KG: I worked in Black history museums for a long time and that was one thing that would always come up, that Black history is written around people overcoming the odds, but we know not everyone can overcome the odds because they are the odds. And overcoming the odds is extremely taxing! We have all these people we read about who were “the first”: the first Black woman doctor, the first one to do this or that. Being first is emotionally violent in many ways. From my own family history, we integrated a white suburb up here in Massachusetts and the emotional toll of that across generations is still unfolding and is extremely intense. I don’t think we talk about that when we talk about the firsts. We just focus on it as if it’s some benign story of triumph, like you cross a hurdle, and not that you psychologically battle people who wanted you dead 24/7 for most of your life, which is very different.

So, in our history, I always wondered about those people who didn’t want to play this game. Who felt like, This game actually enrages me! I’m tired and I don’t feel like I can do it and I want to be able to say I don’t feel like I can do it. But we don’t get those stories. I think that’s why a lot of Black people don’t like reading Black history, especially younger people, because it feels like there is such a focus on “inspire, uplift, inspire, uplift!” It was important to me that the character of Libertie got to make big, potentially life-altering mistakes, and she didn’t die from it. I wanted her character to be an exploration of that. While her mother is this consummate Black achiever, Libertie is definitely not that, and I wanted her not being that to really mean something. But I also wanted her to still be able to have a full life with joy, interests and friends, longing and desire and all those other things that make her human.

LB: As the mother of a daughter, do you feel like your own personal experience provided you with insight into the character of Libertie’s mother and the relationship between the two?