WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.540 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.540 --> 00:00:04.950 align:middle line:84% I'm the last stop on our journey towards James Hannaham. 00:00:04.950 --> 00:00:07.270 align:middle line:84% I'll try to be quick, but it's hard. 00:00:07.270 --> 00:00:10.590 align:middle line:84% There's so much I want to say, but I'll 00:00:10.590 --> 00:00:13.500 align:middle line:90% try to focus on the book. 00:00:13.500 --> 00:00:17.250 align:middle line:84% In the opening scene of James Hannaham's most recent novel, 00:00:17.250 --> 00:00:19.950 align:middle line:84% Delicious Foods, the reader meets 00:00:19.950 --> 00:00:23.160 align:middle line:84% the book's African American protagonist, Eddie, 00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:26.310 align:middle line:84% who is fleeing in a stolen car from 00:00:26.310 --> 00:00:31.860 align:middle line:84% some violent undisclosed trauma that cost him both his hands. 00:00:31.860 --> 00:00:34.680 align:middle line:84% As Eddie's story unwinds, the reader 00:00:34.680 --> 00:00:38.460 align:middle line:84% learns his injury occurred as a result of his escape 00:00:38.460 --> 00:00:41.130 align:middle line:84% from an agribusiness in Louisiana, 00:00:41.130 --> 00:00:46.310 align:middle line:84% where he and his addict mother lived in forced servitude. 00:00:46.310 --> 00:00:50.630 align:middle line:84% Thus, Hannaham's second novel establishes itself 00:00:50.630 --> 00:00:54.560 align:middle line:84% as a modern day variation of the neo-slave narrative 00:00:54.560 --> 00:01:00.420 align:middle line:84% and upends the reader's expectations page after page. 00:01:00.420 --> 00:01:04.080 align:middle line:84% To begin, the horrors that James recounts 00:01:04.080 --> 00:01:10.030 align:middle line:84% do not take place in some remote past, but in 1994, 00:01:10.030 --> 00:01:12.773 align:middle line:90% if my calculations are correct. 00:01:12.773 --> 00:01:14.190 align:middle line:84% The story of Eddie and his mother, 00:01:14.190 --> 00:01:17.950 align:middle line:84% Darlene, is actually inspired by real events, 00:01:17.950 --> 00:01:22.200 align:middle line:84% the case of Bulls-Hit Farm in Hastings, Florida, 00:01:22.200 --> 00:01:26.940 align:middle line:84% where overseers controlled Black workers with crack and alcohol, 00:01:26.940 --> 00:01:30.920 align:middle line:90% exactly as the book describes. 00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:33.020 align:middle line:84% Through Hannaham's deft storytelling, 00:01:33.020 --> 00:01:34.820 align:middle line:84% the characters' predicaments become 00:01:34.820 --> 00:01:39.800 align:middle line:84% linked not only to the ravages of late capitalism, 00:01:39.800 --> 00:01:44.030 align:middle line:84% but to addiction, to the devastating legacy of Jim Crow 00:01:44.030 --> 00:01:48.930 align:middle line:84% violence, to a racist justice system. 00:01:48.930 --> 00:01:53.110 align:middle line:84% Eddie's mother, for example, Darlene, on first glance 00:01:53.110 --> 00:01:56.670 align:middle line:84% a stereotypical addict, turns to drug 00:01:56.670 --> 00:02:00.480 align:middle line:84% after her activist husband is murdered by white supremacists 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:04.540 align:middle line:84% and the police refused to investigate his killing. 00:02:04.540 --> 00:02:07.060 align:middle line:84% In the example of Eddie himself, Hannaham 00:02:07.060 --> 00:02:10.930 align:middle line:84% has explained in interviews was inspired some 00:02:10.930 --> 00:02:15.730 align:middle line:84% by the trope of the "magical Negro," the hard-working friend 00:02:15.730 --> 00:02:18.560 align:middle line:84% to white folks in Hollywood movies. 00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:20.440 align:middle line:84% In fact, soon after we meet Eddie 00:02:20.440 --> 00:02:23.290 align:middle line:84% on the road driving with his bloodied stumps, 00:02:23.290 --> 00:02:26.800 align:middle line:84% he finds a home and a job marketing his trauma 00:02:26.800 --> 00:02:30.730 align:middle line:84% to sympathetic white people with a business card that reads, 00:02:30.730 --> 00:02:34.430 align:middle line:90% a handyman without hands. 00:02:34.430 --> 00:02:37.070 align:middle line:84% And I would be remiss to not mention in any intro 00:02:37.070 --> 00:02:39.680 align:middle line:84% to this novel that the drug crack actually 00:02:39.680 --> 00:02:41.630 align:middle line:90% becomes a character within it. 00:02:41.630 --> 00:02:44.870 align:middle line:84% It's a character named Scotty who narrates whole passages 00:02:44.870 --> 00:02:46.490 align:middle line:84% in a voice that The New York Times 00:02:46.490 --> 00:02:51.600 align:middle line:84% reviewer called a cross between Kit Williams and the devil. 00:02:51.600 --> 00:02:54.270 align:middle line:84% But for all the way it thwarts our expectations, 00:02:54.270 --> 00:02:58.200 align:middle line:84% moving from devastating to gruesome to hilarious 00:02:58.200 --> 00:03:02.310 align:middle line:84% in a matter of pages, Hannaham's novel does so in order 00:03:02.310 --> 00:03:05.940 align:middle line:84% to provoke us, to challenge us, to wake us out 00:03:05.940 --> 00:03:08.010 align:middle line:90% of our complicity. 00:03:08.010 --> 00:03:11.910 align:middle line:84% It's work that reminds us that we are not post-race, not 00:03:11.910 --> 00:03:17.830 align:middle line:84% even post-slavery, still trying to see ourselves and be seen. 00:03:17.830 --> 00:03:20.860 align:middle line:84% It struck me that one of Hannaham's early descriptions 00:03:20.860 --> 00:03:24.400 align:middle line:84% of Eddie's family might serve as an appropriate description 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:27.970 align:middle line:84% for our nation at this time, and I quote. 00:03:27.970 --> 00:03:31.000 align:middle line:84% "Everyone wandered around like children in a funhouse. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:34.120 align:middle line:84% They could hardly see one another across the corners, 00:03:34.120 --> 00:03:38.770 align:middle line:84% and what they could see was completely distorted." 00:03:38.770 --> 00:03:42.760 align:middle line:84% Hannaham's work gives us a clearer view of what we've been 00:03:42.760 --> 00:03:45.350 align:middle line:90% and who we are. 00:03:45.350 --> 00:03:49.910 align:middle line:84% 12 years ago, I met James Hannaham for the first time 00:03:49.910 --> 00:03:52.550 align:middle line:84% as a fellow student in a grad seminar 00:03:52.550 --> 00:03:56.990 align:middle line:84% at UT Austin about the neo-slave narrative. 00:03:56.990 --> 00:03:59.450 align:middle line:84% The class for me was an introduction to writers-- 00:03:59.450 --> 00:04:02.120 align:middle line:84% to the canon of the writers who included 00:04:02.120 --> 00:04:05.192 align:middle line:84% Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed, a canon 00:04:05.192 --> 00:04:06.650 align:middle line:84% that I probably should have guessed 00:04:06.650 --> 00:04:09.380 align:middle line:84% at the time you were going to write yourself into, 00:04:09.380 --> 00:04:13.850 align:middle line:84% James Hannaham, which is what you did only 12 years later. 00:04:13.850 --> 00:04:16.940 align:middle line:84% Among many other things, that class 00:04:16.940 --> 00:04:20.630 align:middle line:84% was an introduction for me to James Hannaham's intelligence, 00:04:20.630 --> 00:04:22.400 align:middle line:90% humor, and generosity. 00:04:22.400 --> 00:04:25.220 align:middle line:84% And it gives me incredible pleasure tonight 00:04:25.220 --> 00:04:27.890 align:middle line:84% to introduce you to him and his work. 00:04:27.890 --> 00:04:28.970 align:middle line:90% James Hannaham. 00:04:28.970 --> 00:04:30.820 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]