WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.040 align:middle line:90%


00:00:02.040 --> 00:00:08.580 align:middle line:84%
The Tolstoyans, the
Afro-American slaves knew this.

00:00:08.580 --> 00:00:13.380 align:middle line:84%
You could be killed for teaching
people to read and write.

00:00:13.380 --> 00:00:16.740 align:middle line:84%
I used to think the worst
affliction was to be forbidden

00:00:16.740 --> 00:00:18.900 align:middle line:90%
pencil and paper.

00:00:18.900 --> 00:00:22.800 align:middle line:84%
Well, Ting Ling recited
poems to prison walls

00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:27.090 align:middle line:84%
for years of the Cultural
Revolution, and truly

00:00:27.090 --> 00:00:31.770 align:middle line:84%
the magic of written
characters looms and dwindles,

00:00:31.770 --> 00:00:37.770 align:middle line:84%
shrinks small, gross swollen,
depending on where you stand,

00:00:37.770 --> 00:00:43.740 align:middle line:84%
and what is in your hand,
and who can read and why.

00:00:43.740 --> 00:00:46.830 align:middle line:84%
I think now the worst
affliction is not

00:00:46.830 --> 00:00:50.550 align:middle line:84%
to know who you
are or have been.

00:00:50.550 --> 00:00:54.690 align:middle line:84%
I have learned this
in part from writers.

00:00:54.690 --> 00:00:57.630 align:middle line:84%
Reading and writing
aren't sacred,

00:00:57.630 --> 00:01:01.985 align:middle line:84%
yet people have been
killed as if they were.

00:01:01.985 --> 00:01:02.485 align:middle line:90%