This book has been a long time coming. It was originally a short story that was published in 2014 by Sable Literary Magazine, and I would like to thank Kadija George and Jacob Ross for their edits on that. You both helped develop my voice at such a nascent stage in my career, and I am deeply grateful for it. Jacob was the first editor to bluntly point out that I needed self-restraint and as a baby writer, that critique was such a gift. I took his advice and it has continued to serve me throughout my entire career. Thank you for not holding back.
Many thanks to my editor, Laura Perciasepe, and to everyone at Riverhead Books for your work in stitching this book together into a physical story that can now go out and touch the world. I hope you are as proud of it as I am.
As always, a deep well of thanks to my agents at the Wylie Agency, particularly Jacqueline Ko, Kristi Murray, and Jessica Bullock. What luck to have you all on my team!
To everyone who read drafts of this book over the years, who workshopped it with me and gave me notes, thank you so much. These books are never made alone. To my family and my community, thank you for growing with me.
To my readers—I can’t tell you how pleased I am to be sharing my eighth book with you! Thank you so much for supporting me and my stories, for telling your friends and family about them, for gifting my books to people you care about, for teaching my books in schools even while under threat, for understanding that disseminating the stories is part of the work. I couldn’t be in this service without you. This book might be difficult to witness but my hope is that it gives us some courage to witness the difficult things in our lives, to understand how close they can brush to our skin, and to move accordingly.