it in a way that sounds good to you and feels good to you i think that's the beginning because what that'll teach you is it'll teach you your own voice it'll show you who you are show you your own style right it'll allow you to express yourself freely we can go back in and figure out how to punctuate it later um but just do your thing get it on the page the other thing is write in whatever form you want to write in if it's poetry if it's raps uh if it's a list all those things matter all of it strengthens the muscle um but you gotta i think sometimes we gotta pull those rules out of the way because they can become barriers and walls to creativity all right uh our next question comes from again another robin uh what messages from writers or musicians do you wish everyone heard oh man what's the message let me let me let me okay because i this is a good question because there's been so much good advice i think you know their effort for musicians as far as from a musician's standpoint you know and there's a famous quote i believe it was miles davis um i want to say it was miles davis who said that basically he learned a long time ago that there's no such thing as a bad note right and that if he hit a note that seemed like a bad note he would either just repeat it right if you repeat it a few times it becomes part of the part of the piece or he would change the note that came after it which would then make that note the right note right and i think if we think about um life i think that sometimes we when we become our true selves sometimes that feels like an incorrect move sometimes you want to high school kids especially right you want to put on something that represents who you are but you know that if you put it on they gonna tease you for it or it might not be in style or it might not be fly it ain't this ain't that it ain't this and ain't that but if you do it every day or you do it once a week or you you continue to repeat it because it's what you love you'll realize that everybody will start copying you right you'll set the tone for it right you you change the tone and the temperature of what's fly just by being consistent and holding your ground right or just by playing the note after that right which is basically like you don't like this the truth of the matter is if you look at it this way it's actually kind of flat right i don't want to wear jordans why you don't want to wear jordans because all y'all got on jordan's and so i'm choosing to stand out and be an individual and do it my own way and then what you'll see is more people will start copying you anyway right now for writers i think i think you know there's so much advice i could give but but the one thing is um understanding that like writing is always difficult and i love this because i think that people are afraid of difficulty young folks today y'all generation i love y'all so much but the one thing that that does kind of scare me a little bit is that difficulty scares you tremendously and it'll cause you to sort of back back out of things that are important for you to not back out of um but writing is always a difficult task writing is hard for everybody all of you youngins in school right now who are struggling with writing guess what your teachers struggle with writing too they'd be struggling they have a heart they they probably couldn't even write their essays they asked me how to write or they would have the same amount of the same amount of hardship doing so that's the truth right that's a fact right and so if writing is always difficult then the choices that i have to make every day is to step into the difficulty knowing that it's difficult and doing it anyway right if there's nothing more to learn from life it's that there are going to be moments in life that are difficult and the questions can't be is it hard or is it easy the question has to be are you going to do this or are you not going to do it because the difficulty part is always going to be there right and i think that's something that all of us got to kind of get a grip on that sometimes life gets hard and i had to choose to be tough enough to deal with the difficulty of life and move forward knowing that on the other side of that difficulty could be beauty could be freedom could be grace could be love could be could be financial stability could all of that right and that's i think that would be my two pieces of advice do your thing and don't be scared of the hard stuff we have a question from robert he says that one of his favorite books is oh the places you will go and my grandmother recorded this before her death what other books do you think are good for this and i think he's mentioning uh like a speech before one passes away so what up what books might be suitable for this purpose there's a book that i wrote called for everyone um just check out for everyone it's literally meant for this very thing for for transitional moments in our lives and uh and it's all about how what a gift it is to be alive and have a dream even if the dream doesn't come true the gift isn't the dreaming in and of itself and uh check that book out it's called for everyone i hate to do a shameless plug but it is a book that i would recommend if you know for this particular question all right one our last question which i would like to ask myself um so in your book look both ways which i actually read a couple days ago um are there any experiences that you've had in your real life that inspired some of the stories in the book all of them man listen i grew up man yeah all of them man all of them from from running from the running from the dog you know being chased by dogs all the time in my neighborhood being afraid that my parents like that my mom would be hurt and what would i do um standing up for my gay friends as a young young man before we had the language that we have now but being trying my best to be a good ally and standing my ground about about pushing against hatred uh and homophobia as a young person uh um being platonic friends with my home girls i'm like looking out for my home girls without like and being safe around my my my young women friends knowing that they could trust me and that i wasn't on no funny stuff and then i could look out and and we could just be friends and family you know without all the extra nonsense that young women have to deal with in this world all the time all of those stories man i rooted in i rooted in my truths man but all of my stories in general for the most part i wrote it in my truths i think that's what i can access better than anything else is who i am i think because i know who i am and i've gotten to know who i am i can write books that feel like they're honest and true and i think that's the greatest gift that i could give anybody now it's time to wrap up our q a i would like to thank everyone who joined today and we hope that you had a meaningful and enjoyable experience as much as brandon and i and hopefully jason has of course um congratulations jason on your third year as national ambassador for young people's literature and to everyone who joined today if you'd like to keep up with jason as the national ambassador or to participate in his platform called grab the mic tell your story visit guides.llc.gov jason-reynolds and to see courtney myself and other teams speaking with 2021 national book festival authors visit loc.gov and once again thank you everyone for watching today bishop [Music] you

Channel: Library of Congress

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Length: 33min 10sec (1990 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021