When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It's an emotional illusion, I guess.

Adolescence is a modern construct and very American in so many ways.

When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It's an emotional illusion, I guess.

I think the NAACP isn't recognized enough for all of the work it does, especially in the field of law. They may have faded from view over the last couple of decades, but they are fighting the good fight.

I don’t mind expressing my opinions and speaking out against injustice. I would be doing this even if I wasn’t a writer. I grew up in a household that believed in social justice. I have always understood myself as having an obligation to stand on the side of the silenced, the oppressed, and the mistreated.

And this is how it started. Just with coffee and the exchange of their long stories. Love can be incremental. Predicaments, too. Coffee can start a life just as it can start a day. This was the meeting of two people who were destined to love from before they were born, from before they made choices that would complicate their lives. This love just rolled toward my mother as though she were standing at the bottom of a steep hill. Mother had no hand in this, only heart.

This is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. But there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.