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You're listening to Ted Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day.
I'm your host, Elise Hugh.
Happy Sunday, y 'all.
Today we're bringing you a conversation between me and American cultural critic and author, Rich Benjamin.
We got together virtually in front of a live audience of TED members a few weeks ago to speak about his new memoir, Talk to Me, Lessons from a Family Forged by History.
This conversation is part of our book club series where we check out new books from past TED speakers that will spark your curiosity all year long.
We all grow up with families and stories that shape who we are and how we see the world.
Rich, who many know for his popular 2009 book Searching for Wytopia and his 2015 TED talk on the same topic, has a particularly unique story.
His grandfather was Daniel Finole, the popular Haitian leader who was president of Haiti for only 19 days, before a US -backed coup removed him from office and changed the course of history forever.
The stories that Rich shares in his memoir, and that we dig into in our conversation, are rooted in themes we can all relate to.
He talks about forgiveness, history, and what it's like to grow up under the shadows of family trauma.
And why storytelling is a powerful tool to help us bridge the growing divides we face today.
Lastly, we want to note that there will be mentions of violence and sexual assault in this conversation, so feel free to mute or leave the conversation when you need to.
Now on to the episode.
Rich Benjamin, welcome.
Thank you so much for opening your heart and sharing this story and for being with us today.
Good to see you, Elise.
So let's just jump in and begin where the book starts.
In your prologue, you share a story from about 15 years ago or more, you and your boyfriend at the time were in a taxi in Manhattan, you know the scene.
The driver hears that you have an accent of some kind.
and he wonders if you were also of Haitian descent like him?
He keeps asking you where you're from, and you keep saying New York.
So, why didn't you tell him that you were Haitian, and why did you choose to feature this particular story so early on?
Well, Elise in that moment I was having one of these boujee Manhattan nights, we'd just been to the Philharmonic, we hop in at Taxi, see.
And the dark -skinned driver says, do you have a Haitian accent?
And then where are you from?
I'm from New York. Really?
Where were you born?
New York, where did you originate from?
New York. And so I didn't want to tell him I had Haitian blood because I was so far from Haiti in that moment.
And Haiti has this really bad caricature in this country.
One that I grew up with.
Haiti is dysfunctional, Haiti is riddled with AIDS, Haitians are all boat people, all these negative stereotypes.
And the punchline of that scene, and I won't reveal too much, is when the guy I was seeing at the time says, oh, I had a Haitian nanny, but I can't even remember her name.
So there were all these stereotypes that Haitians are on the one hand resilient, but also unsavable.
Reading your book. I really related to that overall idea of discovering your own family's incredible history and just bits and pieces just all the way into adulthood, because our elders often don't like talking about it.
They say something so unexpected about the past at the dinner table.
And you're like, what?
So how much did you know before you started this book, and why looking back do you feel like your mother couldn't share this with you?
Well, first of all, at least I relate to that, because I have friends of all kinds of background.
They can have a Chinese background, they can have a Jamaican background, they can have a Jewish background, they can have a Congolese background, and their parents just don't talk about the past. Right.
So, I hope people read this book and identify with that aspect of family members just not wanting to talk about the past. But in my case, my mother was just silent about it, and in fairness to her, I also didn't ask because of the negative caricatures of Aidy I had internalized in my head.
So no one's talking about it.
She's not telling me and I'm not asking until, of course, the Haitian earthquake in 2010 made not asking impossible.
And you also tell the stories of people in this book so intimately as we're reading this, and it really often feels like you're painting these scenes where we feel like we're in the room while we're reading.
So how did you piece all this together, starting from very little knowledge to just deep intimate scenes.
Thank you for saying that, Elise.
I appreciate that. So there's this big record for me in order to paint these intimate scenes.
And that record includes letters from family members.
It includes what I would find our news reports.
It includes CIA records.
And that was part of my journey of Discovery, was to find out that there's this big archive of records where the CIA operatives in Port -au -Prince were spying on my grandfather, so I'm able to construct the past by that, and also I am a bit of a pack rat.
If you've ever written me in my life, I've kept that letter that you've written me, so I have a lifetime of letters that I can draw on that were written to me, so all of these help construct the past, but it's also a matter of sleuthing.
One of the records that I got my hands on that really spoke to me and that I would never expect to find was this letter where my grandfather wrote the Chief of Police in Port -au -Prince begging for better protection for his family.
And in order to beg for that better protection, he described the violence that they were living under.
And it's just this graphic letter of empty Kel -shasings in his living room, it's this graphic letter of broken windows and how his children had to learn to hit the floor in seconds in order to not get hit.
So it's all these personal and public records that I'm able to draw on to just paint these intimate lives.
And let's dive in a little bit more to your grandfather because publicly he became a deeply a beloved hero in Haiti.
He owned for fighting relentlessly for the betterment of Haitians really until the day he died.
But privately, a different picture emerges.
He was a distant father and husband, he became more and more abusive to his children in life before fully abandoning his family years later in Brooklyn to live with a much younger woman.
So I'm curious, Rich, how did you navigate these very different sides, public and private, of your grandfather?
And that's incredible.
It kind of speaks to your last question, Elise, is how do you tell the past. So I can tell the past of his public life, you know, through all these public documents, and then interviewing people who knew him.
But his private life, that's one of the layers of secrets I was not aware of, that in public, he was this beloved figure who did all these measurable good things for children across Haiti.
And then he practically abandoned the… Not practically, he actually abandoned the children under his roof.
And I could get a paint, a picture of how he was as a human being in private, behind closed doors.
And so, Elise, there's this beautiful phrase where a journalist in Haiti during his lifetime they called him the Moses of Port -au -Prince.
He had done so well.
But then he was kind of a monster in his own home.
How did you reconcile that?
It's difficult to reconcile.
It's difficult to reconcile, except to say that he grew up under such, and I'm not excusing it by any means, but he grew up under such hardship and violence.
People don't realize that.
And this is another really tactile portrait I like to print is, what was it like to grow up as a young black boy under the colonial power of America?
Most people don't realize that America colonized through gunboats, Haiti, from 1915 to 1934.
And what was that like?
Not abstractly, not historically, but day -to -day, what was that like to grow up under colonialism, the way that my grandfather did.
So in reconciling the public Moses of Port -au -Prince, with a private monster at home, I have to really put him in his context and try and walk in his shoes.
Yeah. Let's turn to your mother, because when your mother was held captive after her father, your grandfather was removed from office, Haitian soldiers raped her, and it was a horrible and violent event that really shaped the entire trajectory of her life and yours too, even if you write that you didn't always know that.
She said she told her father what the soldiers did when they were captured and that he didn't believe her.
She said she could never forgive him for this.
And it's one of the reasons she ended up cutting him out of her life altogether.
A generation - her generation, it was more important just to be an expert and to be effective.
And it didn't matter so much whether she connected with people personally.
Yeah, that totally makes sense.
You say that this book is a love letter of sorts to your mom.
What does that mean to you?
And now that the book is done, has your relationship with your mother changed?
One really goes on this discovery.
Something that I hope is a political pot boiler, this happens, this happens, this happens, this secret's revealed.
This secret's revealed.
I want the book to read quickly and beautifully, and then at the end you realize, oh, it's about layers of family forgiveness, and it's a form of love letters.
If you look at the history of books, they're different forms of love letters in literature.
And so this is kind of a social political one of discovery.
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Okay, let's get back to the politics and talk about Papa Doc or Francois Duvalier, who was later known as Papa Doc, the brutal dictator who ruled Haiti from 1957 until he died in 1971.
He was behind the coup that ousted your grandfather from the presidency, and ironically, at one time, he was your grandfather's friend and even your mother's godfather.
But obviously they turn from friends to foes, and based on your research, it seems clear that President Dwight Eisenhower's administration supported Duvalier's coup.
So can you speak to this takeover and why the U .S. didn't like your grandfather?
So before being president of Haiti, my grandfather was a labor leader in that country.
and we have to imagine people are working their butts off to cull the sugar cane, to cut the sugar cane, to work in shoe factories.
They're doing all this difficult work but they have no representation to these big American corporations.
And so my grandfather is their representative as a powerful union broker and he's able to get garner them better wages, he's able to get them better working conditions.
And so the corporate heavies across the world do not like him.
And so the very day after he's inaugurated, the Eisenhower administration is meeting.
Dwight Eisenhower is presiding over the meeting and you have the CIA director, you have the defense secretary, you have the Secretary of State, and they decide not to recognize my grandfather's administration.
And in the subsequent four days, they're fielding all these angry phone calls from U .S. executives.
And one of the most chilling phrases I remember is one of these executives telling the Eisenhower administration that Finulae is, quote, our number one enemy, and he should not be allowed to stay in office.
And so lo and behold, just 19 days after his inauguration, he's ousted in a coup at the behest of the U .S. government.
And the private sector, it sounds like corporations.
Yeah, exactly. I'd love to talk about your trip to Haiti in 2010, the first time you ever traveled to Haiti and you went right after the devastating earthquake, which killed more than 200 ,000 people, destroyed much of Port -au -Prince and the surrounding area.
Can you talk with us a little bit just about the connection between that trip and then your desire to write this book?
So, as I said, I had grown up very indifferent to Haiti.
My mother's not talking about the Haitian past, but I had just finished my first book, Searching for White Topia.
And then I was leaving my office in Manhattan at the time and that's when these images struck the flat screen TV in the lobby and an earthquake, devastating earthquake, that destroyed 80 % of Port -au -Prince had just happened, and you see these Haitian faces pleading.
You see these devastated Haitian faces, but you also see the presidential palace crumpled.
the bali strays, the columns, the crown of the building just crumpled into dust. And at that point, ignoring Haiti, ignoring the Haitian blood coursing through my veins, it just became untenable.
I had to know, who is this man who wants to occupy this building?
And so I packed my bags and set off for Haiti.
in or among all of that rubble are some of the Haitian archives that you hope to find on your trip you mentioned you had to turn to the US archives for some information to piece together about the past so yes where my mother wouldn't speak where there was no information in some of the Haitian archives I decided to turn to our archives and I hit what every writer wants which is this gold mine of information.
And those are the CIA records spying on my grandfather.
And four of those documents were still redacted.
They were just blacked out by Sharpie.
So I had to sue the State Department.
I had to appeal their refusal to release the information.
And then I had to...
To go into these spaces and to work in an environment where you know that people don't generally agree with your positions.
Yes, it's one of the through lines for me to my grandfather, and I don't want to self -aggrandize.
He obviously did more for more people.
He was obviously in more violent situations.
But the through line is to put yourself out of a comfort zone, to not believe in safe spaces, and to do better in that lack of comfort.
And so yes, for some years, I would say beginning around 2007, I used to go on Fox News as a regular, progressive commentator, because the calculation was there was a sliver of reasonable, rational, Fox News viewers who you could persuade about crucial issues like regulating Wall Street, like police brutality, like raising the minimum wage.
So that's why I decided to go on Fox News.
But I could tell I gave a good interview with Bill O 'Reilly and some of these prime time hosts when afterward my inbox.
Would just blow up.
And I knew that I had gotten under their skin and I was being persuasive.
So yeah, you used to do that.
I would never go on Fox News now.
Yeah. There's no pretense of trying to have a discourse in the same way that existed in 2007.
It is obviously a very different environment that we are in today.
And knowing all of this reminds me of something your mother taught you, which is this notion that education is not meant to be safe.
Can you speak a little bit more to this and how she viewed it and how it kind of continues on in your work?
So my grandfather was also a professor, in addition to a labor leader.
And as a professor he would criticize the despotic regime at the time.
And for that criticism he would be tossed into prison, his home would be tear gassed, and sometimes worse.
Stream establishment historians will write history one way, but the people who actually lived it have a better, more nuanced version of history and so the book has to reconcile their version also.
And how do we ensure a more full and inclusive account?
We have to write our own books.
We have to write our own books.
Yeah, I believe that Honestly, I'm not trying to be glib, is that if there is a story that hasn't been written, a through line, a history, a narrative that hasn't been written, we must be the ones to write it.
We love that. Okay, from Toward R., as a cultural critic, what role do you think storytelling plays in addressing societal divisions?
Indispensable. I think the role of storytelling is indispensable.
Stories are memorable, stories are healing, stories are powerful, and stories speak to each other.
Statistics don't relate us.
But I hope when people buy this book, the stories—even if you have no Asian blood, But if you've never been anywhere in New York City, if you've been anywhere near the Western Hemisphere, I still hope the stories speak to you.
So stories are indispensable.
Yeah. That's a great message to our very global TED audience.
Next question is from Ketka Kondriana.
She says, Where do you get your inspiration from, Rich?
Do you think AI will break humanity's ability to write stories?
And if that's possible, what can we do to avoid that?
Yeah. So, I get my inspiration from other art and from other artists in my community.
And in these digital technology days, I recommend that people have a real life, close, creative community.
And more specifically, I have a sculpt in my community.
I have other writers in my community.
I have musicians and painters and their creativity kind of shakes my head loose, provokes new ideas, provokes new ways of thinking of something.
So if I hear a beautiful tune, it helps me to think about words better.
If I see a beautiful sculpture, it helps me to think about words better.
So that's what works for me personally, that's what inspires me, is the creativity and the successes of others.
and AI in my belief is horribly detrimental to this.
And I'm not one of these anti AI Luddites, but for me the problem with AI is that it's so passive.
It's so passive and for me to have a creative life, a creative mind, I have be very proactive in seeking the friendships and the community that really get my brain synapses sparking.
Yeah, that's such a powerful reminder to really nurture our creative communities, no matter what kind of work you're making.
What would you say to people who are leaving their countries and cultures behind?
There continues to be so much migration across the world.
Yeah. For me it means if you intend to stay in the country, deeply learning the language, deeply learning the culture, deeply understanding the culture, well, never ever again being bullied into dismissing or looking down upon the culture that you left, which has been the case for most of our history in America.
Yeah, a demand for assimilation.
A demand for assimilation, but not only a demand for assimilation, but this hierarchy as to who's better, who's not between Americans and immigrants and even among immigrants.
And that's been the whole history of Haiti.
You know, oh, Haiti is a site of the AIDS epidemic.
Oh, Haiti is both people.
Oh, Haitian is a superstitious voodoo culture strictly on and on and on so that's my advice.
Yeah. All right next question is from Mariana A.
Mariana asks, how do you honor your story when it's been really painful and you might want to change your reality?
I don't think of this as a trauma narrative at all.
I mean, they're funny scenes and what I land on without giving away the conclusion or anything is, this is a book about survivors.
It's a book about people who are resilient, who, thrown into this context, really make a way out of no way.
And for me, an example of that is my mother's choice of profession, is that she had this experience, and then professionally she became this type of human being.
So it's to acknowledge, to look for the examples of survival and resilience and joy that exist in all of our stories.
That's lovely. All right, before we wrap, Rich Benjamin, I wonder if we could end with you reading a short passage that you wrote at the end of your first chapter.
As my mother ages, I worry I am squandering a vanishing chance to really know her, our history.
My family's existence in Haiti, those dis -remembered years, dwell like a caesura in our minds, lost stanzas in an epic poem.
If ever I am to understand my mother, I must speak to that void.
Beautiful passage. And I really feel like your book has spoken to that void in a beautiful and powerful way, Rich. Thank you so much for writing it and for being with us today.
Thank you, Elise. Thank you, everybody.
Until next time. Bye for now.
That was Rich Benjamin in conversation with me, Elise Hugh for the Ted Talks Daily Book Club, hosted in partnership with our TED membership team.
Thank you to our wonderful TED members for joining our live virtual event from around the world.
Finally we'd love for you to be part of our next live book club event so just sign up for a Ted
