Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures, by Natasha Marin.
Where I learned of the varieties of what safety, love, and origin mean for Black people. Hearing that we are not a monolith has become so common as to be automatically understood sometimes, but it is not, and it takes books like these to remove one from their automatic thinking of us wanting the same thing when, on these pages, the evidence is found that what is safe for me may not be safe for them, and what is safe to them is probably not love to her, and what is definitely love to her is so far from what his origin story means to him.
This collection of short narratives is so honest. It is so honest and candid, and I saw some people’s hearts in its pages. It is heartbreaking — the simplicity of what would constitute safety for Black people and how we, inhabitants of the “greatest nation on Earth,” choose not to provide that when it is well within our abilities. But it is equally as riveting to read the ways that my people are committed to creating this world for ourselves, and as always, when we do that, everyone benefits. Amazing how we keep giving when it feels like we shouldn’t. Almost like the land grew from us or something.