There are so many women and girls in this story. Women I’ve known. Poets I grew up reading. Girlhood friends. Through the writing, the people who kept me inspired were my hurricane of a mother, Miss Essie Mae Coston Williams, my own “Delphine”—Rosalind Williams Rogers, Rashamella Cumbo, Debra Bonner, Ruby Whitaker, and so many more. Among the poets I thought of during the writing were Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Kattie Miles Cumbo. And where would this work be without my sister, champion, and editor: Rosemary Brosnan?
I could not have written this work of fiction without having read books, articles, and interviews that cover this period. I specifically could not have felt the climate of the times from Black Panther accounts and perspectives without David Hilliard’s The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service.
I wanted to write this story for those children who witnessed and were part of necessary change. Yes. There were children.