Through the process of specifically writing this memoir, there was so much reckoning that I had to do. It was very difficult. It doesn't erase anything that happened, but I think that it was healthy for me to do it. The teenage self-loathing that I suffered from all of a sudden found itself turned into rapids with my grief after my brother died. I turned it inwards. In the same way that my mom processes her grief and her problems. This project, as a memoir, has helped me funnel it outwards.

While I've said that there are plenty of things I dislike about the South, I can be clear that there are things I love about the South.

Grief doesn't fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief.

I think that we're just too invested in that myth that we are not connected, and are all potential millionaires if only we put in the work. I think that's destructive and ignores history and is one of the reasons we as a state are consistently at the bottom of all the lists because we handicap ourselves.

I think that I'm trying to hopefully change my children's ideas about what is possible, and about what is possible for them.

Some people think that Southern hip-hop doesn't have any depth. They think it's just noise, all about people having a good time in the club. And some of it doesn't have a lot of depth, it's true, but some does. I wanted to work against that stereotype. These are verses by Southern artists who are really wrestling with what it means to be here, young black men who are trying to figure out how to live in the South. So I wanted the epigraphs in my novels to reflect that.

I was thinking about the difference in voice between the different characters. Each voice has to be unique. Hypothetically you should be able to read each chapter without the heading that tells you who is telling the story.