SPEAKER_03 1:45

Welcome to another episode of the Hilltop Glove Podcast. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Taylor Simon, a podcaster and the owner of Liberation Is Lit. Taylor, known as the Radical Reader, found that Liberation is Lit not just to read books, but to create meaningful dialogue and foster a sense of community. She joined the Bookstagram community in search of fellow passionate readers and advocates for liberation. What she discovered was a divide between mainstream book enthusiasts who prefer to keep discussions apolitical and those with smaller platforms who viewed reading as a catalyst for political and social change. Reading has always been a significant part of Taylor's life. As a child, her mother would get her books on cassette tapes, which she would listen to while driving or cooking, fostering a deep love for stories. Even now, Taylor is known for her unsolicited book recommendations and her passion discussions about the books she reads. In 2019, Taylor took a bold step and started a blog focusing on the books that she was reading. She wrote extensively about how various books influenced her perception of the world and how they could inspire movements towards liberation. Through this journey, she found a community of like-minded book lovers who view literature as a powerful tool for social change. Liberation is Lit is not just a bookseller. It's a liberation movement driven by the stories we read and the communities we build. Taylor is dedicated to equipping radical readers with the tools to become activists in their own right. Her podcast, Liberation is Lit, is available on Spotify, is a testament to the power of storytelling and its role in social change. On her podcast, Taylor discusses the profound impact of stories that amplify voices, challenging norms and fostering understanding. Whether you're an advocate for social justice or simply someone who believes in the transformative power of stories, Taylor's insights will surely ignite a fire within you. How are you doing today, Taylor?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Oh my gosh, I love that intro. Like I feel cocky. I feel like I got a big head right now. Go ahead, big head. Go ahead. You are arrived.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

We're gonna thank Tamaya Allen for that. Tamia is the best social media internet ninja that we know. We call it producer. Producer, yes. Yes. Okay. Yes, yes. She will find anything and everything about a person as much as we can before we speak with y'all because that's that's what you're supposed to do, right? But it's also um it's also good for folks to hear the stuff that they do because uh at at our ages, I always like to see because you don't get to talk to a lot of folks who have lived life and have a lot of experience. You don't realize how much you've done.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:31

It's good to hear it.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

I always feel like for for so long in my professional career, I've been like the youngest person in the room. And now that the people I serve are staying the same age and I'm getting older, I find myself.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

I like how she's staying the same age.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

I used to work with college students, and I was actually at USC's campus uh the other day, and I was just like, oh my gosh, like these students, they're 18, 19, 20 years old. And I used to work on college campuses from 24, and I'm just like, oh yeah, like I'm like one of you. Yeah, yeah. Now, like I said, they're staying the same age.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

All of a sudden they're like, no, you're not.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah, right, right.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Yeah, I feel you.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03 5:16

It's happening. Yeah, it's happening. It's part, it's part of it. But that's a good thing. That is a that's a blessing. That means you have staying power. You're still there moving along as new people are coming through. It's almost like Nick Saban. He just stayed, and everybody else went. And eventually he even realized, all right, I gotta go. I gotta go now. It's time for me to move on. But um, we we always like to ask people the simplest question just to start how many siblings do you have and where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_00 5:43

So I have one younger sister. She keeps me young. She's she's an older generation Z, but she kind of keeps me grounded in the okay, like that's still cool. Okay, that's not cool anymore.

SPEAKER_03 5:58

Uh-oh. That's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah, she keeps me young. We're actually hanging out after this. Uh we're super close, even though we're six years apart. And we both grew up here in Columbia. I grew up on the southeast side. So kind of commuting back and forth from Columbia to my grandparents' house in Hopkins. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents on my mother's side, and yeah, that's that's home. Hopkins in Columbia.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

Hopkins in the house. Yes. I didn't realize how hopping Hopkins was. Oh, yeah. Just get it, get it.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Oh, be a corny, I'll be a corny.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

But yeah, I didn't realize how I didn't know that there were there was that much going on in Hopkins or that many people that I knew were in Hopkins, even like well-known folks coming from Hopkins. It blew my mind that that many people, I was like, so where have I been at this entire time? I've been stuck on the west side of the side. The other side, yeah, yeah. That's what happened. Yes. I don't go over there at all. I remember when we um interviewed one of our guests, Mitty, Mark, we went over there and it was just like, oh, so there's a whole world over there. Whole other suburb of Columbia over here. Yeah. All kinds of cool things going on. So it's always cool.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

I don't know about cool things. That's why. Why are you saying?

SPEAKER_03 7:11

And I was like, but all the people make the people say that. The people that come out here awesome. Y'all some awesome folks that come out of Hopkins. Um, what or who influenced you growing up to lead to the career journey that you're in now?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Um, kind of like what you said in my intro, my mom instilled reading into me from a very young age, and the cassette tapes from the intro. I remember having my little Winnie the Pooh carrying in case with all my cassettes and my books, and I would have my little headphones, and this was before iPads, so I was a book on cassette tape kind of case. Yeah, and um every time it would beep, it's time to turn the page.

SPEAKER_03 7:57

So, like Yo, I forgot. They used to have the beep to teach you how to Yeah, so you could follow along and still see the pictures. Y'all we're dating ourselves now.

SPEAKER_04 8:09

Let me let me tell you now. I don't know if you've been to the kids' library recently, but now they have a little like MP3 player. Uh excuse me, it's probably not even MP3. They have some kind of digital media player built into the cover, and so you open it up and you hit play, and Io sits there and it does the same thing. Beep, turn the page, beep.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Oh my gosh, how techno.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

This is they have a whole section of the library. My fault, you just blew my mind. It's book, book, uh, audiobook, but also with the tangible book. Yeah, it's great. Oh, it's more. I want some adult ones.

SPEAKER_03 8:41

Yeah. That's true, right? That's what we actually grow up. That's actually us. That's for us. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

I mean, people ask me all the time, how do you read like over a hundred books a year? And I'm like, audiobooks? Audiobooks, yeah. And I will give a tip. If you feel like audiobooks are not for you, like you get bored or sleepy, try speeding it up because that's hard.

SPEAKER_04 9:04

My wife did.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Yeah. 1.75 is my sweet spot.

SPEAKER_04 9:09

So the are they if you if if you're um, I don't know, maybe a little bit attention, if your attention's a little bit deficient, or you have some kind of neurodivergence situation going on. Yes, yes, sometimes you uh will start thinking about other things instead of listening to your book. So speeding it up keeps you from wandering. Because they're moving. It's like you're listening to other people. Or doing another activity. I do it while I'm playing video games. And then I can pay attention to it.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

If it's something I don't need to listen to, boop, boop, boop, shh. Getting it going. Yeah. And I gotta ask this, because you're talking about your mother and her what was your mother's profession? Like, why was there a reason why she was so into books?

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Uh I I have no idea. She was just always an avid reader. Um, we kind of diverged on the kinds of books we liked. She liked James Patterson, and I do not like James Patterson.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Oh, girl, that's that's saucy stuff right there. That's saucy.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

But yeah, she when I grew up when I was really young, she had her own hair salon. So she did hair for a really long time. And then she uh started working for the Elections Commission. So that's also when so she started working for the Elections Commission, probably around a few years before Obama was running for president, and everything she taught me about the elections process, like I was registered to vote at 17.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yes, made sure I was registered to vote.

SPEAKER_03 10:36

Wait, wait, at 17?

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yes, but you should register to vote at 17 as long as you're 18 by the next president. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

You just can't vote and get it. Yeah, about the same. Make sure I'm registered. Words matter. We'll register you at 13, sir. We'll wait until you're 18 to take you. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

So she really got me politically thinking politically active and the importance of not just presidential elections, but I keep hitting the mic. But all elections. And she was uh over candidate filing, so she met a lot of the local candidates who were running for office. Okay. And so she kind of gave me the scoop of like who's running and like what their what their personality is like, what their platform is like, and it prompted me to kind of do my own research as well. So she really instilled that. And then my grandmother, she was disabled for I think all of my life, if not just most of it. Um she had back surgery and knee surgery, so she was on disability, she didn't work, so she took care of me and my sister and my cousin while our parents were working, and she would always drag us, don't let it be summertime, because she would always drag us to the community center in Hopkins and drag us to different people's house to give them food or like check on people and taking us to church to do different like community-oriented things. So those two really kind of instill the value of reading, being curious about the world, being civically engaged, and just at the end of the day, like caring about people and like all kinds of people. So those those are the two women that I definitely most wanted to be like growing up.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

Oh man, that's so dope. That's really good to hear because I'm I mean, you gotta imagine, like in this day and age, you're looking at all these things that are coming in front of you. You can have influences from anywhere. Uh just to hear I it's it is good to hear that. Just the people that raised you and took care of you were also your influences and how they influenced you. I like the fact that you said that um the story of you your grandmother taking you to like visit people and stuff like that. So skip and I we can remember. Sense of community. Yeah, that's a real sense of community. And like, was she heavily involved in church?

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Yeah, she was actu actually um an assistant pastor of a couple of different churches during my lifetime.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

So did you ever go to people's houses to pray with them?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Um occasionally. We would go to uh I don't know what it was called, and I don't think it's still there anymore, but there was she called it the old folks' home. And uh we went to the retirement home and we would just pray with people, give them donuts and stuff. And one of my um great aunts uh was in a home as well because she was deaf and we would go take her out to eat and take her to get to the store to get whatever she needed, and we would go and spend some time with the other people and the house she lived in too. So that that sense of community, and she did it without starting her own nonprofits, she did she did it without um sanctions, yes, or or being part of like having it be her career. She didn't get paid for it, she just did it out of the goodness of her heart.

SPEAKER_03 14:05

That's what um and I just want you to say that, especially for the audience, because um Skip and I, we used to do that. We used to be look, we used to we used to be going from door to door, praying with people, getting ready. I grew up Jehovah's Witness. See? This is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We was there, yeah, we was there. So like it's funny to hear people still say that because you're like, well, do people that really did that really happen? Yeah, that really happened. We used to do that. We used to go around. Yeah, it's your thing. Check on the older folks in the neighborhood, make sure everybody's good. So we don't do that anymore. It's something that's that's a law, it's almost like a lost thing that people do socially. So I just want you to say that because that's both interesting. We just gotta do it. Yeah. I think it's gonna be it's gonna be our generation that's gonna have to do it.

SPEAKER_04 14:47

It's gonna be our generation that's gonna have to do everything.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Yeah. Because the other ones, like, if I let Savannah do it, Savannah's gonna bring a tablet. And they're gonna show you that tablet and tell you to watch that Ghostbusters. Right, right. And I don't know if that's gonna work, right?

SPEAKER_04 15:03

Imagine Io. You have to teach Io how to do that. Oh, he goes next door and does a garden with the art, our oldest neighbor. He loves going over there and gardening with her, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:12

All right, see? He's getting taught already. See, because that's important. I think that's really big because when we're about to talk about what we're about to talk about, it's important to understand that communities are vital. Right. And communities are vital in what we do on our everyday, and they're very vital when it comes to political um movements, strategies, and just we're just talking about liberation. Right. Okay, so I thought that was very important. That's why I want you to talk about that. It was very important. Tell me about uh Bookstagram.

SPEAKER_04 15:38

Yeah, oh yeah. Because I'm I'm vaguely aware of this, but then it's not my future community. So uh what's up?

SPEAKER_00 15:45

So when I first started my blog on books back in 2019, I was like, okay, I gotta promote it, I guess. I hate this, but there's this hashtag on Instagram called Bookstagram, and it's where all of the bookish people reels and videos about what they're reading.

SPEAKER_04 16:09

So not just book reviews, but actual social media content.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Book reviews don't get engagement anymore, so we're not doing that anymore. And it's like, no, I want to know what people think about books and have the discussion. Not I just don't want to always have like cutesy reels to trending audiences. Feeding the algorithm. Yes. It is. Okay, actually, tell me what you're reading, though. Don't just show me like, oh, isn't this book pretty? Okay, but did you read it?

SPEAKER_03 16:39

Wow, that's crazy. When it took the book, the reason for the book is being deflated by the video.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

That's interesting. So my fault, just to so bookstagram, that's a that's what it is. People go on there and they show off your culture.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yes, yes. And there's a whole kind of offshoot of book talk, which is the equivalent on TikTok, and um, it's even more of that kind of popularized view. But what kind of struck me when I started is one, all of the people with huge followings were not talking about any books written by black people, uh about uh people who look different from them, about LGBTQ writers. It was all the same, like Colleen Hoover and Sally Rooney and all of those kind of authors and their stories, and it's just like, okay, where are the stories about people who look like me? Then I found hashtag blackbookstagram, and I saw and all of the diversifier bookshelves and the own voices, and I'm like, okay, these are these are my people, these are the books that I want to talk about. And in that, I would see more people talking about the political side of publishing. Like, why aren't we talking about books written by people of color? Why aren't we talking about diverse books? Like, why do publishers continue to push and amplify the books that we already see everywhere instead of giving a chance to the publisher, to the authors who don't have that big a platform just because they're black. And I will admit, I used to, my mom was also into kind of the urban fiction growing up.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

Urban urban fiction.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

And um it's so funny how urban fiction now means in a city.

SPEAKER_03 18:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Instead of just like the blacks, the blacks, yeah, actually means city. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

But um, I remember like, okay, she'd have to turn off the audiobook when certain parts came on. Girls, like about the pastor, like with the whole congregation, and but I'm in love with a drug dealer. And I was like, those, I thought, oh, like, I'm not interested in those stories. Like, maybe I just don't like black books.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

And then later, when I found Tony Morrison and Alice Walker, and um, Their Eyes Were Watching Gods or Neil Hurston, I'm like, oh, okay, there's black classics.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

And then in my head for a while is okay, we've got the black classics and we got the urban fiction that my mom likes. And when I found black Books to Gram, I'm like, wow, there's a whole world of black literary fiction that I didn't know existed. And I just fell in love with it. And these are the stories talking about the issues that are affecting the community, not just people who aren't part of the community coming in and saying, oh, like this is the solution to this problem. No, it's actual people with lived experiences telling their shit.

SPEAKER_04 19:51

Colonizing.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yes. Oh.

SPEAKER_04 19:54

What a novel idea. So no colonization today. You mean you mean asking people what needs to happen and then helping do it? Oh.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Exactly, not trying to be a savior. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

So, and those are where the conversations about, oh, can a white author tell a black story? Because there was all this like drama about this white author who she was writing a lot of nonfiction books about the black experience. And we're like, how are you coming in and writing educational content about the black experience? And would have like black women on the cover, so people assumed.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

Oh, they did the reverse of what they used to do back in the day with album because it's a high the black artist.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

So if I don't, I don't, this might be uh, I don't know if the You're good.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

You can talk, you're good, but speak freely.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Um I don't know if y'all had the Blue for High series books.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

No, no, okay. Put us on game.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Yeah, it came around um probably like the early 2000s, but it was like this series of this high school, and they were all black characters and Latino characters, and it was just like, wow, like stories that we could relate to, and I loved that series growing up. And then I found out as an adult, they were all written by white authors.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

But you enjoyed them.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

I know, yes. So I'm over here asking questions and writing think pieces for blogs, like, can a white author tell my story? And then I enjoyed the Blue for High series, so I'm still trying to ask you.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

See, you're trying to make it balance that. You trying to balance out there.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Yeah, but I will say it was about like somebody brought a gun to school and somebody's mom's on card. Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_03 21:35

So some sensational tribes issues that were being brought forward. Yeah. I get it, I get it. I've read uh read some interesting books. There were always like true stories written by white authors about black situations or black experiences. And they were always really interesting because uh some of the things that I would see in the books is they would be trying to figure out why was that black person thinking that way? That would be the question in the book. And then they would basically the whole book is about getting to figuring out why did this person have an experience that would make them do this action. That's what it would be about.

SPEAKER_04 22:14

I'm not a writer, but I would just imagine if you were trying to do that, you would have to like really own the heck out of your own biases. Say it implicit or direct wise.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

And maybe do a tiny bit of research. Just a little bit. Maybe, maybe ask some friends.

SPEAKER_04 22:30

Just ask some friends that are. If you have any, ask some friends that are not the same complexion.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

Ah, that's the hard that's what I thought was always weird. I was like, so it seems that they got this information from public files and court documents. Did they speak to any of the family members? And it wouldn't be anything about the family members. It'd basically be like reading a New York Times article that was 300 pages. That's what it felt like at the end of the day. So I always thought that was an interesting thing. Then the fact that you said that about those other books and the people they're writing, but you enjoyed it, right? Because like just hearing sometimes, just seeing yourself being placed in public makes you feel better.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Right, because I was thinking, like, did I enjoy them because they were good, or did I enjoy them because I was starving for stories about people like me? Because I growing up, I used to love, love a good story about a little white suburban girl.

SPEAKER_03 23:26

Yeah, read about them.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

That that became my life. I was just like angsty, and it's just like, no, there's another layer to that that's missing to the story, but it's fine. Um but like you were saying about the books, about the information coming from court documents and like archives and things like that. That's why I think it's so important to have stories and tell stories because it humanizes experiences. It's not just oh I'm reading this research paper or hear the statistics. Like I'm actually humanizing this experience and seeing the interconnectedness about like Audrey Lawrence says, we don't live single issue lives, and nothing illustrates that more than a story. And it's like, yes, we're talking about something like immigration, but also let's talk about how that overlaps with disability. Let's talk about how that overlaps with being like a firstborn daughter. Like let's talk about how all of these things come together.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

It gives you a more enriched feeling, like it enriches the story itself, the information that's being given, and then allows people to experience a little bit. Because that's one reason why I like to read is to experience it, right? And I'm I always like to tell folks there you learn different ways, and I always like to tease you have people that are hard-headed, they learn from like firsthand knocking a head off, right? And you got some people, they can learn from watching others. I like to learn from watching others, so that's why I like books. So I could read a book and understand from the book what was going on and say, you know what? I don't have to do that. Like I don't want that experience. I can choose whether or not I want to go through something or if I like what is occurring in the book, and I want that to be a part of my life. But more specifically with what you do, and I think this is interesting because this is stuff I'm interested in too, as well. Um, and we'll get back to question three, but I gotta jump on this because we're starting, we're here already. With liberation is lit, right? Um you're really hitting on political thoughts, concepts via the vehicle of a book and it being digested through an author and then discussion happening from that. Why is that so important to you, first of all? And when did you decide, okay, this is the way I'm going because it's going to serve me some in some way, shape, or form? Because it's not popular.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Yes, no.

SPEAKER_04 25:55

I'm about to say, you know it nobody don't like that, right? People don't like to change the way they think about self- No! Oh, no.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

No, it's a very uncomfortable experience. But I think that's the beauty about books and reading. It's not, and that's why when people are like, oh, I'm not really into nonfiction, I'm like, there's other ways to learn outside of nonfiction. I'm a very big advocate for using fiction to learn about people's stories and experience. Like, I just read um a book called The Lion Women of Tehran, and it was about um these two women who grew up in Iran and how they were working from a very young age to they were shaped by the climate to want to fight for women's rights in Iran, and even coming to the US, the US like I learned all about everything when people were like peace in the Middle East, that time period from that book, and it's a fiction novel, and you can learn a lot by just experiencing things, history that happened through the eyes of characters, and there's so much to learn about yourself and others. I somebody told me this quote, and she couldn't tell me who the quote was from, but I quote it all the time now. Books are like mirrors and windows, books should be a place where you can see yourself, but also be able to see into the lives of people who are different. Thank you. And in that turn, learning more about yourself. And so that's why I think books and storytelling is so important, and the way publishing is set up right now is we don't get a lot of stories from really good people because these big publishing companies are like, that's not marketable, that's not relatable, that's not universal. And just because I'm black, my story isn't relatable or universal. Like, who are you to tell me that? So there's like a lot of studies out there about just how white publishing is, straight publishing is, um, how people there's not a lot of representation with people with disabilities, and that is controlling what kinds of stories we're seeing on a big time level.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

Yeah. And there's oh the publishing companies. I don't think it started publishing companies. It's one of the oldest monies out there. It is, you gotta think about that.

SPEAKER_04 28:27

This is this is old money.

SPEAKER_03 28:30

It's older than cotton. Old money, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

And then they control knowledge and culture in this country, and people don't think about it like that.

SPEAKER_03 28:38

No. Until until they're getting ready to destroy or rid of rid of rid us of certain books, whether it be a textbook. This was crazy. Rid you of textbooks, or if they want to rid you of certain uh books that they feel may um attack a specific political ideology.

SPEAKER_04 28:56

And they're not Willburning, they're just ceasing to print more. Ceasing. Yeah, you can go get them. Yeah, we decided we're done with ceasing.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

And the thing is with book censorship now, is a lot of these books are being challenged by parents who don't even have kids in the public school system.

SPEAKER_03 29:12

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

They have not read the book.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

Nope, they never matter of fact, they never read the book.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

Let's just get that right.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

They never have an extreme example. So Beloved by Tony Morrison is a book that is um, it's kind of have magical realism elements about spirits and things like that, but it's essentially about this woman who escaped from slavery with her children. And it's based on a real story of an enslaved woman who actually killed her children rather than have them all go back into slavery. And uh that book is banned from schools for bestiality.

SPEAKER_03 29:50

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

Because there is one sentence in one chapter about some enslavement taking comfort among the goats.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

Yeah, this is what it says. It don't d describe.

SPEAKER_04 30:03

I don't remember reading Chaucer and uh Oh my lord. You're probably remember the sailor that had syphilis in his knee and the wife of Bath, who was the prostitute that banged everybody in the city, right? Mm-hmm. And they told you about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Oh, but great.

unknown 30:16

Peak.

SPEAKER_03 30:18

Peak literature. Yes. No, literature.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

No, and that that's what kills me. That we have I don't want to be mean, but I gotta be a little mean with this. We have the illiterate, the deaf, dumb, blind, and mute telling us that we cannot read. From a soundbite. Yep. From a soundbite. That you should not read something.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Right.

SPEAKER_04 30:42

And I would be, as I said, I I don't know nothing about Booksogram. Yeah. But I would assume, just from what I know about the industry, that some of these people in Booksogram that are um more influencer than book reader uh are getting paid by these publishing companies to do these.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Very little, but yes.

SPEAKER_04 31:02

Well, I like that you said that.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Compared to other industries. And that kind of leads me into the industries around bookstores in general. Bookselling is not very profitable at all.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

We were talking about that earlier.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

It is not. So I did not start a bookstore to become rich by any means. Um, and it's it's a conversation on Bookstagram about how these influencers can get paid thousands of dollars to push these cheap products. But oh, your payment for Bookstagram is you got the book. Maybe a PR box you got if you get lucky.

SPEAKER_04 31:41

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Unless it's like an ongoing campaign, it's like the book is your payment.

SPEAKER_04 31:45

Wow. Thanks that that makes sense though. Well, I mean, that's what they've been doing to every like you know, journalism paper. I guess they're just taking like the newspaper model and moving it that way. What's in you have to do that?

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Because oh, if we're paying you to review this book, then you're gonna review it favorably.

SPEAKER_04 32:05

But that's how you know it's an old money, is because they they give you integrity in exchange for cash. For cash. Yeah. Integrity, cash.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

Hey, they were gonna do this way, cash. But that that makes sense because I I think people should hear that because it it makes it sound real because in the sense of it's not something that you should be chasing for fame or wealth. It's a actual passion that you have. And I know it's a passion you have because we went on your site and I looked at the prices of them books, and I was like, ain't no way she's making millions of dollars off these books. And Mike was telling me, yeah, because we were walking, breaking it down, looking at the thing, and I was like, so how does this work? So it says they got Shopify hooked up to the site too. So if they buy with $50 of books, do they pay her all at once? Like, how does this stuff work? How does this business operate around her and her and her book selling, right? And I figured she can't be making millions of dollars. You can't be making millions of dollars. And uh, I guess it's a very um, I guess, um systems type question asked, but how is it that you receive your product to sell? Very it's a question just for the audience. I know they're gonna ask this.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Community.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

Really? What?

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Yes, yeah, I get a lot of a ton of donations. The Hillary Clinton book was a donation. Yes. So I also have an amazing partnership. I'm gonna shout out my friend Marla Taviano. Go ahead, shout out. Uh, she has the Instagram page, well, bookstagram page, White Girl Learning. Hey. And she's local. We connect. I followed her when she was still living in Cambodia, and then she's like, I'm moving to Columbia. And I was like, whoa, no way, I live here. I've been following you for a while. Let's link up. And what she'll do is she loves going to thrift stores and like different places to get used books, and she'll buy the books for me, she'll put out a micro reparations opportunity for her followers to sponsor a box, and then she'll just give me the books for free. That's awesome. Well, she is she's like responsible for most of the books I have, but yeah, I get a ton of donations from the community.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

And I'm so how do they know how do they know to find you to donate books?

SPEAKER_00 34:16

Uh, I have not been good about putting a call for donations because Marla keeps me stuck.

SPEAKER_03 34:21

Keeps you stuck, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

But uh usually like if I'm out selling books, people are like, Oh, do you take books? And I'm like, absolutely. Bring them, bring me your books. So um, that's how I'm able to make some profit. Um, but as far as selling new books, so if you notice in the back of books, the price is printed on them. So if you if any other product, people, it has like suggested retail price, but people can buy or sell for whatever they want. Booksellers can't sell book prices, books, new books for whatever they want. They have to sell it for the price that's listed on the back.

SPEAKER_03 34:58

Wait, wait, wait.

SPEAKER_04 35:01

What? Yeah. You can't just put a sticker over it. They won't let you do that.

SPEAKER_03 35:06

You have to sell it for the price. That's crazy. No, because it's printing on it. Well, you think about it, it's what they do with cars. Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

And we only get around it's around 40 to 50 percent discount from publishers.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

Really? Oh, wow. So if the book is $22, you'll get the book at what? Maybe $10. And then you still have to ship the book, start the book, sell the book. Because we had a we had a brick and mortar book um distributed on our podcast last year, and that was one of the things we asked, is like cost of books. And like one thing that she told us I thought was really interesting is that there's some books that they got in there, just just because she knows the people are gonna come by. James Patterson. Shout out James Patterson.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Look, look, that ain't teased them earlier.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

But James Patterson said James Patterson, I'm sorry. It's all good, it's all good.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

It's all good.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Because I noticed like when I was like actually like going to thrift stores and stuff and buying, and I would see all the James Patterson. I'm like, people don't want to buy, like, well, you're not competing with them. True.

SPEAKER_04 36:07

You've got your people are following you and saying, I want to read what she's telling me.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Right.

SPEAKER_04 36:12

Yeah, and which is by the way, here it is. Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

And that's why you should support local bookstores because over Amazon, because we're not just selling books, we're providing community programs, support, personalized recommendations. Like Amazon's working on an algorithm, and they can sell books cheap because that's a profit loss for them. They're making millions of dollars off of other products.

SPEAKER_04 36:35

So we know about the algorithm. Yes, algorithm is biased.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

And I'm also a self-published author. So go ahead. That wasn't in the bio. Go ahead. Shout it out. My books are my life. Um, and I sell my books on Amazon only because they have such a chokehold on the market. Yeah. But I much prefer you buy my books from the store or from bookshop.org, which um I have a relationship with. They support local bookstores by giving commission.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

Awesome. Awesome. Now, I'm gonna ask you a really simple question that I know you'll be able to answer. Of course, we live in a live in an ever-growing, completely digitally controlled society now. I am a Googleite, right? So, with that being said, can you explain the importance of reading and selecting books that inspire you to become more than just a digital media consumer?

SPEAKER_00 37:31

I think because of technology, we rely on it to just passively give us things instead of actively and critically thinking about what we're consuming. So instead of reading the newspaper, we're watching people, which is great for journalists who don't have that platform and they have that that free access to amplified stories that we we don't hear from traditional media, but we're listening to people who don't have credentials, don't have training or the critical skills of their own.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

It's about their opinion and we take it as news. Uh so I, as a part of Liberation is lit too, I really want to teach people how to critically read again and critically engage with content because if we're just so used to passively receiving information all the time, they can tell us whatever they want, and we're not there to question or imagine new things. So I made a very controversial post about um wanting to vote for Kamala Harris out of fear and not really because I know what her platform is, like fear of the alternative.

SPEAKER_02 38:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

And um people, and I said, like, at the end of the day, I don't believe politicians are the answer to our liberation community is.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

And people are just talking that craziness. You better stop it.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Yes. That don't where did I say I'm not voting for Kamala Harris? Don't worry am I telling people not to vote for Kabala Harris, but I don't act out of fear.

SPEAKER_04 39:09

I'm just saying, when was the last time that we had primaries for both parties in the majority of states? A long time. Because we're just getting candidates that are picked from back room. Yep. And I don't like that. Me neither.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

We actually do have primaries, but nobody knows when they are, how to vote in the well, and this year they everybody got bullied out of all of them.

SPEAKER_04 39:31

Yeah, we got bullied. The parties bullied out all candidates out of the primaries.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 39:36

Which is criminal to me. At no point did people pick. But anyway, I don't want to be political. I'm done with it. Man, it's a WWE to me right now. I believe it. I believe it.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Community is the answer. And when we have that critical thinking skills, then we can think about what we want to create instead. And a lot of people call me brave or whatever for starting Liberation is lit. But what I've learned to embrace is not to want to create something new. Because if the system is set up to never benefit us in the first place, like I'm I'm in the business of teaching people how to start new things to help their community.

SPEAKER_03 40:16

I'm about to say, man, you really do sound like you're a liberator, uh liberation theology, like black liberation theology over here. This is the stuff I was reading growing up. This is why I'm like, we're talking. I'm like, yup. Mm-hmm. You're serious about this.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

And with that movement, we had the independent publishers. Oh, we did. We had the books to the book.

SPEAKER_03 40:33

You had to have independent publishers. Yeah, independent news. Yes, independent. And I what I like that you said, and this is what I want people to get to to understand this part when it comes to black liberation theology, people scared of it. Oh, black liberation theology. It's actually about learning how to critically think. My uncles, my father, them growing up, one of the things they always told us is they used to always tease and I blew my mind. I went, Why are they saying this to me? I said, Boy, stop thinking. No. I said, What? How am I supposed to know? What I think I'm so confused. Good luck with that one. Yeah, but then I then I understand, yeah, good luck, right? I understood what they meant. Like later down the road, I said, Oh, I get what they mean. Like, if I do my thinking beforehand and I'm critically uh analyzing things, then I'm going to know. Sure. Meaning what now when I'm moving, I'm moving off of knowing and not trying to understand like, do I really know? And I'm thinking about it. Uh I'm gonna know. And it's very important to be able to do that. So one thing I do want you uh to do before um as we get ready to wrap up, is just to explain to folks why it is so important for us, especially leading up to an election, because that's where we're going, to be a critical thinker and actually know what it is that you are seeing and hearing and dealing with.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Yes, because like as you were talking, I kept thinking it's not about being able to parrot off what somebody else is saying on YouTube or this one book that one per type of person lifts up as authority. It's about being able to take in the information from different sources, being able to one sort out what's good information, what's not good information, but also take from the good information the pieces that okay, this aligns with my values, this aligns with my values, this is what's gonna help other people, this is what's gonna help my community. That's what critical thinking is all about. It's about synthesizing all different, but also separating the bad from the good.

SPEAKER_03 42:37

There you go. You can't throw out the baby with the bathwater. You gotta know. You gotta pick and choose and make sure you get that stuff together. So um, as we wrap up, I do want you to go ahead and give yourself a shameless plug, tell everybody where they can find you, how they can get in contact with you, um, and if you have anything upcoming, tell it all yourself.

SPEAKER_00 42:53

Yeah, so you can find all my work with my bookstore at liberation is lit. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and liberation is lit.com is my website. And if you want to look at my author things, because I write my own books, um, I have two poetry books, one called Phases and one called Love and Other Forms of Heartbreak. Those are wherever you buy your books, but you should get them from Liberationislit.com. And uh you can follow my author stuff at T-A-Y-L-E-R underscore made underscore books. And uh I'm on Instagram and TikTok.

SPEAKER_03 43:32

Oh what you're wearing.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Um so I got the shirt that says Unapologetically Black and Bookish, too. And that is also on my Liberation is Lit website. Um, and I got some stickers and tote bags and all the fun merch, too. If you're trying to get back into reading or if you're like me and listen to audiobooks. Libro.fm uh is where you can get audiobook memberships. It's the same amount as Audible, but way better. What? And better for the community. And you can support Liberation is Lit through the book.

SPEAKER_03 44:04

Oh, okay. I'm gonna give up mine. I'm gonna flip over my my um look, you're gonna pull me away from Google.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:12

Google Amazon. I'm about to get pulled away from one thing, but it's been a pleasure speaking with you today. We're gonna wrap up here for the Hilltop Globe podcast. I'm DJ and what? This is Mike. Background, we got Skip. Anne. It's Maya. Hey, and our esteemed guest.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

Say your name. There you go. Go ahead. Shout out, shout so pal.

SPEAKER_03 44:31

Well, it's been a pleasure. I just want to make sure, um, make sure you tell somebody that next to you that you love them, tell folks around that you care about them, and until the next episode of the Hilltop Globe Podcast, peace. Peace, peace.