welcome to new beginnings with karen dell and i am so pleased to have dr donna clovis author professor and educator joining us to speak about her latest book which is quantum leaps in princeton's place nice to be here thank you yes so i have been anxious to have you on here and your schedule has been very busy and it's crazy so i wanted to have you talk about you know kind of the origins of the books sure but also a little bit about your background because you have a very background yes you are and i just learned today that you actually work for a b c yes i ten and your role explain to the audience your role well when i work first work for a b c i was actually doing web production and working with the emmy award so we were going back and forth to l a into new york and i was in charge of the red carpet meaning that i had about twenty five to thirty people i was in charge of and so when we had to mention the awards we had to get all the tape and get all that everything translated very very hectic it's about like two or three months in advance of the awards but i worked there and i actually went to journalism school at columbia university which  fabulous and that's really where i learned how to write so working with a professor that was the executive director of a b c he was the one who really taught me the ins and outs of broadcast journalism so i started there and then from there i believe it or not i have certified in education and as my children were getting older i felt mom needed to come home around eighth grade and so from new york i came back into education and working with high school students in shakespearean performance so i still was able to keep my performance background and working with video and still t v with with the kids which was awesome so yes my background is extremely varied i work internationally i'm a professor in switzerland and i teach visual culture to multi ethnic kids who are young adults and college that's wonderful that's wonderful and you have written a book that's near and dear to my heart as i read it i'm a transplant to princeton but i've been here now going on fourteen years and i know but community i won't say i know it absolutely well but i know it quite well was a deep burning desire you kind of stumbled upon it yet totally i was not planning on writing a book actually i used to teach in princeton school system and they said teach b s l and my children attended princeton schools from k to fifth grade k to sixth grade so we actually were part of the community so in taking her my daughter back and forth to school in and talking to people i actually loved talking to older people that was one thing in journalism i really loved doing so when i came back into the schools i thought well maybe that's what i would want to do i had just finished a project that was a holocaust project in germany and was fully funded by the mccoy fellowship and our entire family went over to germany and interviewed everyone over the age of ninety one who was still alive to be able to talk about the holocaust and my purpose was so that we didn't forget that we didn't make the same mistakes and then if we saw the warning signs we could prevent it so i thought it was important not only for me to document photography and writing but to also have my family involved and my kids were about ten or ten years that time and it was something that they never forgotten forgot and that collection of work is in the holocaust museum in washington d c in the archives so we're coming off of that project i still felt like i wanted to talk to  so i started talking to the oldest people in princeton you know during the time when my kids were in school and one was one hundred three and one was in their late ninety's and i just documented their lives that it didn't it wasn't a book i wasn't thinking of them as a book at all but just a way of like documenting what were their experiences and how could we learn from their experiences and to better our society as opposed to make it worse so and i think for younger people that connection is so so vital and so important so i've put that all that documentation away it took me about maybe six months to a year to document their lives and i just put it away and about a year and a half later my daughter had a playdate and this is what's so weird about this my daughter had a playdate on rosedale road and it's was in one of the mansions there and she attended johnson park school and i went to driver and one of the houses i guess it was a mansion and i said you know how many first senator do you have the wrong address and sure enough we knocked on the door and a little girl comes to the door with her mom and it was my daughter's friend that she had just met they just moved into the community so on several playdates you know go by and drop my daughter off and then the mother invited me in one day for coffee as we were waiting for them and she says well you wouldn't believe what i found in the basement and i said what did you find she pulls out a box of old photographs of the people from the house and this house originated in one thousand and twelve then she pulled out a diary and she says this is the diary of the woman who owned the house since nine hundred twelve and i was like you're kidding so i started to look at it yes why don't i just let you look at it and you know do what you want with it and give it back and i said fine lo and behold the two people i had interviewed one of them had been a like oh my goodness and i couldn't wait to get on the phone to this mother and you wouldn't believe this but and she says well i think you're meant to write this book and so every play day i would sit in the mansion and write while my daughter and her daughter would play  and there were floors and floors and different parlors and so i would just kind of sit and like kind of listen to the house and the noises that we make in things like that and i was very observant about what was going on of more research on and i found out it was the first plantation house in princeton and that it was an actual at the top floor was a slave quarters so the miss aida actually lived here so i thought i would write her story and being able to write her story in the house that she resided in was such a privilege for me to be able to recall her her life story and and the whole idea to which was so surprising to me that  think of the south and segregation but how the north was also very segregated and you know her life and how all these women no matter what culture they were from helped each other and i thought that was so unique to the story of princeton and is that it wasn't just about her it was about the lady who owned house who tried to help her move into like a mortgage interest hill neighborhood as time went on and you know the italian neighborhood which is part of princeton is part of the book so actually interviewing all these real people and having it come together and i think that's what did it it's when everything came together i was like ok i'm doing this it has to be written down so we're so happy that we're able to call it  princeton's place for a couple of reasons one because of einstein you know there are sightings of einstein in the book and but also because things happened so miraculously and putting everything together to be able to compile because you know it was you did these distinct action in terms of talking to older people from the holocaust having that interest be sparked and then saying you know let me identify some of the older or the oldest african americans in the community and document their history as you said put that aside for a year or so your daughter introduces this whole with the university and her husband's connections with the university and who they knew and their parties in the house and things like that really helped that whole connection a whole circular kind of piece come together absolute so like i said it wasn't meant to be one but it just it just happened that way and we more or less felt we all did that even to this day when i talked to my daughter who was in her twenty's who said it was meant for you to do that book it was a loop and she felt the same thing you know it being like a nine or ten year old and  time so it was it's quite exciting to actually have it in a context like this absolutely absolutely and the changes that you've documented over the lifetime and actually you know you're really telling what happened not as you said not just in her life but the lives of other women african american women white women and the changes in the top power graffiti of princeton it's interesting because the  jackson neighborhood with through tremendous change with the development of homer square absolutely in action here to i know yeah i know and talk a little bit about that because for our viewers who may not be familiar pri still transit a place people come and go based on you know the farm and other corporations universities around here so they may not understand that full history sure sure well it's interesting because the witherspoon neighborhood where what we talk about segregation that's where the predominantly most of the african american community lives and you know what's nice about this book was not only doing the interviews and the journalistic interviews but actually delving into the history and pulling out articles that were in the archives of the historic you know foundation here in the archives of the library actually pulling out articles about paul robeson and his actual performances i found his reviews which i would thought was amazing but going back to your question about palmer square palmer square was a business entity so the people who are colored at that time living in that place witherspoon neighborhood were actually pushed out and pushed back so that princeton could build the palmer square that we know of it today but if you go back into history it was all residential before and it was all african american and maps where your african american population would have would stay and that his historic what's what's tough is when you're writing all of that and then you see you see on one hand well if there's progress in terms of commerce and that's beautiful but then what happens to the history of the people who were there and and even to this day you know establishing the witherspoon neighborhood as a historic place is so vital to this community and that's something that for great so she is our church historian and she's a member of the princeton historical society she gives tours to talk about the change and when you go there were a stablish mintz that that african americans oh that's right and you know those i mean they had entrepreneurship there because things had to be segregated but then those who didn't work the worked at the university in the private clubs and then is palmer square developed you know they they worked in those establishment as well so shifting from palmer square to another  c person who is a native son of princeton is paul robeson yes yes yeah what i thought was interesting about paul robeson and situation was that he was so internationally famous and at a time where the united states is thoroughly segregated that he could go into london and he could go into paris and perform his art and to me there was such a beauty in being able to do that at a time segregation and such an accomplishment but we pulled out a review i'll never forget telling topics and i guess that it was a lousy review that he got out of one of his performances but and it's in the book as well but i just thought the fact that he could get up and perform on princeton stage it was such an honor but such dignity and boldness in his personality and i was always so impressed that he was able to go internationally at a time where that wasn't happening for a lot of african american people and become renowned that way and that encouraged me and i thought oh well what it would encouraging story for all kids you know for all young people if they pick this up and just read about the lives of people here that are so close to them and may be so far away in terms of what they're thinking about that they could be really great examples for what they do in the future yeah and i agree with you i  have done some work trying to elevate paul robeson his childhood home is on witherspoon in john street and it's being renovated so that it can be used by the community to represent what he values and his credo but recently i went to one of the local you know corporate entities to talk about paul robeson and  to bring it home for people who are around today what i said was that paul robeson was the beyond say quit and he was known around the  globe for his not only his the african film career but his operatic career as well and then if you peel back before that he was a rutgers all american football player he was five beta kappa he graduated with honors from rutgers it was like he had the mightest you know he was our ever he touched he took it to the top of the game and he had such high standards and not only did he have high standards but he achieved high standards so you know i love that you had mentioned him you know in detail to get his character and his values absolutely and i think too that was the other thing too is that shakespeare teacher his work in a fellow which is phenomenal and just to be able to bring that back from my students and talking to them and being able to emulate you know the character he him an emulation of fellow which do shakespearean theater you know so many students didn't realize african americans do shakespearean theory that if you go into london it's that's the way it is and shakespeare's writings were all in the mediterranean corporator africans in major part as for paul robeson to have that part and to play that as a shakespeare person myself i thought oh my goodness has to go in here and and i kind of you know pu high schools colleges or you know it's available on amazon yes so let's talk a little bit about what are your plans for the book well the book is available on amazon and barnes and noble dot com so people are interested in purchasing it there they can i'm interested very much in getting it into high schools i think it's a nice read for students but it's a very encouraging read it's one of those types of books that i consider a interracial book and it's a book that all of the cultures are working together actually to to defy segregation which is very interesting in dealing with something that was so problematic in american society so for high school students to have it in a literature class or to have it in a history class it would be really nice little touch of princeton history for students to learn by right now it's international which is which is awesome i understand that people have purchased it in the ukraine in russia in switzerland in london and in china so i'm really excited about that it's part of our curriculum in franklin university in switzerland so it's all the students from saudi arabia are getting it which is nice i just had a book signing with hate house at the philadelphia convention center in september and it went over you know big there with people who were you know all different races and that's what was that is the beauty in the actual story is that it's a story about humanity and it is a story about humanity right here in princeton and i think that princeton is just such a wonderful place as the setting a so much in terms of history and so the world to know that what is really great so the more the merrier like i said i would love it in high schools that would be absolutely great wonderful wonderful we also have a clip that i'd like to show  because it really does a wonderful job of promoting the book so we'll run that clip kirkus reviews tells us this novel depicts a century of change in the one time home of albert einstein in princeton new jersey this tree line town dominated by its famous university contains many magnificent homes including the rosedale house over the years this house has seen a lot changes historical events and all of the facets of the human experience in quantum leaps stories from one thousand nine hundred to the one nine hundred sixty s follow for women of different backgrounds who meet in time in princeton's history united in their search for equality the voices of the rosedale house tell their stories representing a microcosm of america still relevant in these racially charged to modern times this cast of characters in princeton nearer than an intriguing drama but a perspective of the haunting past relevant to our present and future visual idea of what the book was and to do it in a minute and thirteen seconds it's like i mean for me as a writer that's tough to do they did a great job and visualizing what the book is about so  quickly it's awesome awesome advertisement for the book so i'm very happy with it yeah and now are the residents who you know lived in this mansion are they still there or is that owned by someone else and now now it's owned by someone else but this is this is really weird synchronicity or serendipity where i am there are new people in the house so my my daughter's friends have moved away and you know likely spritely so with high school graduation rate everything is interesting is i went to macarthur theater in april because i decided to do a second book that will be a sequel to my first book so i said i want to start writing so mccarter theatre had a special august wilson with the university and i thought wow you know august wilson was here is wonderful playwright i just need to sit in the audience and kind of suck all the said it so happened that i was sitting next to the president of the board of trustees of macarthur theater in a packed house and she saw me taking notes furiously and she asked me oh what are you doing i told her about this book and whatever and she says could you get me a copy i'd like to get a copy for emily man and i was like  l who are you doing she tells me she's the president of the board of trustees well not only that she knows the house she lives around the corner from the house and she goes all the new people there i know they have a book group so let me see what i can do in terms of maybe  we can do a book you know a book group or something there or whatever so serendipity again oh wow just wow that was just really wild so now him really man who is the artistic director for carter she has a copy she has a you met with her not yet no i didn't meet her though and that day of august wilson showing up as a matter of fact what she said to me which was so interesting was i know you somewhere and i'm looking and i'm like oh just a family man well i'm she says well you know i've heard of that book and i've been meaning to get it which was you know princeton library done a beautiful book signing for me with a packed house and so it had gotten some nice publicity you know there so she has a copy of it which i'm just i'm thrilled so that's how my second book i mean so i was like ok i'm on the way to the psych so tell us a little bit of what is the second book what is the and for our audience john nash was the brilliant mathematician who had just won the nobel prize coming back from stockholm as an auto accident and then he and his wife died it's awful it was awful and he lives six doors down from me and the opening chapter and i will leave it to suspend deals with his really with our family and helping us in a very interesting way and it's but he lives six stories down and opens  you done some signings you'll have a new video clip for that and it sounds very it sounds like a lovely sequel to this and you know it's actually taking us through time  could be a history or a literary book or could be taught both ways right absolutely which is wonderful and what's great for me as a journalist is doing the interviews and doing the historic pieces and doing all the research behind it and i think that that's the fun of putting together a novel like this and actually meeting the real people i actually at my book signing at princeton met my first interview there i the gentleman came up to me ninety three years old and said could you interview me one and i was like well i wasn't planning on doing it but i did and he was just lovely i want all hell to fall and his family on the hill market on nassau street amazing ninety three years old that's great it's very well it has been lovely talking to you we're just out of time so i want to thank you again dr donna clovis who is the author of pulitzer well as matter of fact what was interesting is i was actually i was on the feature writing award on racial profiling believe it or not i for my one of my first pieces that i wrote in journalism that's great and it was from the national association of black journalists i was there with barbara walters when i got my our ward which was like it was such an honor so well we're honored to have you thank you again ok thank you and thank you for tuning in to new beginnings