Hello, and a very warm welcome to everyone who's joining us this evening for our inaugural seminar, which is part of our history series. My name is for Zana Kuroshi and I am an arts humanities librarian here at South Library. We're very excited to be hosting this series where we hope to share narratives and stories for the Asia Africa and Caribbean diaspora. So the co-chair of the SOAS Library Decolonisation Operations Group. I'll hand over to Ludi. Hi, we're in the same room, so we might be just string to each other in case anyone's wondering about that. Yes, my name is Ludi Price. I'm the China librarian here at SOAS Library and also co-chair of the Decolonisation Working Group. And I can hear an echo for Zana, would you mind muting? So sorry. That's okay. So just a bit on the Hidden Histories seminar series that we've got set up here and thank you all for coming to our inaugural session. So part of our goal as the SOAS Library Decolonisation Operational Group is to promote the decolonisation of knowledge. And part of that is de-centering our Anglo-American or our Eurocentric ways of thinking. And it's really hard to do that without engaging with and learning about the hidden histories of communities outside of that Anglo-American and Eurocentric sphere. So what we're aiming to do really with Hidden Histories is to bring these stories to the fore and to allow voices from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and their diasporas to be heard by everyone. So we're really happy to kick off the first seminar in our series and we're really glad that it's coinciding with Black History Month. And we'll be talking about Black British publishing and literature here. So if you have any questions you can put them in the Q&A box and we'll be picking them up at the end of the seminar during the special Q&A section. But in the meantime, feel free to chat and discuss the talk with each other in the chat. And I think that's all for housekeeping.  Sorry, I was muted there. Hi, so my name is Ida Hajibayanis and I'm lecturer here in the SLCL at SOAS, so Africa Section. And today I'll be chairing the event which has been curated by the SOAS Library Decolonation Operational Group. And this group is led by Frazana Qureshi, who we just met. Dr. Ludie Price, who just spoke before me, Amapoku and Angelica Bastiera. So hidden histories seek to highlight stories from African, Caribbean, and also Asian communities in the UK, and also beyond. So this brings to light a shared vision of decolonizing knowledge production and also documenting the unique voices and experiences of their explorers in Britain, as well as across the world. So in particular to celebrate Black History Month, this is our inaugural session in the series. And it will explore Black literature movements, visual representations of Black figures, and also Black women in the academy. So tonight we'll have a panel discussion with Aurelia Yoso, Kuda Haire, who are from Thika Black Lines. And this is an interdisciplinary research and artist collective that applies contemporary art theory, cultural studies, social practices to rewrite histories. The group applies contemporary art theory. And what Thika Black Lines does is that it really sort of like loops between the lines. And I'm sure that two of them we'll talk more about this. But Thika Lines was initiated by Rihanna J. Parker, as well as Aurelia Yoso, and Kuda Haire, and also Karima Ali. Aurelia Yoso is a writer and art historian. Her writing has appeared in Frise, I hope that's the correct pronunciation, she can correct me later. Hyper-alleged art scope and also other art publications. She has worked with organizations including the Tate, White Chapel Gallery, photo works, Hausa and Worth, Glasgow Art School, and many, many more. Aurelia is a founding member of the Interdisciplinary Art Collective, Thika Black Lines, which is why she's here today. And she's also the convener of Kitchen Table Crit, which is a monthly peer forum for Black artists, critics and curators. Kuda Haire is an independent researcher and artist with a background in public international law. Her practice focuses on the position of Black people globally. And she has shared work at the Tate Museum, sorry, Tate Exchange, Tate Modern and Uncommon Space at Tate Britain. So there's three types of Tates going on there. She can tell us more about it later, I'm sure, if you're interested. She's also worked for the Prince of Notre Dame, Cheese and Hail Gallery and DIY cultures. Kuda is part of the Black feminist artist collective, Thika Black Lines, as well as an associate of Numbi Arts and M.K. Zine. She's also a founding member of the Somali Museum. I'd like to know more about that, I'm sure. We also have Dr. Marlene Edwin, who is deputy director of the Center for Caribbean and Diasporas, that is like Goldsmith University of London. That's our sister university. Dr. Marlene Edwin is currently engaged in research on Creoleistics and also oral literature. She's also the convener and postgraduate module convener for literature of the Caribbean and Diasporas. She also teaches the MA in Black British literature. I think that's it for me. So I will start by welcoming Kuda and Aurela, who will offer their presentation now. Thank you. Hi everyone. Thank you for that introduction and thank you for inviting us to be a part of this first panel update in history series. My name's Aurela Youssef and I'm here with Kuda Keira and along with Rihanna Jade Parker and Karima Ali, we are interdisciplinary artists and research collective called Thika Black Lines. Thika Black has been primarily concerned with black art in Britain and how that fits more widely into the conditions of black life and knowledge production and how these things intersect. So today, we are going to be talking about black British publishing. I'm going to start with, I guess, a few highlights from the history of black British publishing through into the present day and how the publishing industry independently and in the major publishing sector has developed over time, but also looking at the role of audiences and readership within that and also looking at our work in Thika Black Lines as a kind of case study for working with audiences. And so with that, I will begin our slideshow and I will hand over to Kuda to begin the discussion. Thank you so much, Aurela, and thank you, Kuda, for that pretty generous introduction. I hope throughout this presentation, we will have an understanding of how complex the discourse of decolonisation, whatever there may be look like, through actually taking, you know, as Lucy spoke about having a sort of a pulling out to look at the few origins of as to how the colonial world was formed and knowledge production is primary vehicle by which we can understand the colonial power operated but also to introduce another language, coloniality, to take the words of less American theorists and Marciano, the continuation of colonial power structures, despite the end of formal colonisation. And so Thika Black Lines have been engaged in a discourse looking at the written word, looking at books specifically in libraries and how they are both sites of the, the display of colonial power but also sites of counter narratives and counter resistance. And so throughout our presentation, Aurela and I will look at the complexities of understanding what would decolonise text look like and thinking about things in terms of the present, present day and the, and the, the sort of strides that communities have taken from the past, but going back to sort of like what are we talking about when talking about publishing. We are thinking about the spread of the written word and the primacy of the written word and the legitimacy of the written word, written word over other forms of narration, such as all testimony or histories and specifically the primacy of European languages and English language. So this, this whole conversation is limited to texts are written in English, even from authors that had different languages as their primary tongue because language was a display of power.  And when we're thinking about the histories of black peoples vis-à-vis British culture and history we must think back to 1492 we must think back about the creation of the new world and the colonial adventure, which was always for African peoples and negotiation around enslavement and the laws around the capacity of enslaved peoples to read and write and to learn are really underpin how we can think about the responses of black British people in the, in going forward and how to think about our relationship with publishing. And so in the colonial world system, African peoples were not allowed to read and write, and this was punishable. Nonetheless, we saw the written word be used as a vehicle to for the explanation of the grandeur, both the systems of enslavement but also thinking about the humanity of enslaved peoples. And so Thika Black Lines, when we're thinking about these histories, we're looking back even to the first text written by black peoples that were made available in England, such as the work of people like Oloda Ikwano and Phyllis Wheatley. Phyllis Wheatley's work was published in London in 1974. After a tour of her work, she was a captive African who found herself was taken to Boston and was able to nonetheless learn to read and write and speak about her story directly and was able to take her herself and with the abolitionist movement was able to arrive in London and have a court where the mayor of London at the time and even the royalty at the time knew her work and her prowess not only as a skilled poet but also her actual biography, her story. And so the slave narrative was a primary vehicle when British publishing thought about the stories of African peoples. This is a more autonomous conversational about the story of African peoples in and black peoples in in British publishing. Nonetheless, the as we sort of will talk about this the story of autonomy is always a very fragile conversation. Within the context of slavery, the capacity of black peoples to was doubted in order for black people to actually be understood as literary people. And in a culture that was vast publishing houses were vastly becoming the sites of knowledge production, whether it be attached to the university or the more the independent publishing houses of Bloomsbury and Heinlein and so on. The narratives that those publishing houses shared of black peoples across the globe, whether it be in the Caribbean or the UK or in Africa wasn't was a narrative and a discourse that was on the whole part incredibly disparaging. We can think to the work of a famed author Joseph Conrad and the Heart of Darkness, but even sort of our more what we would say are sort of our best sellers and our favorite authors people like Agatha Christie, her best selling texts published in 1939. Originally was entitled something incredibly inflammatory it was it was changed to. And then there were none and to this day it's still Agatha Christie's best selling text one of the best selling texts in the English language. Nonetheless, the, the, the propagation of defamatory was for black peoples was in the common vernacular, and this type of orientalizing some in some narratives, or just in other ways to say the depiction of black people in in in negative terms was replete within the English canon, and this were acceptable texts to be published. And so, during the up until the mass immigration of black people to the UK from 1948 onwards. There was a from from the outset that was a great move to redress these negative discourses on on black peoples. And so one case study that we'll sort of speak through is a Britain's first black publishing house. The impetus behind the publishing house and the ecosystem to which that publishing house was was created to think more about what is it then we're thinking about when we're thinking about publishing and its social impact and how do you understand the the experience of black peoples. And so the founder of new beacon books, author, John La Rose came to the UK 1961 as many Caribbean peoples did and he was originally from Trinidad to study, and he found himself in a cohort of artists, writers, theorists, thinkers who were challenging the colonial system in this milieu of anti colonial movements and Britain from the interwar years onwards was a hotbed by which anti colonial fervor and movement was was being sort of established, founded the Caribbean artist movement. And the Caribbean artist movement had a publication that can a regular publication as well as having regular meetings by where authors and writers were able to share their texts in 1966. John La Rose established new beacon books, new beacon gained its name from beacon publication, which was a a West Indian publication that had writers like Alfred Gomez and and CLR James and was a publication that was thinking about the the unity of of the Caribbean, which under the colonial system, the islands were the means of communication between islands were incredibly severed, and knowledge production was focused on the colonial culture pole. So authors and writers and peoples. And this is not exclusive to the Caribbean this is across the colonized all the nations, particularly that Britain had colonized that knowledge production was was focused in in Britain and disseminated on to the colonized peoples and the capacity and the space by which peoples were able to speak to themselves in the written form was incredibly limited. John La Rose has a really heartfelt sort of analysis of this time. When he says of this of the of growing up in colonial period he said, growing up in the colonial society in Caribbean, maybe cutely aware of the colonial policy that was based on withholding information from the population. There was a discontinuity of information from generation to generation, publishing therefore was a vehicle to independent validation of one's own culture, history and politics, a sense of self, and to make and make a break with discontinuity. So we see from the outset new beacon books had some could argue a decolonizing modus of methodology, a way of thinking about this, this newly nascent form of the Caribbean of the West Indian bringing together as people from in the disparate islands that that will create a disparate by the colonial system. And as well as we responding to the live reality of people who were away from home and making Britain their home new beacon books had its headquarters in Stroud Green Road in Binsbury Park. And it was literally based from his his genre is his beds that they shared with his partners, their cell light. The Caribbean artist movements would have regular meetings in spaces like the West Indian Student Center that was based in else else court, but also many other places. And they published the works of fellow writers in the movement, such as Edward Comell Brathwaite, the John LaRose's poetry himself, as well as factual, as well as factual text. And the new beacons bestseller was a pamphlet by Bernard called called how the West Indian child is made educationally sub normal in the British education system. I'm saying this from memory, I should look at the text title directly. But this book was new beacons books bestseller and was directly speaking to the challenges that black children Caribbean children specifically were facing in British education system that was purposefully denying resources to children and branding them as educationally sub normal, because they were not born in the UK. And even if they came from homes where English was the primary language, other really beautiful texts that new beacons books published were on the on the creation of a creole grammar. And the text looked at took a scholarly review of creole languages in the Caribbean and specifically addressing the hierarchy of English and English established language that that that was prevalent in the academy and in British culture that just did. The language spoken in the Caribbean as being a sort of a pigeon English and lesser version as opposed to a language was a hearing grammar system, and one that was unique to its locale, not something that was derivative of English cultures at work. So, and the 1960s and 70s saw an upswell of independent publishing houses, including not only new beacons books, but also the bogal literature bookshop. That was established by the Huntley family, and as well as publishing houses like such as the work created by Margaret Bosby. So, there was this moment, this period where publishing was understood as an important vehicle for not only countering racist anti black narrative about black people in the UK, but also as a as a ecosystem to support creative works by black writers in the UK. And one that was also established created in in partnership with bookshops, but as well. Even in international book fairs and so one of the sort of key moments in the history of new beacons books was the establishment of the black and international third world international book fair that was a three day book fair that invited authors from across the world. And was a nexus point for the sharing of, of information, and as well as authors having a direct relationship with their audiences. Sorry everyone I've been trying to share slides and I don't think they're showing up. So, you know what we will we will share the slides afterwards but yeah I just to to sort of like to close out so many of the, the, the activist groups that were established in the UK such as around the organization of women of African Asian descent. Publications attached to their work. So speak out magazine was a publication by which works were being able to be shared in the 1980s. There was a news by publishing houses that although were not established by black writers and authors were concerned with and disseminated the work of black writing. The women's press, which was an imprint of Virago was the first public a first press in the UK to share the work of Alice Walker's color purple, and were also the first publishers of a really important landmark text called the heart of the race. And that was a text of a sociological a sense of the sociological overview of the experiences of black women in Britain, that was overseen by and written by Beverly Bryant Stella dad's in Susan scarf and we're going to talk more about that text later.  And so, finally on the screen we have a passions a discourse on black women's creativity that was created by red urban Fox publications, which was an independent venture by the artist Maud Sorter and Lubina him and is to this day the only text that is could be exclusively about the work of black British female artists. And so you can see that black British publishing was very much drawn from a necessity, and the, the ecosystem that created these these independent publishing houses that were involved were very much led by by audiences and by by sort of the word that we were using the symbiotic relationship between the needs of the community and the readership and the, and the, the creativity of the authors that that were able to show that they're, they're, they're at least many times in in British cultural life there's been this this deep conversation. So I want us to have this in our minds when we're thinking about sort of the present day examples on what we're thinking about when thinking about black British publishing and how that relates to this kind of conversation that, that this seminar is having around decolonising knowledge and what would that look like. So I'll hand over to my colleague Arela now to share her parts. Yeah, so thank you, Hedda. And I think we're going to take a bit of a leap into the present day but the reason why these two books are so significant to us as black black lines as, as, as readers Lee is because, as Hedda said, passion is still today, the only book that has been specifically about black women artists and Heart of the Race is both books were out of print for a long time, Heart of the Race was republished a couple of years ago and we'll talk a bit about that now. But the fact that books that are so landmark and be out of print and unavailable for such a long time is something that's really important to remember when we think about the kind of progress that's been seen to be made in mainstream publishing and particularly when we think that over the years of the decades really since these books came out to now, there have been a number of black writers who have come to prominence. But there hasn't really been that huge shift in the overall industry. But we are seeing a few initiatives in recent years that have been coming after increasing pressure because I think everyone might have noticed like year on year there are these kind of reports that are published about the industry, and really stating in cold hard figures, the lack of diversity in behind the scenes but also as far as writers, whether it's in academic publishing in fiction, nonfiction, children, children and young adult literature, and also in journalism and mainstream media. And a few initiatives that have been established in recent years are in 2018, Murky Books is an imprint of Penguin which was created actually by the rapper Stormzy. And that's also something that's interesting because the impetus for this is actually coming outside of the industry. And I believe he also, you know, is the primary financial backer of this. And although this isn't an imprint that focuses exclusively on black literature, it's a purpose for writers coming from different underrepresented marginalized backgrounds. And also by Jack Aranda there was this initiative called 20 in 2020, in which they sort of published 20 books by new, or perhaps previously unpublished writers, which covered the majority fiction but also poetry and nonfiction. So these are the kinds of things that we are seeing. But they're, I think what they indicate is that, although there is, there is a tendency within mainstream publishing for these kind of initiatives to receive a lot of a lot of press. The actual push is not coming from within the industry. And it's actually coming from pressure either by audiences by the general public or by writers themselves. And last year in 2020, following the global uprisings that we saw in really every area of society that was slurred on by violence and police brutality in the United States but actually more widely. This, this kind of had a huge ripple effect on lots of different areas of society and industries, and led to the establishment of the black writers guilt in the UK, in which 200 black British writers across different sectors came together to really put pressure on the industry to improve the visibility, the diversity and representation of black voices in publishing in and in the media. But I think the difference between these kind of initiatives and what we saw with new beacon books and the movements of the 1670s and 80s is this, like I said, this symbiotic relationship between the writers and the audiences that it was very much a kind of community based platform in which there was a direct relationship between what audiences wanted. And what you'll find now is that publishers have an expectation that writers are already quite established before they will even allow them to publish through a major one of the major five publishing houses. And there's an expectation that they already are fairly have a voice within their community that are well known, and frequently this this has an impact on the type of publications that we're seeing. So a lot of the, a lot of the new writing that we're seeing is coming from the sphere of journalism of social justice activism. And so what this creates is a kind of an imbalance where there is a lot of nonfiction writing being produced. And this is separately to academic publishing, but we're not necessarily seeing the same amount of fiction and the type of writing that can really enrich and have a really nuanced understanding of the world, especially for young readers. And I think when we think about some of the greatest black writers globally, you think of people like James Baldwin, Tony Morrison, Chinoisea Bay. We don't necessarily require only non fictional texts to represent our lives and our experiences. And actually we can get the just a deep understanding from also fiction and having those two things going together. And it's really, really important. So something that is, that is not as visible is kind of spaces for the development of creative writing that that simply doesn't get the same kind of traction that in this moment in time in the social climate that the nonfiction gets. And so what this leads to is audiences and readerships only having access to the kind of books that are essentially given to them. And when we were talking about this, we just we felt that it was really, really important that audiences actually develop like a sophisticated understanding of what they want, because they also have the power to demand more variety, more of everything that they want really where we can have really layered and rich understandings of our lives and about experiences and not just have to accept whatever is presented to us. But audiences don't necessarily have the confidence to do that if they don't have the space to read slowly and think together and ask questions. Because reading can be quite a solitary endeavor, but it can also be something communal and that's something that we have found very important in our work as the black lines. In 2017 we had a residency exchange and take one, and as part of that residency, we had a series of public programming. One of the events was essentially a pilot and a bigger project later on, and it was a reading group around and part of the race, the book that we mentioned earlier at the time this book was still hadn't been republished. And so the co-pad were, I think, ex library copies that were circulating on Amazon. And it was really a really rewarding, kind of close reading. And it was quite transformative for some of the members of the public who joined us on that day, where we looked at one chapter of the book. Subsequently the book was republished by Verso in 2018 and we were invited to do a longer project in which we had a five week reading group each week focusing on one chapter. And this was open to a much larger audience, where we had 40 or 50 people with us every week from the general public across all ages, genders, backgrounds. And it was, it was that I think the most remarkable thing was that people would return week after week, it wasn't just sort of a drop in and leave it at the end of the session, but there was that commitment. I think it was, it was one of the occasions where we felt we were actually having the opportunity to read with people to think ideas through about society about about life, because although our work focuses on artists you can't understand the conditions of art production standing the conditions of black life in this country. So, I'm going to hand over to her to talk a bit more about the long reading group that we had, and then I think we will wrap up after that. Thank you so much, so when we're thinking about publishing libraries as a, as a consumer published works and as a forum by which public works can be be read, and a physical venue for for community readings. We created a little library I don't know if you can see that there in, in the, in the picture, and think about clients that she's involved in a lot of sort of create library creation and creating reading, reading lists for, for example, the Turner prize in 2018, but also, and with the space at the, the, the page in, in Pimlico and the library that we created during the residency at Tate, Tate exchange. And because we think that you cannot have a conversation about British publishing without thinking about the conditions of libraries and the reality that many people in terms of the readerships may not be people who buy books, but certainly have required access to books, and rather than libraries being a space that diminishes the impact of, of, of texts and literature because you know that they're not this kind of consuming public as it were. You know, my lived experience and I think many of us we can have that conversation on later, the libraries have been the primary place where which we've learned about works. And we're also really interested in terms of thinking about black British publishing the, the culture of creating personal libraries. One of the things that we found really remarkable in our research around black British publishing is how much communities were reliant on people's who had extensive book collections and the capacity for communities to share texts together that were outside of the sort of the mainstream British publishing houses, a publishing house that has been discriminatory towards telling stories of black peoples in a way that has been supported virtually empowering. Despite sort of the many sort of movements and various towards more diversity and equality and community libraries, the creation of informal networks of knowledge, not only a knowledge dissemination but even knowledge production through independent publications, like zines, like pamphlets, like magazines, and black British organizing has been focused around as well dissemination of knowledge through the printed texts, and these former publications I think can't be diminished and so much of the work that has informed the Black Lives and informed our reading of the heart of the race was from these informal networks of knowledge production. And I think that returning back to the sort of the Franley-Bewitz quote that Oro and I sort of also wanted to open out to our fellow people on the Zoom thinking about what discernment we have when thinking about what type of books we want, what is our level of connoisseurship, what are our tastes, and there is a, there can be a sort of almost a pessimistic reading of black British publishing if you think about sort of the types of texts that were created in the 60s and 70s and 80s, you know, like Walter Rodney is how Africans made was undeveloped, or to these texts that supported intellectual work in the communities on texts that were, that to this day we still find incredibly nourishing. We'd like to open up to the audience to think about what is their experience of black British writing but also what is it that you're looking for, especially in these times. Of global upheaval and climate crisis catastrophe and the ongoing violence that black people's faces, not just in the new case from police violence, but across the world. What type of literature, what type of texts would be appropriate for this time or what we need from this time. Yeah, so I think I'll close there and apologies if you've overrun, but I'm really excited to hear the conversation that we'll have afterwards, so thank you all. Yeah, thank you very, very much to both of you, Ruda and Aurela, that was very stimulating, I'm sure we'll have some good discussions later. So I'll just quickly say, like, as you were talking, Ruda, I was, isn't it when you spoke about how reading was not a privilege that many could have. I was thinking of the latest of the most recent Nobel of the laureate, Abdulazad Gurnah, and he writes in Afterlives about a girl called Afia, who learns to read and as soon as her uncle finds out, he smacks her, he really, he beats her up so much until she breaks her arm. And that's the kind of thing that actually happened on the coast of East Africa, which was seen as a cosmopolitan area. So we can discuss all this later. And again, interestingly, Gurnah also wrote Paradise, which is the response to Heart of Darkness, so we can also look at this later. Aurela, your talk on the imbalance of what is being published in terms of fiction and nonfiction, I think is very interesting in how the new ones is reaching those that are being targeted. But we can discuss all this after we hear from Dr. Marlin Edwin, who will, please, it's like you're welcome to present your presentation. Thank you very much both of you. I love to talk. Okay, thank you. I'm just going to share my screen and hopefully if you give me a thumbs up, I will know if it's working. Say one second. Let me make sure I'm sharing the right thing. Think. Okay, can, well, can you see my screen? Yes. Yes, we can see it. Yeah. Great. And it's not the one with my emails on it. Okay. Okay, great. I'd just like to thank Faizana and Ludie and the team for inviting me to be a part of your Hidden History series. So my talk this afternoon is titled The Longest Journey, Black Women in the Academy, Our Story, Her Story, My Story. And it focuses on my particular journey into the academy, alongside my interactions with the Centre for Caribbean and Diaspora Studies, which I will refer to as seeds at Goldsmiths and the recently retired and Professor Joan Animado, who's also the director of the centre. And I have taken the title of my talk from the title of her book, The Longest Journey, A History of Black Luition. So firstly, how did I get here? And by here I mean within the academy. So my background is such that I left school and went straight into work. When I started working at Goldsmiths, I did not have a degree. And in the summer of 2004, a pamphlet landed on my desk and I was immediately intrigued. Could there possibly be such a thing as an MA in Caribbean literature and Creole Poetics. In my primary and secondary education, I had never been told that other literatures existed, besides that prescribed on the school curriculum. This was my first introduction to Animado, who would later become not only my mentor and colleague, but also a valued friend. Animado arrived in the UK at the age of 13 and through a strong sense of self and a very strong sense of place, she became a teacher. She survived the UK education system because of her curiosity and love of literature. The history of the centre for Caribbean and diaspora studies and its current activities placed it at the forefront of Caribbean related studies in the UK and beyond. The centre was responsible for the first London conference of Caribbean women's writing in 1994 and signalled an inclusivity for those in the diaspora studying this body of work as an academic discipline. This text on your screen framing the word was an output from that particular conference. So I became a member of the centre in 2004, and I am currently the deputy director in line with the impetus for Caribbean courses to be made available in higher education institutes. 2004 saw seeds launch the first program of its kind in the UK, and that is the MA that I referred to earlier. So this postgraduate degree program developed students specialist knowledge and critical understanding of Caribbean literature in English and in English translation. The program also covered the evolution of Caribbean Creoles in part by looking at the impact of West African based Creoles on the Caribbean and the resulting literature. The cohort of students to which I was one of the first consisted of three full timers and one part timer, and we were to become what I call the first community of learners, or as Patrick Joyce names us liberal citizens. And we would set up the monthly Caribbean forum to open out discussion to a wider group. Whilst still a postgraduate student, I organised two challenging and thought provoking symposia in 2005, which provided time and space for issues of Caribbean in diaspora studies, illustrating an important direction to the centre and goals list, developing the Caribbean voice, both locally in Luisham, nationally and internationally, academics researching the field had much to say about this symposium. So there are a couple of quotes here on the slide, where they're just talking about the conference providing a telling opportunity of what the centre can contribute to an institution like goldsmiths, which provides provides itself in being a creative innovative place, offering a truly interdisciplinary ethos, and then further Giovanna Covey from the University of Trentone stated I think this sets a benchmark that other institutions might successfully follow. It's rare for such a small event to open up to non anglophone perspectives, and to include scholars from different disciplines, and do full justice to the field of Caribbean studies which cannot possibly be tackled otherwise. So both of these quotes illustrate the effect that seeds had and continues to have on the academy. The recommendations for a strong Caribbean centre and the much needed forum given in 2005, I was relevant today as they were 16 years ago in arguing for a raised visibility of Caribbean studies as a discipline and Caribbean research centres in general. And they continued as any matter encouraged me to undertake a PhD, also while working full time with two kids, but she encouraged me, and I did it and was successful. And so during that time sees organized numerous conferences, a few of which I'm going to just talk about very briefly here. In 2007, with its centennial focus on the abolition of the slave trade, and its impact on the Atlantic world, including slave colonies of the Caribbean was no better year in which to further debate the debate concerning Caribbean women's specifically the conference theme at that time was writing diaspora and the legacy of slavery, and it sought to embed the central motif of burden of production reproduction, which fell to African Caribbean women in the immediate aftermath of abolition, and to extend this to contemporary issues of writing and representation within the region and the diaspora. The human creole culture to be a significant part of the legacy of Atlantic slavery, meanings of creolization inscribed within artifacts of the culture were fruitfully read. The conference was attended by some 50 delegates from as far afield as Australia, the US and Barbados. And similarly, in June 2011, we had a further international Caribbean women's writing conference titled comparative critical conversations. And this, we were reminded in our keynote lecture at that time, and that of the reminder that the audience of the need to become comparitists in order to allow the body of work that is Caribbean women's literature to quote find a room of its own discussions concerning affect and career poetics, as well as female subjectivity and gender relations, led to further debates on spoken word, auto theorizing and diasporic remembering. The significance of this conference is that through the construction of the conference website, the essence of the conference has been captured and archived, resulting in a visual and acoustic cataloging of events, which make up this materialized archive. So further in 2011 we received funding for an AHRC project titled beyond beyond the looking glass, other cultures within translating cultures. We brought together leading academics from 10 universities and employed methods and perspectives from across the fields of literature, museum studies, linguistics, history, sociology and anthropology to examine the determinants and impact of the construction of cultural identity, and the act of translation as collaboration and shared knowledge. This collective transnational scholarship highlighted a rich theme of cultural translations in the relative and related intersections of realization. Britishness and global English of interest to scholars, teachers, creative artists, museum educators and education professionals. The proposal premised on translation as collaboration and shared interdisciplinary knowledges gathered researchers whose collective scholarship is grounded in transnational discourse and intersected theoretical questions on the complexities of cultural translation, which are critically, critically questioning meanings of cultural translation by regarding first text marked by realization and discourse originated through intercultural exchanges. Out of this research network emerged two further international conferences, one in the Library of Congress in Washington in 2012, and the second took place in London titled perspectives from other cultures, translating cultures. We returned to the primary sources that of the conference program, not only to reconstruct the disciplinary past, but to teach it to the next generation of scholars. Through this micro history, the added value of studying these sources in their original context is revealed. Micro histories are distinctive in the incorporating both emic and ethic perspectives. The international conference series, both at home and abroad represents what micro historians call the exceptional normal, and that is an event or practice that viewed in the context of modern scientific inquiry seems exotic, remarkable or marginal, but that when properly investigated, that is placed or coded in its proper context reveals its own logic and order. Micro history does not narrate the normal or describe the exceptional, but rather interprets their relationship, shedding light on the normal and lending more than anecdotal significance to the exceptional. The conference I spoke about above, and indeed seeds conference series are examples of the micro historical concept of the exceptional normal, and can be read as an interaction ritual. So the context of these things defines interaction ritual as an instance of mutually focused emotion and attention, producing a momentarily shared reality, which thereby generates solidarity and symbols of group scholarship. He highlights four factors that constitute an interaction ritual group assembly, a barrier to outsiders, mutual focus and a shared mood. One of these can be applied to seeds international conference series. That is to say that combined these factors lead a group to develop a rhythmic coordination and synchronization to their conversation. Unless such participants get quote caught up in the rhythm and mood of the talk by describing these conferences through the template of Collins interaction ritual. I assimilated to normal intellectual practices in academic disciplines, yet on each occasion, core participants return to engage in rhythm and mood of the talk, embodying their own identities and uniqueness of seeds conference series. This is a prototype that defines the event or series of events, and it's written documents as exceptional. And to my knowledge the seeds conference series was the first of its kind in London to focus on Caribbean women's writing and continues to do so. I'm going to move on briefly to Black British Publishing and both Arela and Huda have spoken about New Beacon Press and the People Tree and Dialogue. I want to make reference to a very, very small press manga publishing, which was founded by Joan Annie Maddo. Not only was she is or is she the director for the Center for Caribbean Indian Studies, but she also had a small press. And the inspiration for the founding of manga was as a result of the first Caribbean women's Writers Conference, the one that I referred to earlier on.  The CWWA provided a forum for dialogue and the space in which new forms of writing were produced by those whose voices had been marginalised. A primary motivation for founding this small press was to provide the opportunities for these new writers to have their voices heard. The CWWA held workshops, conferences and local library readings and recognised the need for books that would speak to the communities in which they were operating. Under the umbrella of manga publishing, 1994 saw the launch of Manga Season, Caribbean women's writing, a journal published four times a year, giving voice to the CWWA. The literary magazine included creative writing, literary criticism and reviews. Manga remained committed to this vision, publishing its first anthologies of short stories and poetry, Manga and Spice in 1995, and Voice Memory and Ashes also in 1995, followed by Jacob Ross's fine collection of short stories, A Way to Catch the Dust in 1999. Concerned with creating literary space for women writers, Manga published new names together with internationally known and award-winning writers such as Beryl Gilroy, Velma Pollard and Albert Ambert. As an independent publisher of fiction and poetry by writers of Caribbean and Hispanic heritage, Manga soon added works of literary criticism to its catalogue. An interest in the wealth of fine writing from the Hispanic world, often inaccessible in the United Kingdom, led Manga to develop a series of bilingual works. This included poetry, My Last Name and the Great Zoo by Nicholas Diem of Cuba, regarded by critics as one of the finest of the region, and Nancy Maureen's Black Women and Other Poets, an internationally acknowledged Cuban poet. And among other works in this series are books of short stories by Brazilian and Cuban women. A new series focusing on Black British writers included Thelma Perkins' Roundabouts in 2002, and Cherish in 2003 by Yinka Sunmolu. A number of Manga publications received international acclaim, including Limbo Lands by Maggie Harris, which was awarded the Guiana Prize for Literature in 2000. In 2003, Spirit of Haiti by Miriam Cansey was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Work of Fiction. In 2007, Mango Season was relaunched as New Mango Season, the Journal of Caribbean Women's Writing, and is the UK's and indeed Europe's only literary magazine to focus on Caribbean women's writing. In the death of Birch in 2015, who's the co-founder of Mango with with Animado, Animado's work commitments increased, resulting in fewer publications from the publishing house. However, Mango has issued some valuable and important books to date and continues to give voice to its female collective. But then finally, I just want to give a brief word on the MA in Black British Literature that is here with Goldsmiths and that was formally named Black British Writing. And so as early as 2009, Animado was also involved in the formation of this MA as well. So as early as 2009, Animado's proposal for a new MA was initiated. At the end of 2011, it was reported that over 14,000 university professors in the UK, only 50 were black and overwhelmingly outside humanities disciplines. At the time this was followed by confirmations that there were no black managers in British Premiership football, no sustained presence of black cricketers in the national team, despite the long standing presence of the West Indies team in the international competition, and in turn by findings that no sustained promotion trajectory exists for black police officers into the higher ranks of the police service, even while black males continue to be disproportionately stopped in search by white police. In the light of such a broader social context, the MA was not only timely but necessary. Many established scholars of contemporary literature working in Britain, Europe, Africa and Asia, occasionally taught a course or two incorporating black British writers, were doing research on black British texts and publishing articles and books on these interests. However, the Goldsmiths MA in Black British Writing meant that the University of London would break new ground in preparing an empowering scholar specialist in this growing and exciting field of study. Students who chose a sitting protest against perceived racism, any matter contemplated action in the face of inertia, or possible institutional racism. The challenge the Hershey recalls, as a finely tenured but minoritized black academic was how to respond in the face of a demoralizing inertia, especially since, as Pilkington notes, the prevailing pattern remains all too indicative of continuity rather than change. Having successfully negotiated quality assurance processes previously with the MA back in 2004, and the Maddo and her colleague Dr. Deirdre Osborne continue to fight the institutional obstacles placed in the path of delivering the MA. Concerns were raised by senior management, including feasibility studies, potential numbers, lack of funds for extra staffing and so on. The issues that the institution should have focused on included college wide diversity initiatives, or historically underrepresented black and minority ethnic students, or attainment gaps or diversity plans. In my opinion, and the Maddo writes, the background, as I perceive it, is a sustained narrowness regarding literary knowledge, especially in relation to Britain's imperial past race, blackness and ultimately who constitutes a human within the humanities. I recently addressed this from courses that I've developed from 1999 to 2014, including an undergraduate module curbing women writers, and a postgraduate module interculturality text poetics. From the first classes at either level, my practice makes clear that student participation in my classroom is vital for both teaching and learning. In this context, students invariably reveal that they've had little or no opportunity to reflect on issues of race in most other literature classrooms. Whether this reflects ethnocentric bias or an exoticizing of postcolonial texts that sidesteps race, they insist, they're learning rarely involves texts by black authors. The great majority of students appear to be but to best appreciate in my classes might be described as an added dimension akin to preparation for world citizenship. For black students the power of seeing oneself reflected on the page in the university classroom should not be underestimated. In 2015, Annie Maddo was still the only black lecturer in the department preoccupied with period courses, Victorians and restorations, for example, and united against threats of more contemporary literature. Canonical literature was a central concern, yet long and varied experience of teaching and learning have not only informed her scholarship, resulting in an understanding of the classroom as a dynamic space for change. Modernity literature specifically could play a crucial role by adding to the canonical while requiring students to rethink how knowledge including the critical and theoretical is produced by whom and come to be valued. Black British literature a contested field promise to open up related questions, not only about literature and its values but also about knowledge and that's referring back to when who that was talking about knowledge production. In September 2015, witness the first cohorts of students to undertake an MA in black British writing so you can see that it, the concept started as early as 2009, but it took all of that time and all of that kind of internal fighting and politics, before the actual first cohort of students arrived at Goldsmiths to take that take the course, such change involving humanities departments in an English university was unprecedented. She was able to position herself within the borderlands of literary studies and pedagogy, and despite reservations articulated in discussion of the literary space as a site of struggle, in which still too few others are engaged. She led that historical change as a marginalized black woman professor, one of only 25 in the UK. She was a political erotic in 2019. Despite inertia and opposition at departmental and senior management levels, any matter was able to lead curricular change. The MA BBL produced a literature class of majority black and minority ethnic students, never experienced in our university before. This class on the department by 2017 meant that they were delivering undergraduate modules, black British literature and contemporary African migrant literature and film. Moreover, the transformation continues to influence our university's work towards equity diversity and inclusion, as in September 2019 and goes this launch this MA in black British history. Where am I now, having obtained my PhD, it was not my intention to join the ranks of academia. However, following Annie Mado's retirement in 2020, I was asked to take on the delivery of one of the core modules on the MA BBL. It was daunting at first, but the students are thirsty for knowledge, and I have just started my second year. I have been standing on the shoulders of the one and only black female professor of Caribbean literature and culture, and I hope that I will be able to inspire others to start that long journey and pave the way into the academy. Thank you. I try and stop sharing my screen now. I'll stop sharing. Yes. Let me come back. Okay, so I didn't race through that too much. That was brilliant. That was very, very good. Well, congratulations to begin with. I mean, there are very, very few black academics, as we know, and well done. You're also doing, yeah, this is really good. So I really enjoyed sort of like hearing about manga publishing, especially, and cultural translation and translating cultures, because I work in translation as well. Although it's African language, so here, etc. So this was very fascinating. We have only about 19 minutes for questions or comments or anything. So I won't take this time and start sort of like my own thoughts. So if you have any questions, members of the public, please do type them and I will ask. So while we're waiting for this, do any of you have any comments for each other? Maybe I'm not sure. Yeah, I just wanted to ask how long have TBL, Thicker Black Lines, how long have you been in existence? Yeah, I mean, we've been friends for many, many years and working together in different sort of capacities, but TBL sort of as a name, I think you might recognise this as the reference. Lebena Hymid had a Black British artist, Swahili actually, her father is from Zanzibar, had a landmark show, Thin Black Line, at the ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts in the 80s.  And so our work on to sort of think about what is this, this space, this gap between sort of all this activism that was taking place in the 70s and 80s, and kind of these breakways into institutionality. And yet, you know, when we're talking about things in 2017, sort of especially after the movements around Black Lives Matter and thinking about the role of Black life in just generally and in the UK. And so our group, Thicker Black Lines came together from, well, I don't know, I don't want to say too much. Arela, you're really good at making sort of a short synopsis of like how we came, just stop myself with bloat. I mean, yeah, 2017 is when we kind of formally came together in that way and it culminated from a residency that Simone Lee had at Tate as part of Black women artists for Black Lives Matter. And so from that there was an opportunity to present our work, and she extended that opportunity to British artists and that's when we sort of came together, even though it's her to say that we had been working together previously. And so I think you might know the work of Simone Lee, she's one, I think it's the Guggenheim and there's an amazing artist, a Caribbean descent as well, although she's an African American artist, she's a Caribbean descent. But that conversation that we're having is, I think has echoed so much in your presentation of their mind in terms of sort of the really in-depth work that people have to take on themselves and the lack of institutional support. And what I really appreciated about your presentation is we, the Academy, and how does the Academy create readers and how, especially given sort of the British academic system is so, and the publishing industry is so symbiotic. Most of our publishing houses have either not a direct relationship with universities as university presses, certainly vast majority of publishers are from the sort of like the literary graduates. And yet what expertise do they have in these institutions? And I think the MA course of Goldsmiths is sort of one space addressing this gap, but it's unsurprising that it took such a sort of a mammoth fight to create it. Can I ask something very quickly, what somebody had asked previously? So you showed the book passion earlier, and I think somebody had looked it up and it's out of print, but in the end they found it somewhere for 200 pounds. So thinking about that and also how Aurela talked about nuanced writing and nuanced reading, could you know of anything that's been done for this book to become accessible maybe to our children or are they just going to be sort of like, okay we see them on this presentation then and that's it. Do you have any idea about how this book can be accessed at all? I mean I think one of the things that we sort of touched on is the kind of, if you are fortunate enough to be in a position where you have access to a book, you've got certain responsibility to share that with your peers and with your networks. And perhaps that's not what publishers want, but when a book is out of print or when it's financially inaccessible, or it's in an institution that not everyone can have access to, then I do think that the responsibility is on those of us who can disseminate that to a wider readership. And because a lot of these books we ourselves encountered in that way, so we talk about kind of personal libraries and just word of mouth and that kind of circulation of knowledge and that doesn't always happen within institutional spaces because I think if we're waiting for a publisher to remember this out print book from 1990 and to republish it, you know, we don't know if it's going to happen or not. It would be great if it did and it's fantastic that it happened with the heart of the race, but there are so many books which are still out of print. Okay, so maybe it's in like one way forward, like in, so I think Swahili, we have this manuscript project in the Stoic Library, where it's in like these old sort of like letters, books, manuscripts that are digitized and accessible to all. So maybe that's one venue that can be looked up. Ludo, I saw your hand, yes. Hi, just just to let you know that there's a comment on the Q&A, would you like me to read it out, Ida, or do you want to read out? Yes, please do. I couldn't see anything. Yeah, go on. Okay, so it's Leila Cassiere says, I'm not sure if this is a question, but I found it interesting that thicker black lines accessed out of print books for the reading groups via withdrawn library books. It makes me question the value or otherwise institutional libraries placed on books and how community libraries are making them accessible and reinstating the value. So I don't know whether anyone wants to comment on that. First, I'd like to say hello, Leila. Leila is an amazing librarian based at Senate House Library and also a set of expertise around Zine culture and Zine libraries as well and is doing excellent work. So hello, hello, hello. And yes, so all I think all of our copies of The Heart of the Race were ex library books. And this was really in response to sort of now we've had more than sort of 12 years of sort of systemic cuts to public services. And that they sort of the great activism that was taken by oftentimes libraries and community libraries to ensure diverse reading material for their members. So this kind of movement in the, in the, especially in the 80s and 90s to for public libraries to be have more sort of diverse texts and some literature for young people's and so on and so forth. It's very telling that these books, many of these types of books are now on Amazon, and some of them are very cheap sometimes I mean the copy that I had a part of the race I got for a penny. It was being sold for a penny, and I had to just pay two pounds postage and packing, but that was it. And it was a part of this kind of mass dumping of a library that's no longer that it exists. It was a popular library is the stamp that I've got in my one is so many libraries have closed in local authorities and have their texts have just been sort of sold up and moved and so absolutely I agree with Leila the community libraries, libraries that have a, and a collection of tutorial policy as to what the libraries actually made off. So, our library was was focusing on the experiences of black British women. So that's why we collect this is what that's where we found this book because we had sort of an agenda like we want to know what the work and part of these of this community that we're part of. And I think a lot of communities are responding to the way that the state has sort of consistently neglected communities and the step forward. And as I said, if you have these copies you have a duty and responsibility to make that available to your community and so for our reading group, we just photocopied copies and we just shared it. So hey guys, have it and we're very lucky now that Verso has taken up the rights and we printed that and I hope that other publishers do the same. But yeah, no, I entirely agree. I think that we as citizens we have the right to make these demands on institutions, but also I think pragmatically we have to be aware of the sort of the systemic failures of these institutions to meet our needs and be dynamic and pragmatic in how to make solutions that are otherwise. I think I can see a comment here by Lauren Latuli, who agrees with you, and she says that I know when I used to work on London public libraries in Barnett, we used to, we would weed or sell off the books that hadn't circulated in the past few years, except for black and less represented authors so there was some understanding of the importance of keeping the books within the collection policy. Thank you very much for this Lauren. Yeah, that's really amazing. We have about maybe six more minutes if anybody has any comments or any any question. You're more than welcome to bring it forward. I have a question for Marlene actually. I'm really interested in, I guess your experience of with your students and thinking about young emerging body right well they don't have to be young. They're writers, writers, and the importance of because we've talked about publishers and we've talked about audiences and readers. And I'm thinking about the importance of these kind of spaces for writers to have that time for thinking through their work and developing their work and taking on critique and just growing. Yeah, we're one of the things that we've been fortunate here at Goldsmiths to have within the MA black British Literature is that there's an internship in the summer with. I think it's Hachette or Quercus. I can't remember the name of the publishers but students on on the MA can then apply I think they have to they offer to summer internships, which gives our students that experience of being in the publishing field to see it from the other side, and then also being able to maybe work on on projects and things and get insight into kind of their own you know if they, if they're on the course, because they want to then be writers we have, we have a lot of the students in the community, they're either already teachers, and they want to gain this information and then bring it back into the schools which is really good because it's like how and how do we get our literature back on into the school system and onto the curriculum. And then you have others who are there either their screenwriters or things like that and they decided so they're already practitioners in their own right, but they decided to come along and take the MA because they want that kind of theoretical background and the different ways of reading and understanding the different types of literature. Yep. We have a comment from Anisha. I'm really sorry if I said that completely wrong. So, Anisha says that I first want to apologize if the Indian Asian for being sorry, Indian Asian and it's wrong to take space over here. Well I don't think you should apologize at all. I'm really happy that you're here and please take place. Thank you so much for your insight for your presentation. I wanted to throw a light on as Indian who grew up reading Alice Walker and Toni Morrison while not reading on the atrocities or minorities in my own backyard. I wanted to make a recommendation to bring palms up poll publication and more is it embedded car to the public and community library, and to throw light on the intersectionality of oppression. Maybe okay Farzana, I'm curious if you could just sort of like explain this to us a bit better because I don't think I've read it very well. Farzana. I'm sorry, I meant that I was going to read the comment I think it's probably better for Anisha to explain more of what she would like to to suggest. I'm able to speak. Oh, I think I should not know she's not she. No, okay. Well, okay. So, I mean, I think I think Anisha wants to sort of like to introduce this new, is that like a publication called Panthopo publication Panthopo yes. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I mean, and I think she's referring to Ambedkar which was was a thinker who represented if I'm not wrong, of course, the untouchables a particular cast of people in India. But I think if Anisha could perhaps, she could perhaps put it a bit more expand a bit more of what she's, what kind of perspective she's talking about. Yeah, I think initially you could be amazing because I don't think we're very familiar with. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to say if there isn't, I have a question actually for Marlene. But just, yeah, thank you. I just wanted to say thank you to all that was very inspiring. Marlene I wanted to ask you're fascinated with the programs that you're teaching at Goldsmith. I want to ask how much input or do you have or debate or say from students participating in what is is being taught on the courses or research. So basically, on a terminally basis, students are asked to module evaluation. Okay, so they're asked to to feedback on the module that they are attending and to input. And they think that there's a novel or a play or poetry that's come out that maybe they feel should be on the reading list. That's something that we take forward for the next academic year so we're constantly the program spec is constantly changing with the inputs of the students, especially those that because the courses offered one year full time, or two years part time. And so students have a chance to kind of have a look at what's going on. And between myself and the program convener, we constantly look at new books, new writers that are out there, that we can then kind of incorporate into the syllabus and we work quite closely and we have subject librarian, who we can then say right you need to get copies of these books we have come across the same things are out of print, and you know we might have to have three or four copies that we can then lend to the students and stuff. And some people have issues buying it from, you know, a certain online provider, who shall not be named. And I mean, somebody was talking about how we make these things accessible, the things that are out of print, and maybe by I think either you were talking about digitization, but then you get to you come to the question of, in most cases, the authors are still alive. So what happens when you digitize something that they were supposed to be getting royalties from, and this is now freely available you know they're all sorts of kind of gatekeeping issues about how, how we make these books available but at the same time, and I think I can't remember somebody was talking about the, the value I can't remember somebody one of the libraries was talking about I think she was talking about how to the race and how you managed to get it for one P but now it's been reprinted and things like so there are kind of a lot of issues that we have to in some way look at in terms of out of print. The material that is, you know, still relevant today, but it's finding it really hard to get. Yeah. I'll tell you what it's like, I often talk about this, not often like recently, I mean good now won the award, the Nobel Prize for literature, and his books are nowhere. They're not there, because all his books were like ex library like you got a renaissance like it was this kind of situation. And then now probably, I mean, okay they went from two, six pounds to 40, 50, 70 pounds during the first week. So I think maybe they might be published a bit, the rest of us can get them easier. But this is a great situation that you're talking about. This person is, is read by only a certain amount of people in certain circumstances and then suddenly. Yeah, there's a need and there you are. Yeah. Wow. Thank you very much everyone this was very very interesting and fascinating. I'll just add the button to. It was going to close the meeting and thank everybody for coming. Thank you very much. It was lovely meeting all of you and I feel very honest. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's, it's been great to listen to all your amazing presentations and I'm sorry I was on mute for a second, I get really confused. It always happens once at least in a meeting. But yeah, thank you. You've been absolutely amazing. I'm going to give you a round of applause. Thank you very much. That was just really wonderful and as I said, so much food for thought and I was scribbling away all the names of the book so I hope we can definitely acquire some of those for the library. And we also want you to please carry on tuning into us our next talk is already up for November the 23rd. We're going to be looking at South Asian History Month. And we've also got another speaker who's going to be talking about projects to do with the partition of Indian Pakistan. It's a peace building initiative project. So we're really really excited about welcoming those speakers next month to talk about again the South Asian narrative. And yeah, we look forward to it very much. Thank you. Yep, thanks. And I just want to give a shout out to Angelica Baskira and I'm a cookie who also helped us put this all together. So thanks everyone and thanks everyone who, who's shown up.


I don't even know where to begin this video. But one of the things that I have always prided myself on is to be real and to be transparent as much as possible, especially on YouTube. Because YouTube to me has been something I've been doing for an awful long time, not just recently, not just in the last year or two. Actually, since 2009 is how long I've been on YouTube. So it's been a long time. And, you know, I started my YouTube career doing lifestyle videos and stuff like that and sharing the things that I enjoy doing and what my world was like. So in that sense, it's always been about transparency and being real.  And I really avoid all that stuff. We all have enough of that. You can go onto Facebook and you can see any political belief you want. But I also know people don't want to see sadness. They want to be uplifted. So I struggle with that myself because I haven't been on YouTube. Has it been over two weeks? I don't even know. I haven't had a video up, which is very much unlike me. Those of you that have been with me for a while, you know, I try to do twice a week at least. And I've been pretty consistent with that. But I kind of disappeared a little over two weeks ago now. I think maybe almost three. And I had a number of you reach out asking me what was wrong. Some of you knew what was wrong because you saw it on Facebook. Facebook for me is where my family is, you know? And so I share a lot or my family shares a lot and I'm tagged a lot on Facebook. But I feel like owe it to you to at least say where I've been and you know, what's happening. On September 29th, my brother passed away very, very unexpectedly, very suddenly. And he wasn't found until the morning of the 30th. And he died of a massive coronary collapse or I looked at his death certificate and the listing and all that. Basically a massive heart attack. I wanna believe that he died quickly and felt no pain. But you know, I know no matter how someone dies it doesn't much matter, right? It just throws you for a total loop. But I think that sometimes when it's a sudden, sudden thing like that, you just don't have time to absorb it maybe, to adapt to it to this new reality. So telling my mom that my brother was had gone, this is exactly how we told her. I went down to see her. She wasn't home. Jay dropped me off and he went to my brother's condo to make sure everything was locked up and fine while I waited for my mom. And she walked in, she had gone groceries, I brought her bags in for her and then in the kitchen she said, you know, what's wrong? And so that's when I first looked at her and when I looked at her she saw it all over my eyes. And I knew she was going to probably collapse or something. So I just went over and I embraced her really tight and I held her up and I said, mom, I said, Billy's going to be with dad in heaven. That's how I told her.  So it threw us all for a loop.  I spoke to him last on Sunday night. My mother spoke to him on Tuesday night. The best we can recollect is that or the best we've been pieced together is that he passed away on the 29th on Wednesday and, you know, wasn't missed until Thursday. And so you struggle with that, you know, especially for me being as caregiver. Anyways, not that I want to dwell on that and I don't because I have a lot of stuff I want to share with you guys because at the same time as my brother passed away, we had been preparing for a family wedding and we were like so excited about this family wedding, you know, and I found myself having to write a eulogy for my brother and then a week later, a blessing from my son and his new bride and it was just such an emotional ups and downs. You know, I just couldn't even think of YouTube. I couldn't even think of doing a video and I have videos, I mean, I've got this awesome mascara I want to talk about, it was actually sent to me and you know, oftentimes you get things from Octoly. This was sent to me from Octoly. I also got a PR package with the, I can smell the perfume, it was so pretty, with dossier, you know, designer perfumes and or inspired by designer perfumes and I was like, whoa, I was impressed. So there's like a whole bunch of different things I want to talk about. We ended up getting our e-bikes, we've been biking. We went the weekend, my brother, when I found out my brother had passed away that Saturday, Jay took me for a really long bike ride. We went from Nashor to Hampshire down to Airmass and back was like 25 miles through beautiful pastures and you know, along the river and the leaves were beautiful and it just helped me so much clear my mind because I knew I had to prepare a eulogy. I had to think about stuff. So riding that bike just really helped me get to that place. I don't know, you know, but anyway, so I thought I owed it, it's not so much that I owed it. I felt that I wanted to answer those questions on where I've been and so it's, I'll be back. You know, I'm gonna do that video, I'm gonna talk about that mascara, I'm gonna talk about the perfume and I wanna share some pictures of the bike ride and I wanna share some pictures of the wedding. The wedding was yesterday, it was amazing and I was really worried about the blessing, you know, what to say, how to start it and I got, I mean, I got like in the middle of it, people just started clapping like crazy. And then at the end they clapped as well. So it was like, it was just really, it was really good and my stepson flew out and he is only here from Wednesday night to Sunday and then he had to fly back to Atlanta but my stepson Justin and his wife came out so we had family together and just such an emotional two weeks, just such an emotional two weeks. But yeah, all, you know, all is good and I'm sorry for those of you because I know I had put a message on my community tab but apparently not everyone gets notified of the community tab or even knows to go and look at a community tab and that's what I did.  It's hard to do that but I need my YouTube for sure because I miss you guys, I miss the engagement, I miss all of that and I want to share the bike ride pictures and I want to talk about my new bike, I know who cares but I want to talk about the mascara that I'm loving and I just want to get back to more of a normal routine.  This is my backyard, this is how much leaves we have in our backyard. Jay and I are hoping that we can do a quick one, at least one more camping trip and even we're thinking of just even overflow camping and then we'll flush out our tanks and winterizing all that. I really dread the idea of winterizing but got to do it, got to do it at that time of year. So I just wanted to pop in and say thank you for all of you, I know a lot of you've been wondering and reaching out and all that and I'm fine, totally fine, back in the groove and yeah, my next video I'm gonna share a whole bunch of stuff with you. So anyways, thanks for understanding and I will see you in my next video, bye guys.


What's up everybody, Jason here for jaspyscasebreak.com, 2023 tops, Star Wars signature series, 20 box case break, random characters number one just sold out, and again guys, this features some big names like Harrison Ford, Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, Adam Driver, Emilia Clarke and many more big signers, remember this is a 33 spot break, everybody gets four random characters from the list below, and just please note that there is one spot for any and all dual multi autographs, any dual triple or multi autographs will go to this spot automatically, automatically, so from any and all dual autographs, all the way down here to zero, so let's get a new dice roll, here's a customer name so this is the 33 names, and then like I said it starts at the top with any and all dual autographs, all the way down to zero, now we're going to quadruple your names, all right, four times, so one, two, three, four, that should make 100 and I believe 32 or whatever it needed to be, we'll make sure it matches right now, and here we go, this dice roll, it is a four and a five, yeah it needed to be 132, thank you Devin, yeah I just got this a few weeks back during the world baseball classic, all right four and a five, nine times, here we go nine times, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, so nine times, nine times add down to victor, now five times here on the characters now, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine times, nine times, Galen Urso, which is a great actor that played Galen Urso, and Margo, now again I'm going to show you guys the way your guys' characters matched up right now, but then I'm going to alphabetize it by customer name, I think it will be a little bit easier that way, and I can quickly show you guys the four characters you guys have, so really quickly there's the way it came out, Annie and I'll do autographs go to Slade, and then all the way down here guys, a lot of different names, done a victor with Margo, so now guys I'm going to alphabetize it by customer name, and now you guys can quickly see your four characters, I'm not going to say every single character name because I would literally run out of my voice, it's 132, but I'm going to give you guys about 5, 10 seconds each, each uh, each little block and you guys can see them for yourself, so there you go Aaron Bilensley, you got Boba Fett in there though, it's kind of cool, Fennec Chang, there's Alan Murdock, some of these guys I have no idea because I didn't watch any of the animated stuff really, so bear with me, Anthony, Ben, you got BB-8 in there, D-Mac, there you go, Devin, you have Darth Moll, and Supreme Leader Snoke, Ed, you have Galen Erso, Ahsoka Tano, Cassian Andor, Obi-Wan and Kylo Ren, what a randomizer, Jesus, you got so many great characters in there, and General Grievous if you want to throw him in there too, father of the Mandalorian, just the fact that you have Cassian Ahsoka, Kylo and Obi-Wan is a plus right there, Francis, General Hux, you have General Erso, Felicity Jones, Franklin, you have Han Solo in there, Zero, Ben Kenobi, you have Jargar Binks, Kyra, which would be Daenerys, James, you have R2-D2, Jared, you have Cad Bane, cool character, Jason K, Grant Admiral Thrawn, Chancellor Palpatine, the Chancellor is evil, Pelle, for Jonathan in there, she's really funny, you have The Client, which is that old man, forget his name, very popular actor, and then Matthew Slade, you have the Indian All-Do Autographs, you have General Erso's mom, you have Moff Gideon, which is Esposito, Darth Vader, and then RX-24, which we were talking about that earlier, Mike said that's Pee Wee Herman, Nicholas, the seventh sister, and then you also have Anakin Skywalker, amongst others, Peter Aang, you have Finn and Zeb O'Relius, actually Zeb just made his debut on Mandalore in the other day, spoiler, Robert Runkle, Admiral Ackbar, that's a trap, he's most likely going to pop out, actually Maul must have been somebody else, this is Darth Maul here for you, maybe Maul is a different character in the animated series or something, Roger Padme, Ahmed Allah, Grandmaf Tarkin, Stephen Kendrick, there's yours right there, and then Victor, there's yours right there, see I don't think anyone's gonna make any trades, there's just as many characters, but let me just title this page really quick for you guys, all right so let me also border this, I still gotta make it look nice, let's actually print out this sheet because we've got to have it for the shipping team, get a little bit smaller there for the shipping team, did I not put it to print, all right sweet guys, and of course obviously we're not gonna even put 132 names into the promo, of course that's just crazy, but the 33 names that bought in though will be part of the promo, so let me paste your guys' names in here really quick, the 30, the 30 or 32 or so, and then I'll paste your guys' name into the promo here, and you guys are also part of it now as well, and we can cross out the Star Wars Savages series, so I did post up another one, it won't be a promo break but it's a pretty fun break though guys, you guys want to get that one rolling, we can delete that now, all right awesome guys here we go, no problem James, hey man you you put it work today with that with that break and the filler and in straight up spots, so I mean it's not shocking for me to see that man, so I appreciate it man thank you for the support, thanks for buying with us, I'm glad you like it, let's definitely get some more of those days and break some for you, Star Wars, obviously guys I mean I grew up loving Star Wars as well due to my older brother, not that I didn't like the original movies, I did like them and I'm more of a episode one two three guy you know just just because I'm a 90s baby so my brother of course likes the originals better which is normal he's he was born in the 70s so that makes sense but I still love Star Wars as a whole and I love all these new uh uh shows that are coming out especially Madeline and Sobatano, Kazan and our show is great which is need more need more all right guys so again one in case autograph per box let's take a look and see how this looks so here we go guys I like signature series like normal first one is how about a little Grand Moff Tarkin autograph there Guy Henry as Grand Moff Tarkin which I believe I think this is the animated version of Grand Moff Tarkin I think the original character has passed away but got this guy to play too um and I think that came out in in a row one I think and uh Grand Moff Tarkin Roger nice one there buddy congratulations nice little hair right there to start us off and those reds aren't numbered but they look really cool though I will say I don't know if that's like an evil thing I dig it and then we have the bartender authentic autograph from the book of Boba Fett and that is uh Alan Graff as the bartender so bartender is Franklin there you go next one let's go show you that this is flipping around and it is a five out of five bendu see that five up there five out of five this is from Star Wars Rebels which I did not watch but it's uh voiced by Tom Baker it's pretty cool five out of five and I don't know who that goes to but there you go that's what you're right there bendu is Kevin there you go ahead nice one Kev so one thing guys I didn't really get too much into the animated I should watch it though I know they say they're great but just never really got into them so much and then we have another animated character Urza or Ezra sorry Bridger voiced by Taylor Gray from Star Wars Rebels and then um Franklin that's another one for you buddy and we have Evan Pelle or Pelle which is from Star Wars The Phantom Menace yeah I think uh that should be coming out in uh in Ahsoka Tano right Ahsoka's story and then Evan it's another one for Kev or even I should say it's not even Sabine it's also going to be coming out soon I think and we have Rio Durant there's a character out of a role one Star Wars story Katie Cartwheel and then Rio is Matthew Slade oh nice Dr. Pershing I actually really felt bad for this guy Omid is the character Urza player or sorry the the actor playing Dr. Pershing that's pretty cool and Dr. Pershing Roger with that one man why can't Pedro Pascal be in this man probably realize he's kind of expensive we have Ben Kenobi looks like they animated from Star Wars Rebels Stefan Stanton so Ben Kenobi is Franklin Urso Lyra Urso which is uh Jen Urso's mom she got shot down the Lenny Kane so Lyra or Lyra I should say right is it Lyra I think it's Lyra actually Matthew Slade and then we have uh out of 10 orange which I believe this do some book above of it yeah Barry Lowen is the is the actor that voiced I guess and I forgot is it Gar yeah Garfalo walks I don't know I forgot what they called him I'm not a good at pronouncing some of these character names Garfalo let's say Garfalo but there you go and uh add with that one at P that's out of 10 though let me have an imperial fighter a freighter pilot which is Alexander an imperial fighter pilot freighter pilots sorry so there's imperial comms officer imperial freighter pilot and then uh then there's an imperial security officer so Matthew Slade that's yours right there and we got lovely came out in Star Wars the last Jedi Ben Lily hole and I think lovely was Steven Steven also uh Steven uh Kendrick yeah there you go Steven Kendrick on the board and we got TOB1 as Jaden Waldman from Star Wars Visions which is Franklin or T0B1 I should say Azuma which is from Star Wars Visions Andrew Kishina Franklin with that one as well Franklin's got a lot of hits here I mean you could grab a good amount of spots but what do we got here we got uh Ed Rio two tubes which I believe came out in uh uh rope one I think David Accord I think he's like he was like um what's his name's like number two um uh what's the guy's name damn it Saw Geraris number two I think yeah Saw Geraris Jonathan Griffin on the board with that Ed Rio and we got Earth Sing number to 50 from Star Wars to Clone Wars Jamie King is the voice and then uh Earth Sing is Matthew Slade and then we got Christian that is uh Kerry Jones Roger with that one oh sorry that's two Rs huh Crisantin sorry I think it's Crisantin that one came out in the book of Boba Foot and we got Quirin Prawler as an authentic autograph from Demetrius Biss Trevisky Nicholas back here all right two more to go guys two more to go beta trawler from the Maddalaurian Ryan Watson is the character and that's Robert Rumpel so they're gonna last box here guys so I'm gonna get some good names but I think super jaw dropping but let's see what we can get here at the end oh well it's a trap Admiral Ackbar I feel like we couldn't go without getting an Admiral Ackbar 21 out of 25 voiced by Tim Rose there you go and then Admiral Ackbar Robert Rumpel all right we've got some good characters you know some from animated series that I really know too much about some from the live action movies and shows but we did get some low number ones though out of five that's pretty cool but again guys every case is totally different there are some big names out there guys so if you guys want to give it a shot again on another break I did post up another one so appreciate it guys jaspyscasebreaks.com