On being is brought to you by the John Templeton Foundation, harnessing the power of the sciences

to explore the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind. Learn about the latest

discoveries in the study of hope and optimism, intellectual humility, and free will at Templeton.org.

The pandemic memoirs began almost immediately, but now comes another kind of offering.

A searching look at the meaning and possibilities in the racial catharsis, to which the pandemic

and some sense gave birth and voice and life. Tracy K. Smith co-edited the book,

There's a revolution outside my love letters from a crisis. She joins me together with Michael

Cleaver digs who contributed to that work. It is a reflection inward and outward, backwards and

forwards, primarily of the black experience of 2020 and all that the murder of George Floyd

came to mean. But the 40 voices in this volume span an array of BIPOC lives and perspectives

from Edouille Stuntacott to Reginald Dwayne Betts, from Lely Long Soldier to Rosquet to Julia Alvarez.

This conversation with and between Michael and Tracy is soft and fierce and wise,

and it's a privilege to be part of along with the gift of their writing.

It wasn't that I wanted to let go and sink. It was that it was hard to keep my hat above water

and carry my stone at the same time. I wanted a place to rest. Okay. I wanted to float just for a little

while. Dear Black America, we are many things aren't we? We are hair, God yes we are hair,

and song and memory. We are a language so deep it has no need for words, and we are words that

faint, dart and wheel like birds. Like James Brown, we feel good. Like Fanny Lou Hamer, we are sick

and tired. We are fearsome, we are fire, like God, we are that we are.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on being. Michael Cleber Diggs teaches creative writing

through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and at colleges and high schools in Minnesota.

He lives as do I in St. Paul and is just publishing his first book of poetry.

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