0:00:00.917,0:00:06.393
I want to talk today[br]about how reading can change our lives

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and about the limits of that change.

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I want to talk to you about how reading[br]can give us a shareable world

0:00:14.042,0:00:16.750
of powerful human connection.

0:00:17.833,0:00:21.393
But also about how that connection[br]is always partial.

0:00:21.417,0:00:26.500
How reading is ultimately[br]a lonely, idiosyncratic undertaking.

0:00:27.625,0:00:30.476
The writer who changed my life

0:00:30.500,0:00:34.934
was the great African American[br]novelist James Baldwin.

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When I was growing up[br]in Western Michigan in the 1980s,

0:00:38.250,0:00:42.167
there weren't many Asian American writers[br]interested in social change.

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And so I think I turned to James Baldwin

0:00:46.542,0:00:50.583
as a way to fill this void,[br]as a way to feel racially conscious.

0:00:51.958,0:00:55.934
But perhaps because I knew[br]I wasn't myself African American,

0:00:55.958,0:01:00.476
I also felt challenged[br]and indicted by his words.

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Especially these words:

0:01:03.458,0:01:07.059
"There are liberals[br]who have all the proper attitudes,

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but no real convictions.

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When the chips are down[br]and you somehow expect them to deliver,

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they are somehow not there."

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They are somehow not there.

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I took those words very literally.

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Where should I put myself?

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I went to the Mississippi Delta,

0:01:26.542,0:01:29.684
one of the poorest regions[br]in the United States.

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This is a place shaped[br]by a powerful history.

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In the 1960s, African Americans[br]risked their lives to fight for education,

0:01:37.792,0:01:39.500
to fight for the right to vote.

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I wanted to be a part of that change,

0:01:43.083,0:01:46.792
to help young teenagers graduate[br]and go to college.

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When I got to the Mississippi Delta,

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it was a place that was still poor,

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still segregated,

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still dramatically in need of change.

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My school, where I was placed,

0:02:02.417,0:02:06.726
had no library, no guidance counselor,

0:02:06.750,0:02:09.726
but it did have a police officer.

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Half the teachers were substitutes

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and when students got into fights,

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the school would send them[br]to the local county jail.

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This is the school where I met Patrick.

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He was 15 and held back twice,[br]he was in the eighth grade.

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He was quiet, introspective,

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like he was always in deep thought.

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And he hated seeing other people fight.

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I saw him once jump between two girls[br]when they got into a fight

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and he got himself knocked to the ground.

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Patrick had just one problem.

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He wouldn't come to school.

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He said that sometimes[br]school was just too depressing

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because people were always fighting[br]and teachers were quitting.

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And also, his mother worked two jobs[br]and was just too tired to make him come.

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So I made it my job[br]to get him to come to school.

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And because I was crazy and 22[br]and zealously optimistic,

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my strategy was[br]just to show up at his house

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and say, "Hey, why don't you[br]come to school?"

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And this strategy actually worked,

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he started to come to school every day.

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And he started to flourish in my class.

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He was writing poetry,[br]he was reading books.

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He was coming to school every day.

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Around the same time

0:03:32.542,0:03:35.226
that I had figured out[br]how to connect to Patrick,

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I got into law school at Harvard.

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I once again faced this question,[br]where should I put myself,

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where do I put my body?

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And I thought to myself

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that the Mississippi Delta[br]was a place where people with money,

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people with opportunity,

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those people leave.

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And the people who stay behind

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are the people who don't have[br]the chance to leave.

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I didn't want to be a person who left.

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I wanted to be a person who stayed.

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On the other hand, I was lonely and tired.

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And so I convinced myself[br]that I could do more change

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on a larger scale if I had[br]a prestigious law degree.

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So I left.

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Three years later,

0:04:24.375,0:04:26.768
when I was about[br]to graduate from law school,

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my friend called me

0:04:28.542,0:04:33.458
and told me that Patrick[br]had got into a fight and killed someone.

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I was devastated.

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Part of me didn't believe it,

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but part of me also knew that it was true.

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I flew down to see Patrick.

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I visited him in jail.

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And he told me that it was true.

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That he had killed someone.

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And he didn't want to talk more about it.

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I asked him what had happened with school

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and he said that he had dropped out[br]the year after I left.

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And then he wanted[br]to tell me something else.

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He looked down and he said[br]that he had had a baby daughter

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who was just born.

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And he felt like he had let her down.

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That was it, our conversation[br]was rushed and awkward.

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When I stepped outside the jail,[br]a voice inside me said,

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"Come back.

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If you don't come back now,[br]you'll never come back."

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So I graduated from law school[br]and I went back.

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I went back to see Patrick,

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I went back to see if I could help him[br]with his legal case.

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And this time,[br]when I saw him a second time,

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I thought I had this great idea, I said,

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"Hey, Patrick, why don't you[br]write a letter to your daughter,

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so that you can keep her on your mind?"

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And I handed him a pen[br]and a piece of paper,

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and he started to write.

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But when I saw the paper[br]that he handed back to me,

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I was shocked.

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I didn't recognize his handwriting,

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he had made simple spelling mistakes.

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And I thought to myself that as a teacher,

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I knew that a student[br]could dramatically improve

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in a very quick amount of time,

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but I never thought that a student[br]could dramatically regress.

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What even pained me more,

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was seeing what he had written[br]to his daughter.

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He had written,

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"I'm sorry for my mistakes,[br]I'm sorry for not being there for you."

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And this was all he felt[br]he had to say to her.

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And I asked myself how can I convince him[br]that he has more to say,

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parts of himself that[br]he doesn't need to apologize for.

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I wanted him to feel

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that he had something worthwhile[br]to share with his daughter.

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For every day the next seven months,

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I visited him and brought books.

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My tote bag became a little library.

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I brought James Baldwin,

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I brought Walt Whitman, C.S. Lewis.

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I brought guidebooks to trees, to birds,

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and what would become[br]his favorite book, the dictionary.

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On some days,

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we would sit for hours in silence,[br]both of us reading.

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And on other days,

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we would read together,[br]we would read poetry.

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We started by reading haikus,[br]hundreds of haikus,

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a deceptively simple masterpiece.

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And I would ask him,[br]"Share with me your favorite haikus."

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And some of them are quite funny.

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So there's this by Issa:

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"Don't worry, spiders,[br]I keep house casually."

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And this: "Napped half the day,[br]no one punished me!"

0:08:08.667,0:08:13.101
And this gorgeous one, which is[br]about the first day of snow falling,

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"Deer licking first frost[br]from each other's coats."

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There's something mysterious and gorgeous

0:08:22.292,0:08:24.934
just about the way a poem looks.

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The empty space is as important[br]as the words themselves.

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We read this poem by W.S. Merwin,

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which he wrote after he saw[br]his wife working in the garden

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and realized that they would spend[br]the rest of their lives together.

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"Let me imagine that we will come again

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when we want to and it will be spring

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We will be no older than we ever were

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The worn griefs will have eased[br]like the early cloud

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through which morning[br]slowly comes to itself"

0:08:59.917,0:09:03.309
I asked Patrick what his favorite[br]line was, and he said,

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"We will be no older than we ever were."

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He said it reminded him[br]of a place where time just stops,

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where time doesn't matter anymore.

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And I asked him[br]if he had a place like that,

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where time lasts forever.

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And he said, "My mother."

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When you read a poem[br]alongside someone else,

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the poem changes in meaning.

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Because it becomes personal[br]to that person, becomes personal to you.

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We then read books, we read so many books,

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we read the memoir of Frederick Douglass,

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an American slave who taught[br]himself to read and write

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and who escaped to freedom[br]because of his literacy.

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I had grown up thinking[br]of Frederick Douglass as a hero

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and I thought of this story[br]as one of uplift and hope.

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But this book put Patrick[br]in a kind of panic.

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He fixated on a story Douglass told[br]of how, over Christmas,

0:10:07.958,0:10:11.059
masters give slaves gin

0:10:11.083,0:10:14.559
as a way to prove to them[br]that they can't handle freedom.

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Because slaves would be[br]stumbling on the fields.

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Patrick said he related to this.

0:10:22.333,0:10:25.809
He said that there are people in jail[br]who, like slaves,

0:10:25.833,0:10:28.059
don't want to think about their condition,

0:10:28.083,0:10:29.893
because it's too painful.

0:10:29.917,0:10:32.101
Too painful to think about the past,

0:10:32.125,0:10:35.458
too painful to think[br]about how far we have to go.

0:10:36.958,0:10:39.851
His favorite line was this line:

0:10:39.875,0:10:43.476
"Anything, no matter what,[br]to get rid of thinking!

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It was this everlasting thinking[br]of my condition that tormented me."

0:10:49.958,0:10:53.917
Patrick said that Douglass was brave[br]to write, to keep thinking.

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But Patrick would never know[br]how much he seemed like Douglass to me.

0:11:00.667,0:11:04.417
How he kept reading,[br]even though it put him in a panic.

0:11:05.250,0:11:08.309
He finished the book before I did,

0:11:08.333,0:11:12.042
reading it in a concrete[br]stairway with no light.

0:11:13.583,0:11:16.309
And then we went on[br]to read one of my favorite books,

0:11:16.333,0:11:18.518
Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead,"

0:11:18.542,0:11:22.684
which is an extended letter[br]from a father to his son.

0:11:22.708,0:11:25.059
He loved this line:

0:11:25.083,0:11:27.268
"I'm writing this in part to tell you

0:11:27.292,0:11:30.601
that if you ever wonder[br]what you've done in your life ...

0:11:30.625,0:11:32.643
you have been God's grace to me,

0:11:32.667,0:11:35.833
a miracle, something more than a miracle."

0:11:37.375,0:11:43.018
Something about this language,[br]its love, its longing, its voice,

0:11:43.042,0:11:45.500
rekindled Patrick's desire to write.

0:11:46.292,0:11:49.393
And he would fill notebooks upon notebooks

0:11:49.417,0:11:52.726
with letters to his daughter.

0:11:52.750,0:11:55.684
In these beautiful, intricate letters,

0:11:55.708,0:12:01.684
he would imagine him and his daughter[br]going canoeing down the Mississippi river.

0:12:01.708,0:12:04.518
He would imagine them[br]finding a mountain stream

0:12:04.542,0:12:06.708
with perfectly clear water.

0:12:08.042,0:12:10.083
As I watched Patrick write,

0:12:11.250,0:12:13.393
I thought to myself,

0:12:13.417,0:12:15.476
and I now ask all of you,

0:12:15.500,0:12:20.792
how many of you have written a letter[br]to somebody you feel you have let down?

0:12:22.042,0:12:27.125
It is just much easier[br]to put those people out of your mind.

0:12:28.083,0:12:32.726
But Patrick showed up every day,[br]facing his daughter,

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holding himself accountable to her,

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word by word with intense concentration.

0:12:42.417,0:12:44.958
I wanted in my own life

0:12:46.042,0:12:49.101
to put myself at risk in that way.

0:12:49.125,0:12:52.750
Because that risk reveals[br]the strength of one's heart.

0:12:56.625,0:13:00.684
Let me take a step back[br]and just ask an uncomfortable question.

0:13:00.708,0:13:04.417
Who am I to tell this story,[br]as in this Patrick story?

0:13:06.042,0:13:09.018
Patrick's the one who lived with this pain

0:13:09.042,0:13:13.208
and I have never been hungry[br]a day in my life.

0:13:15.250,0:13:17.018
I thought about this question a lot,

0:13:17.042,0:13:20.768
but what I want to say is that this story[br]is not just about Patrick.

0:13:20.792,0:13:22.309
It's about us,

0:13:22.333,0:13:24.833
it's about the inequality between us.

0:13:25.667,0:13:27.083
The world of plenty

0:13:28.375,0:13:32.018
that Patrick and his parents[br]and his grandparents

0:13:32.042,0:13:33.851
have been shut out of.

0:13:33.875,0:13:36.958
In this story, I represent[br]that world of plenty.

0:13:37.792,0:13:41.601
And in telling this story,[br]I didn't want to hide myself.

0:13:41.625,0:13:44.292
Hide the power that I do have.

0:13:45.333,0:13:48.893
In telling this story,[br]I wanted to expose that power

0:13:48.917,0:13:51.309
and then to ask,

0:13:51.333,0:13:54.250
how do we diminish[br]the distance between us?

0:13:56.250,0:13:59.851
Reading is one way to close that distance.

0:13:59.875,0:14:04.309
It gives us a quiet universe[br]that we can share together,

0:14:04.333,0:14:06.583
that we can share in equally.

0:14:08.500,0:14:11.601
You're probably wondering now[br]what happened to Patrick.

0:14:11.625,0:14:13.333
Did reading save his life?

0:14:14.583,0:14:16.708
It did and it didn't.

0:14:17.875,0:14:20.768
When Patrick got out of prison,

0:14:20.792,0:14:23.125
his journey was excruciating.

0:14:24.292,0:14:27.768
Employers turned him away[br]because of his record,

0:14:27.792,0:14:30.934
his best friend, his mother,[br]died at age 43

0:14:30.958,0:14:33.434
from heart disease and diabetes.

0:14:33.458,0:14:36.167
He's been homeless, he's been hungry.

0:14:38.250,0:14:42.792
So people say a lot of things[br]about reading that feel exaggerated to me.

0:14:43.792,0:14:47.768
Being literate didn't stop him[br]form being discriminated against.

0:14:47.792,0:14:50.417
It didn't stop his mother from dying.

0:14:51.708,0:14:54.083
So what can reading do?

0:14:55.375,0:14:59.333
I have a few answers to end with today.

0:15:00.667,0:15:03.417
Reading charged his inner life

0:15:05.083,0:15:08.143
with mystery, with imagination,

0:15:08.167,0:15:09.417
with beauty.

0:15:10.292,0:15:14.625
Reading gave him images that gave him joy:

0:15:15.417,0:15:20.976
mountain, ocean, deer, frost.

0:15:21.000,0:15:25.125
Words that taste of a free, natural world.

0:15:27.625,0:15:31.143
Reading gave him a language[br]for what he had lost.

0:15:31.167,0:15:35.809
How precious are these lines[br]from the poet Derek Walcott?

0:15:35.833,0:15:38.059
Patrick memorized this poem.

0:15:38.083,0:15:40.184
"Days that I have held,

0:15:40.208,0:15:42.476
days that I have lost,

0:15:42.500,0:15:45.726
days that outgrow, like daughters,

0:15:45.750,0:15:47.583
my harboring arms."

0:15:48.667,0:15:51.643
Reading taught him his own courage.

0:15:51.667,0:15:54.976
Remember that he kept reading[br]Frederick Douglass,

0:15:55.000,0:15:57.143
even though it was painful.

0:15:57.167,0:16:00.875
He kept being conscious,[br]even though being conscious hurts.

0:16:02.208,0:16:04.768
Reading is a form of thinking,

0:16:04.792,0:16:08.851
that's why it's difficult to read[br]because we have to think.

0:16:08.875,0:16:13.125
And Patrick chose to think,[br]rather than to not think.

0:16:16.000,0:16:19.958
And last, reading gave him a language[br]to speak to his daughter.

0:16:21.375,0:16:24.601
Reading inspired him to want to write.

0:16:24.625,0:16:28.768
The link between reading[br]and writing is so powerful.

0:16:28.792,0:16:30.851
When we begin to read,

0:16:30.875,0:16:32.958
we begin to find the words.

0:16:33.958,0:16:38.601
And he found the words[br]to imagine the two of them together.

0:16:38.625,0:16:40.333
He found the words

0:16:41.958,0:16:44.208
to tell her how much he loved her.

0:16:46.042,0:16:49.976
Reading also changed[br]our relationship with each other.

0:16:50.000,0:16:52.059
It gave us an occasion for intimacy,

0:16:52.083,0:16:54.976
to see beyond our points of view.

0:16:55.000,0:16:57.684
And reading took an unequal relationship

0:16:57.708,0:17:00.375
and gave us a momentary equality.

0:17:02.125,0:17:05.059
When you meet somebody as a reader,

0:17:05.083,0:17:07.059
you meet him for the first time,

0:17:07.083,0:17:08.791
newly, freshly.

0:17:09.875,0:17:13.083
There is no way you can know[br]what his favorite line will be.

0:17:14.458,0:17:17.666
What memories and private griefs he has.

0:17:18.833,0:17:22.833
And you face the ultimate privacy[br]of his inner life.

0:17:23.666,0:17:27.101
And then you start to wonder,[br]"Well, what is my inner life made of?

0:17:27.125,0:17:30.375
What do I have that's worthwhile[br]to share with another?"

0:17:33.000,0:17:34.333
I want to close

0:17:36.208,0:17:40.500
on some of my favorite lines[br]from Patrick's letters to his daughter.

0:17:41.333,0:17:44.101
"The river is shadowy in some places

0:17:44.125,0:17:47.393
but the light shines[br]through the cracks of trees ...

0:17:47.417,0:17:50.976
On some branches[br]hang plenty of mulberries.

0:17:51.000,0:17:54.458
You stretch your arm[br]straight out to grab some."

0:17:56.042,0:17:58.476
And this lovely letter, where he writes,

0:17:58.500,0:18:02.851
"Close your eyes and listen[br]to the sounds of the words.

0:18:02.875,0:18:05.059
I know this poem by heart

0:18:05.083,0:18:07.917
and I would like you to know it, too."

0:18:09.375,0:18:11.184
Thank you so much everyone.

0:18:11.208,0:18:14.500
(Applause)