Get Here If You Can: A Book Review – “Zeal” by Morgan Jerkins

Zeal /zēl/ – powerful fervor in/whilst aiming to achieve (a mostly common) goal. Jerkins writes as if she’s stood in the historical bowels of Henry Louis Gates’ “Finding Your Roots”; had a conversation with the roaming ancestors guarding precious truths. Zeal is a call and response between the choir and congregation – the elders spread amongst all pews, resting peacefully with their eyes closed, bodies gently moving in sync with the rhythm of the psalm; souls open yet protected. So protected. Zeal is the love story we didn’t know we needed. It tells of love’s ability to stand the test of time and time’s ability to shore up love. Jerkins takes the reader back; way back. Then brings them forth. And we ponder on whether time only moves in one direction.

Jerkins ushers the reader through summer 1865 Mississippi to Great-Migration era Kansas to 2019-2020 Harlem. Harrison and Tirzah are the two sturdy trunks of trees whose branches hold conversation just at their roots. They are a side-by-side survival of the fittest that share ground. It is Tirzah’s letter that opens the storyline of the novel as a modern-day couple (Ardelia and Oliver) celebrate their engagement party with Tirzah’s letter gifted as a pre-marital heirloom. Then, we are transported back to where it all began – Natchez, 1865. Hardly free yet deeply in love, Harrison tries to find Tirzah after being discharged from the Union Army following the war. It is this split, it’s surrounding climate, and its resulting air of yearn, disappointment and push-through that frame the 416 pages of Zeal.

Nuclear. Jerkins explores many classic American institutions through her development of the family structure in this novel. The obvious goal of each union is to be free enough to be with the one you desire. However, in said attempts to come together, both survival and the churning underbelly of duty/circumstance create an almost perfect storm. And after the storm, all parties are turned to and fro, too tired to fight for what they truly want. Harrison, exhausted and illiterate, resigns to building a family unit with Tabithah – the very woman who foils his efforts to find Tirzah. A nuclear family is indeed formed as Harrison and Tabithah form a union and even offspring (a daughter named Miriam). However it is sure to explode-up the lies, betrayal, forced ignorance and even seediness surrounding family ties as they relate to slavery, war and lineage. The resentment is evident and so is the fervor of survival.

Separation of Church and State. When I think of Tirzah’s character, I think of the book title: A Woman is a School. And I can remember a time where prayer was allowed in school, and lunch-dates with the littles was second nature. But I also remember the stories of black women’s bodies being haphazardly and unethically used as science projects – studied for both mere sport as well as the hope to improve the lives of those deemed worthy. One might even say that Tirzah is sacrificed – her idea of freedom tainted by those claiming to love her the most. Like Harrison, Tirzah laments to a life with the good option: a minister named Isaac. Outside of Tirzah’s sacrifice, there are other sacrifices that take place for this union; such as the helpful Quaker, Tirzah and Isaac’s son Free, and even Isaac himself. Tirzah is witnessed by her future daughter-in-law committing the ultimate lay crime (forgive my cheeky oxymoron; as every sin is equal…right?) and thus falls into a sort of trap set by the very system she and her loved ones are trying to survive in. She must run…again. Though the shackles of the state are shaken off, the shackles of the church still grip tight and we ponder: perhaps this separation (of church and state) was a mere facade in the desert.

Only Children. Miriam (female with a melancholic whimsicality) is the only child of Harrison and Tabithah. Free (male and painfully gifted) is the only child of Tirzah and Isaac. Miraculously, following huge upheavals in both of their lives, they meet and form a sort of otherworldly bond. Jerkins does a phenomenal job at relaying the complexities of this…meeting of the two offspring of survival and zeal. The weight is palpable – Miriam carrying the orphaned outturns of both paternal and maternal heartbreak, and Free hoisting the murdered fallacy of a required new last name. They are both drawn to each other and repelled at the same time – attracted like romantic partners, working out kinks like siblings. The creation and development of their characters is pretty brilliant on Jerkins’ part and woefully depicted that chasm many of us must approach, avoid until we can’t, and thrive through (however yucky). Moreover, Miriam and Free pull at more than the reader’s heartstrings, but yank also at one’s rearview and sense of justice as only children can (do NOT pardon that pun).

“I loved a flower so much that instead of plucking it, I left it alone.” -Osho

Not Through With Me Yet. As Jerkins depicts the many branches of these two adjacent tree trunks, the reader is able to both walk the valleys and delight in the journey that both Harrison and Tirzah commence. The reader witnesses country life turn to city life as these lineages migrate in the direction of black freedom – to and through Kansas, Chicago and New York. Necessity turns into artforms and sustenance, even livelihood as the families grow and encounter seeds that bloom and seeds that indicate where the bad soil was/is. Regardless the soil, these lineages are compatible with life! And through Ardelia and Oliver, much is uncovered yet much is still unwritten. In a world such as the one in which we live (not so different than the worlds that came before), I imagine that one might tell the one they love, “If you are safe, stay where you are. Get here (only) if you can.” It is a conundrum’s tale…as old as time. And Jerkins does a fantastic job at showcasing a historical, multi-generational fiction. Zeal is a little baby of color who has been here before.

Work Cited:

Jerkins, Morgan.  (2025).  Zeal.  United States: Harper Collins.

34 Chapters: A Book Review – “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The reading list for 2025 was a heavy one for me. So much so, that I vowed the last one of the year would be a romance novel. As if romance is somehow less heavy? With all of the vowing and pushing and pulling, the last novel of 2025 still chose me. Shifting around the library my eyes saw blue ripples and the familiar name Ta-Nehisi. I must admit that reading Coates is no simple feat. He tackles issues ranging from spirituality to politics to history and family lineage. And he does not rush through…anything. His writing is patient, methodical, heart-felt and masculine. The Water Dancer was published in September of 2019. A childhood friend and I were speaking in jest the other day about how September babies were, of course, likely conceived under a mistletoe or an umbrella of new year’s fireworks. The Water Dancer is that baby – a parentage worth exploring, researching and a love that surpasses eros in order to ‘see what that agape do‘. I chose to listen this go ’round. Though the audio framework of literature ingestion is not normally my thing, once I recognized the voice of thee Joe Morton narrating this particular art-space, I was all in.

Hiram Walker is the main character of Coates’ debut novel set on and off a tobacco plantation in Virginia. He’s somewhat of a prodigy in that he has what we would today call a photographic memory. However, his memory is both the source of great gains and great losses, as recollections of happier times with friends and family are coupled with the the stains and stings of slavery. Hiram can remember everything but his mother’s face. Unimaginable – Hiram’s mother’s face, and the audacity of a slave society to utilize a boy’s recollections while at the same time harnessing that which he desires most in a way that taunts, bates and controls. Ta-Nehisi goes deep into the subconscious of Hiram and finds conduction – an otherworldly ability to move through space via a river of memory. Through Hiram’s gift of conduction he is connected to The Underground, Moses (Harriet Tubman), his mitochondrial lineage, and a sort of free servitude. Conduction is in essence movement of power between adjoining substances – sound waves are conducted, nerve impulses are conducted, heat is conducted, water is conducted (and conductor). And though Coates conducts The Water Dancer by way of a purposeful masculine gaze and mirror, his insertion of the female experience is also both purposeful and imperative to the movements of Hiram and the novel overall.

Through a vision of his mother (Rose) water dancing, Hiram crashes into the River Goose while crossing over the very bridge that many of his ancestors have crossed upon being sold to the Deep South (gone ‘Natchez Way’). Maynard (Hiram’s half-brother and appointed Master) dies; Hiram lives and the reader experiences Coates’ framework of conduction for the first time. The novel flows back in time to when Hiram is a child. Following the sell of his mother, Hiram is left alone before being taken in by Thena. Thena is an elder slave at Lockless. She too has been left alone after losing her husband to fever and having all of her children sold away. Unlike Hiram, her memories are all but buried in an effort to survive and Thena comes across as walled-off, brash to those without the wisdom or capacity to understand her. Whilst residing with Thena, Hiram is beckoned to The Big House of which his biological father Howell Walker is master and proprietor. His gifts of quick intelligence and memory are soon recognized and Hiram is assigned a tutor. However, the Lockless plantation aims to utilize such tutelage overall in service to Maynard – white, privileged, and natural nepotic benefactor of the Lockless estate. Coates continues to remind the reader that this is home to many of The Water Dancer’s main characters. And what it emotionally and practically means to have a home that would barter one’s talents, loved ones, safety, and overall peace. What is the root of such ideology? And is it something that can be dug up through sheer muscle power? Water pressure maybe? Or must we lament to…accepting it?

Hiram has his eyes set on Sophia (a reluctant concubine to Howell’s brother Nathaniel Walker). The two decide to run together after acquiring some surface knowledge of the Underground Railroad and its inclinations towards freedom. They are captured, placed in prison, and separated – Hiram, purchased by a sadistic slave-holder who makes literal sport of hunting human flesh, and Sophia, sent back to Lockless. Coates beckons the reader into this very weird world of choosing between bad and worse – a world that dares ask questions smothered in hypocrisy, betrayal, cruelty, sadism, and overall disgust. Though the order is obviously peculiar (and even ill), it is a sight to behold how the human psyche still clings to it when faced with chaos. It is tainted water to the deathly parched – it is poison. Hiram’s body eventually suffers injury and it is through this experience that the gift of conduction visits him yet again. He’s brought to Corrine Quinn, who has purchased him from his father following his attempt at running. Hiram learns of Corrine’s connection with the Underground and the agenda of her purchase as it pertains to his gift of conduction and how it might assist in freeing other slaves. Corrine’s positioning is…interesting. Though she would mainly be looked upon as a southern, white, female abolitionist, Coates frames her in a way that is quite complex. I did not particularly like her character and saw her as both perpendicular and adjacent to Ryland (the overseer of the Elm County jail) – the ideology forming a cross and thus inevitably an intersection of pure ick. However, I think Coates’ framework of Corrine’s character is purposefully gray; and makes for great exploration of the systems we depend on. She is next in line to inherit a sort of generational throne in Elm County and thus she has learned to be strategic whilst not letting go of her own privilege.

Hiram is sent to Philadelphia and works at headquarters for a year. While in Philadelphia, Hiram gains a new education of how the Underground works and is lead to a meeting with Harriet Tubman (Moses) who also has the gift of conduction. It is through his interactions with Moses that he learns of the ins and outs of emotional, mental and physical slavery and ultimately the connection between memory and water that sustains the power of conduction. Upon returning to Virginia under the guise of tasking, Hiram makes it known that his endeavors are to be rewarded via the freeing of both Sophia and Thena when the time is right. Lockless is no longer the same. The decline of the tobacco industry has resulted in a sort of wasteland manifest and Coates makes this evident in his comparable imagery of Lockless past and present. Hiram finds Sophia at Lockless once again, but this time she has mothered a girl child (Caroline) through her ‘relationship’ with Nathaniel Walker. Coates allows Hiram’s process of emotion to be seen and felt by the reader – the ups and downs of possession, the polarities of protection and setting free, the risks associated with loving for real, the nakedness of choice.

Hiram unlocks the full potential of his gift of conduction upon finding a shell necklace whilst back at Lockless. Upon touching the necklace the very painful memory of his mother being sold away floods Hiram’s psyche and he is now knowledgeable of who is responsible for the selling of his mother, and what she was exchanged for. It is this final knowledge coupled with his previous experiences that allow him the power to conduct Thena in the direction of her living daughter Kessiah (now, residing in Philadelphia). Coates’ description of this is fantastic and solidifies this work as not science fiction but very spiritual (in my opinion). For, it takes not only Hiram’s faculties to conduct her but also ancestors and even future pedigree. Thena is heavy. And Coates does a great job at depicting both the storm and the levy required to move a woman like Thena, with all she’s endured and overcome.

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer. “ -Zora Neale Hurston

Seventeen (an odd number) – doubled to rectify, to make even, to form 34 chapters of a circular journey made whole. The novel is coated in excellent imagery – running river water, deadly bridges, a necklace made of shells, a wooden carved horse gifted too soon. It is quite the scene – a dance indeed. To speak of structure/framework and movement in the same breath. In this novel, supposed sturdy (and dare I say…erect) institutions, foundations, alliances and establishments…dance (of all things). We see this dance in Coates’ portrayal of societal nepotism and spiritual nepotism. Again, I proclaim that this work is not of a specific genre and should be thought of as outside the boundaries of science fiction. Published one year prior to the pandemic, it is as if the world stopped and earth-quaked ever so subtly so that Hiram could remember his mother’s face, Thena could move in the direction of her children, Sophia could mother in any dimension, and Moses could part seas of many colors. Again, Coates would not be rushed. The Water Dancer is over 400 pages long and explores so many aspects of American society. These days, while so many seemingly progressives, orators and podcasters strongly urge ‘us’ to move past the slave narrative, it is works such as The Water Dancer asking the necessary questions (may I have this dance?) in a way that sets us up for a successful answer (yes, you may). Wishing all the readers a happy new year, a memorable MLK Day, and the glasses to see a love story unfold in due time. Most of all, I hope you dance (on the water, on fire, on air, even above ground; especially above ground). 😉 💃🏾 🕺🏿 🌊

Work(s) Cited:

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. (2019).The Water Dancer. United States: Random House / One World.

Frost, Robert. (1969). The lockless door. In E. C. Lathem (Ed.), The poetry of Robert Frost: The collected poems (pp. 174-175). Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Hurston, Zora Neale. (1937). Their Eyes Were Watching God. J.B. Lippincott Company. Page 21.

Walker, Alice. (2003). A Poem Traveled Down My Arm. United States: Random House. Page 56.

Descendants of Wood and Water: A Book Review – “James” by Percival Everett

–In the Beginning– This will likely be more than a book review, as this book is more than a book. It’s a love letter of sorts, perhaps even a postcard sent from abroad, a Polaroid snapshot of a renamed landscape encompassing both past and future. Everett deserves all of the accolades garnered. Let me start by saying that I have never met a James I did not like. James – Hebrew and Latin in origin, meaning may God protect. Rarely a name placed in the middle, it fares well as a first or last. And this is interesting. Though there is indeed power in a name, the way one yields said power is the real essence of their being. Everett does not frame his main character as a simple hero. But instead as a teacher. Perhaps reluctant at times and even with an air of tongue-in- cheek, James (Jim) is a protagonist that teaches whilst surviving. He seems to be shielded by a force unseen as the adventure framework of Huckleberry and Tom (children, male and white) are nightmares manifest to James (adult, male, and black). Everett makes the reader want to know of this otherworldly force unseen that seems to walk, run, swim, and even rest with James. I watched the The Book of Eli while reading James. I’m learning to not be so spooked when synchronicities cuddle up in my lap. The watching and the reading of these two works of art was just that – a wading synchronicity highlighting the importance of language, literature, literacy. Toni Morrison proclaimed, “…we do language. That is how civilizations heal”. There’s much healing to be had in pre and post war, apocalypse, growing up (not to be confused with simply aging). Language gauges the degree of separation. Finally, we realize we are and have been shoulder-to-shoulder. The separation, a mere facade in the desert, and a white lie on the plantation – salt water to the thirsty, and a pine box to the finally free.

–The Word– The novel is set in Hannibal, Missouri – a necessary nod to Mark Twain’s original novel. I would urge the reader to research the term Hannibal past the knee-jerk allusion to the psychopathic doctor namesake (although, that may be relevant as well); and also accept the phonetic similarity of the state name and term Missouri & misery respectively (as this is also relevant in my opinion). Jim is self-taught and duplicitous in his use of language. The word – his safe place, a hiding space or stage depending on the situation. He is careful of his use of proper vernacular not only because it could reveal his learned state and thus position him as a threat to his oppressors, but also because his movement throughout the world (whatever and whichever world) depends on it. James utilizes ‘slave talk’ when needed but teaches, dreams and narrates in proper English where secure and applicable. The point is: in a world banking on him not knowing, he does indeed know. He is faced with being sold away from his wife Sadie and daughter Lizzie to another plantation down in New Orleans. Upon deciding to run, James is followed by Huck who has faked his own death in an effort to escape his father. The two hide out across the river on Jackson Island and thus begin the adventures of Jim and Huck? The search for Jim and Huck? The trials of Jim and Huck? The story of James. Everett is adamant in relaying the dualities that reside in James as well as his tricky positioning. His only possessions are not even the clothes on his back; they are a waterlogged notebook and a pencil gifted in blood. His station in society is runaway slave although he has a wife and daughter. His main companion on his journey away from and back to the plantation is a little white fella who he just can’t seem to shake. Thus, Everett makes a clear point – one’s simple may be another’s very complex. Moreover, Everett’s depiction of Huck’s refusal to be excluded from the story of James is a word within itself.

–The Belly– Jim and Huck are separated on multiple occasions; their separations preceded by multiple strikes…of steamboat, of ally, of human sale, and of truth. I think when one strikes the truth it makes a sound. Like a massive tree toppling into a large body of water or like a ship splitting in two, like a paddle striking flesh. Everett makes a point with the splitting of wood and splashing of water as these two are desirable yet problematic; much like lumber for burning and Adam’s ale for sale. The complexities of coupling necessity with exploitation is loud and evident. This system of slavery has touched every character in this story and left behind a smoldering

destruction. Everett does not allow for debate in this area (rightfully so). Each introduction of a new character or character group places Jim and/or Huck in a sort of love below situation – just above the reproductive parts but below the heart and mind. Each separation of the two leading them to inevitably find each other again as they run into polarities that will either yield rebirth or regurgitation. Everett is clever in his depiction of the duo’s interactions with others. This humanistic need to form alliance, friendship, family – is it a welcoming invite of pure intention or a methodical crash?.

“…just because someone desires you, it does not mean that they value you. Desire is the kind of thing that eats you and leaves you starving.” -Nayirrah Waheed

–The Beast– Indeed, there are many meetings of mind, heart and soul in James. The four black men hovering over an awakened Jim signals his arrival to Illinois and the horrific value (or cost) of a writing utensil. Huck returning with two criminals relays the extraordinary utility of self-proclamation and the ridiculousness of playing church. The introduction to Easter (an elderly slave and keeper of a livery) informs the reader that even sleeping unshackled comes with consequences. James’ singing voice summons The Virginia Minstrels and a surface agreement is made – common decency in exchange for black face and a fondling of the mind’s area without consent. Our introduction to Master Henderson expands upon this lack of consent as Henderson runs a brutal sawmill and has been raping little Sammy since she was pre-menstrual (again, I urge the reader to explore the phonetic kinship of menstrual & minstrel). Sammy runs with Jim and is eventually a casualty of stripped femininity, stripped lineage, stripped safety, stripped language. Working with wood from sun up to sun down and finally meeting her end as she is shot while attempting to escape across a body of water; she is a casualty of slavery. Jim and Norman’s arrival onto a riverboat reveals the machine’s crazed engine – a slave named Brock in charge of feeding coal to the boiler and making the boat…go. Through Jim and Norman’s interactions with Brock, Everett makes a finite point – the system is unsustainable; no one thing (coal), person (hydro-power), place (wood) can satisfy this beast.

“One must say yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.” -James Baldwin

– The Beauty– Jim and Huck are jolted back together following the explosion and sinking of the riverboat. James’ desire is made clear – he wishes to be reunited with his wife and daughter. However, the means of acquiring them has also been made clear – unsustainable, treacherous, a feeding of an insatiable beast. The duo return to Hannibal and in Jim’s old cabin they do not find Sadie or Lizzie, but rather a new slave couple by the names of Cotton (go figure) and Katie. It is as though they’ve returned to a scene from Jordan Peele’s Get Out. But though the scene is the same, neither Jim nor Huck are. They have gained a new knowledge about how the world works, how Hannibal Lecters are born of a naughty child’s Christmas gift, how blindness can be both a gift and a weapon, how passing doesn’t keep one from passing away, how mention of a breeding house can drive a man mad or crash him into sanity. We can see the dots, the zeros and the ones and we know (almost immediately) that Shonda Rhimes did an excellent job at depicting a grown-child Huck and a hair-touched Olivia Pope. Jim can no longer offer Huck the gift of blindness and so he offers him possibly the next best thing(s) – the gifts of truth and choice. As Everett informs the reader of the impending Civil War, Huck is now armed with the truth of paternity coupled with the truth of societal workings. Jim learns through Sammy and Katie that 🎵 nothing even matters 🎶 past the realization that the vulnerable portals of life can be sold, maltreated, and bred. This system does weird, nasty things with the ideals of consent, rights and wrongs. In 2025 it seems like a far-off concept, something in the past too terrible to see the light of day. In 2025, Everett is telling the reader to get their head out of their asses; the oldest professions (prostitution, scamming/thieving, lay preaching and soldiering) prove staying power if nothing else. And, Civil War is already amongst us. Who else would they put to work and to war if not the descendants of wood and water?

–The Rest– James lays to rest the ideology of ‘doing good for goodness sake’ and awakens the notion of ‘faith without works is dead’. Both the overseer Hopkins and Judge Thatcher receive lessons before their penalties are enacted out by Jim’s hands and faculty. Jim makes it to the Graham breeding farm and sets the surrounding cornfield ablaze ultimately leading to the farm owner’s own penalty and the freeing of the slaves. Iowa is the landing spot for James, Sadie, Lizzie and a few other escapees. When asked of his nomenclature, James offers up yet another lesson that Everett leaves open-ended. Here’s my take: whether you are walking with the King James version of yourself or standing up in the first-name only, every version of you deserves to know you are there. And the novel seems to fall into a sort of calm resting place…on a bed of structured (yet creaking) wood cradled by a churning (yet steady) water. Percival Everett did a thing with the novel James. A Go(o)d thing.

👓 This Book Review is dedicated to my paternal grandfather and very own JAMES P. EASTER. Love you PahPah Perry! ♥️

Work(s) Cited:

Baldwin, James. (1963). The Fire Next Time. United States: Dial Press.

Everett, Percival. (2024). James. United States: Doubleday Publishing.

Waheed, Nayirrah. (2013). “The Color of Low Self Esteem”. Salt. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Window Pains: A Book Review – “Holler, Child” by LaToya Watkins

There are eleven heart-moving stories placed into this collection by Texas author LaToya Watkins. Each story is tossed at the reader in an endearing manner; a manner that sets the reader up to succeed – to catch, to understand and to answer back truthfully with their own mental and emotional grasp and release. There are recipes beyond the eleven windows we gaze through in Holler, Child. Recipes that have been lost, and found again. But first, there is the pain that must be drudged through – the questions that linger on the window seal like sharp shards of glass. How did the stovetop get so dusty? When did the inhabitants decide that these walls were suffocating? Why would grandmother store the recipes in the bedroom instead of the kitchen? What did she mean by…a pinch of nutmeg? Watkins’ stories are a pinch of this and a pinch of that; made successful by the atmosphere(s) of home and the pursuit of love and somebody (or some thing) knowingly or unknowingly helping you decipher a recipe written by hand on oxidized paper in ancestral dialect. Sure, we might holler in joyful glee when we get the recipe right. But, we can holler too, when we need some help.

The Mother – The first of the stories is of mother and only son. We journey through beckoned (even reluctant) storytelling as the glass gets thin enough to shatter. And we see that stories are not just what we make them but also for whom they are made. Watkins traverses the story of an only son’s coming to be and how he is to be remembered once gone. There are a number of characters who make it through the mother’s threshold soliciting the narrative of the only son, but the one that elicits validation (true or otherwise) is the only one left who can return the sentiment.

Time After – The eleventh and last story in Watkins’ collection is titled without fault and moves like a song. Alluding softly to the collection’s first story, we are again in search of an only son – his story and its edits; the oracles being the women in his life sharing a good part of his genealogy, childhood and rearing. Time After seems to function as a purposeful conclusion to this collection with the ever-present theme of understanding scaffolding the tales. It pulls at the parts of you that deeply ask why, wishes things could be different, hopes to make a fool out of both patterns and time. But because no one has ever really truly been successful at making a fool out of time, we lament to being present for those we truly love (time after time).

This is a necessary collection of short stories with timeless depth and span. Stories two through ten are the guts and the oozing filling in the dermis that are stories one and eleven. Watkins brings her characters to life during both the pinnacles and valleys of their evolution. Each story has a holler mechanism – the jubilation at the end of the search, the tribulations surrounding the time in-between, the peeling back of scar tissue to reveal the real wound. The recipes function as both the tracing backwards and the leaning forward. Like a string of museum exhibits – all eleven lined up in a row; a separation of thick glass between the exhibit (the story) and the voyeur (the reader, sans ick). We look through the glass window of each exhibit while Watkins guides us through the joy, the journey and the pain. Though we may not be left with a cake, or pie or even bread, we are indeed left with a homemade holler heard through the thickest windowpains.

Work Cited: Watkins, LaToya. (2024). Holler, Child. Tiny Reparations Books.