hi welcome and thank you for joining me at another segment of today's community spotlight where we put the spotlight on authors and literature i'm your host as ms elba and today my beautiful guest is the talented author poet mus joy joy thank you for joining me today thank you for having me it's my pleasure i'm glad you took time out of your busy schedule to come out and talk about your books in your literary career start by i have to say when i first started reading your work i had no idea that you were hearing impaired you so you went to the school for the death tell us a little bit about that i didn't go for the school for the deaf but  here and i love the to say the hearing population and i'll let you say because that mainstream full inclusion because i work with special needs students we like to say they're not handicapped or thing i also think is very talented or to work from the the deaf community or the hearing impaired community i've always been the latter with that i see sign a little bit and i'm always shy to sign about ten years now and i work with what they call severely handicapped students who have little or no language and even though a lot of them are hearing pair they can't speak or don't have that ability to speak but they want to communicate rhyme and i'd go home and i study the words not to come back and incorporate that word and over the past three years i was teaching songs at a christian school in oakland and those kids their total he population learning disabled me when a ticket up like that and they love it they love it and it made me feel a little bit more bolder in using it but i had weird things happen where i was shy to use sign around a deaf community people and in the hearing world like oh she doesn't need to do that why she doing it she sure enough they were just angry at me for being able to communicate in another form but now i'm older and i'll think about like oh you side and way i am because my family did not treat me like i was different but the time in the world honestly feels like a different but that's good to know and are not different but be prepared because the world is going to treat you different and that's a good thing that you got that from your family also like that your mother went against what the doctors were doing at birth because i like to say that this practice medicine nothing against the medical community but they practice medicine and they can say ninety five percent of the time with the fact that ninety percent of the time is affective but i'm glad that you said your mother was like we're not going to do any unnecessary surgeries on my child and it turned out to not be necessary for you that's commend her for that m know you've done some things that's very good and to be so outspoken i love your work this is my favorite book of yours silence is not always golden and it's a poetic revolution it's a good if you haven't read it you should buy her book and read it so tell us a little bit about your writing and when you were first published this is your second book right so tell us a little bit about your first book when your first published how that came about i us eyes very therapeutic to release a review things that you've been through and you said you didn't write music you write poetry to me music is poetry put to you know the lyrics are portrait put to music so people say i'd like to say that life was like a story where you've lived long enough and you can look back and reflect on some things and see where you are now you can kind of predict where you're going so that makes sense if you can see your past you're in some thing going through some ten or about to go through some things so it doesn't matter don't let it stop you and i'm sure people have actually you as people have asked me you just said it right there you have your ideas you put it on paper  technology you don't have to wait for somebody to come along and discover you you can publish your work yourself and i like to say if you gonna write don't talk about to write about it so get it started so there are some steps you got some ideas everyone has at least one good story put it on paper or set aside some time and just try to just drop everything else and dedicate to your writing edited it get another pair of eyes on it and publish it it's not that difficult and then reach school the portress can also be kind of like free spirit it can fall out of the form and then you mentioned writing novels and i'm just saying it's mostly for like the listening audience who is always because the show is about authors and literature and writing writing novels you've got incorporate some dialogue in there a panther revolution and a lot of people don't know that african american studies started here in oakland by the black panthers at mira college which used to be grocery which is now more of the king jr way and a lot of people don't know that a lot of awful to be an african american to be proud of it were probably the only culture that i know of it's accused of being racist for liking your own self and i like to say respecting my culture and loving my culture does not equate to hating yours where does that come off  it's a good thing to been a child of oakland in the in those revolutionary times well let's go ahead and talk about your book silas is not always gold in a poetic revolution tell me one of your favorite pieces from