Tanya Mosley

You learned about losing early your father.

He was a beautiful singer with a wonderful voice.

He was a public housing administrator, the man who taught you that law could be a tool for fairness.

Then in 1969, he died when you were 10 years old.

And your mother carried the loss of your father while raising you and your older brother.

And then a few years later, you all lost him too.

Can you tell me just a little bit about what happened to him?

Well, thank you for that.

That's the story you knew.

You know, Kimberly, I've always known that grief is a kind of knowledge, but I've never really been able to articulate that.

what the knowledge is outside of grief itself.

And you write a book about a life of seeing, of being able to name things other people couldn't.

And so many Black families have experienced in some form or fashion, especially during that time period.

It's a common story of investigations that don't make it through fully, or you don't know the full story, and you learn things later, or you never learn at all.

What did your grief teach you to see?

If you're just joining us, my guest is legal scholar Kimberly Williams Crenshaw.

Her new memoir is called Backtalker, an American memoir.

We'll be back shortly.

This is Fresh Air.

I'm fast-forwarding now all the way to graduate school.