Coming to you from the dining room table at East Barbary Lane. Welcome to a special edition of Full Circle the podcast. With us today is Rio Cortes, a Harlem based writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Miami Rail, and many other publications. She is also the author of the New York Times best selling title The ABC's of Black History and The River Is My Ocean, as well as the adult poetry collection Goldennacks,
which was long listed for a National Book Award. We're here to talk about The ABC's of Women's History, a book fresh out in twenty twenty five. Rio Courtes, Welcome to the Full Circle Table.
Thank you, it's o good to be here. Thanks for having me absolutely.
First of all, I just want to say that when I read the book, I don't usually say the word wonderful like that. That's just not a word that naturally comes out of my mouth. But at least five times on going through like this is wonderful.
That makes me so happy.
So I'm going to assume I just want to go backward a little bit. So in December of twenty twenty, you put out The ABC's of Black History. Yes, Yeah, became a bestseller. I love the format.
Yeah, telling history like through the alphabet. I learned in the writing that there's like you probably you probably already know this, but aba ab sidarian, it's a whole word about using the alphabet to you know, as the structure of a book.
So I love it, Okay, I do. I know that. There is also the ABC's of Queer History, which didn't write, but a friend did.
Yes, mean we met mutually through the publisher, and she's an amazing writer and she's also a medical doctor.
I saw that. I saw that. Now I want the other two books, but the ABC's of Women's History, I can't. It's so timely. Really, this is so timely. Yeah, you know, I work a lot with the trans community. Everyone is kind of reeling and not knowing what's going to happen next and what are they going to try to do on a federal level. And you know, our states, right's going to hold because you know, we are in New Jersey and New York right where right now things are okay for us, but could change.
Yeah, and depending on where you live, which is what we don't want right exactly federal productions to really function so that if you're not a completely different reality if you live in New York, or if you live in Mississippi or Kansas or you know, so things.
Are already bad and getting worse for a lot of folks. Yeah, and at a time when books are being either banned or burned or both, where do I love this one?
Exactly? I was like, ooh, this this book is going to be called woke, all left, right, and sideway.
Yes, I mean that's perfect. I assume you're prepared for that, right.
I Actually, I'm so glad that we're talking. This is the first time that we have really been able to talk about like our political reality alongside this book. Surprisingly, and it's true like with the ABC's of Black History,
it was it was banned in Miami, Florida. But in the ABC's were History, we talk a lot about shadow banning, where even if people aren't banning the book, that merchandisers and retailers aren't taking a big position on the book because they don't want to deal with their customers, and so it's like a shadow like it's quietly banned in a way because they're not putting it out on the shelves, you know, because they don't want to engage in like volatile discourse with folks who come in the store, and
so I think that's also happening all the time, especially with queer centered books. But with women's history, I feel, yeah, basically at there ready because there were certain things that I think, are you have to that were unavoidable for me to talk about in the book, like consent, for example, or choice to include trans women in the story of women's history. All these things that I imagine and I anticipate that somebody out there is gonna have an issue with.
So hasn't happened. I mean, it just came out, So I don't know. But the world is magically a better place. But there are positions that I felt really strongly about taking in the book that, yeah, that I feel like I'm prepared for a little bit of opposition about.
Which is sad but a reality right now exactly of the current discourse, which is upside down and insane. I mean, nineteen eighty four was supposed to be a warning, not a house you got, not a guidebook, right, but you did touch on those things. And as I read through the book, you talk about so many powerful women through history. It wasn't until I got until the very end when I realized there was a section on you know, terms
and figures. But as I went through and you mentioned these names, I thought, what a great primer, you know for a parent, right to teach, more right to say, just to put a spark kind of on every page, like who are these women? When did they live, what did they do? And you provide, you know, a pretty concise piece in the in the back to read about the women who are mentioned in the book. But I still think, you know, talk about your what she used to do?
Oh yeah, So my I'm biracial. My mother was white, my father was black, and my mom wanted to make sure that, you know, I was versed in black history, so she would bring these We had these black history calendars and each month was a different figure and so like she made me write like a couple of paragraphs about each person. Maybe you know, so that's why I know who like sojournal Truth and Benjamin Bannerer and those
you know what I'm saying. And these things are important for parents to make sure that your kids, you know, have more than what they will be fed in school.
Yeah, Oh I love that. I love that ear mom did that. Yeah, absolutely, And I feel like, thank you
for acknowledging the back matter. Takes a lot of time to create that as a resource, but I feel like it's so important because you could go and I really hope, I mean, I don't hope that there are people no one knows by I love when there are moments where you encounter a name that you've never heard before and you're like, oh, let me, actually I don't know who that is, like whether you're with the young person or not, like, let me look at the back and see. I think
those moments are discovery. Is kind of what we're hoping for when we create a text like this.
Oh yeah, I learned a couple of things. I was like, oh, I didn't know that.
Oh I see it happening. I really do. That's how we learned about Polly Murray. Oh oh, right in the middle of an interview. Because before Rosa Parks and before Claudik Colvin.
Yes, was Paully Murray absolutely.
A person at the time no one wanted to hold up as a figure, but you know what a brilliant human in the course of our history and in the course of civil rights history.
That's right, Yeah, yeah, exactly moments like that poly Murray. I learned later about poly Murray in life too, and I feel like that's it's just like it's so helpful in grounding and inspiring to to find out that folks were doing this type of work and unacknowledged at the time, that you thought that you really understood the key players.
Oh yeah, and that, you know, brings me to.
How did you.
Narrow down the list of women? It's like, Okay, I'm doing a book about notable women, and I'm only going to make the book this long.
I know, it's like impossible. As a prompt, it was like women's history, okay, so like from the beginning of time like that, Like it was very hard. Well, first I narrowed it. It's it's mostly American women. There's a couple of global figures in there, but I think to do a global women's history would be a different project. And then I would say it's probably like in the
last one hundred and fifty years. So that helped a little bit, right, And then after that I started thinking more by like discipline, you know, like visual artists, people who were in the labor movement, people who maybe you know, were community organizers, librarians, people who were in the environmental field, people who were in public policy and made change that way.
So then I once I started to kind of have those themes around everything then and my background is in poetry, so the whole the verse rhymes, and so that also has it.
I love that part of how.
You could include everyone, but I did. I woke up like all the time in the writing of this book, like thinking of women that I needed to include and hadn't. So it gave me a lot of anxiety. But the back matter helped too, because then I'm like, all right, some people who aren't in the verse still are in
the back matter. And then Lauren the illustrator, sometimes if we couldn't fit it in the verse, she could illustrate the person age and name them, and so that was another device we used to get as many figures as we could in the book.
I love how co cohesive the illustration is with the text.
Thank you. Yeah, she's great.
You know, the story is told, you know, both with words and in the text of each page. And you know, Maya Angelo is my absolute favorite writer of all time. I don't I met her once, very briefly and before I transitioned because I worked at the University of Pennsylvania and she had come to speak, so I got to say hello, I got to shake her hand, but I never I don't know where she would have kind of stood if we had met and talked much in person today,
But I do know. You know, she's a huge inspiration because here is a woman who was six feet tall, whose voice was deeper than mine, who was not traditionally pretty by you know, at least American standards, and yet knew herself yea, as something magical and knew herself as something incredible.
Yeah, yeah, that's so true.
Yeah. Still I rise hangs in my office. You know, it's my favorite poem.
She's incredible. I love her interviews too. I feel like I always get so much out of like she pays, Like great series with James Baldwin where they were in conversation, Yeah, and some of my favorite when I love when you hear writers that you love kind of like spinning conversationally and you get more like spontaneous response to things. Yeah.
When I first read that they were friends, I said, of course they were friends, right, of course they knew one another.
Yeah, Well, I love that when Nikki Giovanni passed that footage of the conversation she had with James Baldwin started making the rounds, and I was like, yes.
Yeah, I really put James baldon with anyone, and I feel like it brings out like all the best of thoughts. So yeah, yeah, it's going.
To be impossible to not have a good conversation.
I don't think that I've ever seen you exactly, like, I'm not engaging a conversation with you.
And I have to imagine, you know, having a conversation with James Waldwin had to feel like being strip naked, like you know, there was just no room for anything that wasn't authentic.
Right to the point of Blade Bear.
Yeah, because he wasn't parsing words or suffering fools or pretending to be other than James Baldwin.
Pains.
Yeah, and of course the two of them knew each other. I want to read from one page just to kind of give a flavor sure of the book. I kind of picked it randomly. But D is for dreaming out loud and in color, Like the artists whose work helps us discover, there are new ways of seeing, more than one way to be. We can imagine a world beyond you and me. Alma Thomas's patterns, Frida Callo's reflections, and Jia O'Keeffe's florals teach beautiful lessons on canvas and photographs.
Sculpted or drawn art is what ensures the artist lives on and challenges each of us to create new dawns.
Yeah, thank you for reading that.
There's a little story within each page. It's just it's beautifully written and so accessible, not just to young people, and that's I feel like this is another, you know, layer of the subversion we have to consider is you know, making not letting history die, not letting our stories not be told. And yeah, it has to start there. Like I used to take my kids to band's band book week, you know what I mean, like at the bookstore or the library and say pick.
What you like, right exactly. I feel like that's that's especially now, like so much of our like the way that we tell history is under attack, and so it's like when you're at warwith facts and information, it feels like even more important impression to make sure that the record is kept about some of these books. Yeah, absolutely, it's.
Very obvious by the list of banned books that they are very much going by the reading needs leads to knowledge, knowledge leads to power, So we have to squash that now, Like, that's totally how that reads. And that's another reason why I love how expansive, Like the different types of women from all different fields and backgrounds are covered in this book because to a young girl, to a young person, you have all these different examples of what kind of girl you want to be, what kind of women you
want to grow up to be. And you know, by reading this book, you know if I were a little girl, like, I could be anything I.
Want to be.
Like, I love that, And even it says at the end, like you know, you address the reader and it's it's gorgeous.
Oh thank you. Yeah, that's one of my favorite spreads. I think it's Why is for you?
Why Is for you?
Yeah, it's true, And I love what you said also about the power of I mean, I think it tells you a lot when they ban our books and they ban histories about how powerful it is for us to understand them. Right, it's like the other side of the coin, like you're.
Saying, I mean, the fact that it makes them that uncomfortable, you know, proves the value of the work exactly and the importance of the message. I mean, you know, I've talked often about it. I should not have been a full grown adult before I understood Blackwall Street and Oklahoma, right, you know, that should have been taught right alongside of the rest of it. And the fact that it isn't. And we're seeing this, you know, dystopian language right now.
But to be fair, so was I.
Yeah, we were both adults like that was not in school, and you went to an all black school and still didn't learn it when you should have, which is astounding.
I mean, say, yeah, Sabe, there's so many histories I feel like were withheld that would have been really powerful for me to learn earlier in my life.
I love that. You That I is for intersectional intersectionality is why we started this podcast, right in part Well, we realized, you know, we live at this intersection of race and gender and orientation, sure, and the conversations we have with one another. We thought, you know, this is kind of interesting and not something we could find out there, so we said, let's do that. Right.
I love that, And.
Really that's what this is. Sometimes it's just I don't know how to process this. Talk to me.
Yeah, you know.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. Help me understand it from your perspective. And I love that the two figures you used for intersectionality were Marsha p. Johnson and Sylvia Are there?
Yeah? Yeah, really, it was very important for me to get them in the text. I couldn't get them in the rhyming verse, but I knew. My note in my manuscript to Learn was that these were the women I wanted to include in that spread. And I feel like she did break job illustrating that page.
I mean, you say, there, we contain multitudes. I mean, you don't need much more.
You know, there is a movement right now, and I want to say it's the gender revolution. Is that what they're called, led by Raquel Willis and others, really kind of pulling together women's rights and the right to choose with you know, trans rights because it's all about bodily autonomy, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, I think it also, like I feel like it's really important for all of us to see our freedom struggles as connected. Yes, you're saying, and so it's it's not like, oh, I mean these civil rights for myself, but I want to like, but it has nothing to do with civil rights, for it has everything to do with when they are so connected. And I feel like we're even more powerful when we think about that as a collective struggle. So but yeah, bodily, absolutely, they're very related.
Because I'm constantly saying it's all of us, are none of us? That's right, you know, And it's crazy that that's not the prevalent mindset that it's all the same struggle just within the lgbt Q. There's like, you know, the L, the G and the B right now is like, well we got ours, the tea is over there, and it's like no, because who you think is next, you are directly next.
Yeah, and there are still some that, yeah, that's struggle with that, and you know too many arguments that you know, race and gender, identity and orientation are not the same, yes, but in so many ways they are. In so many ways, it is the other ring. It is the marginalization. You know, if we can point to you as someone to hate, you won't notice while we pick your pockets, which is the game really, I know.
Yeah, and some of us are many things at once, you know, I have to think about that like in terms of you know, anti blackness, and I'm half Puerto Rican and half Black American and there's anti blackness in the LATINX community. And yeah, these things are so connected or that you might have like whether you're interested in rights as a Black American, but you're not interested in rights of the trans community. But there's so many people who are black and trends like all of these things
like they connect together. And I don't think that you can be you know, pro black and anti trends like these are not things. You know, they go for me hand in hand as well.
But you know, we've got how many men and how many of these different cultures where misogyny, you know, is the common threat totally. Yeah, there's that too.
And it's like, wow, well I always have said, you know, homophobia and transphobia, it's all rooted in misogyny because we don't raise our boys to become men, we raise them to not become women.
Mm.
Wow, So anything feminine is considered like wrong, bad, stop that, you know. So if we don't honor and revere women, everyone's loss really is what it comes down to.
Yeah, no, I've never thought about it that way. It's interesting it's like very generally yeah.
Yeah, and you know the femininity from the masculine, like, why would you do that? That's not okay, that's scary. Yeah, it's a thread. It is a thread.
Unfortunately it connects many communities as the misogony.
Yeah, and you know that's that's the other part of this because you know, young girls right now, and I mean all of them, I mean young trans girls who are not yet out or don't feel safe, and certainly, you know, young girls of every stripe have to be looking at this current political climate and say do I matter? You know, and say will I matter as this, you know continues, And why isn't my body my own? Like my grandmother fought this fight.
I know, it's hard for me to like wrap my head around just just even what happened with the overturning of row and how quickly, like in the span of fifty years, it feels like we could be reeling backward. Yeah. I definitely was thinking a lot about that in writing this book. Yeah. There's lots of really great like pictures too that learn put in of like protest signs that young girls in the book have a feeling that just like sending a message that your voice matter is starting now,
you know. So I do love that this book up and that you can get involved in these in a step forward to repair these books.
Yeah, and as for now, never again, we are not going back. Nope, that's my god his favorites.
Fred I think she loves to say no, which is great, she's a queen of no. But yeah, I love that. I love when she reads it too, because it's like, it's just so nice to be able to empower a young girl to say no. It feels like such a culture of like, you know, pleasing others. I feel like it's how a lot of girls are raised.
And so yeah, yeah that I live for a generation of young girls coming up who know who freed to Collo, Angela Davis, Greta Thunbird, Marsha P.
Johnson are like. I love that, you know that's going to be in their heads. I love that. Oh yes, I'll be scared that little girl can't tell her not that.
Well, and that's the you know, they're already out there. I mean, I don't know how old you are. I'm not asking that question, but you know, my my oldest child is thirty six. And I noticed from his generation forward, a very different mindset of inclusivity and just you know, things like gender or race not being a big deal, just like tell me who you are so I can so we can understand one another and respect one another. And which makes this difficult for me to swallow. You know,
I didn't cry this time, you know, this election. I didn't because you know, in twenty sixteen, we owned a bar together and our friend Tys was there as we were watching the returns. And you know, t is a Muslim, black, lesbian woman with five children, right, and I started to cry because I couldn't believe, you know, and she, you know, she took me into this great, big hug and she said, oh, honey,
your people still surprise you. And I couldn't forget that this time because I'm like, no, I'm not surprised now, I'm certainly disappointed. Yeah, you know, because last time, all of the warnings were dead on, and we watched all of it happen. Yeah, how could we see all of that and say, you know, more of that looks like yeah, good, good, let's do that.
I know. Yeah, what what a powerful way to put it to But yeah, that lack of surprise, I have to constantly trying to balance both not feeling that surprise, like being able to anticipate that that this sort of
thing can unfold, but also not feeling numb. I feel like we may challenge now is like really pushing against that like that, yeah, that kind of instinct to just be like nothing matters, like this is all so rotten that I just can't move forward, just like resisting that feeling all the time and being like this isn't normal, this isn't right. There's still so much room that we
can go. There's still so much I have to constantly kind of be negotiating with myself like that, Like it feels so it feels so irresistible sometimes to just be like I just can't, like I can't do it. I can't engage anymore, Like you know that's holding a numbness, but yeah, but you have to. There's just can't do that. We can't, you know, we have to constantly engage in these I think that's what the story of women's history
has helped me do too. Is fine that there are folks in times like that, that the nature of history is cyclical, and that there's so much room for progress and you have to just keep fighting forward.
Basically, you know two things. One of the ways that I've spoken to my community after saying I'm not going anywhere, yeah, you know, I'm going to keep doing everything that I do and opening my mouth, and that's just going to continue. This is an important time to build community. This is an important time for all of us to see one another, everyone who has a place in being marginalized in this election. Really we need to understand our common fight and recognize
our enemies as well. Stop looking at each other so often and look to the folks who really are acting not in our interest. And the second, you know, concept I've been I've been rolling around. I've been working on an essay, but it's just not I don't know, it's
not together yet. Is for a while I've been saying, you know, we're in the last throws of you know, that white nationalism, that white ideal, that that place where there is a lot of fear, you know, there is a lot of we can't embrace diversity and all the pushback on DEI and all that. And it kind of makes sense to me in some way that it would
be loud, aggressive and ridiculous before it gets better. Yeah, like we have to go all the way, so we have to take the absurd to the nth degree preserve something that only worked for some of us.
Ever, Yeah, darkest before at the dawn, you.
Know, I think so like that.
Yeah, that's what I'm telling my I've been telling myself that too. I'm like, the reason it feels so amplified and so violent right now is because we're in these last vestiges of empire and the way that we've had it. Maybe that's the reason, you know that that is sort of coalescing in the way that it is, is that that real change is on the brink around the horizon.
I hope. So I have to believe that. I have to believe it's possible. Yeah, you know, to get up every day, like I'm not going to give up hope. And at the same time, I'm not going to cry not about this because again not a surprise, really a huge disappointment. I mean, I was ready, so ready for President Harris, and I thought.
Maybe, yeah, maybe I did too.
The alternative was so ridiculous.
Yeah, I know, it feels even more ridiculous in a way because, like you're saying, we've had example, like, we know how it went, so you think like we wouldn't make that choice again.
Yeah, that's the thing. It's like, I don't understand the appeal to people that work for a living, you know what I'm saying a group of people.
You know.
But I always I keep holding on to There's this one line from the movie The Never Ending Story that I constantly tried out. It's got a hurt before it can heal, you know, and I keep I think about that. I hold on to that. It's like where there's there's two sides to the coin, and we're on this, but you know that coin's go and flip.
It's going to.
Flip, right, And you know, this takes a wonderful look back at women who have certainly changed history and left and Mark and said and kind of to me felt like, so how dare you give up? You know, because at these points in history, you know, as we look back,
some of these lives were so much more difficult. They didn't have the Internet, they didn't have the organizing capacity that we have, they didn't have, you know, the tools we have to better understand each other, which is another reason why it's crazy to me that we're even you know, going towards this inauguration. But that said, it's never been easier to be educated, it's never been easier to know things.
That's that's so true. It's at your fingertips, really right.
And I think that that great equalizing also comes with this backlash of oh my god, if they're all smart, we can't keep doing this.
That's right.
Yeah, so that's why they're going there, you know, eliminating fact checking and eliminating the hateful content policies because you know, they're getting too too close. They're starting to talk to each other.
Yeah, we know too much. I feel that, And you're right. I think there's so many women in this book who not in their lifetimes were able to participate in the change that they made. You know, that part they maybe they weren't compensated for their work. Fairly, they weren't. Their
legacy wasn't known to them until after they passed. But it's a good as unfortunate as that is, it's a good reminder that, you know, the arc of justice is long, and that the impact that you have now might not be instant like we're so used to that kind of instant gratification, instant results but that it has to be sustainable and that we're in it for the long pole.
So even though it feels really dark in this one moment, that there's still like just so much space ahead to create change in difference.
And that is something I think we don't I don't know think about enough. Is that idea of you know, planting the trees. We won't sit in the shade of you know, planting the theos future trees, the future ideas. Yeah, and that's that is true. That's so much a part of the legacy of some many of these folks who never got to see the impact of their work, right, you know, Sylvia and Marcia certainly didn't get their flowers until they were both gone.
That's right.
Really at all, we still don't know how we lost Marcia, you know, some things remained.
Well.
Yeah, I love that you included title nine.
Yeah, yeah, that it was the learning process for me too. I didn't know the lawmakers like my name that put that into motion, and so I knew I wanted the title nine because it felt really foundational to women's history. But I learned a lot in research that went to the Edith Green and Patsy Mink and their involvement.
Yeah, yeah, and yeah we're pretending to give us damn about what women's sports.
I think, Yeah, it wasn't there just some recent was it something was legislated against trans women in sports? This week? Was it our last?
Yeah? Congress is actually trying to make that a federal law. And again, what happened to state's rights? Gentlemen?
Right?
I loved that Zora Neil Hurston was mentioned under Z. Right, but Z it's for zeal on the way history.
But Z is a hard letter. When you're writing an ABC book, Z and X they feel like are the the real challenges.
But yeah, ZA that X marks the spot which is the perfect place for Harriet Tubman.
A couple of women in this book appear in both ABC's of Black History, and that's like the intersectionalit and then could probably also appear in ABC's of Queer History. They're just people that might fit into lots of these stories.
But Harriet Tubmans, Well, that's what I was thinking when I was reading this book and seeing how inclusive and intersectional it is, and then realizing that there's also you know, a Black history and queer history, Like there's no way that there's not overlap along the three books.
Yeah, yeah, there definitely is. Shirley Chisholm. I think she's in Black History also Maya Angelou. I can't think of all of SEMA's pages, but I'm sure if Sema were here, she could give more insight that.
It's almost like.
Black history and women's history and queer history is.
Just American history, right, huh?
Is act crazy?
And that you know, that's that's the issue. That's one of the core issues here is to really understand it, we do have to look at the different perspectives and the people not just that we're the victors, but the ones who were impacted, you know, the free labor that you know, the who were tortured into building this nation and not by choice, Like, how do we not tell that as a part of our story.
I know, it's really remarkable to me. Even I also tried to be really thoughtful about including indigenous women in this collection. Is well, it's you know, it's I think
we have this impulse too. I've heard a lot of people talk about giving you know, the abcs of women's history to young girls in their life, that it got any anybody's hands because of what we're talking about these histories aren't siloed like we experience the results of these labors for all of us, for every single person, And they're also.
Well, when I want this in the hands of young.
Boys, thank you. I was just getting ready to say.
That's where I want this, Yes, yeah, and that that really is the point, you know, I hate that things kind of wind up in silos, right, Yeah, Yeah, this is a great book for girls. Now, this is a great book for all kids exactly. Yeah. And I don't know, I yearned for that day when we pick something up and read it because it doesn't necessarily pertain to us, but it's another perspective. That's what educational supposed to be, wasn't it right?
No, I love that, It's just it's yeah, it feels against a lot of the way that we're practiced to consume things and engage in things. But yeah, that would be amazing.
Well, just it being you know, having the element of honesty in the storytelling this book, you know, sets it apart, because you know, we're at a point now where we're either just straight up not teaching things or changing certain elements, which unravels the whole story. Yeah, and you know, I think about the the West African symbol of Sankofa, which has the spirals, because it's like going backward. To go forward, you have to know where you've been to know where
you're at, to know where you're going. So if you take any of these blocks out, like how was the wall supposed to stand?
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I think of exactly. We live in a world where not only are you not able to talk about certain histories, but you can't even say certain words like like you know, classrooms were whole just words and like yeah, oh.
When they started trying to say instead of slaves, immigrants, right.
Yeah, that was fun.
I'm like, I thought I knew what words meant.
Right, what is happening? I know?
Right? But you know, I was just thinking about you the way you have said. The problem is that we've had photography for quite a while now, and so I'm sorry your grandma was, you know, yelling at Ruby Bridges and we got it on film. But that doesn't mean we erase everything, like you know, like do better exactly.
And Ruby Bridges is still alive, which means Grandma is too.
Well, no, Grandma might not be, but Ruby Bridges certainly is. But you know those pictures are out there, that's captured and I know, what did you do? This nonsense will be captured for history as well.
That's right. I hope that that's a powerful motivator for some but yeah, absolutely. But there was just a famous I don't remember somebody who was in one of these photos. I can't like, maybe he was in sports, but Jerry, like, I don't know a sports person. He was like captured as one of the vitriolic students who was opposing integration at a school. They were like that, that's him. Yeah.
I think if you were on the other side of that, you might be really interested in shutting down discourse in history.
R yeah, right, But this book contributes to the opposite of that, indeed, which is what I love. Can you talk a little bit rio about your journey as a writer as a poet.
Yeah, I grew up in Utah and I saw that. It's so weird. My mom's family, they're Black American and they came to Utah to reconstruction, so they were sleeved in Louisiana and then they've been in Utah for all these generations. And not Mormon, not LDS, which is like a really bizarre place to grow up. But I became really interested in poetry at a young age. I think maybe as a result of like feeling completely out of place. I think a lot of just like searching for ways
to understand my own feelings. And yeah, and then I studied poetry. I went to n y U. I have an mfaan poetry, and it's just been a big part of my life, probably since the third grade. And then I worked. I worked in publishing, and I worked at the Schamberg Center for Research in Black Culture. At the time, I wrote the ABCS of Black History. So that's part of the new Public Library here. I mean, you guys,
you're a new journey, so you all know. But yeah, So it was working there and I was surrounded by the archive there, which is incredible, and I was learning things that I felt like were with help for me as a grown ass woman, you know, just not having known like so much. And a friend of mine, who was a children's book editor or a former colleague, reached out and said, have you ever thought about writing poetry
for children? And at the time, I was pregnant with my daughter, and it just felt like a lot of things just kind of aligned in a way that made sense to me, So I was able to draw in the archive at the Schomberg to write the ABC's of Black History. That's the first time I wrote poetry for young people, and then since I've written a few children picture books for young people, but I still published it my poetry collection with Penguin a couple of years ago.
It was called Golden Acts. It's for adults. It's also dealing with a lot of history and family history archive. They're really separate kinds of writing, but I get a lot of joy out of writing for young readers. It's like a break sometimes in what feels like really tough work to write about memoir and stuff like that through poetry can be really emotional, challenging, and so I think writing for young people is like my respite from the
other kinds of work that I'm doing. But yeah, that's kind of how I entered into the picture book landscape. But history and nonfiction have always been a really big part of the work that I do.
Yeah, I love it. I imagine. Yeah, like writing memoirs, you're reaching back to the past, but when you're writing these children's books, it's like you're feeding the future.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like it's much more hopeful and fun. And also when you write for children, you have to kind of get down, like distill down to the truth in a way that I know it just feels really like good work.
Right, Yeah, I noticed that in this book. How like you said, distilled down to the truth. You know, it's like you give, you give the facts, and you give enough that you know you you understand the point being made, but you still have that kernel of I want to know more, yeah, which is ideal.
Yeah, exactly. And you have to say it plainly too. I think sometimes as writers, like we can get caught up in like the flourishing of language and the lyric and there's a little bit of that in writing for children too, But I like having to say it like really plainly without all that excess, you know.
Right.
Well, Like a friend of ours, her daughter interviewed Martha for a school project and hearing Martha tell her story to this ten year old girl, and I'd heard these stories before, but the way that she again distilled down to like the salient points for a kid was was it was beautiful to see and it was you know,
that's how you gotta do it. Don't give more that we mire ourselves down in language, we talk around our points, you know, we don't tend to We try to make ourselves look as good as possible by the end of the story. You know, when if you get to the truth of it, sometimes you don't look as great as you like. But you know, we now know the true story and you have the un of telling your truth. And that's what kids need. They don't need the burden of excess.
Yeah. I think it resonates more with them too. Yeah.
Well, yeah, because kids think on a whole different level, right, with less style and less nonsense. And you know, so you're doing something if you connect with children or yeah, because they smell bullshit. They just do and will tell you that it stinks. And they also know when they're being seen and listen to and that they matter. That's so important, and you know that's I love this. I
love that you're a part of this. You know, we we've talked often about it's not always how we get knocked down, but the creative and amazing ways we respond. And there are so many stories, right, so many stories of people just choosing a brilliant response that did something like the I'm thinking of the young man in Florida, oh who was a gay man. He was the valedictorian,
and they wouldn't let him say the word gay. So he talked about what it was like to go to school there with curly hair, and you know that was the theme. He everyone knew what he was talking about.
Yeah, yeah, he.
Wound up, he delivered it. It became national news and then he actually delivered the speech he would have delivered in front of the entire federal Department of Education. So it was really something. So now that's part of the you know, like the official record.
Wow.
And it was all in a response to trying to you know, dude has a brilliant story about you know, finding himself and finding his voice and they wouldn't let him tell it in this new culture in Florida. And he found a way to do it, and he found he found a way to make them look ridiculous, which we're very good at. You know, we've had to be we've had to be really really creative. And you know, you start with two words that I think are very important.
And Lois Moses is a friend temple professor, yes, yes, who puts these two words together, you said, as artists and activists, we earned our seat at the table. And Lois taught me the word artivist and I stole it.
Oh yeah, we use that word in both of our bios.
And I just wanted to give you that word as well, because you embody what an artivist is.
Oh that's such a great word, am I God?
Yeah, someone who uses their talent for good instead of evil. But you know, understands art because it does take all of us, and we do, you know, activism and art in different ways, you know, and it's all valid. And the more we can see one another and respect one another, the more we can come together right where we have common ground.
Yeah, and the creatives are are always where the hope comes from.
I think absolutely. I do too, Oh absolutely, when when you don't even know what to say, and you know, that's the other thing I keep telling people is we don't know right yet. But let's do our best to be prepared, I know, and stand together and let's you know, celebrate one another and you know, take care of ourselves as best we can and use tools like this to encourage one another to say this exists in the world, right, This came out in the same year. Mm, it also has happened. How about that?
Do you guys want to do you want to know, like a sad little publishing fact about this book wasn't sad,
but I mean the timing of it. So, you know, Women's History Month is in March, but we're talking about this in January, which is also such a treat to be able to talk outside of a heritage month about us, right, But they moved the pub date of this book up because they were hoping that Kamala Harris would be inaugurated next week and that this book would be coming out, you know, on the heels of our having a first
woman president. And so I feel like, you know, even in talking about this book, you know the release date that sort of like is in the back of my mind and all the conversations. It's just that that we had had this like big dream for women to history and for the subject here for young kids, and that didn't quite get there this time around. But I feel like it's made this feel like even more important as
an effort in the way that we're talking about it. Absolutely, yeah, But just just to kind of what you were saying about trying to do that sort of activist work through our art in the ways that we can show up.
So you know, you have June Jordan's quote right at the right up front. We are the ones we have been waiting for. And I hear you because you know, we've talked about different things, you know, that are happening in my career and my life and just speaking more and being more of a voice. Yeah, and I still feel like that's happening. But boy did that change the direction of what's going to be, you know what I mean? Like, I'm thinking like we're full steam ahead, and it turns
out we have so much more work to do. Yeah, but that doesn't mean we stop doing it. So I think this is even more right on time.
Well, I was just thinking like the last time we were here in twenty sixteen, I was still teaching dance to teenagers, and so I had class the day after the election, and I walk into the studio and all the girls they're just sunken, like there's these usual bright lights are just not there. And so I took everyone in the studio and I asked the stupid question. I
was like, what's wrong? And they were like the election, and so I set everyone down and I, you know, talk to them about how no matter what is going on around you, you know what is right, you know what is true, you know what is real. Hold on to that. And I was thinking, how you know this go round not teaching kids, and I know that that message is needed, but we have this book we can just put in kids' hands. That's that response, so right
on time, Thank you. It wasn't the timing that we wanted, it was the timing that we needed.
Apparently. Yeah, yeah, because we're about to see what repeats. I mean in part maybe we can count on some of the ineptitude we saw in that first four years to just continue and not a lot will get done because he still thinks he's on television and he's going to fire everyone every six or eight weeks. I don't know. I don't know what's happening, but I do know. I
do know that this is important. It exists now, it's beautifully illustrated, it's well written, and it's one more tool, you know, that we can give to young people and say we're still paying attention. You know, we still care about your future. You still matter, because that is one of my that's one of the things that really hits me. And maybe because it took me so long to find my own voice, that young people hear so much of this nonsense and this cacophony and absorb it, you know,
and say, how can I really have a voice? How can I really be important? How can I matter? And I think it's you know, so much of the important work right now is saying you do you do more than ever?
Yeah, thank you for saying that.
Absolutely well, because you know, I loved the Why.
I'm going to read that one.
Because I thought this is great. I love the way it points, but it applies to you as well, any reader. Yeah, yeah, why is for you, Yes, you and all your glory. You are uniquely part of the story. There's a future ahead and a path to claim and most important of all, a place for your name. That's what a beautiful, beautiful thought. And you know, thank you for writing what you do. I can't wait to see the next work.
Oh, thank you, thank you, Martha. I love their readings. I feel like I went your boys send the audio books.
Well you just let me know, he said, none but a word. It's just so beautifully done. And again I hear that story we spent a week with author Niko Lang, who is you know, one of our most prominent LGBT journalists right now, who wrote the book American Teenager, and that came out in early October. Again, it was meant to be a warm you know, it's a it's a really intimate look inside the lives of eight right different trans teenagers across the country, many of them in Red States.
It was meant to be a warning, but it's still part of the canon and we still continue. Nica's still touring, you know, we spend a week between New Jersey and Philadelphia, but they are really touring the country, just trying to get the book out and trying to make sure that books understand this. This work matters. Yeah, you know, it matters. It does matter, and so does this very much. I love it.
I love it, and so does this exactly what you're doing. I feel like having these conversations and these discourses are also something that really matters and that people can connect to and here different perspectives. So thank you so much for your work.
Too, Absolutely thank you. This book. The new book is The ABC's of Women's History by Ria Cortes, illustrated by or In summer. Yeah, very well worth the read. What a great gift for any young person in your life. And you are at Rio Cortes dot com. Correct.
Yeah, if we visited the website, we would be able to purchase the book there you can.
Or you could go to your local indie bookstore, your community bookshop. But yes, you can also find out a little bit more about different publishing projects.
Okay, well, I promise you I'm going to be at our indie bookstore with the book in hand, making sure that the owner knows that this exists, and I'm going to say if it's not there, it'll be there soon.
I know that's right, right, Because we can be downright pushy when we want.
To be obnoxious. I just want to thank you so much for taking this time. The work is important, it matters, It matters more than it ever has and I just thank you for doing it.
No, thank you so much for having me. Really a pleasure talking with you both you.
As well, indeed you have been listening to Full Circle the podcast. I am Martha Madrigal and.
I am Charles Tyson Jr.
And we just want to a special thank you again to Real Cortes for being so generous with your time about this important book.
Thank you bye everyone. Full Circle is a Never Scured Productions podcast hosted by Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal, produced and edited by Never Scurd Executive Produced by Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal. Our theme in music is by The jingle Berries. All names, pictures, music, audio, and video clips are registered trademarks and or copyrights of their respective copyright holders.