richardmurray

Alexis Henderson author of the witching Q&A on Thistle and Verse with Chloe Rose

Initial 
The ghosts in savannah are mostly wraiths.
2:40 
Sequel writing is not for every writer but the financial environment of writers in modernity gears audiences to love getting sequels eternally, ala JAmes Bond or Statian Comic Book characters longevity or Golgo 13 , and industry loves feeding the desire they prompted cause it is easier to gauge profitability or trends than with porviding continuous new stories over a similar time.
4:12
writers at their best always reach their comfortability
5:17 
a great question is offered, are the characters in young adult fiction, the main plot characters , age bounded?
I think the modern readership has been manipulated, especially in the usa, to view genres with many bounds on the characters that film them. The Neverending story isn't a children's only book. 
7:08 
Alexis provides hint to her next work, she says if you like the witching you will like the next work and she is in an anthology
8:05 
Imagine a romance with that angel in hell boy golden army as a main character.
9:04
Yes, Chloe , the common reader is disconnected to desiring short stories. The world of telenovelas/movie series pushes the idea that every story must be this modern epic length. 
12:27
Interesting, I think many females like Margaret Atwood's no nonsense style  , especially in handmaids.  Yes, the south has a very agrarian relationship to spiritual. 
14:50 
Chloe ask Alexis a question never asked before by the writers viewpoint.
17:40 
Chloe asks a question I never think to ask, what edit was the toughest, I will steal that question
The structure of each of the witch's and the writers relationship to their genesis or life is good viewing/listening.
23:50 
tracy chapman shout
30:38 
yes, the bond villain is never alone, sympathy for the devil
I agree, making the financially poorest be the one who must work to improve a larger society is a dysfunction
32:26
She loved Ursula from the little mermaid. Alexis gives her position on witches in media. 
33:53 
Chloe asked Alexis who will she want to play the characters in film world
Timothée Hal Chalamet
Indya Moore for emmanuel
Nicole kidman then Tracy chapman for vera
37:56 
she references her southern baptist upbringing as a potential source to a scene in the book
38:50 
brianna collett is the voice actor for the audio book
42:23
an interesting sheparding fact, on jacob rams
we give rams a bad rap like all hoofed creatures cause of the early christian churches criminalization of the more ancient roman culture where the hoofed fauns and hoofed god pan were considered positive entities and thus criminalized the people of the countryside, the villains, who still worshipped greaco roman deities as christianity grew
...
GOOD SHOW
 

Well... it is another Friday, another day to love, to Oxum, Oshun, Freya, or Venus, another day to Kizomba!
Enjoy Ebo and Nana in Black & White, like a nice  ball; their routine is complete to tricks/turns/fun. Enjoy  

"All men can live together. If they wish to."

- Actress and civil rights activist Josephine Baker (1906-1975)

Craig gave candid thoughts, though, when discussing whether the lead should be a woman or an actor of color.

"The answer to that is very simple," Craig declared to Radio Times < https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/james-bond-daniel-craig-woman-next-newsupdate/ > . "There should simply be better parts for women and actors of color. Why should a woman play James Bond when there should be a part just as good as James Bond, but for a woman?"
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/daniel-craig-advice-to-next-james-bond-dont-be-s-231011388.html

An essay on the "lavender scare" if you don't know of it, take a look 
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html

James Webb was head of NASA during the mentioned lavender scare, his name is being placed on a telescope, some, not most, want his name disconnected from the device, regardless of his long or fruitful stewardship of Nasa, what say you? 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nasa-advisor-quits-agency-keeps-100633698.html

Retrofuturism pinup- Ethel
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Retro-Futurism-Pin-Up-entry-894906430?ga_submit_new=10%3A1634260489&ga_type=edit&ga_changes=1

REtrofuturism pinup Ethel's dream 
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Dream-Advertisement-of-the-RMC-7000-894906666?ga_submit_new=10%3A1634260388

Retrofuturism Ethel, black and white
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Retrofuturism-pinup-Ethel-Black-and-White-894907641?ga_submit_new=10%3A1634260657

Retrofuturism pinup model R
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Retrofuturism-Pinup-Model-R-894907759?ga_submit_new=10%3A1634261234

Retrofuturism pinup model R- black and white
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Retrofuturism-pinup-model-R-black-and-white-894908633?ga_submit_new=10%3A1634261335
 

PRo vaccinators versus Anti vaccinators

I asked someone
What are your thoughts on the 5-11 year old vaccine?

That person replied
I just hope it happens soon.  Children get all sorts of vaccines when they're babies and it continues throughout their childhood.  This is just another vaccine that could save their lives.  Bring it on!!

My thought reply

It is interesting that most of the talk concerning the 5-11 year old vaccine concerns time. I think it need to concern health. The Food and Drug administration has a history of taking many products into a long back and forth with manufacturers. the fact that newspapers/electronic media concerns/regular folk use words relating to speed, not function concerning the 5-11 vaccine is interesting. I think faulty. CHildren's metabolisms are different than adults. Their metabolisms are closer to the bats that hold the Sars-Cov-2 virus, the bats who don't need a vaccine and can live with it in their system for their lifetime. So... I feel the sense of governmental connection to the vaccine issue. 
You raise another interesting point. How many people have been vaccinated as children in the usa? plus how often? Your words suggest something but I don't see it that way. I live in NYC and I am 100% certain the orthodox jewish/orthodox muslim, various religious communities, various fiscally poor communities have children who did not get vaccinated, one for religious or cultural reasons, the other for financial , and add to either of them the people who don't trust the pharmaceutical industry , for personal or historical or communal reasons and I don't think children in the usa are vaccinated as much as some statistics may imply.  I could be wrong, I am not saying I am . But I have questions to the quantity or rate of vaccination before the sars-cov-2 was introduced into the human populace. Second, with the world health or Center for Disease control admitting that years of the vaccinations for things like the flu was with ineffectual vaccines then , how many people who were told this was a vaccination was actually getting a placebo or snakeoil? Why does that matter, cause then, you have a culture of faux vaccination before the sars-cov-2 introduction, thus shedding a bad light on the pro-vaccinators claims, at the least historically.   But, in the end, I can't prove anything, i read what people who are supposedly telling the truth say, but... I have many questions and I think one day decades from now it will be inteesting to see some PBS <if they are still around> special covering this time. 
Back to the children being vaccinated. I cognize what the goal of the anti vaccinators is? THey want to be free to choose to take a vaccine or not. The media problem is with the pro vaccinators, they seem unable to confess their goal. The goal of the pro vaccinators is to get 100% people vaccinated. The problem is, some pro vaccinators  are willing to use force or coercion, while other pro vaccinators are not.  Why can't pro vaccinators simply say, they want to force people to take the vaccine? why not? From the beginning , I see the vaccine issue as dead. Each human being has their own immune systems. Some people who have fragile bones and weak muscles with asthma have stronger immune systems than people who are triathletes and never had a hospitalization. The history of vaccines has one truth. A majority in humanity was never given a vaccine and humanity survived. Africa for all the malaria cases that a new vaccine is supposed to stop has one of the youngest fertile populations in humanity. So the human body changes, adjusts through life or death, slowly but purposefully. The human body is the beginning of health and some people just can't handle interacting with some lifeforms in the race commonly called virus. I accept virus's as children of nature. Human beings have annihilated many species of cat or tree in the same way viruses kill many humans. Human technology , in my view, will never be able to outwit the virus. Virus's evolve and will adapt to survive. So, getting 100% vaccination isn't a goal worth getting. It is hubris, but that hubris seems to be the agenda in the usa among the pro vaccinators. Even though outside the usa, 100% s publicly stated as never reachable. The party of andrew jackson needs the vaccine issue cause it is the only issue they can tackle. Immigration/historical or financial negative bias based on phenotypical race/government bureaucratic dysfunction are all impossible to get their multiracial voting base to find a center with and the party of jackson leaders are unwilling to use the state model to arrange things in the usa to betterment.

Kroye(Unity)! Nkosuo(Development)! 

In support of our initiatives in Asankrangwa focusing on SDGs goals: 1, 3, and 5.
 
When
November 6, 2021 3:00 PM EDT to 6:00 PM EDT
Where
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIsduCsqj0qGNNm9ME2LrB1Q_paLoKBNZfB

Afro Latinx children's books are still too rare. These four authors are trying to change that
Written by
CNN Style Staff

A vivid homage to the graffitied streets of the Boogie Down Bronx and an interstellar quest for the perfect natural hair style are part of a new wave of picture books celebrating Afro Latinx culture and characters, in an industry where these stories are still few and far between.
"I want to show kids of diverse backgrounds that they can go on fantastical adventures, too," said New York-based illustrator and toy designer Yesenia Moises, author of "Stella's Stellar Hair." She noted that in children's media, stories featuring protagonists of color are often about overcoming struggle, or are "hyper-focused" on identity and race. "I want to step away from that for a moment to be able to show that ... their worlds can be vibrant and full of color."
Having grown up without picture books that reflected their own experiences, the Latinx authors and illustrators featured below are crafting and sharing those stories themselves, with colorful vivid imagery, prose and verse.

Here, four authors speak about their storytelling philosophies, and why kids need to see themselves in the pages of the stories they read.
Eric Velasquez
Eric Velasquez is an Afro Puerto Rican illustrator, author and educator. He has illustrated more than 30 books and has authored four, including "Octopus Stew," about a boy named Ramsey who must save his grandmother from the gargantuan octopus she's cooking.

"Octopus Stew" was inspired by the tall tales of Velasquez's father. Credit: Eric Velasquez/Courtesy of Holiday House Publishing

My family comes from a strong oral storytelling tradition; we would gather together to share and listen after nights of dinner and music, and so it was something that I wanted to be part of.
My book "Octopus Stew'' is essentially a tribute to that oral tradition. Whenever my dad would come over and cook for my friends and me, he would inevitably say, "Did Eric tell you about the day I rescued him and his grandma from the giant octopus?" Every single one of my friends knows that story because of him, and over the years, it just grew like a tall tale.
Grandmothers are central to many of my stories. I can trace my own career back to the summers I spent sketching in my grandmother's living room in Spanish Harlem, surrounded by music.

In "Grandma's Records," Velasquez recalls the memories from his own childhood that made him understand that 'heroes' aren't just White. Credit: Eric Velasquez/Bloomsbury Children's Books

Those summers inspired my book "Grandma's Records," and also taught me the importance of having heroes who look like us. I remember marveling at the musicians who would visit when I was young, including Rafael Cortijo, the prime architect of Puerto Rican salsa. When he came by, my grandmother told me only to refer to him as "maestro."
"That man is a genius," she said, "and he deserves to be treated with respect."
In school, when we learned that Beethoven was a musical genius, I remember thinking, "I know a genius too! He loves rice with beans and roast pork, and he even entertains us with music after dinner." I didn't feel there was a disconnect between the concept of "genius" and what I saw around me.
But over time, I realized other kids struggled to do the same; at art school, when they pictured "heroes" they would never draw men or women of color.
That's when I started to realize how important representation is. When you grow up with examples of diverse heroes, it affects your imagination. You start to believe that you can be part of this creative world, and I think that's very important.
Yesenia Moises
Yesenia Moises is an Afro Dominican toy designer and illustrator. She is the author of "Stella's Stellar Hair," a book about a young Black girl with natural hair who travels the solar system in search of hairstyles.

"Stella's Stella Hair" is about owning your natural hair, inspired by Moises' own hair journey. Credit: Yesenia Moises

When it comes to my hair, I spent most of my life trying to fit the mold of Eurocentric beauty standards by chemically relaxing my hair. Growing up, my mom, a fair-skinned Latina woman with the loose waves a lot of people aim for -- not at all like mine -- would always comment on how thick or unruly it is, or how it tangles itself.
It was only after I started letting my hair grow out in its full, natural glory that I grew to love it, but even then I realized that many kids today are still made to feel bad about their hair. So I created "Stella's Stellar Hair" to celebrate the variety and creativity of Black hair across the African diaspora.

Stella is aided on her intergalatic quest by cosmic aunties, who each have a hairstyle for her. Credit: Yesenia Moises

The whole concept of having aunties from the different planets came from one Black hair trade show I attended, which was full of older Black women with amazing natural hairstyles that showed their personalities. And I'd never seen that before. I was so used to making sure that my hair was as flat as possible, but here were all these older women who were just proud of the hair that grew out of their scalp. It really inspired me to show just how versatile and beautiful Black hair can be.
I think it's really important for young readers to feel seen more than anything else. As a dark-skinned Afro Latina, it wasn't until 2018, when I saw Miles Morales become Spider-Man in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," that I saw someone with my background represented in the media I watch. I really loved how the director made a choice to exclude English subtitles for the conversations Miles had with his mother. When you add subtitles, it makes the experience feel foreign; but in their household, it was natural -- just like it is in mine. That really floored me.
Margarita Engle
Margarita Engle is a poet and author whose works celebrate her Cuban heritage. Her book "Drum Dream Girl," illustrated by Rafael López, is inspired by the true story of a young Chinese Afro Cuban girl who became a drummer for Cuba's first all-female jazz band.

"Drum Dream Girl," written by Engle and illustrated by Rafael López, tells the journey of a girl in Cuba who pursues her love of drums. Credit: Margarita Engle/Clarion Books

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to Cuba, where my mother is from. We would go back in the summers to visit the extended family, but we were cut off from them because of travel restrictions after the missile crisis. When I was finally able to go back as an adult in 1991, I found that I wanted to write about the experience.
I know that, all of a sudden, we're not supposed to hyphenate things anymore in our writing. But I felt like I lived on that hyphen, and the compound word "Cuban-American." It was a bridge and an abyss at the same time; by the time I was a teenager, it felt like it was easier for a US citizen to walk on the moon than to visit relatives in Cuba.
Music is a recurring theme in my books. My picture book "Drum Dream Girl" is based on the life of Chinese Afro Cuban girl Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, who played the drums in Cuba when it was forbidden to girls.

The story is a real tale of perserverence in a dreamlike setting. Credit: Margarita Engle/Clarion Books

I read the memoirs of her older sister and there were these amazing photographs of this all-girl band -- the first of its kind. In the 1930s, most of the jazz bands had been men, and here was one made up entirely of sisters. And the youngest was a 10-year-old girl who wanted to play the drums.
Even today, in certain cultural traditions that come from West African religion, women in Cuba have to fight for the right to play certain types of drums. But in Millo's case, for entertainment, she really opened that door. The band became very successful, and everybody loved her drumming, so, after a while, many other women drummers followed.
I was inspired by her courage and her perseverance. When I talk to children about that book, I ask the boys, 'How would you feel if society said you couldn't drive monster trucks, or only girls could motorcycle race?' And all the boys immediately give up their right to be the only one to do something. They instinctively understand that this isn't fair.
Charles Esperanza
Charles Esperanza is an Afro Puerto Rican illustrator and author whose new book, "Boogie Boogie Y'all," published this summer. The book is a brightly colored depiction of his home borough of the Bronx, as well as a tribute to graffiti.

"Boogie Boogie, Y'all" celebrates the Bronx as a colorful cultural hub. Credit: CG Esperanza

I'm interested in telling stories and taking something about our culture -- as a Black and Latino person, and as a Bronx resident -- and de-stigmatizing it. What inspired "Boogie Boogie, Y'all" was an awesome graffiti piece outside of the community center where I teach. I took a photo of it to show to my students; it turns out none of them has seen it before. I said, "Y'all don't really look around and take in all of the awesome things that are on the street."
I've asked my students what they've heard about graffiti and a lot of the answers were recycled from decades ago: It's gang symbols; it's vandalism. I wanted to give them another perspective about it; I pay homage to a lot of contemporary street artists in the book like "Gully" and "Modus," who can be seen all over the Bronx and the rest of New York City. They've seen the book and have expressed excitement about it.

Esperanza wrote and illustrated the book after a conversation with his students about noticing what's in front of the them on the streets of their home borough. Credit: CG Esperanza

I think kids need to be able to see themselves in the books that they read, and they need to be able to see themselves in the art they look at. As a teacher, I notice many of my Black and Brown students create White characters. Instead of preaching to them that they should use people of color, I show them examples of amazing Black characters, created by artists like Yesenia Moises, LeSean Thomas or Geneva Bowers to inspire them.
I get a lot of inspiration just walking around the Bronx, and I definitely wanted to capture that. I love the borough for its grittiness and personality. We are known for our cultural contributions through hip-hop, but we have so much more in food, fashion, art and music that's waiting to be shared with the world. All of our communities -- old and new -- are adding their vibrant tag to the wall that is the Bronx.
When I was first trying to get into the business. I heard some really wild things about why publishers wouldn't have a Black child as the protagonist. I remember one editor told me that for picture books, they would rather have an animal like a panda or something as a main character, because every kid could relate to that. I was blown away, realizing that the underrepresentation was intentional this whole time. So I'm glad that we have so many artists now that are coming in and knocking down the door and doing awesome things.
Each author's personal statement was edited for length and clarity by a member of the CNN Style team.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/afro-latinx-childrens-books-hyphenated/index.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit Hub Daily: August 27%2C 2021&utm_term=lithub_master_list

Jess Bergman/August 11, 2021
The Uncomfortable Rise of the Instagram Novel
Beth Morgan’s “A Touch of Jen” is the latest work to reckon with a social media–fueled obsession.
https://newrepublic.com/article/163238/uncomfortable-rise-instagram-novel-touch-jen-beth-morgan?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit Hub Daily: August 13, 2021&utm_term=lithub_master_list

A sudden price change for Amanda Gorman’s book shocked booksellers.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/87229-gorman-book-s-price-hike-startles-booksellers.html

Writers notes: the record label remixing novels into music
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/27/writers-notes-the-record-labels-remixing-novels-into-music-bibliotapes

REFERRAL- New Environmental Canon, An LGBT+ Picture Book, and Women in Horror: This Week in Book News
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/08/27/new-environmental-canon-an-lgbt-picture-book-and-women-in-horror-this-week-in-book-news/ 
 

Book Smart: Phoebe Robinson on ghosting, refusing failure, and shaking up the publishing industry
The comedian, who launches her own book imprint this month, pens an essay for EW.
By Phoebe Robinson
September 16, 2021 at 12:00 PM EDT

Dear reader, yes, I look fabulous in these photos, but please know that I wrote this essay while pantless and seated on my couch, rocking a push-up bra (for who? I'm by myself ) and listening to Omarion's "Ice Box" because there's never a wrong time to live the way I was living in 2006. Anyway, here I am in Entertainment Weekly tasked with summarizing, IN 1,200 WORDS OR LESS, (1) my journey toward launching my literary imprint Tiny Reparations Books with my third book, Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes (Sept. 28), and (2) my opinions on the ever-changing publishing landscape. Insert shocked emoji followed by the Kanye West lyrics: "Poopy-di-scoop/Scoop-diddy-whoop." Basically, this writing assignment initially caused my mind to overload with a barrage of thoughts that all I could make out were some poops and scoops. Still, I'm not one to back down from a challenge, so here goes.

It was 2014. I told my now-former manager that I wanted to write a book. Her response: "Well you're not famous, so you shouldn't be writing a book." Did I fire her after she said that? Nope! My goofy ass kept working with her for several months until she GHOSTED ME because I was still not famous. Let's soak that in for a moment. I continued paying someone 15 percent of what I make to tell me I ain't s---. LOL I will unpack that in therapy right after I work through the fact that I wore foundation eight shades too light for my skin tone because I got my makeup done at the mall before I went to senior prom. ANYWAY! The point is: I was a struggling stand-up comic with a dream and zero knowledge of how to make it happen. And because many famous authors, movies, and TV shows romanticize what it's like to write books, I thought it would be easy, aside from the occasional bout of writer's block. I was wrong! Writing and selling a book proposal to a publisher ain't sexy! Writing a book ain't sexy! Promoting a book ain't sexy! In fact, the whole process — the idea phase straight up to publicaysh — is mostly like lovemaking after a hearty Thanksgiving dinner, a.k.a. sometimes tryptophan won't let you be great and the same can be said for the world of publishing. Let me explain.

Back in 2015, my literary agent Robert and I shopped around my proposal for You Can't Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain. Imprint after imprint rejected it because they claimed that books by Black women don't sell (wut?) and are not relatable (to whom, DAVE?), and that no one is interested in funny-essay collections by Black women (wut? the sequel). In the end, Plume was the only imprint that wanted me, and as Lady Gaga taught us, ya only need one person to believe in you, boo! Anyway, cut to 2016. You Can't Touch My Hair was on the New York Times best-seller list for two weeks, and the very places that turned me down emailed Robert asking why we never tried to sell my proposal to them because "they would have loved to publish me." He politely reminded them that he did and what their responses were. And while it's good for the ego to prove a bunch of close-minded and biased heauxes wrong, I kept thinking about all the women, POCs, and queer people who don't end up with this happy ending, let alone the opportunity to get their writing published. I wanted to do something with what little power I had, but then life happened.

My TV career grew thanks to my 2 Dope Queens specials for HBO. I fell in love. Finally traveled after being in debt for over a decade. Had creative projects fall apart. Got a Peloton. JK. But also, #PelotonIsLyfe. Was in early talks with Plume to partner with me and launch an imprint. And yes, of course, coronavirus. It made the world stop. All the plans everyone had vanished. Like most people, I clung to anything that felt "normal," and that "anything " was books. Every morning, I would get up early and read for hours. Books became my escape, an oasis, a new way of understanding our drastically different world, and most important, they brought me immense joy. Robert could sense this whenever we chatted on the phone just as friends, and when I told him about my idea for Please Don't Sit on My Bed, he said that I should launch my imprint and that could be the first book published. #UltimateFlex, but also, hmm. In the face of the summer of social reckoning spurred by the murder of George Floyd, having an imprint seemed… irrelevant? But then I reminded myself that every time I read, I felt inspired that there was something more than the collective trauma we were enduring. If anything, the suffocating bigness of COVID and police brutality illuminated how special and important books are. So having my own imprint went from seeming trivial to a "why the hell not?" Given the state of the world, the worst that could happen is failure.

A word, if I may: After you've been told more times than you care to count that you don't have what it takes to achieve your goals, that you and your work are not valuable, or you're just given an emphatic "no" without any further explanation only to prove them wrong by not just knocking your goals off your to-do list, but exceeding the wildest dreams you've ever had, you start to realize that worrying about failing is not worth your time. Even if what you're going after doesn't work out, betting on yourself is the smartest and the best no-brainer thing you could do. And launching an imprint during COVID AND the reckoning AND in an industry that, to say the least, has not always embraced women, POCs, and the queer community is pretty damn smart. The contributions to the written word from these groups are ASTOUNDING, and it's my privilege to, in some small way, help them carry on the tradition.

Sure, the jury's still out on how Tiny Reparations Books will perform, but in my eyes, it's already a success. I have eight authors on the slate. All of them are first-timers. I guess my experience shopping around You Can't Touch My Hair really stuck with me, and I never wanted anyone to experience the amount of ignorance, disinterest, and lack of faith in their talent as I had. So it is my honor to be in the trenches with them, and my only hope is that every promise made by publishing houses during the summer of 2020 and the viral #PublishingPaidMe conversation is delivered upon. It's not up to me nor any of the brilliant writers on my slate to do the long overdue work publishing needs to do to be more inclusive, to pay writers from marginalized communities better, to nurture and hire more women, POCs, and queer people in gatekeeper positions. We're watching you, publishing industry, because we love you — and we know you can do better.

https://ew.com/books/phoebe-robinson-essay-fall-books-special/

Who doesn’t read books in America?
BY RISA GELLES-WATNICK AND ANDREW PERRIN

Roughly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print, electronic or audio form, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted Jan. 25-Feb. 8, 2021. Who are these non-book readers?

Several demographic traits are linked with not reading books, according to the survey. For instance, adults with a high school diploma or less are far more likely than those with a bachelor’s or advanced degree to report not reading books in any format in the past year (39% vs. 11%). Adults with lower levels of educational attainment are also among the least likely to own smartphones < http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/ > , an increasingly common way for adults to read e-books. 

In addition, adults whose annual household income is less than $30,000 are more likely than those living in households earning $75,000 or more a year to be non-book readers (31% vs. 15%). Hispanic adults (38%) are more likely than Black (25%) or White adults (20%) to report not having read a book in the past 12 months. (The survey included Asian Americans but did not have sufficient sample size to do statistical analysis of this group.)

Although the differences are less pronounced, non-book readers also vary by age and community type. Americans ages 50 and older, for example, are more likely than their younger counterparts to be non-book readers. There is not a statistically significant difference by gender.

The share of Americans who report not reading any books in the past 12 months has fluctuated over the years the Center has studied it. The 23% of adults who currently say they have not read any books in the past year is identical to the share who said this in 2014.

The same demographic traits that characterize non-book readers also often apply to those who have never been to a library. In a 2016 survey < http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/09/a-portrait-of-those-who-have-never-been-to-libraries/>, the Center found that Hispanic adults, older adults, those living in households earning less than $30,000 and those who have a high school diploma or did not graduate from high school were among the most likely to report in that survey they had never been to a public library.  

Note: Here are the questions, responses and methodology used for this analysis < https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Non-Book-Readers-2021-Methodology-Topline.pdf >. This is an update of a post by Andrew Perrin originally published Nov. 23, 2016. 

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/21/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america/ 

Inside the rise of influencer publishing
Many bestsellers of the last few years originated outside “traditional” publishing houses. But are influencers good for books?

By Ellen Peirson-Hagger

We live in a world where everyone is a brand,” said Laura McNeill, a literary agent at Gleam Titles, which was set up by Abigail Bergstrom in 2016 as the literary arm of the influencer management and marketing company Gleam. Many of the UK’s biggest selling books of the last few years, from feminist illustrator Florence Given’s Women Don’t Owe You Pretty to Instagram cleaning phenomenon Mrs Hinch’s Hinch Yourself Happy, have been developed at the agency, and then sold for huge sums to traditional publishing houses. 

Celebrity autobiographies and commercial non-fiction have existed for a long time. Gleam Titles’ modus operandi is more specific: it has a focus < https://www.gleamfutures.com/gleamtitles >  on “writers who are using social media and the online space to share their content in a creative and effective way”. The term “author”, for the clients with which McNeill and her colleagues work, may be just one part of a multi-hyphen career that also includes “Instagrammer”, “podcaster” or “business founder”. These authors – whose books will become part of their brands – therefore require a different kind of management to traditional literary writers. “I do think the move to having talent agencies with in-house literary departments comes from these sorts of talents being a bit more demanding,” McNeill said. “I don’t want to come across as if those clients are difficult. But they are different.” 

The biggest draw for publishers bidding for books by influencers is that they have committed audiences ready and waiting. Gleam understands the importance of these figures: on its website, it lists authors’ Instagram and Twitter followings beneath their biographies < https://www.gleamfutures.com/scarlettcurtis-titles > . When publisher Fenella Bates acquired the rights for Hinch Yourself Happy in December 2018, she noted < https://www.thebookseller.com/news/mrs-hinch-signs-mj-after-11-way-auction-917271 > Sophie Hinchcliffe’s impressively quick rise on Instagram, having grown her following from 1,000 to 1.4 million in just six months. Upon publication in April 2019, the book sold 160,302 copies in three days < https://www.thebookseller.com/news/mj-signs-second-book-mrs-hinch-1068146 > , becoming the second fastest-selling non-fiction title in the UK (after the “slimming” recipe book Pinch of Nom). 

Anyone who has harnessed such an audience to sell products, promote a campaign, or otherwise cultivate a successful personal brand is an exceptionally desirable candidate to a publisher that wants to sell books. What’s more, the mechanics of social media means the size of these audiences is easily measurable, making the authors “cast-iron propositions” for publishers, said Caroline Sanderson, the associate editor of the trade magazine the Bookseller, who has noticed a huge increase in the number of books written by social media stars over the last couple of years. 

A spokesperson for Octopus Books, which published Florence Given’s Women Don’t Owe You Pretty in June 2020, suggested that a book deal can raise an influencer’s profile too. When the book was acquired, Given had approximately 100,000 followers on Instagram. “Her book was acquired because she was an exceptional writer, not because she was an influencer,” they said. “By the time it was announced, she had 150,000 followers and when the book was published her audience had jumped to circa 350,000 followers. As the book and its message grew, so did her audience.” Women Don’t Owe You Pretty has spent 26 weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller charts according to data from Nielsen BookScan, and, as of August 2021, has sold over 200,000 copies.

Such authors also bring skills that a traditional novelist, for example, would not be expected to have. “These people are incredibly good at marketing themselves”, McNeill said, “which puts a lot of the work from the marketing and publicity departments of publishing houses onto the clients themselves.” In her previous role as an agent at Peters Fraser and Dunlop, a literary and talent agency that was established in 1924, McNeill sold books by Chidera Eggerue, also known as “the Slumflower”, and by “Chicken Connoisseur” Elijah Quashie, best known for his Youtube show The Pengest Munch. During the process, McNeill realised she was working with a new type of author: Eggerue and Quashie “wanted to talk about the branding and the image and the 360-element of it a lot more than any other writers I’d worked with before,” she said. 

Some may feel inherently suspicious of the authenticity of anyone who makes a career out of social media, a pursuit often deemed trivial or shallow. Such suspicions – which often appears as disdain, or even ridicule – are prevalent in the publishing industry regarding books written by influencers, McNeill said. She told me she has observed a “snobbishness” about the books she works on, “from industry insiders way more than from the public”. One criticism often levelled against influencer authors is that they use ghostwriters. “There’s a misconception that none of these people write their own books, but plenty of them do,” McNeill said. “They’re creative talents and perfectly capable, but they might just need a bit more hand-holding and editing.”

When Quadrille published What a Time To Be Alone: The Slumflower’s Guide To Why You’re Already Enough in July 2018, it sold 1,961 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen BookScan. That should have placed it fourth on the Sunday Times general hardbacks bestseller list the following week, but “they just picked it out”, McNeill claimed, and put it in the “manuals” list instead, because its subtitle used the word “guide”. To her, this demostrates the industry’s unwillingness to understand the nature of the book, and to accept its significant audience.

The continued popularity of books such as Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Charlie Mackesey’s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse, as well as hugely successful titles published in the last 18 months, such as Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, have been credited with buoying the publishing industry during the pandemic. It makes sense that best-selling titles of any genre are helpful for the industry as a whole, as they get people excited about reading and into bookshops. But Kit Caless, co-founder of the independent London publisher Influx Press, called “the Reaganomic idea of a trickle-down system” a “fallacy”. The suggestion that a highly commercial book, such as Stacey Solomon’s Tap to Tidy, which spent ten weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller list, could be a “gateway drug” into reading is “patronising” and “tokenistic”, he said. “If they’re having to use Stacey Solomon as a Trojan horse to get people to read, I think that’s a failure on behalf of publishers to engage those readers in the first place.”

For the Bookseller’s Caroline Sanderson, it’s exciting that books still hold value among people who have found their success in the digital age. “I always think it’s amazing when people have built a platform on Twitter or Instagram, or increasingly TikTok, and the thing that they most want to do is a book, that it’s still the ultimate medium,” she said. She thinks the trend signifies “a real vote of confidence in what books are and what they can do and who they can reach”.

Sanderson said she has heard instances of people who, excited to read a book after seeing it advertised on social media, have asked “Where can I buy that?”, because they’ve never considered purchasing a book before. “It shows that there are people out there who don’t buy books but might. For me, that’s a holy grail. If they buy one book, they might buy another.” Though, she accepts, because the commercial non-fiction market is composed of a lot of “non-traditional” book-buyers, the likelihood is that they will buy online, often via am*zon. “The extent to which they benefit our highstreet bookshops is a concern.”

McNeill said that what she finds most exciting about the authors she works with – who are increasingly professionals who use social media to share their expertise, such as the astrophysicist Becky Smethurst, known on YouTube as “Dr Becky” – is that she’s breaking new ground, working with writers who wouldn’t necessarily have been given a chance to write a book for a mainstream publisher before. “I do think there is not enough risk-taking in publishing,” she said.

Caless agrees that mainstream publishing is too cautious, but considers Gleam part of that mainstream. Publishing a book by someone who already has a sizeable social media following is inherently risk-free, he said. While smaller publishers like Influx might “have an innate desire to take risks,” he said, “most publishers will publish books because they think they’ll make money; not because they think they’re good or healthy for culture.” 

McNeill believes her books do both. “I’m excited by people who are able to communicate their expertise to a wider audience,” she said of Dr Becky, whose second book, an accessible exploration of black holes, will be published by Macmillan in 2022. And, time and time again, such an attitude has also proved to be immensely profitable. “These books had to fight for their place in the market. But now no one’s able to close their eyes to the phenomenon of how well these people are able to sell and communicate to their audiences.”

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2021/09/inside-the-rise-of-influencer-publishing

REFERRAL - Influencer Authors, Library eBooks, and a Ramona Quimby Walking Tour: This Week in Book News
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/09/24/influencer-authors-library-ebooks-and-a-ramona-quimby-walking-tour-this-week-in-book-news/

C. S. Lewis review of the Hobbit

C. S. Lewis Reviews The Hobbit, 1937
By C.S. Lewis November 19, 2013

A world for children: J. R. R. Tolkien,

The Hobbit: or There and Back Again

(London: Allen and Unwin, 1937)

The publishers claim that The Hobbit, though very unlike Alice, resembles it in being the work of a professor at play. A more important truth is that both belong to a very small class of books which have nothing in common save that each admits us to a world of its own—a world that seems to have been going on long before we stumbled into it but which, once found by the right reader, becomes indispensable to him. Its place is with Alice, Flatland, Phantastes, The Wind in the Willows. [1]

To define the world of The Hobbit is, of course, impossible, because it is new. You cannot anticipate it before you go there, as you cannot forget it once you have gone. The author’s admirable illustrations and maps of Mirkwood and Goblingate and Esgaroth give one an inkling—and so do the names of the dwarf and dragon that catch our eyes as we first ruffle the pages. But there are dwarfs and dwarfs, and no common recipe for children’s stories will give you creatures so rooted in their own soil and history as those of Professor Tolkien—who obviously knows much more about them than he needs for this tale. Still less will the common recipe prepare us for the curious shift from the matter-of-fact beginnings of his story (“hobbits are small people, smaller than dwarfs—and they have no beards—but very much larger than Lilliputians”) [2] to the saga-like tone of the later chapters (“It is in my mind to ask what share of their inheritance you would have paid to our kindred had you found the hoard unguarded and us slain”). [3] You must read for yourself to find out how inevitable the change is and how it keeps pace with the hero’s journey. Though all is marvellous, nothing is arbitrary: all the inhabitants of Wilderland seem to have the same unquestionable right to their existence as those of our own world, though the fortunate child who meets them will have no notion—and his unlearned elders not much more—of the deep sources in our blood and tradition from which they spring.

For it must be understood that this is a children’s book only in the sense that the first of many readings can be undertaken in the nursery. Alice is read gravely by children and with laughter by grown ups; The Hobbit, on the other hand, will be funnier to its youngest readers, and only years later, at a tenth or a twentieth reading, will they begin to realise what deft scholarship and profound reflection have gone to make everything in it so ripe, so friendly, and in its own way so true. Prediction is dangerous: but The Hobbit may well prove a classic.

Review published in the Times Literary Supplement (2 October 1937), 714.

1. Flatland (1884) is by Edwin A. Abbott, Phantastes by George MacDonald (1858).

2. The Hobbit: or There and Back Again (1937), chapter 1.

3. Ibid., chapter 15.

Image and Imagination: Essays and Reviews, by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper. Copyright © 2013 C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.

This article originally appeared in the Times Literary Supplement. Click here to read it on the TLS site.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/11/19/c-s-lewis-reviews-the-hobbit-1937/

Referral Article
https://www.openculture.com/2013/11/c-s-lewis-reviews-the-hobbit-by-j-r-r-tolkien-in-1937.html 
 

Rapper Noname just opened an LA library dedicated to the Black experience. 
By Vanessa Willoughby
October 5, 2021, 11:17am
Fatimah Nyeema Warner, otherwise known as Noname, has become a fierce advocate for literacy. The Chicago rapper, who generated buzz after appearing on Chance the Rapper’s 2013 mixtape Acid Rap, launched her synonymous book club < https://lithub.com/chicago-rapper-nonames-new-book-club-highlights-work-from-writers-of-color/ >  in July of 2019. Noname Book Club < https://nonamebooks.com/ > , which operates online and in person, is dedicated to spotlighting the works and voices of people of color. Currently, the club has 12 local chapters with plans to continue growth. Additionally, the organization also sends monthly book club picks to incarcerated people through their Prison Program, which was launched in 2020. 

Now, following months of planning and construction, the doors of the Radical Hood Library have officially opened.

The library, which is located in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, offers several categories of literature, including Prison Writings, Global Black Resistance, African American History, and How the US F*cked Up Everything. On Twitter, Noname said that her favorite sections are Fuck the Police and Black Capitalism Won’t Save Us. She added that more sections would be added in the near future and this was “just the beginning.”

This type of progressive entrepreneurship runs in the family. The artist’s mother, Desiree Sanders, opened the Afrocentric Bookstore < https://twitter.com/noname/status/1444774485723287554Unsurprisingly, Noname envisions bigger plans for the book club. According to Rolling Stone, she’s could possibly expand the club into “a government-recognized cooperative, where all of its workers own the social enterprise and have similar power in running it.”

Of course, because we can’t have nice things, some dissenters on our favorite love-to-hate bird app said the public library was a reflection of “gentrification.” (Insert upside-down smiling emoji.) I’m not really sure how anyone can come to that conclusion, though I suspect this particular reaction to Noname is based in misogynoir. Public libraries are more than just spaces to house books—they’re integral to community building, education, and economic development.

To support Noname Book Club, consider subscribing to their Patreon < https://www.patreon.com/nonamebooks > or checking out their merch < https://nonamebooks.com/Shop > . And if you’re local to the community, you can use the online catalog < https://bookclubhq.libib.com/ >  to place a hold on books and pick them up at your leisure. 

https://lithub.com/rapper-noname-just-opened-an-la-library-dedicated-to-the-black-experience/

James Patterson and Scholastic are joining forces to mitigate illiteracy.
Vanessa Willoughby 
September 28, 2021, 1:26pm

In rather heartwarming news, bestselling novelist James Patterson is working with Scholastic Book Clubs to tackle literacy inequity. On Monday, Scholastic announced that Patterson had donated $1.5 million to help launch “The United States of Readers,” a classroom initiative created to address the needs of children in Title 1 schools. According to Scholastic, the program will get books into the hands of 32,000 kids nationwide, grades K-8, from low-income families.

“I’ve been working my entire career to get kids reading because I believe that illiteracy is one of the biggest challenges our country faces,” Patterson said in a statement. “And in many cases, kids simply need access to books—and especially books they want to read—to fall in love with reading, characters, and stories. Through my partnership with Scholastic these past seven years, we’ve made some great strides to do that. And I’m particularly excited about this new program as it will bring books to those schools and communities that need them the most, and ones that we haven’t served before.”

It’s no secret that Patterson has a dedicated interest in combating illiteracy. In September of last year, Patterson made headlines for awarding thousands of teachers with $500 grants to foster and strengthen students’ reading skills.

And in an interview for multimedia outlet Big Think, Patterson discussed his partnership with the University of Florida and expressed his sincere belief in the transformative power of literature: “I really mean it when I say that we can save lives—and thousands of lives. If we do this thing in Florida we will save thousands of lives in Florida. And any state that can solve the problem [of literary inequity] is going to save thousands of lives. Plus you can improve the economics of the state because you’re going to have that many more people who can go out into the workforce, that have choices . . . It’s a hugely important thing. And I think it’s kind of a sacred mission.”

Thus far, Patterson has donated more than $10 million to teachers and students through Scholastic.

For more information about The United States of Readers, visit the program’s website. < https://unitedstatesofreaders.scholastic.com/  >

https://lithub.com/james-patterson-and-scholastic-are-joining-forces-to-mitigate-illiteracy/

The 25 Most Iconic Book Covers in History 
By Emily Temple
October 7, 2021
Iconic covers- for me, Gatsby is the best in the list
...
https://lithub.com/the-25-most-iconic-book-covers-in-history/

This Virginia library is getting kids to read . . . through robot companionship.
By Walker Caplan
October 6, 2021, 2:54pm

Parents and educators have tried many different tactics to get children to read—games, star charts, personalized books. Now, Roanoke County Public Library is trying something new, which seems both incredibly effective and a little dystopian: encouraging children to read by having them read to a humanoid robot.

Roanoke County Public Library owns Pepper, an advanced robot which can identify faces, read human emotion, and engage in conversation. (In an interview, Tech Insider asks Pepper: “Should I be afraid of you?” Pepper responds: “Have you seen my Instagram? I’m just plain cute.”) Pepper’s eyes light up different colors to indicate what she’s doing at the time—spinning blue eyes when listening, solid green for talking or thinking, solid white for looking at an object, and solid pink for looking at a human. (This is emphasized in Pepper’s informational materials.) Families can book times for kids to read to Pepper at the library—a program called “My Robot Reading Friend.” (Guys, you could just say Klara.)

One such kid, Sadie Brannen, recommends the experience: “I’ve never read to a robot before,” Brannen told WFXR. “Go to the library. It will be fun because you can read to Pepper, the robot.” Pepper is serving her function!

As Roanoke County’s website states < https://www.roanokecountyva.gov/2046/Pepper > , Roanoke County is the first public library in the United States to recruit Pepper to serve as part of the library’s team. Yes, it feels like technology is catching up to us—we might be seeing more Peppers in libraries in the next few years—but on the bright side, I’d feel more listened to if my conversational partner had spinning blue eyes.
https://lithub.com/this-virginia-library-is-getting-kids-to-read-through-robot-companionship/

This 7-year-old is advocating for more disability-centered books in libraries.
By Walker Caplan October 4, 2021, 11:53am
https://lithub.com/this-7-year-old-is-advocating-for-more-disability-centered-books-in-libraries/

For Sale: Kidney Story. Never Authorized.
Lincoln Michel
https://countercraft.substack.com/p/for-sale-kidney-story-never-authorized

REFERRAL POST- Supply Chain Worries, Robot Readers, and Bad Art Friend: This Week in Book News
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/10/08/supply-chain-worries-robot-readers-and-bad-art-friend-this-week-in-book-news/

Mystery Week
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/10/06/mystery-series-week/

Traci Todd Named Publisher of Little Bee Books
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/87501-traci-todd-named-publisher-of-little-bee-books.html

Univ. of Nebraska Press Launches LGBTQ+ Fiction Series
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/87369-univ-of-nebraska-press-launches-lgbtq-fiction-series.html

We’re delighted to announce the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, which each year awards $10,000 and publication to a first-time, first-generation immigrant author, alternating yearly between fiction and nonfiction. The 2021 nonfiction prize goes to Ani Gjika for By Its Right Name, a memoir, which will be published by Restless Books in 2023. This year’s prize was judged by Francisco Cantú, Shuchi Saraswat, and Ilan Stavans.
https://lithub.com/announcing-the-winner-of-restless-books-2021-prize-for-new-immigrant-writing/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit Hub Daily: September 30%2C 2021&utm_term=lithub_master_list

REFERRAL: Reader Reach, Graphic Novel Adaptations, and Book Blobs: This Week in Book News
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/10/01/reader-reach-graphic-novel-adaptations-and-book-blobs-this-week-in-book-news/

National Comic Book Day
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/09/25/national-comic-book-day/

By Sarah Bahr < https://muckrack.com/sarah-bahr > 
Oct. 7, 2021
The poet and activist Sonia Sanchez, 87, a leading figure of the Black Arts Movement, has been awarded the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, the prize trust said on Thursday.

The honor, which carries a cash award of about $250,000, is awarded to an artist who “has pushed the boundaries of an art form, contributed to social change and paved the way for the next generation.”

Sanchez, the author of more than 20 books, is known for melding musical formats like the blues with traditional poetic forms like the haiku and tanka, using American Black speech patterns and experimenting with punctuation and spelling.

Her work champions Black culture, civil rights, feminism and peace.

“When we come out of the pandemic, it’s so important that we don’t insist that we go back to the way things were,” Sanchez said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “We’ve got to strive for beauty, which is something I’ve tried to do in my work.”

This year, the five-member selection committee, led by Zeyba Rahman, the senior program officer of the Building Bridges program of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, chose Sanchez unanimously out of 50 finalists from various artistic disciplines.

Rahman said in a statement that the award recognizes Sanchez’s “extraordinary literary gift and her lifelong commitment to speaking up for social justice.”

On Nov. 11, Sanchez will reprise her role in Christian McBride’s “The Movement Revisited,” in which she will recite the words of Rosa Parks, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
 

The question is: Has the comic book industry failed black people? 

Before I viewed the video, my thoughts

The question makes an erroneous assumption. Did the comic book industry of the usa ever pledge to support or favor the black community in the usa? To fail on making a goal, you have to first state the goal. The comic book industry in the usa never ever said it was trying to support the black community in the usa in any way.

Now some will say, The comic book industry , like any other, only serves revenue. But this is a  lie. No industry is ever purely on financial gains. Every single industry has communities that control it. From the white jewish community in Hollywood. To the  white irish or white italian community in law enforcement. To the white anglo saxon protestant in christian communities. Each industry by default has a desire for more revenue. But each industry has a community that controls it and seeks to maintain its control. 

The comic book industry in the USA is owned by whites, who want to retain their control. Its goal is to gain revenue from all humanity. 

The question is, how can the black consumer in the usa generate a black owned comic book industry in the usa?

After I viewed the video, my thoughts

He doesnt address the question. The validity of a person's claim to any subject is easily rankable based on truth. The community of Black Nerds as it relates to comic books/anime/ or the entire entertainment global complex is complex but doesn't answer the question. Black people in the comic book/animation industry being told by any other, including black people,  that they can not be a character whose phenotype they do not share doesn't answer the question. White guilt or shame does not answer the question. The level of information of the general community online doesn't answer the question. The video blogger's personal life doesn't answer the question. Stating a desire to have a discussion on the comic book industry and as it applies to the black community while having that as the title to your talk is poor prose. 

The issue isn't complex. Those who own control. Those who own in fiscal capitalism, have two desires, to make money, to block others from owning. 

 I will use as an example a community outside of the usa . In the last century starting in the 1940s to this year , global media, dominated by the usa, and primariily administered by the jewish community in the usa, has placed in countless history books/countless movies/films/stageplays the negative actions of german nazi's against the non nazi german populace <romani/jews/disabled people/et cetera>. Every single german person living today knows a history of germany during the world war II era. I said a history cause what the sister above calls a real history of the usa, includes the negativities or complexities all to often absent. But in german nazi tellings the reverse is true, all the negatives or complexities are well documented. But the positivity is absent, like how the nazi's rebuilt a country being intentionally impoverished by its neighbors. How the nazi's had become the envy of so many countires or communities absent any financial aid or governmental alliance to said communities. Thus, The german people today have been given all the negative or complex elements of nazi history and yet, in germany the post world war II nazi community has always continually grown. Is that reason cause the modern germans don't know about death camps, they don't know about burning people alive. Don't know about all sorts of experimentations? They are fully aware of history, all to often more aware of the negative than anything else, but they still align philosophically with the nazi party of yore. The question is why? Based on the sister's assertion , these people are ignoring history but how can they ignore what is commonly present. The attacks on turkish people in modernity, muslims is that indicative of the nazi's. The reason why countries ways don't change is very simple, what the people want doesn't change. LAws change Nike. Media narratives change. But the desires of people , of communities they don't change the same way. Many german people still want german superiority, they still want germany first, they still want those they don't deem german out of germany. What people want is why things don't change, not knowledge. Strom THurman was a white man who had a secret child with a black woman , treating that child so well, that child still speaks of him favorably. Even though this is a man who consistently, yelled to high heaven about the need to deny the black community all things, all the while he is taking his black child/ mulatto in latin america, to the beach or other places away from the media, having a good time. Knowledge, acquisition of knowledge does not change one's desires.