“Your commitment to survival is more than a notion; it’s a balm, an affirmation, an eternal love note, and a sacred love manifestation that starts as a whisper and rises into the atmosphere. How to be Alone gave me closure. What a gift it is to know that there’s another person in the world who’s so brave […]
Category: books
Celebrating a Profound Literary Inheritance: Glory Edim on the Well-Read Black Girl Anthology Celebrating a Profound Literary Inheritance: Glory Edim on the Well-Read Black Girl Anthology — Read on longreads.com/2018/11/06/glory-edim-on-the-well-read-black-girl-anthology/
When I spoke to Carol Anderson for Kirkus Reviews, it felt like we could have talked for hours. Her book, One Person, No Vote, is an important read for anyone who cares about what’s at stake for the midterms and for 2020. What stayed with me most about what she said when I asked her […]
I’m so excited I’ve been asked to read in the company of these talented writers for a Brooklyn Book Festival event. If you’re in town (or you’re a New Yorker who will be looking for a place to party after you VOTE in the PRIMARY ELECTION THAT IS WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING ELSE I […]
“Our community is such a community of survivors and resisters and resilience. We’ve been like water when we have also wanted to be a bridge. Day by day, I have to find a way to figure out a way to do self-care. Writing is very cathartic for me; creating worlds where people end up OK […]
It makes total sense that Book Lovers Day would fall right in the middle of the hottest days of summer, when there really isn’t anything better than sitting in front of the air conditioning (or some other cooling device) and reading. As it happens, as I’ve been in the homestretch of finishing a work in […]
I’ve been reading some of the beautiful and important memoirs of the Movement for Black Lives that are forthcoming from Black feminists like Barbara Ransby & Charlene Carruthers as well as screening Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin story, which begins airing tonight on the Paramount Network, since the end of June. I wrote about […]
I’ve been more quiet than usual because I’ve been dusting off my photography/summer counselor skills at Jewish surf camp (!) [more on that later, obviously] interviewing my share of incredible writers for Kirkus Reviews, reading and watching and reporting all of kinds of other things for other stories, finishing up my work in progress draft, […]
The spring before I left the Bronx to go to boarding school, to accept a scholarship that would change the entire trajectory of my life, I had an abortion. I was 15. I was raised a devout Catholic; I’ve always been a deeply spiritual person. But I also had been so desperately lonely for such […]
“I’m black. I’m solitary. I’ve always been an outsider.” This is how Octavia Butler described herself, the first self-possessed Black woman writer introvert, I had the honor of writing about for publication. Actually interviewing her was one of the great honors of my life, two years before her death in 2006. I wonder what she […]
