And I wonder, can you talk a little bit about that sort of, that situation and where you've encountered it, how it's changed, the different ways in which you've seen it?

I think there's a few different sort of trends that come to mind when you reference that passage.

The situation that you had in fifth grade seems to me to be sort of like a flat, unreflective tokenism, which I recognize as well.

And when I was in majority non-black environments and there were only a handful of other black people there, I experienced that same kind of matchmaking pressure.

I was surprised to find out, though, that when I got much older and was in grad school, there was sort of an inverted version of the section you mentioned, um, I'm referencing a professor at the MFA program that I went to who proclaimed in class that, um, that, that black people in what we might semi-ironically call rare air, uh, together tend not to partner romantically precisely because they can't really afford to alienate one another if it doesn't work out.

And one thing I read about in the book in terms of my, uh, friendship with Sasha is that, uh, being young, gifted and black fell way short of being a love, lovely, precious dream as it is, you know, built in the Nina Simone song until I shared that predicament with Sasha.

And I think having that experience and, and connecting with someone, uh, not just in this really powerful way, but in a context where there were lots of other people who may be, um, did not feel that kinship with you, made that connection feel both vibrantly exciting and kind of fraught, right? Because the possibility of losing this classmate who I not only respected as an artist, respected intellectually and really enjoyed her company, but felt genuine care, mutual support from and with getting in any circumstance where I would no longer have that kind of backup in the context that we were in together seems obviously imprudent, right? And so you do sort of start to form this interface that is still very resilient, still very strong, but sort of pointedly not romantic.

Can you talk about coming up with this exercise? Maybe just share a couple of questions that were really important to you.