Welcome to Digital Asset News, the top stories in cryptocurrency digital assets and break them down into bite-sized pieces. Today, interesting stuff and it's not just what's going on in the cryptocurrency digital asset market but what's going on in the traditional market. So first up, one trillion in housing bonds, US real estate crisis held back by the Fed's mortgage purchases. So this on top of all the securities that it owns on top of all the quantitative easing can only lead to one thing, disaster. So another hard fork is coming up for Bitcoin cash and that means it could soon drop out the top 10 crypto ranking.  Also Polkadot based DeFi project plows ahead and 205 million has already been staked on staffy. And this could be one of the reasons why Polkadot is one of the few projects that's actually up in today's Red Sea. And lastly we'll go over Q of the day, we're just going to talk about the upcoming US presidential election and what you can expect as far as the volatility and if you should take it out into stable coins, I'll do that at the very end. Before I move on, I'm happy to announce part of the proceeds from all the digital asset news videos are going to help a charitable foundation called dog is my copilot. And what they do is they take dogs and cats from high kill shelters like the city that I live in right now, El Paso, Texas, and they fly them to different parts of the country where there are not as many dogs and cats that are prevalent. So they will take them from Texas and they'll fly them to other areas of the country such as Colorado, Utah and Wyoming where the shelters are not as packed. So if you want to learn more about that, the website is dogcopilot.org and it will also be in the description of every one of my videos moving forward. All right, so let's break in the market. So today it is September 3rd. It is high noon Texas time and what the heck is going on? Nice little sea of red. Bitcoin down almost 6%. 10,700. What are you going to do? I thought it would stay above 11, but here we are. And actually, I was pretty hopeful yesterday that it would go above 12 and hey, here we are. Ethereum just barely above 400. I got to tell you I'm happy with that because it was reaching the peak at almost 470, 480 somewhere around there. I thought it would fall below 400. Here we are. So I'm pretty happy about that. Tethers, Tether, XRP. Hey, one good thing. It's only down 4.8% at 26 cents. Watch out. Polkadot is up and is one of the few products that is up at 4%. And we're going to talk about potentially why that could be. Chain link down, Bitcoin cash, everything's down across the board. We don't have to dwell on this. Tron is up 33%. That could be because of its new app that is in the Google Play Store or as far as wallets and it looks fantastic, up 33%. So congratulations to all you Tron holders. You're one of the few that are actually making it. And everything else is down. NEM is up for some reason. Urin.finance, our D5 product at a whopping $32,000, which we talked about a couple of days ago. So congratulations to Urin.finance. Let's see how long that can last. And off we go. So before we break into today's top stories, let's take a look at what's going on in the traditional market. So a little bit of a decline if we take a look at the S&P 500 just for today. So I think we opened up around $35, $64. And then a little bit of a tumble and a little rally and a tumble, which right here doesn't look too bad. But let's take a look at the five day. And that looks pretty massive. So here we are, $35.79 and just a big, huge sell-off.  Well, we'll get that in a second. We did a quick poll. I just asked a question. Today's crypto market dip has my hands shaky, even, or strong. And the vast majority say that they are strong. And I wrote, I'm glad to see it. I'm glad to see it because in our community, a drop of 10% isn't a big deal. But a drop of 10% in the traditional market, like you would see like with the S&P 500, down 3% or 5%, people are losing their minds right now. And they are selling like crazy. And I got to tell you, if you are in the traditional market and just coming over, welcome. This is not a big deal. Don't worry, don't panic. Everything's going to be okay. There's huge swings on the uptick. Just got to wait a little bit. So if you are coming over from the traditional market and you have lost maybe 3% to 5%, not a big deal. This is what we call a Thursday. We don't care. What we are waiting for is the big upswing, and that is going to happen. Just sit around and wait a while. Everything will be all right. But the real question is, is how low can this actually go? Well, let's dive in. So first up, 1 trillion in housing bonds, US real estate crisis held back by Fed's mortgage purchases. This is scary. This is one of those things that really does concern me because the government is trying to do its best. The Fed is trying to do its best. They're trying to stave off economic collapse. And this is the best they can do. But I have to tell you, there's no end in sight for what's going to happen. And I only see dark days ahead. I just do, I don't, I'm not a very, I'm usually a pretty optimistic guy. Really I am. But with this going on, I just don't see any way around it. Anyhow, emergency powers to stop landlords nationwide from evicting tenants has been enacted by the CDC, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Moreover, the Federal Reserve has purchased 1 trillion in mortgage bonds since March. 1 trillion, that's what the T, capturing 30% of the country's outstanding mortgage bonds. So you have to understand everything is relative. So this is good for the people who were laid off, who could not get unemployment, who are, who did get unemployment, but now that has been slashed in by a half or a third or something like that. Then of course Congress, if you're not from the US, Congress went to go vote on that bill and they couldn't come to resolution. So they took a vacation and said, ah, we'll get to it later. Swear to God, that's exactly what happened. So all these people are in the lurch and they're waiting for a bailout because there's a lot of different small business that have been closed. Getting unemployment has been diminished. So it's pretty hard to pay for all your bills when you have no job, when you have no checks coming in, when you have nothing to really fall back on and you're expecting the government to kind of help you out, bail you out just like they bailed their friends out and all the big businesses.  So here's what's happening. The Fed is stepping in and they're buying everything up and that is going to be a massive problem going on down the road. So you have to look at it like, if you have people who can't pay their rent, that's one thing. So they say, okay, well, don't pay the rent but they want to fix you. Now it goes to the next higher level which is the people who actually own the buildings. And yes, they're in a much better position to handle this economic downturn, but for how long? Because guess what? When renters can't pay the rent, now the person who owns the building says, okay, well, let's see what we can do here if we don't get 10% or 20% or 30% of the people who can pay. Well, now I have 70% of income coming in. Well, guess what, taxes are still due. You still have to pay water, gas and electricity if that is what is provided for your tenants. And on top of that, if you don't own the building outright, well, guess what? You gotta pay the bank. And the bank says, hey, sorry for commercial loans, there is no forgiveness policy. We only do that for the retail. So now what do you have? Now you got a problem because you're gonna have a lot of default loans and I only see that happening not only for this but just for the average Joe Blow trying to keep up with the Joneses, getting a new house, so on and so forth. So I see nothing but problems. Anyhow, moving on, all across the country, homeowners and rental tenants are facing a crisis and the signs are showing in a number of hard hit states. And before I move on, I don't know where you're at in the world, but if you're in the U.S. or you're in Europe, Canada, Mexico, wherever else, do me a favor, take a look at the prices of houses in your area and you'll see that in a lot of places, especially in the U.S., the prices of houses are actually going up. Why is that? It's because people think that this is the best time to buy because they can pick up these houses that are cheap and guess what happens? The price of the house actually has increased. I've had friends who have actually tried to get houses right now because not just for investment properties, just for like an upgrade, the families increasing so they wanna get a bigger house and guess what happens? So they go to get a house and they say, oh, well, it's at 200,000 right now. They come back a week later, trying to jockey for a position and guess what, now it's 230,000.  Oh, well, the bill just increased the price because there's been so much demand. Where's the demand coming from? Well, it's all the people who want to get for investment properties because they think this is like 2008 and they're gonna get a bunch of cheap houses and then the price is gonna increase. That's not what's gonna happen.  So that's a problem, but I could be wrong, but who knows? All right. Lastly, it states international investors who invest in US real estate prior to COVID-19 are now left holding the bag according to a number of reports. A number of real estate proponents believe the US housing market is rebounding but most people don't understand. The Federal Reserve is trying to keep the real estate market afloat. That note was already done. Then lastly, states analysts from Morgan Stanley say that the Fed is purchasing these outstanding mortgage bonds at eight extra rate. It has leveraged in the past. Moreover, Fed Board members have disclosed the pace where main at least at the current pace and distress US properties are coming in 2021, which I just talked about. So I could go on with this article but it gets even more grim but you get the whole gist of it. I don't need to be the dead horse. 2021, I think, is going to be an awful time for housing, for small business, and for just business in general and the traditional market. I do see an uptick for cryptocurrency assets, especially for safe haven assets such as Bitcoin because there's going to be so much volatility. And if you don't think there's volatility coming, wait till the presidential election. And I'll talk about that in a bit. Let's move on. Next up, another hard fork looming Bitcoin cash could soon drop out of the top 10. Bummer. All right, so what's going on? There are two opposing factions within the major players that support the B-Cash Bitcoin Cash Network. The Bitcoin Cash ABC and the BCHN. The BC, this is like I was back in the military. There's so many acronyms. The BCH ABC factions have been advocating for a minor tax, whereby about 8% of minor awards are deducted and dedicated to the betterment of the Bitcoin Cash Network, which seems kind of reasonable. 8% tax, and we're going to try to improve the network. We're going to go this for the minors. And you know, on one side of the light, cool. We'll do that. On the other hand, the BCHN faction says, nope, I'm not going to do that. So the standoff now has spiraled out of control, leading to the ABC faction declaring intentions to force Bitcoin Cash hard fork on November 15th of this year. If affected, the hard fork would result in a chain split and create a separate chain, just like it happened back in 2018, when it results in the creation of the Bitcoin SV. And we all know how fantastic that went. Although, I will say this, as far as the Bitcoin SV fork, it isn't the top 10. So, you know, I thought it was going to be awful and I was wrong about that because it still sticks around. I mean, now it's in the 12, but every time I see Bitcoin SV, I'm just like, I don't know why it's there. Just don't know. Anyhow, so here's my final thoughts on that. I'm sick of these forks. I'm tired of the confusion. I'm really tired of new individuals coming in who are like, hey, what's up? We got Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV. I got a new one coming up. I got Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Tomato, Bitcoin Potato Foot. What the hell's going on?  Just stick with the original. That's all I can tell you. Like, which one's the original? Because when I go to bitcoin.com, that's Bitcoin Cash, right? And everybody's confused. I just wish it could consolidate into one Bitcoin, but here we are. I think it's a mistake, but people are gonna have their differences and it's what I really hate. And I don't know there's any resolution about it, but let me know what you thought in the comment section. Let's move on. Next up, Polkadot-based DeFi project plows ahead. 205 million staked on staffee. What a great picture. Plows ahead. Anyhow, nearly 2,000 addresses have staked 205 million on the Polkadot-based DeFi project staffee. First of all, I don't know what staffee is. It sounds like a pretty good thing. DeFi, that's like the new hot thing, right? Maybe it would be good to invest in. I have no idea, but it looks like it's already overbought. I'll get in that second. So staffee lets users stake their proof of stake tokens and gives them receipts of the token, which they can use, then use elsewhere in crypto. Staffee's a DeFi app built on Polkadot has locked staking tokens worth 205 million. That's a lot of money. And I'm very sure I'm on time. Bonded across only 1,700 plus addresses. That's not a lot of people, 1,700 addresses and who knows how many are duplicates or how many people own like five, 10, 20 of those. Who knows? Scary. The project allows proof of stake token holders to stake their assets and provides them with tokens that represent these stake positions. Atom tokens become our atom. Polkadot's dot tokens become our dot and then the other proof of stake blockchains. So it's the same thing. Just like what they're doing with urine compound and synthetics. With urine, you got YUSD compound, you got CUSD and synthetics, it's synthetic USD, same type of thing. So that's how it works as far as staking and all those things go. The token stake on staffee include Polkadot, Kasuma, KSM, Hazos, Cosmos, Matic, Kava and Harmony. Interesting. Matic, that was supposed to be for Ethereum. So good to see that's branching off. Polkadot's making waves, launching Polkadot's favorable in the current Ethereum only DeFi sector as gas fees in that work reach 500 away this week. That's a lot of money. And I've heard nothing but problems as far as like the Ethereum gas prices.  It's called TXStreet.com and you can see the actions and all the different things that are actually happening as far as like transactions for Ethereum, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. So if you take a look at Ethereum right now, it's pretty active little sector, right? Here's the medium fee. Here's the transaction pool count, transaction per second. Only 11 transaction per second. That's pretty low, honestly. So and you can just see all the difference. So here's Compound, ZeroX, Auger, Tether, Tether, Matic, Uniswap, Curve, all those things. So it's pretty cool how it all lays it all out and this has just been growing and growing and growing. So it's pretty active, right? Let's take a look at Bitcoin. What's going on over there? So Bitcoin, of course, not too much. It's all stacked up every 10 minutes and here's what's happening and it's very slow. Let's just say that. Transaction per second, 4.36, what are you gonna do? But yeah, slow goes the boat. Let's take a look at Bitcoin Cash. See how fast that's moving around. Editor, please put in cricket noises. And that's Bitcoin Cash. So if they're gonna have a split, I can only imagine how fantastic that's gonna go. Anyhow, let's go back. Moreover, this is pretty interesting. Ethereum's processing speed is around 10 to 15 transactions per second while Polkadot can reportedly scale up to 100,000 to 1 million TPS by implementing parallel blockchains. Now, if anybody has any type of documentation or any type of website or some type of PDF that they can point me to that proves this, I would love to see it because that's amazing right now. If they can do that, maybe that's one of the reasons why it went up all the way to number six, number five on the crypto market cap. So that'd be very interesting to see. They can do that. That's awesome. Several other dApps are also set to launch on Polkadot including Acala and Snow Fork. I'm not gonna go into those. I will link this article in the description. You can check it out. Staff has moved to the final phase of the mainnet launch with the staking drop, similar to airdrop, of a 2% supply of its governance token, FIS to existing stakeholders. And that's how this whole DeFi thing works, right? So you're able to stake your coins. They're gonna say, thanks so much. Here's our governance token. And that governance token will be worth x amount of dollars. So like if you look at Sushi, that went from, well actually it went from like a hundred something dollars and then all the stakeholders sold off. Then went to three, to five, to seven. I don't know what it is right now. But that's the whole thing. The governance token causing liquidity and getting all that price action so you can actually make a more money. But reportedly the airdrop for FIS was oversubscribed by seven X. So there you go. DeFi in my humble opinion is going to be huge. It just right now, it's very dangerous. So you gotta be like a shark. You gotta get in and get out. Cause if you stick around too much longer, too long you're gonna be holding a lot of bags. Just my opinion. Let me know what you think in the comment section. Let's move on to Q of the day. All right everybody, welcome back to the office for the Q of the day. So this one comes to us from Joy. And Joy asked a, it's a pretty interesting question especially with what's gonna happen in the next couple of months. She says, hey Dan, watch your videos. Thanks so much, appreciate it. She said, you said that you are not a trader. That is very true. And you hold your crypto assets and I mostly just hold my cryptos as well, however. Because I see it, it's a long-term investment. But with the U.S. election coming up, if you don't know what's gonna happen in the United States we're about to have our four year election for the president of the United States. And that's gonna happen in November. So we are in September, so September, October, November is gonna happen. So there's a lot of volatility right now. Which is usually what happens before an election. But Joy says, do you think it's a good idea to just hold or take the profits for now and re-enter the market a few months after the election? I saw you about exit strategies and it was very helpful but one is your opinion about this strategy during the election period as it might get volatile. I've only been in the crypto space for about four months so I don't know how the U.S. election will affect the market. I entered Bitcoin at 9,500, congratulations. Ethereum at 250, Link at $8 and Theta at 25 cents. You think it may be okay to just write out the ups and downs of the market or do you think it may be better to exit with profits? Great question. So the answer is, it really depends on who you're talking to. If you are talking to a trader, they're always telling you to take profits. And I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you. I gotta tell you, it only makes sense at some point to take some profits just to make sure that you're not sitting on the sidelines going, man, I could have taken, you know, a couple hundred bucks out of here or it's a couple of thousand dollars, whatever it is. So if you wanna take profits, take profits. That's not, there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. I mean, I took profits for chain links. I knew it went up pretty high, but it might come out a little bit, so much it did. So, but the next question really comes down to, do I put things into stable coins during the whole presidential election because it is so volatile? So the thing you have to understand is that volatility is what we'd like to see here in the crypto market. We'd like to see crypto, I mean, well, I'd like to see more of the volatility in the traditional space and in the economy and in the traditional market because the more volatility we see over there, the more people get nervous and they look for safe haven assets or for alternative investments and they come to cryptocurrency. So I like to see that. However, to answer your question about how's it gonna affect as far as the presidential elections, I didn't take a look at, there was a Forbes article and it talked about how, let me pull this up. Here's how the stock market has performed before, during and after presidential elections. And as you can see, the growth of the dollar invested in the S&P 500, January 1926 to December 2019, it's only gone up. Now, there's been some dips after the election you can see between Clinton and Bush. There was a huge drop off and then Bush to Obama. Oh, we have to remember this was in 2008 when there was a huge economic recession and different market collapse. So that might not have been so much with the actual election itself, but what was going on with the overall economy. And then from Obama to Trump, this is where it gets kind of interesting because in the article it states, historically, volatility in the stock market is elevated in the months leading up to an election, which is right now. So right now is the perfect opportunity for volatility.  They're like, oh my God, three and a half percent or 4% what are we gonna do? We should start jumping off towers. Don't do that.  And like I always say, if you think that's a bad day, in crypto we just call it a Tuesday. So I don't know what you're whining about. That's just me. Anyhow, it goes on and says beware of bold predictions recall the 2016 election. So if you don't remember in 2016 or if you're not in the United States, in 2016, Hillary Clinton was pegged to beat the pants off of Donald Trump and of course she lost the electoral college and Trump was put into office. So before the night of the 2016 election, as more states began reporting that a Trump victory was gonna become likely, the stock market sank rapidly and the S&P 500 fell by more than 5% in pre-market trading, triggering the circuit breaker which caused everything to shut down, which is pretty awesome. But what's even more hilarious is that by the time the market closed the day after the election, the index was up over 1%. But if you do a Google search for 2016 Trump win and the stock market returns, the results that you're gonna get from Google, it's gonna talk about instant recession, the market tanking, the stock sinking and of course this is all published before November 8th, 2016 of course. So it was all doom and gloom because this new president is gonna take over and guess what? The return, the average annual price return in 2019 was 14%. So the thing is, all about these different factors, as far as the presidential election, I don't know who's gonna win. I don't think anybody does. I mean, that's just how it works. If I did know who would win, I would probably go back to Vegas and put some money on the winner because you can do that in Vegas, but you can't. So the thing is, I wouldn't take money out because here's a scenario that plays out in my mind. You take your money out, you put in stable coins, right? And then whoever wins, then the stock market goes up for some reason and they say, okay, we want that guy. And then the cryptocurrency market is like, okay, well, we're also gonna follow suit and we also go up, everybody's happy. Well, the money that you put into stable coins, let's say Bitcoin was at 12,000. Actually, who knows? It could be at 9,000. Let's say it's at 9,000 and all of a sudden overnight goes up to 10,000. Well, now you just lost 1,000 bucks. I mean, essentially that's what happened to get back into the same positions that you did with Bitcoin. However, opposite is true.  You're like, I'm a genius. Depends on if you're a trader or not. Again, it's all about who you ask. Me personally, I am going to, I do not care. I honestly don't care who wins. So wherever we go for this position, I don't care if it goes up, I don't care if it goes down. Just like today, I could care less about the market. I just sit back and I think to myself, man, I'm glad I'm not trading. I'm glad I'm not leverage trading. I'm glad I'm on helpless positions that I have to do. That's it. Now, am I perfect at this? No, I probably should take more profits at some point. I just don't because I just let it sit. It's just my mentality, the way I do things. Like I talked about yesterday, when I invest in land, I just put money in land, I just let it sit there. And then, five, 10 years later, I come back and go, well, how much is it worth now? Oh, great, made some money. And that's pretty much it. So for me, I'm just going to sit back, let it all, whatever happens, happens just like today. And then we'll see what happens in one to three years. That's what I got. All right, thanks so much for the question. Let's jump back. All right, hope they answered some questions for the final segment. Just wanna let you know that for all my subscribers, I wanna say thanks so much for joining up. If you don't know those join now button on the bottom right there. It's a buck 99, you don't get anything special. I just do random shout outs. So random shout outs for the day, for the new ones. Doug Lemley, hello, Melissa Davis, Johnny Henderson, Joey Serena. Who else we got? Mark, that's a good one. Dreamer, all right, soft, my man. Barry Balasco, an amused web design. He's helping me with the actual website that I need to build, which I'm actually starting on yesterday actually. So we'll see how that goes. That'll be a free website for education so people can learn more about blockchain cryptocurrency assets. And I'll let everybody know when that is completed. So thanks a lot for sticking around. If you like these types of videos, there's gonna be two more that's gonna pop up on your left and right. I don't know which ones.  If you didn't like the ad that you saw and it was a scam, report it to YouTube, they'd love to hear from you. And that's it for today. So thanks for sticking with me, appreciate it. See you on the next one. Hopefully tomorrow is more of a green.


Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm a little jet lagged right now so please bear with me. I was just in New York yesterday for the the sister black festival uh black comics festival at the Schomburg. It's really wonderful and I'm so excited to talk to three goddesses of black speculative fiction. That's what y'all are. Goddesses, yes that's right. So I'm gonna jump right into it because I know we're right on it but um mostly I talk about a lot about process and inspiration and some of the political aspects of why these particular narratives are so important right now you know and um I think I want to start with the truths that you try to get to when you're writing like what inspired you to write what are some of the things that you are trying to tell truth about um because I feel as someone who creates work that I'm trying to get at us some specific inner truth of some kind and I'm kind of curious about process why you write some of those types of questions. I'm sure a lot of people are curious about those as well right see I can feel that okay anyone can y'all all goddesses go. I'm just glad they didn't say no we don't care about that. I'm okay okay sorry. It's a complicated question because it's never the same truth. People ask me know what do I write what do I write about well it's like ask me what I'm working on now and I'll tell you what I'm writing about. So at the core of it more often than not is that I want to put us on the page I want to be able to see myself as a black Caribbean queer woman on the page um but over and above that every every book has a different theme. I guess I'll jump in uh it's a that's a very big question it's very big and I guess the first things that I thought of the first things that popped into my head with your question which probably doesn't embody everything that I that I think about when I'm writing or all the truths but the first thing that popped into my head was um wanting to see the the Africa that I know um in the future and also in the present in the way that I knew it you know whenever my family would travel to Nigeria and and and I would see interactions with technology for example and and just people being people I would realize that you know I wasn't seeing that in the types of stories that I wanted to see so um one of the things that my mom always says is if you can't if you're not seeing something done then do it yourself and so those are those are some of the things that drive me um drive me to write but also I'm very much one of those types of writers who I bleed onto the page so the the pain that I'm feeling if I'm going through something if I'm dealing with something if I'm if I'm um experiencing something from just seeing how the seeing things happening in the world and I'm responding to that and and I'm very emotional about that like I I feel very connected to just people around me and I often kind of respond to that and so um a lot of that will come into what I'm writing as well like a lot of the emotions that I'm feeling a lot of the the pains and the conflicts and that the rage rage is a big one that comes out in my work um those are the some of the things that that come out in my writing um I think I'll I was talking earlier about what prompted me to write the Gilda stories the first story and I would love to hear if if people have specifics about what prompted them to write their first because I um mine was based on a very specific incident that happened to me in the mid 80s does anybody here remember telephone booths okay um I was in a telephone booth at the corner of my street I guess my phone wasn't working or I had rebelled and not paid the bill but uh so I was in the phone booth and these two guys walked by me and went into their whole thing oh baby let me suck your blah blah blah blah blah and I want to do this to you and oh you're looking so good as if that would interest me their opinion and I was talking to my friend Mary Ann and she said what's going on I said hold on a second I turned and looked at them and I said please go away and then I turned back to Mary Ann well of course they didn't go away they just went on and on I said hold on I turned around and one guy said this bitch is crazy and the other guy was just like kept on going I said yes I am crazy and I will kill you and use a lot of that language that my grandmother had asked me not to use um and the one guy dragged the other guy away and this was on West End Avenue and 93rd street in Manhattan my adrenaline had gone through my body like crazy I was so happy there was nothing at hand for me to pick up right because they keep West End Avenue kind of clean um so my friend Mary Ann I heard her screaming because she thought I was killing someone and um so I said Mary Ann I can't talk I have to go home I can't talk so I went home and I caught my breath and I sat down and I wrote the first Guilder story and it was a woman walking in on the street and a guy does that to her and of course she kills him um so I decided I better use my powers for good and uh and over time you know evolved the the vampire mythology because that's really what I realized I was working on uh so that she didn't have to kill people and develop the whole philosophy around it so that fit into my political social political philosophy as a lesbian feminist and I felt like um you know the surrealists believed that you have to first change your dreams in order to change the world right and I feel that that's what speculative fiction any kind of speculative fiction people writing black comics they're imagining a better world they're dreaming a better world a different world um and I realized that's what I wanted to spend my life doing as opposed to you know killing people on the street we're so glad that that wasn't you're visiting me in jail right I don't want to think about that it's a whole another wow okay so so so picking up some of those on some of those threads I've been I've been really fascinated since uh childhood around uh the supernatural science fiction horror I came up in the south you know in itself is a very speculative scary place right talking like post civil rights era Mississippi right so I was introduced to a lot of these particular types of narratives by my mother right and by my grandmother who I think probably was a hoodwit or a conjure woman herself just thinking about some of the things that she would talk about you know which at the time I thought were like superstitions but now I feel I realize what other types of truths right as you were saying so I've been thinking about this notion what I call the ethnographic right the idea of using um gothic tropes in a particular fashion right that are connected to ways of exercising trauma right and of course like one of the um other aspects of the gothic is the grotesque the monster right this notion of these hyperbolic frightening spaces right so I'm curious about uh because I don't know y'all deal with monsters or monstrous things and sometimes sometimes what monster inspires you the most and why and how does it connect to some of the political aspects that you think might be inherent in the work by way I teach a professor so you hinted to me you would be asking this question and I've been mulling it over ever since I don't see I know I've been sort of walking around in days thinking I can't pick just one it doesn't pick several pick several I think I'm going to put a bunch into all together so this is the nature of monsters yes exactly they are uh shameras um and it is stagoli it is papa legba it is issue it is the that tall lean man dark man in the top hat who knows more about the dark in you than you do and and knows that you want it I think uh well mine uh I'm sitting here trying to figure out why this monster is so central to so many of my stories there there are two um I don't know what one of them is yeah one of them is Godzilla and and this is why I'm sitting here trying to figure out okay because Godzilla has shown up in many of my stories in various ways and uh I know that if someone were to just ask me without intellectualizing it why do I like Godzilla it's Godzilla's destructive nature Godzilla comes out of the water and just destroys shit for no reason you know there's no like there's no rhyme or reason just comes out destroys everything goes back into the water I love that I don't know why I don't know why there's something about it um and it may have something to do with my obsession with post-apocalyptic narratives as well this idea of everything being destroyed you know and then and then having to to deal with that um it also may have to do with my anger issues I don't know a lot of a lot of rage um the second monster it's not really a monster um it's just this this this entity that has shown up consistently in my works now it's it's in lagoon and it's in um it's in Akata which part two as well um and it's a spider it's this this giant spider that is its name is Udide which means spider and Ebo um spider the artist the first time the spider kind of the idea of the spider showed up in one of my stories it was in my story called spider the artist which deals with the Niger Delta where you've got like these it's set in the near future where you have these the the government and the oil companies have created these robot spiders to guard the pipelines that the oil pipelines in Nigeria prevent people from bunkering and these spiders of course they kill anyone who touches them they just tear them to shreds so that they can guard the oil so um that that's sort of another story but but this this spider um is it's not a Nancy I know that um I had an uncle who told me about uh I'm very I'm terrified of spiders so there's that I'm utterly irrational if a spider were to jump like come right now you would see me embarrass myself so I'm terrified of spiders I don't know why it's an irrational fear and um so spiders have always shown up in my stories but this particular large one it lives underneath the city of Lagos and it it it turns onto its back and and feels the vibrations of the people and it's a monstrous spider and it weaves and creates stories and narrative and controls everything it's just yeah so that's that's my second spider yeah I'll stop there okay so I want to stop and read that story like right now okay um well I guess my monster started out as there's two guys on the street hmm and has evolved to uh any figures that prey upon people who are less you know powerful um and I think that was one of the reasons I was interested in doing vampire stories because Dracula is such a pervasive mythology such a pervasive character and insidious because he's charming and he's a serial killer and you know if you go back to the original ones that he um you know seduces women and kills them and everybody is like excited Dracula's coming over you know I'm like is it so that really fascinated me that people would find this such a romantic figure in such a predatory figure um and I've seen you know just about every Dracula movie ever made and I remember one day I went with my mother and grandmother to see the play Dracula on Broadway we left that and went to see the movie with Frank Langella which was playing in Times Square same time and we were in conversation about that for hours like how can he be so sexy and be such a killer um so that really set me up to work on how to redo the mythology so that I felt like uh vampire could be heroic and not a predator not a serial killer um and in this new book that I'm working on it's about the society becoming predatory using people who are empathic using people who have certain kinds of skills artistic skills and making them work for the government segregating them into patches so they only associate with people who are doing what they do and um how to escape that so it's it it really is the monster is really is uh those who prey on less powerful people I'm really fat I mean I'm obsessed with it I'm actually teach a course called the medium is the monster which is kind of a it's uh actually I think you actually came to that particular neti went to that particular course and um yeah she was you know but but I'm really fascinated by it because as a metaphor it has these different multivalent aspects to it and could stand for so many different things and um you kind of touched upon like some of your interest in like you know social justice to a certain degree or uh some of the issues that are going on right now in our country could you talk I'll you talk a little bit about um I've been really fascinated by why about how like black speculative culture has had this not necessarily a resurgence because it's always been there but it seems like to be a lot of interest in the black speculative arts and you know afrofuturism and these different types of like ways of making meaning through um the black imagination because as I was stating earlier I mean the idea of aspiration and the idea of imagination are like key to all types of movements right I mean look at uh Robin D. G. Kelly's book um Freedom Dreams thank you it deals a lot with um this notion of the the initial spark of imagination and how it kind of pushes forth every movement right or this idea of how um there seems to be these intersections between black speculative culture and you know various movements that have been happening recently have you want to maybe talk about some of the things that have been happening or your own personal beliefs around social justice issues whether it's representation whether it's gentrification whether it's you know particular identity politics and how it relates to these particular types of narrative constructions sorry that's a question that's what you're talking about do you see those those things being being intersected or do you see those things being having common grounds because it seems to me that there there are some particular instances like for instance like Octavia's Brood for instance right where you have underground activists who are actually using um narrative uh to to deal with those issues right yeah I keep going back to Walter Mosley who you may or may not know has written science fiction novels and short stories yeah all right all right and uh and I'm going to paraphrase him but he basically said we we need a better world and in order to have a better world in order to make it we first need to be able to imagine it um and also Samuel Argelini um mentor of mine who said we need visions of the future and our people need them more than most so yeah that's right it was true then true now um and so there is very much a connection and I sort of also think yeah the the work is there the work needs to be done it's desperate but we also need to be able to enjoy to have fun to have imagination to have passion because why else are we doing this so I think we also need to give ourselves permission to enjoy Godzilla coming out of the sea and smashing everything up there is nothing wrong with enjoying that um the the work is there and we will do it so there's very much a connection between allowing ourselves to imagine allowing ourselves to think that we get to like anybody else have fun and using that to fuel the vision of what it is we're trying to make um sometimes I just want to write strange stories set in strange places the the my own reality will always seep into those stories but I want to hold on to the fact that that we get to do all of it right yeah I'm I'm I'm sitting here thinking about the word um using these narratives for social justice and I'm very resistant to that um because I know that when I sit down and to write something I'm not thinking that okay I want to make this point you know this is something I want to show the world about whatever um when when when it comes down to it when I sit down to write I'm not thinking about anything I'm just just letting it flow I'm very a very subconscious writer where oftentimes I don't even have an outline I don't even know who the character is I'll just sit down and just start and whatever is flowing through me is what will flow through me so um the idea of of using the narrative for something is foreign to me I mean I understand other other writers other artists who operate like that but for me I definitely don't but I do know that I'm very much a political person so those ideas and and and my what I want to see the changes that I want to see and the things that I want to do and want to see done those are already there those are things that I might have conversations about when I'm not writing but when I sit down to write those things come through in in a more um a more indirect way like I mean I deal with my my books tend to be very political and it's not it's not that I sat down and thought okay I want to write this political story it's just that they are because I am right yeah yeah I I would say the same I think I might be a little more conscious of it um you know I don't I don't think I start out to write adjuprop uh but having come of age you know in the civil rights movement the black arts movement all of the work that people was were doing um was an expression of liberation and opening new worlds to us the worlds of blackness so I think I started writing in a very conscious way about blackness the same as uh as being a feminist I started writing very consciously about women and how women are placed in the world at the same time I don't want to write a tract you know so people will just you know snore um but I think though having come of age in those particular movements make me much more conscious of it as I'm doing it and I think that's one of the interesting things for this um going from african-americans saying how dare you write a vampire novel with african-americans in it how could you do that how could you connect those things um to you know 25 years later as my vampire novel is about to have his 25th anniversary um and a new edition um to see the community come full circle and say oh yeah we're going to claim this and we're going to give it its own name afro-futurism you know it's really great um and in part I think that's because the political evolution on campuses uh in communities uh poor poor communities who are starting to understand their economics has to be uh taken in their own hands they can't wait for the government to fix it um that racism sexism any of the isms really need to he's saying shut up jewel um need to be in our hands how we fight them need to be in our hands and I think that is a sign of hope and I think that's one of the reasons that our writing has started to spread out into these fields into black comics into future afro-futurism and other speculative fictions I think it's a sign of hope I think so too seriously I want to um you know get ready to open things up for questions any any um our question cards for the audience um excuse me so this concept of blade and how the last film the trilogy brought forth the woman and the and was it the second one I'm not totally sure I had to go back and look at it was two and so I mean I'd like to hear you guys take on that because it's amazing that you know you're talking about it from your perspective and I wonder where your mind goes when it goes to blade and how that sort of community builds up within itself if you don't mind me I loved blade the original blade and I was you know it's like all of us we can look at anything and project ourselves into it even if we aren't there literally there you know even star wars finally had a decent black person and a woman in it I mean doctor who has a lovely black woman doctor doctor jones so you know it's a very um it's very easy for us to see ourselves sometime in our minds but it helps when there's really a person there really helps you know and she doesn't have to be you know have bubble breasts and be half semi-clad to save the world she could be wearing regular clothes and have a regular body um so I I enjoy that expansion so that women do get included and the vampire mythology has always been predatory around women so it's it's hard I think for people to reimagine the vampire mythology without doing that but I loved what blade did manifest could I okay I have a lot I'm out because I'm sorry did you want a question because I'm like about to jump out my seat that way I'm sorry yeah not the geeky I love geeky but so one of the things I thought was really interesting about the first blade is how much it likened itself to like black exploitation films and where did blade get his serum from in the first film he got it from the black community right he was surrounded by black people he was surrounded by his people right and it's and this is actually before Marvel Comics kind of took over the the franchise right and so it seems as as soon as it became more corporate because they didn't want him to do it probably right I mean they just kind of like wanted to throw him whatever character right but he actually made it and also jumped off this obsession with the superhero genre in the film also too right so it's almost like this the more and more corporate that particular character became the more um you know he started to be erased from it right yeah removed from community that's right that's right they let me take him out of the community because he actually like he actually got his serum from some space that was it was from a black space yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely I'm sorry yeah I couldn't help it because I'm like you know the other thing too I thought was interesting how they used the metaphor of the of the corporation and the vampire I thought that was really interesting as well can we get um sorry about that he's a mic is coming I'm sorry I'll ask how much of you guys imagination is tied I know it's called Afrofuturism how much of it is tied to your knowledge of the past and past rituals and stuff because a lot of times I know that the imagination is circular whereas it deals with the past and the future but I know that you guys are Afrofuturist writers so how much do you guys read about the past do you guys deal with the past do you guys deal with the ancient past do you you know I just want to know how much of that and what is the process of how it creeps into the future in your imagination okay I gotta you know like Nadie say that when I sit down to write I don't think I'm an Afrofuturist writer I'm going to write to an Afrofuturist whatever um I'll happily claim the adjective it happened after I started writing it is it is it is a label that people use to to try and pull together a pattern that they're seeing and then in so much as what it is it's useful but um it and it is also not as simple as I'm just a writer of course I'm not just a writer I am everything that I am um but the Afrofuturism part is it's just gotta be somewhere else when I write or it will stop me um but of course I'm writing science fiction fantasy so of course yes there's a lot of research that goes into it and a lot of not just research but theorizing because of course the history books leave stuff out so you have to imagine yourself into those places um I'm researching the future I'm researching the past I'm researching uh black history Caribbean history white history I barely stayed awake through a history class when I was in school and now if you look up my shelves that stuff is all over the place and I discover the more I go into it the more I realize that human beings are human beings um you can reach back into the the very beginning of time when human beings are human beings and and we aren't that different uh and there's something there's something healing about being able to go back into African histories and African cultures and African ways of life and and and see that um what we are capable of which you know you know but to see it proven over and over and over and over again as the centuries go by and the centuries go forward um I definitely look into into my past I am um what I consider Niger American which means Niger is slang for Nigerian and I'm American so Nigerian American I was born and raised in this country um but from a young age my parents were taking me back to my siblings and I back to Nigeria to reconnect with our heritage reconnect with our family most of our family is there um and so and then also just being Nigerian American in the house within that culture within the Ebo culture um those those old traditions and ways have seeped into who I am as well so those all manifest themselves my Nigerian Americanness definitely manifests itself in my work um I deal a lot with the the traditional spiritualities especially of the Ebo people but of other parts of other parts of the continent as well um one example are masquerades masquerades show up in my in my works a lot masquerades are found in many different African cultures but I have like a lot of a lot of what I write about comes from personal experience so my personal experience with masquerades masquerades are like um they are manifestations of the dead and the ancestors and spirits and they look they can look in there are many different types some can look very monstrous like you know just rafia and cloth that they look can look like monsters and those are the ones that I've been obsessed with and so as a when I was a kid whenever we go back to Nigeria they the masquerades would come out around Christmas time which is that's a whole other issue just um they come out around Christmas time and because my sisters and I were um American Nigerians they would harass us the most so and they would literally chase us down the street okay they would chase it they had like a whip and they would whip people and they would chase us down the street with the whip and luckily we were fast so we weren't caught too many times and so when I think back I'm like okay and a lot of times we would outrun them and so I when I think back I'm like oh I was outrunning the spirits and so in my own stories you get you you see the masquerades show up a lot in my stories and they show up in a way where um they show up in the way that I imagined them because I've seen the really big terrifying ones at weddings and where all the women just run to the other side of the room it's just it's really it's really quite epic and um in my stories because I'm writing speculative fiction I can imagine those masquerades the way I see them which is as they're not these they're not people or men in particular dressed up in these elaborate costumes who then take on the ancestor of the spirit they are that creature and so in my stories I can do that I can show them that way and I have a lot of fun with it so so yeah you look in the past I would say definitely history is important for me as a writer I mean my my vampire novel my first vampire novel starts with a young woman escaping from slavery in the US in 1850 and follows her after she becomes a vampire till the year I think it's 2050 so my goal was to see the line of history through a couple hundred years and the way I do that research is um I pick a place a town or area of the country I want her to be in then I pick a year I want her to be in and then I research that town and that year and see what story emerges for her whether it's you know during the black migration to the north and she ends up in a town near the Mississippi River where African Americans have moved to work during World War One or Chicago in 1927 you know the meatpacking industry is at its height as are you know mobsters and how do African Americans fit into that and so I find that I'm doing specific research for different periods in different places for each section of the book that I'm writing and I'm writing a second one now but the first one that was exact I mean I almost opened a map and put my finger down someplace I said hmm what year would I like to be in hope Mississippi we have a question we have a question from the audience on the card um so this one is dealing with uh the social political uh agency of art and basically it's amazing like the last question was dealing with history this was kind of dealing with where you think the future's going what do you think this notion of what has been constructed as Afrofuturism or or black speckled culture what have you how do you how's it shaping the future do you think where are we going next do you think it's not it's not really hard I can see where I hope it's going okay and I hope it gives more people permission to know that they can imagine and that they can make stories I mean the three of us were at astro blackness a few months ago and there's a young woman in the audience black woman who um also loved horror and didn't think she could write it because she kept imagining black characters until she found um an ARC and advanced reading copy of one of Octavia Butler's novels on the streetcar or whatever they do in LA um and then it was like her imagination broke open and now she's writing um and it it cuts to my heart somebody thinks that because they've never seen it they can't do it um so that's where I would hope it's going is that that more of us have just sort of know that they we can stand up and make what we imagine I think also that um what I'd like to see and what I think is going to we're going to see more are more African writers from the continent you know writing um afro I have an issue I have issues with the label but I'm not gonna I'm just gonna use the word though yes so with um with afrofuturist stories and I think that that the change that I've seen because I've had a lot of interaction um uh with with especially especially Nigerian um writers and what I remember from maybe about I'd say maybe about 10 years ago there there was this general attitude of um what is real literature and science fiction and fantasy and speculative fiction were not considered real literature and and what was considered real literature were like things fall apart you know serious writing without any of that weird stuff going on in it and um yeah yeah exactly exactly because things fall apart has lots of speculative elements in it um but that's another issue but but I think that we'll see more um more Africans directly from the continent writing um this kind of this kind of literature and I think that that what what they write is going to have like a different flavor as well and and and what I what I also would like to see in terms of afrofuturism is just more uh diversity in the types of writing I'd like to see um I'd like to see female writers um uh writers with disabilities just more just more variety within afrofuturist writing that's that's what I'm waiting to see because right now it's so the it's so small you know and it's it's slowly building it's slowly building and it's increasing and and um and growing but I'd like to see more of that and I'd also like to see really uh an extremely successful afrofuturist writer extremely successful as in like like best-selling status who's mediocre ice yes all right okay um I I I for me the um the idea that genre fiction and I I usually say speculative fiction to cover everything as an umbrella term but I I think speculative fiction is really an easy way for a large population to find themselves and find their politics any kind of genre fiction whether it's detective stories whether it's cartoons um whether it's a romance I know you find that hard to believe but any kind of genre fiction can get away with telling a political story and if it's a genre fiction more different kinds of people are going to read it because they they feel like oh this is just going to be fun and then when they finish they realize oh wow I thought about that that was deep and whoa and you know you saw Star Trek do it with issues around race we see all kinds of TV speculative fiction shows introduce complex ideas and I think the more of us who write and start writing younger the more complex ideas we will put in genre fiction and the more of us who will read them and become increasingly conscious of our political surroundings wonderful I'm or I hope so yes I totally agree I'm I'm gonna have to be the bad guy and be like that was our last question I'm so sorry about that no I know um so thank you for the three again three goddesses of speculative fiction this is a conversation I'm gonna get a picture with all of us of course yeah