Robert Jones Jr.

The brutal work conditions, the relentless pace they were expected to keep.

So I was reading, for example, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, or Frederick Douglass's narrative, or Harriet Tubman's.

These firsthand accounts of

are really where I got a clear picture of what it would have been like to be working on a plantation under those conditions.

There are so many influences there.

I recall Toni Morrison saying something about

how when you write about sex, you should not be writing about the physical act, that you should be trying to describe something else.

So in some cases, I tried to do that.

But there were some places that I wanted to be more direct, like a Samuel Delaney, for example, who's a science fiction writer but writes so much about transgressive sex.

And so I wanted to be direct in some cases.

So those are probably two authors where I kind of went to to say, okay, how should I approach lovemaking, romance, and sex itself?

James Baldwin is someone that I consider my spiritual godfather.

I first encountered his work as a freshman in college and was immediately struck by the

a man living in New York City and also a writer, all of the things I consider myself.

And so I went and found all of his works and read everything by him and was wondering, why isn't he more revered?

He is so brilliant.

The impact he has on me as a writer is that he makes me think about things like race and sexuality in ways that I had never imagined.

He's so crystal clear on who he is as a person, and therefore his writing is so crystal clear.

And so when I'm describing the intersection of blackness and queerness,

Whatever my philosophical point of view is, it was wholly shaped by James Baldwin.