Ramirez masterfully reclaims the narrative of Colombian conflict by prioritizing the raw, lived experience of oral history over the sanitized accounts of traditional textbooks. Her work serves as a haunting reminder that silence is often a survival strategy, not a lack of story.
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Made Local: Adriana Ramirez追加:
Hello. Hello.
I was just getting ready for you.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Welcome to our final Mid-Local lecture of this season.
I know it is strange, but our season ends in the middle of the year.
So, we have only one more lecture to go and then it's going to be next season in June.
And I hope you will train us. And I could not wish for a better lecture to end our season of Mid-Local season than this one.
Tonight, we have the pleasure and honor to host a true Pittsburgh literary citizen, Adriana Ramirez, with a new excellent memoir that reads like a novel and that is also a book of history, The Violence.
Truly, we are really lucky to have her in this city.
My name is Sonny Toneme and it is my privilege to serve as executive director of your Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures and to welcome you in this wonderful hall.
Uh it is an honor and I'm doing so on behalf of the our wonderful staff, the board, and the volunteers who helped you get inside today.
The Mid-Local series is where we celebrate our Pittsburgh stories and authors. It is presented in partnership with the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and it is made possible with the continued support of the Regional Asset District, RAD, and the Pennsylvania Creative District.
Before we hear from Adriana tonight, if you do not mind, I want to encourage you to join us next Monday, May 11th, for our final 10 Evenings lecture of the season with Michael Chabon.
The lecture will be held at the Carnegie Music Hall at 7:30 p.m. You can still purchase your tickets if you have not done so on our website at pittsburghlectures.org.
We will also announce next season's 10 Evenings uh on that lecture. And I've been bragging and I do not know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
I've been saying that it's an amazing season and if you do not agree, I'm going to be really sad, but >> [laughter] >> but it is surely the best I could do.
So, that's >> [laughter] >> So, I hope that will suffice, but it's going to be a really amazing season. I'm really, really excited for next season.
And finally, if you while you're on our website, we encourage you to take a look at the lectures that are coming up. They were coming on the screen. We have Alec Karakatsanis joining us on June 4th, on June 11th Michael Lorenthal, on June 18th Lisa Zunshine, and June 24th Isaac Fitzgerald with his new book American Warbler.
Is it the microphone or Okay. Okay, perfect. It's the smoke factory as Michael Chabon will call it.
Our [snorts] friends from White Whale are here with books signed books for you to buy if you have not gotten your copy.
I'm sure after this lecture you will want to go and get your copy. Get your copy and then after Adriana is very generous to and agreed to sign to personalize your copies. The way that we're going to do that as you're buying your books, we're going to have a line here and then the signing line will start right here in front of the banner and wind down the hall and once you get your book, we ask that you join the end of the line so we can keep the circle going.
Tonight's program will be a reading/lecture by Adriana followed by conversation with the legendary Pittsburgh journalist Tony Norman.
We could not wish for a better person really to share the stage with Adriana and really, Tony, thank you so much.
And finally, we ask that you silence your phone during the event and refrain from using flash photography. You can take pictures, of course, but no flash photography.
Now, I would like to introduce Adriana Ramirez.
Adriana E. Ramirez is our award-winning Pitts- Pittsburgh writer, critic, and poet.
You have probably definitely read her columns and edits and a review in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
She won the 2015 PEN Fusion Emerging Writers Prize. She's a former critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times book section and the co-founder of Asterisk Journal.
In addition to the Post-Gazette, you can find her writings in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, People, ESPN's The Undefeated, LitHub, Guernica, Nerve, and more.
You were She was once in Jeopardy. She did not win, but none of us will just say she lost because we know to make it to Jeopardy is winning enough.
So, please help me give a warm Pittsburgh welcome to Adriana Ramirez.
>> [applause] >> Amazing.
Thank you so much for being here first off. There's so many familiar faces in the audience and I'm just beaming. I'm going to read some sad stuff and still be beaming. It's going to be weird. Um [laughter] but I I really appreciate you being here and you coming out tonight. Um You know, I think it's really interesting that Sonny talked about Michael Chabon because in many ways Michael Chabon is one of the reasons I wrote this book. When I was a graduate student here at the University of Pittsburgh, he came and gave a like a graduate student talk thing. And um we were sitting around this like conference room table and he's going around and evaluating our projects and when it came to mine, he was like, "Oh, family memoir sounds like a good idea."
And I was like, "Oh, this is very encouraging.
This is great." Um and then he turned and he said, "But are you taking risks?"
And I said, "Well, what do you mean?"
And he said, "Well, good writing has to piss people off."
Something I've taken to heart in my time at the Post-Gazette.
Um but >> [laughter] >> haven't we?
Um but you know, he said, you know, good writing takes risks. Good writing is dangerous.
Good writing should make you feel something when you're putting it down on the page and you should feel unsure about whether or not to tell the story.
And I think that was one of the guiding principles of this book. Um I did not tell anyone in my family what I was doing except for the part where they all agreed for interviews.
Um >> [laughter] >> I think they knew I was writing a book, but they did not actually think it was ever going to come to be.
>> [laughter] >> You know, they were like, "Yeah, sure, you're writing a book. Okay."
And so little by little over the course of many, many years, I mean, in many ways the impetus for this book began in 2007. So, this has been 19 years of working and reworking and envisioning and re-envisioning this project. Um and so during many of those times I had to kind of figure out, you know, what was dangerous.
And I I had this extraordinary collection of like family anecdotes and family stories and then I had all these interviews with strangers and I spent a really long time trying to figure out how to put it together.
You know, how do I tell an oral history of a family, but at the same time tell the oral history of a country and of a people? And I remember my editor at Scribner being like, "This project is very ambitious."
>> [laughter] >> Which is code for it's going to take you a long time.
Um and she was very right in that regard. Um but I learned that, you know, to do something and to do it right, it takes a lot of time.
And so from figuring out, you know, what kind of beer was being drunk in rural Colombia in 1948 so that I could have a throwaway line about someone drinking a beer, right? To knowing what was on the radio during those times. What were people listening to? What TV stations were available?
Um you know, what roads were paved?
And what roads were not?
And so I I couldn't figure out how to tell this story. It was very unwieldy. There was one draft where my editor said to me, "There are too many characters. There's too many people. You know, too many names change." Which is like the most Colombian thing of all time. Um everyone has a nickname.
>> [laughter] >> So, in my family I go by like five different names, you know? It's like Adriana, Adri, Nena. Um Negrita. Like so many different names. Um And so you know managing all of that.
And so I tried to find someone to help me. And this is where Michael Chabon saves the day again. See? He's like a hero.
And he had told us that the best thing that a writer could do is steal from other writers.
And I was like, oh, I like this.
And so I went and and searched for who was the writer, you know, who was the model that was going to allow me to figure out the structure and how to tell the story. So I was like, well, I've got this big family narrative and then I've got all these like little kind of anecdotes of Colombian people who were alive during these times. And then I was like, oh, The Grapes of Wrath.
That's it. That's the answer.
And so I went back and I reread John Steinbeck and there's nothing like falling in love with an author that you've already loved again.
You know, and getting to like really dig into the language and really understand, okay, how do we put this together?
And so you're reading differently, right? When you read as a reader, you get to kind of like fall in love with the book and the characters and all that. But when you read as a writer, you start marking up your book in funny ways. And so you've got like, okay, we're moving from landscape now and we're moving to characterization. Okay, now we're moving to action and then why is there still a turtle crossing a road?
Um that's a Grapes of Wrath joke for those of you that know the book well.
>> [laughter] >> Um and so yeah, so I really enjoyed um once the structure came in, it was really easy to kind of figure out, okay, this is how we do this.
Um and so I'm going to read a little bit from the chapter uh the beginning of a chapter that kind of is a complete and direct homage to The Grapes of Wrath.
And um in the uh epigraph of the book, I quote Steinbeck here.
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do.
And some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel. And some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.
Right? It's like Steinbeck is so good.
And we can we can like yeah.
We can go there.
And so this is a chapter called All the Little Wars where I am absolutely ripping off Steinbeck on purpose.
On the morning of April 10th, 1948, the owners of the land had something to say.
They came on horseback or in pickup trucks, wide in their hat brims and gates.
Before anything could be said about politics or death or whatever happened in Bogotá, the cows had needs to be milked, to be reunited with the calves, to be vaccinated, to be rotated from one enclosure to another, to be weighed, to be prepared for sale and transport, to be infected inspected for disease.
Once the cattle had settled into their pastures and the trucks were loaded with cantaros bound for the dairy dairy cooperatives, then the discussions could begin.
Some of the owners were compassionate because they hated war and politics.
They hated the absurdity of it all or they hated the inhumanity of the violence.
Some of the owners were cold because they understood that war demanded it.
The workmen waited for the owners of the land to explain what they already knew.
The landowners needed these men to protect what was theirs. Would they come to a meeting this evening with their families?
But not until the end of the work day, of course.
Later, the workmen and their families gathered at the owners' home. Plates stacked high with sausages, ripe fruit, and rice dishes stood next to delicate pastries and trays of hot chocolate with fresh cheese ready for dipping.
As the people enjoyed a free and fine meal, the owners of the land took their place next to the police.
Both the owners and the law looked well-fed and prosperous, polished and slick with authority.
So you can you can see, right? You can hear like little, you know, taking from the Steinbeck kind of thing.
Um and so in so many ways this was a literary project.
And I think that's really something that a lot of people like want to call this a history book.
But in many ways I what I'm trying to do is kind of critique how we assemble history books.
Because so much of what we think of as fact is in many ways like when you start to press upon it a little bit, it kind of comes undone.
And you can see that playing out now. Uh we can talk for example about this moment in Iran where when we talk about how many people died um we killed by the Iranian regime earlier this year.
Some reports will say 30,000 people.
The Iranian government says 3,000.
The UN says 15,000.
How do we know what the exact number was?
Right? It becomes very difficult to assess. And that's now in 2026 with all the technology that we have available.
And so going back and trying to assess like how many people died in a conflict or how is history, you know, assembled, how do we tell the story?
It starts to come undone a little bit when you begin to like pull at the threads.
And so when you talk about, you know, a war that has serious ramifications for people or for generations of people and you think about how you tell the story, I I found that there was something a lot more capital T truthful in oral history.
In talking to the people who lived through it, who survived it, who had to like get up and milk the cows.
And so and you know, the cows always have to be milked, right? It doesn't matter what's happening outside, it doesn't matter they physically physiologically need to be milked. Um and so there's something about being a farmer in the middle of a war that kind of forces you to kind of push that war outside of the mind even though it becomes impossible to do so.
Because we all exist in a context.
And so my grandmother, who becomes the center of the story and of the family story, is probably one of like the most difficult people in the entire world.
She's the kind of person that will not laugh at a joke just to be mean to you.
Like she'll think the joke is funny, right? And then she'll say to you, hmm, that was funny.
And it's the funniest part of it is that I find myself doing that too now in my old age.
My husband will tell a joke and I'll be like, oh, that's funny. And he's like, really? Your face does not in any way betray that.
Um but my grandmother is this absolutely inscrutable person and this person that I spent my entire life going, like, why are you this way?
What made you so taciturn? Why don't you hug people?
Um you know, I I would you know, growing up in the US, you see these American sitcom grandmothers, right? And they're all like so lovely and they're always wearing an apron and they always have cookies and they're like, oh, sweetie and deary.
Then there was my grandmother who like would not smile and cheated cards, you know.
>> [laughter] >> Very different and my entire life I've been trying to kind of ask my mom, like, why is she like this?
And my mom, who's like the most like jovial person in the entire world and gregarious, and my mother would say, oh, I take after my father, not after my mother.
You know, and my grandma would be like, facts.
>> [laughter] >> I don't know why I had a child that was this loud.
Um and I realized that my grandmother was the way because of her country and because of the history and because of her family and the position that she found herself in.
You know, and we forget sometimes how much we are a product of our of our context and of the history that we've lived through. But as somebody who was a child in the '90s, I can definitely understand that we enjoyed a certain like freedom and latchkeyness and a certain independence that, you know, as somebody who's a mother today, I would say my children are having a very different childhood than I did just by virtue of how we have changed as a people and our country has changed.
So. Anyway, I wanted to finish by just reading a little bit about my grandmother um and about what it was like before the war started.
Uh yeah.
And what she was like the day that the conflict found her.
So thank you again.
Um this is called uh Thicker Than Water.
Esperanza Garita Sarmiento did not imagine the nation in chaos when she decided to take a break from her accounting. But there it was, rioting thick on the airwaves.
She listened to the death of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala announced on the radio and soon after a broadcast of the radio's call to arms in the capital, a long journey from where she sat.
She twirled her pencil, hardly a machete.
Bogotá was under siege from within.
As the Bogotazo it would be known afterward raged, the 20-year-old brunette contemplated what these what these deaths would mean to her and to her family, to the life she'd known, to the accounting she'd begun before she heard the news. That's when wars begin, on ordinary days for ordinary people busy with ordinary tasks.
Esperanza Garita Sarmiento, the daughter of Trinidad Angarita and Evangelina Sarmiento, was a practical young woman.
She was never known for her sentimentality, but she understood the passions necessary to lift a machete, even as she knew the impracticality of it.
A fence broken in the name of a righteous cause still required work and time to fix, and this wasn't her first encounter with a broken fence.
My grandmother, like her three sisters, inherited the Angarita disposition. They were calm and watchful, communicating more with a glance than words. They kept their feelings close to the chest, a byproduct of a culture where opinions voiced aloud could be deadly.
She understood from a young age that every election cycle brought conflict and survival in a country perpetually at war with itself rewarded the quiet and prudent.
Instead learned this from her father, a man whose first memories were of the War of a Thousand Days at the turn of the last century, a different sort of war.
Don Trino had survived his fair share of conflicts with conservatives by keeping his head down.
So, there's a reason that I begin by alluding to the Thousand Days War.
The Thousand Days War is a conflict that occurs at the end of the uh 19th century. Yeah, 1890s, right?
Um and what happens is the liberals and the conservatives in Colombia go to civil war um over land rights and over the separation of church and state.
And they're going to war and it becomes such as a horrible bloody conflict that the United States is able to kind of sneak in, arm the people in Panama, and cause the separation of Panama from Colombia.
Right? Because Colombians too busy fighting one another, they completely lose Panama. And you have to understand that at that moment in time, Roosevelt was contemplating building the canal through Nicaragua.
And so, the idea was that it would be like a canal to Lake Nicaragua, a big lake in the middle, and then a canal out, and that's how the canal would work, and it would be a cooperation with the Nicaraguan government.
But because of the War of a Thousand Days in Colombia, the civil unrest that it caused, the US is able to arm separatists in Panama, cause the separation of Panama, and then in return for arming them, they earn the rights to build the canal.
And so, hence the US has a right has the rights for 100 years >> [snorts] >> until 1999.
And that's part of the reason that the US was there. So, you have to understand the people in Colombia are really mad, right? It's like losing Florida to the Cubans or something, right? It's crazy.
And so, to lose such a like large chunk of your country in a fell of swoop. And so, these recriminations happen, and all of this hatred um and there was this moment where they said like, "Okay, after they came to peace." They said, "We lost so much because of this civil war that we should never do this again."
And then 50 years later, they did it again.
And so, there is something extraordinarily cyclical uh about this and about the fact that like this war that the civil war that was supposed to be the end of things ended up in really really only being the beginning to a conflict that in some degree that Colombia has lasted it for a very very long time.
Um I think Yeah, this is a good place to kind of um pause, and I'm going to read one last little section, and then I'll talk with Tony, if that's okay with you. Um So, this is a book of nonfiction, but I take several liberties.
Um as you can see with the owners of the world, I kind of play with like plural and with like, you know, a lot of people doing something, and I'm really kind of pushing the limits of genre. Uh and I really enjoy doing that. A friend of mine recently used the word genre queer, and I thought it was really fun.
I was like, "Oh, that's going to make some people mad."
>> [laughter] >> I like it.
Uh but yeah, in some ways there's a there's a little bit of this.
And so, I brought in uh mythology. Yeah, book of nonfiction. And right smack in the middle, too. I was like, "Let's go back to the beginning." So, I'm going to read uh just a couple more pages, and then uh You ready? Yeah, okay.
All right.
In April 1952, the newspapers reported that President Laureano Gómez, often called the fake president of Colombia, asked for daily reports on the river levels, as a recent increase in bloodshed had affected the waterways.
His heart attacks or his heart No, he had no heart attack. His heart sank with every report as the aftermath of massacres and mass graves began leaking into groundwaters. Bodies were damming the rivers.
Without clean rivers with good water, there were no fish. Without fish, there was nothing to feed people living along the riversides and marshes. Entire towns began evacuating overnight, and cities became overcrowded, which meant less housing and even denser clusters of half-built homes on the edges of the cities. Crime increased. Everyone was thirsty. Everyone was hungry.
"The violence," they said, "is rising.
The rivers," they said, "are not."
The rivers have always been sacred.
Every president, every conquistador, every parched body that has ever stepped foot in Colombia understood the importance of her flowing waters.
The way the Muisca, the first people of Bogotá before the Spanish arrived, tell it, before there was a country, Colombia was the tropical wild of the gods, caught between the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the Andes, all mountain and ocean and coast and fruit tree and condor.
But the gods thought something was missing.
And so, high in the mountains, between the cliffs and valleys and the deep Lake Báchue, mother of us all, goddess of long black hair, emerged with a boy in her arms.
The child was a gift to her from the other gods, a playmate in the jungle of creation.
She fed the boy her creations, rosettes and ferns, the savory meats and fried skins of birds and reptiles, sweet soups of earth and bread of gold. The boy, a god himself, grew strong into a man. Báchue remained young, goddess that she was, beautiful and dark, elegant and capable.
When he was ready, virile and strong enough, they joined in union. Their coupling, so holy, so important, soon found her with children.
For decades, she remained pregnant, birthing humanity to populate the lands around her.
In time, her children grew wise with her teachings, and Báchue finally began to age, sacrificing her eternal youth for her people to grow.
Her face wrinkled, her breasts sagged, and her exhaustion showed through.
Giving birth to humanity is no easy feat.
To regain her immortality, she had to leave the earthly plane along with her children, the people of salt.
But first, she created the rivers, connecting her lake to the ocean, the mountains to the sea, that her children could always find her.
Satisfied with her labor, Báchue took her husband back to the lake from which they emerged.
They entered, and the lake consumed them, turning them into serpents as the water touched their skin.
When her children eventually succumbed to old age and the elements, Báchue could not bear to watch them suffer. She left the light-filled realm of the gods for her womanly form once more, shedding her snake skin, choosing the dark path back to the edge between life and death.
She could not return to them without risking death, but she could hold her children as they crossed into the world beyond, guiding them to their life after life.
It was their mother who greeted the Muisca in death, who died so that the people of salt could live, who birthed humanity and loved them enough to forfeit her beauty, her vitality, and her time in the paradise that is Colombia.
It was their mother who gave them the rivers.
Thank you.
>> [applause] >> Hello.
Is that an original mythology section?
Yeah, that's that's how the story is told. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I was a fan of Greek and Norse mythology um long before I ever read the Bible.
Mhm. So, what happened I was baptized as a little kid.
I had to take the Bible to school.
I loved those guys.
I miss them. Yeah, I mean, Edith Hamilton's mythology is probably one of the first books I like carrying around as a kid. So, I love those stories. I am also a a big fan of, you know, Zeus and the whole crew.
I'm not such a big fan of Zeus and or [laughter] Odin.
Well, I like the stories.
So, and you talked about you know, pushing the limits of nonfiction, which I think is really uh important.
I think this tension that you've introduced there um is a necessary part of of great reading.
Mhm. And uh and and I I can't imagine um what it would be like if if we were reading about a person's life and there was never anything um or mystical or unexplainable or you know, nonliteral about it because you know, we all live our lives in such an interesting and hard to explain way.
And I think that our fiction and our nonfiction have to reflect that because I think that we don't just live in one reality. Mhm.
You know, we live in many at all times.
So, I think that it should be natural to have a book like this that sort of explores the interconnection of all of those.
I think, you know, when you're writing about a person, there's a moment later at late in the book where my grandmother turns to me, you know, like 96 years old, and just looks at me for a minute. And this is after she's done hours and hours of interviews about her life. And she says, "You don't know anything about me."
And I'm like, "Facts, I don't."
I don't, you know, at the end of the day, I think about this so much because I have kids. um, they're here today.
Hello.
Um, and, you know, who I was when I was in my 20s, right, is very different than Mommy.
Right? Mommy is like, "Ugh, rules, bedtimes." Ugh.
Right? Me in my 20s, no rules, no bedtimes. Ugh.
Feeling times. Right? But my kids, by the na- by design, by the nature of being human being, are not going to know me in the way that my best friend from college will know me.
Right? from college will never know my mother so Well, maybe sometimes we vacation. So she might. But other people will not, right? And there we have so many selves.
You know, there's, you know, high school you. And then there's college you, and if you went to college, right?
And so there's so many facets of what it is to be a person that to capture all that, even in a biography, you know, written by your grandchild, obviously there's going to be distance.
But at the same time, you're still living leaving a certain legacy. And there's ways that the people around you speak about you and know you.
Right? There's like a group of friends, and some of them will be like, "Well, you know how Carly is." And I'm like, "Yeah, I know how Carly is." Right? And it's because we we know each other, and there's a shorthand, and there's like a lifetime of intimacy of knowing one another. And so to write a biography of a person, yeah, it's inherently going to have like a certain tension to it. Um, and I find that nonfiction is really fun and creative nonfiction, literary nonfiction. Is that what you call this, pretty much? Yes, I would not say this is a book of history. Um, this is a book of a of history told by the grandchild of somebody, you know, who lived through it.
>> It's also like tragic magic realism.
Yeah, I mean, obviously the magical realism comes in on the language level.
Yeah.
>> Um, there's a lot of I I began my career as a writer as a poet.
And so I care deeply about language. And there are moments, particularly like when my grandmother becomes a widow, where I don't know how to talk about it, and so I sort of lean into the poetry of it.
Um, and so I'm like, "Okay, let's talk about this transformation that one goes through." You know, and it's it's a very like ontological thing, like I am now a widow. You know, I become something else. I am not who I used to be. And so thinking about that from like a sense of like how one becomes a thing, um, it provided an inroad that I think a traditional kind of narrative would allow me to just kind of feel sorry for her in this moment. And instead, by sort of playing with what I could do, it allowed me to kind of access her in a different way. And so that was really fun. What do you think about that theory that our memories are recreated every time that we recount events, that we basically rewrite what actually happened in the objective world, and that every time we tell the story, um, we get further further from the source of whatever happened? I mean, it's absolutely true just from a neuroscience perspective, right? In terms of like how your brain forges synapses and how you remember things.
It's why it's a weird phenomenon where sometimes human beings remember stuff that happens to them, but they can sometimes like see themselves in the memory. Ah.
>> Like they're not It's not like you're watching from a point of view reference, you sort of can see yourself in the room or seeing something happening to you.
Um, not everyone experiences that way, but it's a really like kind of interesting thing that does happen.
Um, I would also say I when I would teach nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh, one of the exercises that I would do with my students is I would, you know, make them close their eyes and hold up how many fingers or how many windows there were in the room.
Mm. Right? And this is a room we had been in ostensibly like all semester. I would do this at the end of the semester, right? And it would be like, "Three, two, four." And somebody would be like, "I don't know, um, all the windows. I don't know." Um, but much like the jelly bean thing, you know, where you have to like guess how many jelly beans are in the jar, if you average everyone's choices, you'll get to the right amount of windows.
Right? If you average everyone's guesses as to how many jelly beans there are in the jar, the average is surprisingly accurate >> [clears throat] >> and surprisingly close to the real number. Pen and teller taught me this.
And so this is true. [laughter] This is true.
And then I saw this in Las Vegas, and I was like, "Oh."
You know, and I I I I I think it tells us something about perception, right? Is that individually we might not get it right, but when you talk to enough people who were in the room or who witnessed the story or who knew the person, you can begin to get a much more accurate portrait, I think, than if you only talk to one person.
And so it gives you, you know, a much clearer portrait. And so, you know, a lot of like what I'm doing in this book is indebted to like Gay Talese, right?
Mhm. He has an extraordinary piece that he did for GQ that's called Frank Sinatra Has a Cold. Right. And in the piece, Frank Sinatra will not give him an interview. Right. And so he interviews everyone in Frank Sinatra's life, right? From the guy that's like polishing his shoes to the guy delivering the dry cleaning to the guy who's out back cleaning Frank Sinatra's car, and he's able to assemble a portrait of the man through all the people that interact with him.
And it's a portrait of, you know, the impact that he has on people, but it also reveals so much more about Frank Sinatra than if Frank Sinatra had been the one giving the interview necessarily.
And so I really took these approaches to heart in how to approach my grandmother because there were so many stories she didn't want to tell. And of course, like a show, about style, those were exactly the ones that I wanted. Mhm.
Right, right.
Obviously she never got to read this book. Oh, she's she's 98. She's still around. Oh.
Oh, I'm embarrassed. I knew that.
She's waiting for the Spanish translation. And then I would get MY TWO CENTS.
>> [laughter] >> I MEAN, IT'S THAT'S GOING TO BE A VERY AWKWARD, UH, you know, conversation. I mean, you're going to just say, "Hey hey look, Grandma, you know, you you were part of history, and um, you were, uh, a part of a, you know, a tragic moment, and and but you also Yeah, I mean, I was finally able to connect >> deserve with her a few days ago, and I showed her the book the book cover on on, uh, WhatsApp.
And she replied like, "Oh, you're not as lazy as I thought YOU WERE."
>> WOW.
SO [clears throat] UH I'M NOT SURE she's like thinking about this in terms of like what it means in the big Right.
>> [laughter] >> Right. But my aunts and uncles, I've been getting emails along that line.
They're they're so excited even though they disagree with half the stories I tell that they shouldn't be in there.
>> Oh, so they have read it in advance.
>> Some of them or their children have and have told them about it. But when you say disagree, do you mean they like they dispute or are they saying, I did why did you put that story in there?
>> Well, they don't know the specifics yet.
There's just a lot of, "I'm not sure I agree with all this."
And if they name the specific, we'd have to get the receipts, and those I have, so.
And that's the thing about this is literally like if I name like there's a moment where I say there were cream deodorants and old bottles of Coca-Cola on the shelves of this pharmacy, it's because I found photographs of the pharmacy from 1947 and saw that there were cream deodorants and bottles of Coca-Cola on the shelf.
Right. Like every detail in this book has been can be directly traced to a source. So you also depended upon photographs.
>> Oh, so many.
>> Also, you know, ex- external, Yeah. um, No, I had I had time in the Museo del Oro in Bogota. I had, um, time with Colombian scholars, um, in cities of Barranquilla. I had time in the museums.
Um, you know, I was I was that person when you're not supposed to take photographs at the museum, very quietly taking photographs at the museum. Mhm.
Uh, you know, and I had notebooks. I would take notes, and then I mean, whenever there was a fun detail, I'd kind of put it aside and save it, and those were the ones that worked their way into the book. I mean, the there's a a fascination in the very first chapter of this guy in the brothel, and I thought it was fascinating that the assassin had yellow shoes.
I was like, "Yellow shoes?"
>> Yeah, I was wondering about that vividness. It's a weird detail, right?
Who wears yellow shoes? Who even owns a pair of yellow shoes, right?
Some people do.
No, it's not not a normal thing to own, right? And so I I got really hung up on that. And I was like, "He's wearing a great hat and yellow shoes? What is this fashion choice?" And, you know, and so those are the details that kind of worked their way back in, because again, like, you know, as a poet, you're sort of trained to like isolate the image and to privilege the image. Mhm. And so I always end up fighting my way back to the image because I think that is so much more powerful, you know? I'm a show versus tell person, and I absolutely there's there's so much more power in showing you something like that than there is than just kind of sitting there going like, "Yeah, some dude. He he was an assassin, [laughter] you know."
So how long was the book before your editors insisted that you cut out some of this detail or a lot of the detail, because it seems to me that you must have been writing your ass off like to collect these these details.
Well, there's someone in the room here who's edited me before.
He might be able to tell you that it's about, uh, third of the book has been cut. Yeah.
>> [laughter] >> I am, um, I'm more prolific than intended sometimes. Uh, yeah, there was a version of the book that was 120,000 words.
Um, it it had came in about 80,000.
And I just remember my editor being like, "Well, this isn't a history book."
And me being like, "Right. I just love the history." And she's like, "Nope, got to cut it, cut it, cut it, trim it down, stream it down, stream it down."
And so you it was read this up to like Wikipedia for the violence, it would read completely differently than the narrative of this book because I chose to follow these kind of little tangential paths and not the official narrative of those things.
And so it's complicated. Colombian history has such big figures and moments of its history that there are some things that can't be avoided. Right, right.
I mean, um I mean as someone who didn't know a whole lot about, you know, this war and all this tragedy, um you know, I found myself um at least um you were able to ease me into events.
Um I can't say that I walked away with a comprehensive understanding of things.
But I think that um and while I was back there on the green room, I quickly pulled up the The New York Times review.
Uh which which you can laugh about uh now, but I but I but she seemed to be hung up about your use of history and um and and I wonder if you thought there was anything legitimate about her criticism. Oh, yeah. I mean, first off what a pleasure to be criticized by The New York Times.
>> [laughter] >> Like if somebody's going to tell you you did something wrong, I mean, may as well be the paper of record, right? That's got to be right.
Um and she didn't really say I did something wrong. She just sort of disagreed with some of my approaches, which I think is really fair game. Mhm.
Um this is not a book of history even though it flirts with it heavily. Um and they got somebody who was, you know, a Latin American correspondent to review it. A reporter, basically.
>> A I wrote a book that was meant to be literary and The New York Times was like, "Mhm, we need to get some Latin American correspondent to look at this cuz we're not sure about this history."
And I think that's wonderful. I really really like I'm not mad about that.
Um yeah, I and I think you know, a reporter and the way a reporter looks at history is going to be really different than a poet and a nonfiction writer looks at history.
There's going to be an inherent tension there. And I think that what she wanted was something a little more uh perhaps like definitive. Like this is what happened. This is how it was. Less of your voice and more of the voice of objective history.
>> Yeah, and I went into the doubt. I went into the gray area of it all. So I mean, I thought it was a wonderful review.
It's a very mixed review, but she also says really nice things. She says you were really really good writer.
>> Yeah. SO I DON'T KNOW.
>> [laughter] >> I I I LIKE HANGING THAT UP.
I I I probably [laughter] put it out now that I don't have my little ellipses.
It was a brave book, DOT DOT DOT DOT.
>> [laughter] >> UH YEAH, NO, BUT I I MEAN, I think I think that's the goal of a book like this. It's to get somebody to then go and dig into the real history and to expand their knowledge. And you know, there's a reason there's a works consulted section, right? It's so that you can go back and you can find the books that I read and you can fight with them and disagree with them. And you know, I'm also writing as an American who is not living in Colombia. It's not Colombian. It was not raised in the Colombian schools system. Did not study their history from their point of view.
Um the critic was somebody who lives in Colombia.
>> Right. So and she's, you know, Colombian correspondent. Like, why? It's going to There's absolutely going to be an inherent tension there, but I think it's also fascinating to think about, you know, our understanding of Irish history as third or fourth generation Irish Americans. Mhm. Right? I think there's a value there and to thinking about how history is passed down, how we come to know the history of the countries and places that we come from or are descended of and then how we're going to then tell those histories to our children.
And so I I think that yeah, I I find that that was actually a really fascinating take for me.
And I find great value in it, absolutely. And I mean, wherever she is, I think she's a great writer, too. So.
Uh there you go. Very gracious.
What was the most difficult section of the book to write?
Oh, Pablo Escobar, 100%. Um you know, cuz he already exists in the public imagination, right? We, you know, I I spent 10 years working on this. During that time I had to not watch Narcos, which I >> [laughter] >> really really wanted to watch, but I I couldn't get somebody else's version of Pablo Escobar in my head. I was really I was going to first avoid him because I thought, "Oh, how cliche, Colombian [ __ ] history."
Here's Pablo Escobar. But then I met a dude who worked for Pablo.
And it's not And it wasn't a scary encounter. It was uh Well it was not My editor made me cut the part where I showed how I met this guy because it was it was I put myself in a dodgy situation.
Um and she was like, "We don't need to see how the sausage is made." And I was like, "Fair." Um but this guy, Ramon, worked for Pablo Escobar and he worked for him as a henchman, effectively. Like effectively. He was like, you know, he he would say like, "I'm like spearholder number five, you know, like he's one of the guys that pops out of the car in the chase scene." Um and so when I met him and he had all these stories of like the things that he did, um the stuff he had done, and to reconcile with this incredibly charming man that I was meeting, uh it was like my brain just couldn't hold the atrocities that he had committed.
>> Right.
And then in 2007 when I was doing my big research trip for this book, I met the police officer who shot Pablo Escobar.
Wow. And the man who took the shot, um and he was now the governor of the um department, which is like a state, of Santander, and he was inaugurating his new um ranch, which was right next door to my aunt's ranch where we were staying.
And so he was literally having breakfast at my aunt's house when I came downstairs and like mocked me for being an American.
And so I was like and then, you know, like 10 years later this dude gets charged with corruption as the governor and put in jail himself. Right?
Colombian history.
And so I was like, "Dang, like I met the dude who took down Escobar. I got to talk to him. I read his memoir. Like I got to meet a dude who was this guy's henchman."
I have to write about Escobar.
And I just But it was such it was both difficult and fun because you had to find something original about the dude. Mhm. Right? And he's been written about so much. And you're reading like four other biographies and you're like, "Oh, I'm going to tell this story." Then you're like, "Ah, that's already been covered." You know, and then uh you're not watching Narcos, but maybe you're reading some episode summaries just to make sure that's not covered, right?
And you're sort of going through and then, you know, you find a little detail and you're like, "Oh, this is the story." And and again you were writing about Escobar because you wanted to provide the context for all the troubles that had come and were contemporary um and that the drug wars and It's a domino, right? Yeah. One thing is caused by the other caused by the other caused by the other, but if you don't know what the root cause is, you just kind of go like, "Oh, Colombia, dangerous country, Narcos." Right? And you don't stop and think, "Well, why did that happen? How did that happen? What were the conditions that enabled that?" Mhm. What happens when you have a kleptocracy for 20 years?
Right? What happens when your government is corrupt? Not that I thought it would ever happen here.
Right? But what happens when your government is like corrupt and they're selling things to the highest bidder and the right people are getting out of jail and Pablo Escobar builds his own prison, right? Because he says to the government, "You can't contain me, so I will contain myself, right?" Mhm. And so, you know, you're you're you're looking at this and you're with the mind that history tends to repeat itself, right? And you're saying, "Oh, this is how this happens. This is how a klep- I can't you know, klep- I don't know. I said it so well the first time.
Kleptocracy, right? Which is, you know, a corrupt government that is only benefiting the wealthy. It's not even an oligarchy. It's literally like they're selling it. They're stealing the resources. How How does that, you know, enable people to survive and live and thrive?
And then what happens is that people do what they have to and eventually that leads to the creation of the narco state.
And so you have to sort of think about like oh, let's go back in time and find the moment where that domino fell that enabled all of this to happen after.
That's amazing, actually. Um you have to approach you're writing about family history, you're also writing about, you know, a grand um history of of a culture and a country and so forth. And and you're you're you're being fair in in all instances. It seems to to me as as a cultural outsider.
Did you at any point did you find yourself um feeling that, "Oh, I, you know, I drank the Kool-Aid too much on this" or uh I'm I'm I'm a little naive here. I can sense it, but I have no choice because that's how I see it right now.
Well, my mom calls me halfway through reading the book. And my mom is like, "I cannot believe you have so much empathy for the guerrillas." Okay.
>> much empathy.
>> This is what I'm getting at. Yeah, with the Narcos. And I can't believe you wrote that. You you think about the the the And then she finishes the book and she calls me and she's like, "I'm so glad you showed how they like got corrupted >> [laughter] >> and how they like fell for the Narcos and all this stuff." So I mean, I think, you know, no revolutionary wakes up one day and says, "Oh, I'm going to like become, you know, corrupted."
Right? They begin with like I have this fight, I have this need for this fight.
I my people are being oppressed. I want to do something.
Um but eventually, you know, a movement grows and grows and uh if you're a revolutionary, you need guns. Mhm. And in order to have guns, you would need to have money.
And in order to have money, you need to do something. Right? And in Colombia, that became kidnappings. And in Colombia, that became charging people protection fees. And so then you have this revolutionary army of these many revolutionary armies that began that were ostensibly fighting for the people, but that over time because of the way that capitalism works and the need for guns works, ended up becoming much worse than the things that they initially were founded to fight against.
And so there is a certain I mean, if there is a villain in this book, it is imperfect men.
Um you know, who began with these ideals, right? I mean, even Pablo Escobar, that dude's a failed race car driver, right? Like all he wanted was to drive cars fast. Yeah. And his dreams didn't come true, so he did something else, right? And And the same is true of my grandfather. He is a very imperfect man, um but he sold my grandmother a vision that never came to be. And she had to deal with the fallout and the betrayal and the heartache that came with that.
Um you know, same with every president who was elected with ideals and then found that the realities of governing in a country like Colombia meant something else.
And so yeah, I mean, I would say like I am empathetic to a degree, but ultimately, I am not afraid to shy away from the fact that all of these people failed. Mhm.
This is what I um really appreciate most about you uh over the years.
You know, I've read your column for the last 3 years in the PG.
And you've been very generous in showing your own evolution you know, as a person, as a writer, you know, as a parent and and so forth and so on. Uh I've been fascinated by um your empathy uh for the left and the right. You know, if there's a certain intersectionality of politics that just sort of bubbles up from you.
And I wonder if you ever find yourself in a fixed state or are you in a permanent empathetic state where you can just see um the arguments of all sides and you can >> Don't get me started on potholes. No, no. [laughter] I'm like, I object to potholes.
I GOT TIRES HERE, PEOPLE.
Uh I Yeah, I mean, I we all have our irrational moments, right? We all have things that we had take umbrage over. Um local politics absolutely gets me riled up a lot. And I But at that point, you know, because of the nature of our city and our city politics, I you know, you're you're not really railing against Democrats. Some people are, but because of the nature of the BS everyone sees Democrats. And so then you can kind of just rail against individuals. Uh but No, I mean, I would say like I try to approach everything with empathy. I'm not sure my readers would agree. Um I definitely come from you know, liberal arts education. I definitely like grew up reading a lot of books. And that already puts you in a certain category these days, you know, in this day and age.
Um but I I try, you know, one of the great things that books have taught me is empathy.
Like there's nothing more empathetic than getting in somebody else's head and reading from their point of view or reading uh you know, book of history from, you know, the other side. Um and so yeah, I mean, I would say there's there's a large debt to literature um in this book, you know, Alejo Carpentier, there's a lot of Cuban literature that influenced this and certainly a lot of a lot of Latin American boom literature and magical realism and all of that. And so I Yeah, I think being a consummate reader forces you to be empathetic.
Um I I do have a lot of empathy for the other side and I do have a great understanding of how a lack of empathy has gotten us um to not the best place.
You know, and I think that if we were kinder to one another and we were we listened more to one another and understood each other's like the core of hurt that really motivates people, uh you know, history might have gone differently here. Uh history still has a chance to go differently now. Mhm.
Um before we get to the audience with some, you know, find out if there are any questions. You know, and I want to take this as a point of personal privilege to say uh how proud I am of the job you've done at the PG. I was your predecessor predecessor and book editor.
And uh and you did freelance um reviews for me, which always came in clean. I had didn't have to do anything to it. It's like, yeah, you're typo-free.
>> [laughter] >> Which is why I approached you and said, "Hey, I'm I'm going to quit and they're going to need a good book editor." It's his fault.
>> [laughter] >> So you have to tell people like, "How did you end up at the PG?" Uh so um you know, and and of course we we we both have a vested interest in what happens at the PG, especially at a time like this.
Um you know, we were talking earlier about things. Uh And I think you have a little bit of news you might want to share.
You know, I'm thrilled that the Post-Gazette is going to continue.
Um I'm thrilled that we have new ownership.
I'm thrilled that the city is going to have a chance to grow, and I think that's extraordinary.
Uh I'm officially I have the letter, so I guess I can officially say it. I will not be continuing at the Post-Gazette. Uh I'm okay.
That is is such [ __ ] what it's saying.
>> No, no, no, no, no, no.
>> be.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is not No, no, no. I would not say that at all, honestly. I would say that I am so excited that our that our like tradition and our media tradition has continued. Me, too. That is so crucial and that is so important.
>> Absolutely. And I think that we're so lucky that we live in a city with such a robust books culture. And there's so many readings and so many publications in town. And honestly, like I cannot be I I am really happy for this opportunity. I'm working on a novel. I like I got stuff. I'm okay. Um I'm not Yeah, and it's been like a real pleasure, honestly. And I love this job, and I'm not going to get emotional cuz I said I was not going to get emotional.
Um but this is probably the best job I've ever had, and I've learned so much about my city, and I've learned so much about the people that live here and got to talk to so many people. It has been the thrill of a lifetime. And who knows like what will happen in the future. And maybe someday I'll come back, and probably, you know, I won't.
Um but I But I also know that like there is so much more to write about and think about, and we have to continue to support the Post-Gazette. And we have to continue to support the writers that remain. And it's absolutely crucial because an engaged citizenry um makes for a better city. And it makes all of us more informed, and it makes all of us more involved. So I would absolutely encourage everyone, you know, if you're not a subscriber, to subscribe again. And to like please keep our newspaper going. Um and to show the new ownership that we are a city that values local journalism. Right.
>> So and >> [applause] >> And um the the new PG does not come with the Block family.
Um it's Blockless.
>> [applause] >> And um uh believe me, it will go in a a much more progressive direction if you look at um the work that the um uh the nonprofit that is that bought the PG is doing in um Baltimore. The Baltimore Banner is a is a is a great online newspaper. And if that's what we have to look forward to, we're pretty lucky.
So You know, I I I would say like all voices in this city matter. Mhm. The conservative ones, too. Right? They do.
You know, we >> There's your empathy showing again.
>> No, and but it's But it's absolutely crucial for all of us to like there is value in some of those opinions, right? Huh? You know, >> [laughter] >> there is there is. And we don't want to become people who live in a bubble of only people who agree with us.
That's extraordinarily dangerous.
You know, we want to engage with We want to discuss the other opinions. We want to debate them. We want to get mad at each other and then come back together.
Um and I think that's that's really crucial because uh you can't just dismiss a swath of people. And so I I would hope that the new PG reflects our city and the people in our city and all the different ideologies that make up Pittsburgh. I think that's really crucial. Um some of you pushed back a little bit against it, attorney. And we like I I really hope that the new Post-Gazette um you know, features all the voices that make Pittsburgh amazing.
Oh yeah, let's have all the voices, but let's not >> [laughter] >> let's not um go endorsing I'm going to be diplomatic.
[laughter] The other one is attorney.
So um it was 8:00 actually. Uh I I think we have time for a couple two questions. Yeah, a couple questions.
Anyone um want to step up?
I see a question over there.
Yes. Adrian, where's How old were you Um Oh.
>> And one of the So one of the most powerful images in the book and one of the biggest teasers is when your grandfather's mistresses and their children stand up.
Oh, yeah. Oh, it's you're giving spoilers now. OKAY.
>> [laughter] >> NO, YOU'RE YOU'RE IN. LET'S do it.
>> [cough] >> Yes, and you know you talk about how the family sided with your grandmother but they also blamed her. Yes. Isn't that funny how that goes?
And I thought of all those stories that the the families, the mistresses and their children could have told about Yeah.
>> But it was so essential that the whole family had this line of loyalty.
Right?
And so they were off limits. Yeah. And I was very curious >> I thought I was going to be excommunicated from the family if I reached out to any of these like natural cousins and second cousins of mine. That's what I remember, right? But does your curiosity want you to Do you want to find out? I mean, do I want to?
Yes. Do I enjoy speaking to my mother?
Yes. [laughter] So this is this is the tension is that it was my mom. If it had been my grandma or aunts or uncles or whatever, I think I would have I would have risked it. Yeah.
But my mother like my heart person I love the most in the world. Man, one time we got into a fight just once in my life and she stopped talking to me for like 3 days and I like almost died. Like I like I had to sit in front of her and be like just talk to me, Mom.
Um yeah, I could not handle my mother not speaking to me and this was extraordinarily important to my mother.
And so I had to honor that but I also mention it. I'm like I wanted to talk to these people. I could not. My mother would not let me. I wrote that as a 42-year-old woman.
My mother said I could not.
Reader, I hope one day one day you can follow that line of curiosity. Well, here's Here's the crazy thing. Here's the crazy thing. My mom, don't talk to those people da da da da da.
Also, look at her Facebook profile.
>> [laughter] >> I'm like, Mom, why are you showing me this? My mom's like, well, look how she kind of looks like my dad. And I'm like, well, that's crazy. She looks like Yeah, she's his granddaughter. And my mom's like, I know but look at this. And look at this other lady. She looks just like your Aunt Lena. And this other woman did And I'm like, well, can I reach out? OH, NO.
HOW DARE YOU even think of that? Yeah.
[laughter] No, absolutely. That tension absolutely exists um in the whole family. There would be so many times they'd be like, let me tell you this salacious story but I said you cannot print that. Um and so yeah, that's a huge part of it but I yeah, I had to I had to wrestle with that. Um but I want to and I hope one day, you know I can't imagine a world where my mom isn't around so I don't even want to say that. But maybe one day fate will put them in my pathway.
So Good to see you. Good to see you.
Okay, I had not realized that you started researching this quite some long ago.
That's really interesting.
It occurs to me that you as a researcher and author are in a way a moving target.
Let's say that you are evolving and growing as a writer. You are like as you are researching. My point is that your perspective changes over time. Like I know you have kids. Yes. After you started the book? Yes.
How did your evolution as a person Like for instance, let's say you would publish a book before you had kids.
I think I would So my imagine it. Can you Can you tell us a little bit about how your evolution through that period of time influenced how the book came out in its format now?
I mean, there's a moment where I'm talking about a massacre that takes place in the small town and I specifically say, reader, I will spare you what they did to the children.
Mhm. Um because I'm a mom.
I think if I had written that section before I was a mom, I probably would have told you what they did to the children.
Um but as a mother, I just I couldn't bear it. I just couldn't bear to write it. I couldn't bear to think about it.
I couldn't bear to look at it.
Um and so in that regard, yeah, absolutely. They've been working on this book their whole lives, right? And so they're also very proud of me. They're like, you did the thing. Uh now you can come to every soccer game.
I will have to go to every soccer game.
Um yeah, and so there's absolutely part.
And then there's also, you know, the fact that my grandmother's children blame her for her husband cheating.
Mhm. Um and the coldness of that and you know, sort of how your your children see you. And it made me think a lot about that because you know, my parent My mother never saw her mother be affectionate with father.
And she saw her father as this man who was in need of affection.
And so when he found affection elsewhere you know, she said, well, he needed that.
And that's And then, you know, he dies and so he becomes this like mythologized, lionized hero in his children's eyes.
Um and my grandmother doesn't correct the record.
She lets them blame her.
And I think I had a lot more understanding of why she would do that once I became a mother than I would have. I would have been far more critical of that choice. Mhm. But I think that I see why she was preserving their father for them. Right. And the beauty of that moment, And so yeah, this is very much a book about how we sort of whitewash our own history as well.
Do you think you have another book about your family and Colombian history in you? No, but my Mexican father IS VERY WORRIED.
>> [laughter] >> HE'S LIKE >> [laughter] >> HE'S LIKE, OH, [ __ ] THIS IS NOT GOOD. THIS IS NOT GOOD.
LET'S NOT DO THAT.
>> [laughter] >> YEAH, NO. I MEAN, MY MEXICAN side is wild.
>> [laughter] >> Like my grandma's first husband was killed by firing squad. Like there are stories.
Um so yeah, but no, um I think what's next for me is a novel because I want to make stuff up. Uh >> [laughter] >> I think I'm doing a project like this. I I think I was telling my husband like I [clears throat] I think I want to write something about, you know, another nonfiction book probably about Actually, I'm thinking a lot about George Washington and his time in Western PA.
And sort of taking this approach that I have to somebody like George Washington.
Casually starting the French and Indian War in his 20s. Um and so I was telling my husband that I'm going to need like a couple of years to do all the research and he's like, but you know how to do it now. Can't you do it in 6 months? I was like No.
>> [laughter] >> It's going to take a minute. So I think a a novel to kind of just enjoy the writing, get it out, make stuff up, see what happens. Um and then getting back to work on a work of nonfiction is is where my where I'm headed. Sounds Sounds great. Um I think at this point we um recall Sunny to the stage um to make um Yeah, Sunny's on her way.
Or or >> [laughter] >> um >> [applause] >> And I want to take the time to thank you both for this wonderful conversation.
Thank you for the wonderful book that you have gifted us. And uh like I said at the beginning, I'm really proud to be in the same city as you both work in but really truly wonderful book and I want to encourage you all to get your copy and to get it signed. We're going to get the book signed uh right after this. This is a book for you to take your time to read it.
Don't rush it. You have the whole summer.
While you're on the cruise, buy This is a book very much that we all need to read. So thank you so much.
>> a drink handy.
Yes.
>> [laughter] >> Yes. So thank you. Let's Let's help MAKE YOU AGAIN.
>> [applause] >> THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE FOR COMING OUT. THANK YOU.
>> [applause] >> AND THANK YOU SO MUCH TO JOHNNY NORMAN.
>> [applause] >> AND THANK YOU.
Thank you, Sunny.
Where do I go? Go go ahead this way.
Again, the line to buy your book will start here and the signing line will be will start right here. We'll be right back.
So that was so great.
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How The Boys Fumbled The Most Iconic Villain of The Past Decade...
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the legend of wayland the smith — a story of cruelty and revenge #norsemythology #mythsandlegends
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Ship of Destiny: Spoiler Discussion!
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