Robert Jones Jr.

So when I approach it from a critical point of view, when I approach it from a defiant point of view, all of that is Baldwin.

He held me up in those ways.

Oh, yes.

There is one in particular that I have read at least four times, and it is his first work of fiction, his first novel, which is Go Tellin' on the Mountain, which is in many ways semi-autobiographical about a young man in Harlem coming of age in a very religious and a very strict family.

And it's where his burgeoning queerness comes to light.

He goes back in time to talk about his Southern roots and the migration of his family from the South to the North in the United States.

And it's just a phenomenal work.

In particular, there's a scene where he's describing his character going through a spiritual awakening in church, something we call catching the Holy Ghost.

And the descriptions are sublime.

And I was thinking when reading that, when I write, I want to achieve this level of excellence.

If I can only achieve this level of excellence, I think I'll be okay.

Yes.

Outside of the aforementioned Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, there's also Octavia Butler, who is a science fiction writer, but started her work examining race in a work called Kindred.

Her works are just absolutely profound, often dystopian, because she understands that human nature is something that we have to constantly check and balance.

but also so enlightening and just so imaginative.

I return to her works all the time.

And then another writer that I return to all the time is an American writer by the name of Gloria Naylor, who passed away relatively recently and also went to the same college that I went to, Brooklyn College here in Brooklyn, New York.

And we share a mentor by the name of George Cunningham.

She writes so beautifully about the Black American woman's experience of

I return to her books again and again because she helps me to understand the Black female experience and what Black women endure under the dual oppressions of racism and sexism.