Than you! You've written exactly what I've been living. You're so right that when I'm the only black person in the room, it's not fun. I'm on edge. You captured my being pissed off that my white friends live segregated lives and don't care. At the same time, you made me laugh, showed me I'm not alone. Somehow, you managed to make me feel good about how bad I've been feeling. Thanks.

I just read Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. My enjoyment of this exquisite story was deflated by the author's inclusion of a Magical Negro, a cliché so common, it's practically invisible. Invisible, an inhuman prop - that's how I feel as a black woman reader, when this trope shows up. Even incredibly talented and skilled authors can benefit from a sensitivity read.

After writing Blindsided: Essays from the Only Black Woman in the Room, I was interviewed for a podcast by Antoinette Scully, creator of Black and Bookish.com. When Ms. Scully learned that most of my readers were white, she asked about my relationship with the white gaze.

She referred to a sensation that someone is looking over your shoulder. That writers of color need to make themselves understood by, and/or palatable to, white readers. The question floored me. Only a person of color would pose it, and, up to that point, I’d only been interviewed by white people.

Thank you, Antoinette…

Who invented God?

What does empathy feel like?

Astrophysicists report that 85% of the universe is dark matter, and that they don’t know anything about dark matter. So, how do they know how much space it takes up?

What’s the difference between procrastination and waiting for an opportunity that feels right?

What are dandelions? Flowers or vegetables or weeds?

How many wrongs does it take to make a right?

Because the polar ice caps are melting, is hell freezing over right now?

Stage fright gives me nausea and the runs and a headache. So does the flu. …

In the early days of my yoga practice, shavasana was the most painful pose of all. Corpse pose, the final relaxation pose, it was always announced at the end of class like it was dessert. You burned all those calories in Warrior II; now you can have some shavasana. I dreaded the final relaxation. Lying face up staring at the ceiling, I carried so much tension, it seemed like only my heels and the back of my head made contact with the floor. My entire body was a fist.

The years released their grip on me. The tension of striving…

• Learn to fall down and bounce right back up, like basketball players do.
• Respond to “So, what do you write about?” without “… umm … uh ….”
• Deliver a concise, inarguable rebuttal to the next white person who declares “I don’t see color.”
• Stand on my head.
• Live in Chicago for a year, all expenses paid, gorging on art and black box theatre.
• Learn to swim in the ocean.
• Give $50.00 to a panhandler.
• Hike alone in the woods, without assuming the trees are stalking me.
• Keep a snake plant alive for six months.
• Feel (something vaguely close to) joy…

I write essays about love and pain.

Writing is the perfect job for me, a woman buffeted between existential doubt and the cosmic laugh. Existential doubt says, “You don’t know how to write.”

The cosmic laugh says, “You can’t make the writing stop.”

I start each day in my home in Kansas City MO at 5:00 AM, with a bowl of granola, a handful of vitamins, and a dose of caffeine. 6:00 yoga. 7:30 meditate online. 8:30 shower — make mental note to clean bathroom. 9:00 set a timer in the kitchen downstairs, then report to my writing room upstairs…