And because this concept of blackness can be so expansive and complex and maybe at times unwieldy, what kind of frameworks do you draw upon to ground you? Yeah, unwieldy is a really great word for it.

One of the central frameworks I'm really working in is Black feminism and thinking about how do we think expansively about what family is? Because the core of what I'm thinking about when I engage in different communities is really about what it means to be a descendant.

And I had to really investigate the ways that like descendant ancestor relationships are not this like objective fixed thing they've been understand differently in like different parts of the world and especially in the diaspora and so i'm thinking often about like how have black feminists shown us the ways that family is an expansive and complicated and broad concept beyond the kind of typical genealogical here's your like biological mother and biological father and going that way and i think especially for black communities something that I knew intuitively as a Black American but sort of couldn't put my finger on is that family has always been more than just blood relationships.

I think for lots of brown people, you have the cousin who you find out is your mom's best friend's kid.

There's actually no blood relationship.

But that person is still your family.

And that's the person that you would still think of as like in generations as your descendant.

Can you tell us more about that and just how that process works for you?