Original subtitles

Hello, welcome to the fourth annual Bronx Book Festival presented by The Bronx is Reading. My

name is Shaughnessy Miller and I am one of the chairs for the Bronx Book Festival

kid lit committee. I am thrilled to introduce this panel. You're tuning into It Takes Two:

Collaborations and Craft in Young Adult Lit. This panel is moderated by Veronica Chambers.

Veronica Chambers is a senior editor at The New York Times.

She’s also a prolific author whose work spans genres. She’s co-written four New York Times

best-selling memoirs and is the author of her own critically acclaimed memoir,

Mama’s Girl. She’s the author of two recent children’s books: Shirley Chisholm is a Verb

and Finish the Fight: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote,

as well as the young adult novel, The Go-Between. She is a 2019 James Beard award winner for her

work with chefs JJ Johnson and Alexander Smalls on Between Harlem and Heaven, an Afro-Asian cookbook.

Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, her work often reflects her Afro-Latina heritage. You can

follow her on Twitter and Instagram @vvchambers. And now I will turn it over to Veronica.

Hi I'm so honored to be here tonight to be talking to this amazing panel of authors about

collaboration. The authors we have here tonight have written two of the most powerful books

that have come out in recent years, not just about race or police violence, but about friendship,

about sisterhood, about the moment that we're in. So it's my honor to introduce Kimberly Jones.

Little Shop of Stories and currently works in the entertainment industry. She lives in Atlanta,

Georgia. Welcome Kimberly. Gilly Segal spent her college years in Israel and served in the IDF. She

is currently a lawyer for an advertising agency. She lives in Atlanta, as well. Welcome, Gilly.

And Kimberly and Gilly are the co-authors of the stunning book I'm Not Dying With You

Tonight which doesn't have an exclamation, but feels like it should at the end of it um,

and then we have another pair of co-authors Maika Moulite. She's a Miami native,

the daughter of Haitian. Immigrants she earned a bachelor's from Florida State University and an

MBA from the University of Miami. When she's not using her digital prowess to help non-profits and

major organizations tell their stories online, she's sharpening her skills as a PhD student

at Howard University's Communication, Culture and Media Studies program. She’s the eldest of four

sisters and loves young adult novels, fierce female leads, and laughing. Welcome Maika. And

in the same frame with her sister, we have her co-author Maritza Moulite. She graduated from

the University of Florida with a bachelor’s in women’s studies and the University of Southern

California with a master’s in journalism and she's a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania

exploring ways to improve literacy and under resource committee communities, sorry so um if

we could actually just start so that everybody gets it on top. Do you want to share your social

media handles since I didn't have them and that way everybody knows how to connect with you

best? Kimberly, do you want to start? Sure, I am @KimberlylatriceJones on Instagram and TikTok.

On Twitter, it's @kimlatricejones and on Facebook it is @iamkimberlylatrice.

Gilly, do you want to go next? Sure the best place to reach me is Instagram. I am really r-e-a-l-l-y

dot Gilly g-i-l-l-y. I'm also on TikTok at that same really dot gilly. We both love the Toks.

Yes, you gotta talk about that. Maritza and Maike.

Um I am on all social media and that's at m a i k a m o u l i t e. I'm @maritzamoulite everywhere, m

a r i t z a m-o-u-l-i-t-e. I don't know why I was nervous to spell my own name, but I was.

Been there before. Well it's such an honor to have you both here and I don't know if I said it,

but Maika and Martiza are the title, are the co-authors of One of the Good Ones. I

don't know that I said the title of your book um. So I wanted to start with Kimberly and

Gilly and I wanted to ask the same question of my Maika and Maritza as well and which is,

how did you decide to collaborate on this book? So if each of you can start. Do you want to start Kim

and Gilly and then Maika and Maritza? Sure um basically what happened was, Gilly bullied me

into writing this book and that is a fact. That is not even an exaggeration. You're all welcome.

No it's um it's true. So I'm Not Dying With You Tonight was inspired by a real event that

occurred in Baltimore during the civil unrest in the wake of the um the murder of Freddie Gray and

there was a small news clip about a school bus that got trapped behind a police barricade.

And then the news moved on because what the media likes to center is the chaos and the

clickbait and not what's really happening in the community. But Kim and I are both moms

and we got really stuck on the story of that school bus and what happened to those kids.

And so we were friendly at the time. We were in a book club together at the store that Kim managed,

which is a wonderful independent bookstore called Little Shop of Stories. But we weren't such close

friends that I had her phone number. So um I knew that this I had an idea about processing

this through writing. I knew it was never a story I could tell by myself. It's a story about race

relations in America. That is not my story to tell and um I knew Kim was also a writer and so I went

to Little Shop of Stories when I knew that she was on shift and I lurked around the store waiting for

her to be free to the point where the staff was like, do we need to call someone about this? Is

this a problem? And Kim was like no no it's okay I know her. uh And I'm a lawyer by trade. My day job

is still a lawyer and so I'm used to like making, building arguments. And I had these bullet points

of like, let me convince Kim to write this story with me. And I approached her on her break and I

started rattling off my bullet points and she let me get about two bullet points into this argument

and she said, stop right there. And I like, all the blood rushed out of my face because

I was like, this is a terrible idea. She hates this. This is awful. She would never

want to do this with me. But what she actually said was, you had me at let's write together.

And we've been writing together ever since. Yeah it's funny we told that story at a college

and it was like cricket and we were like you know like Jerry Maguire? And they were just like,

what? And then we realized that that movie came out before they were born. Oh my god

yeah it's not even on Netflix, right. It doesn't pop up. Yeah so I I was I went I went to the

movies recently and saw that this year is the 25th anniversary of um of Jerry Maguire and so I was

like, oh so when we told that story and I think it was like 2019 or whatever like that was like 23

years and those kids were 18. They would they had no reference for it at all. So we officially old.

Yes but we did assign them homework of watching the movie. It's an excellent story. Yes

so it's also important for authors to get the "show me the money" line. Yeah

lots of lessons in there um. Yes so for me, Maritza and I, like

we didn't have to stalk each other because we're sisters and we know where

where we both live. If we lurk it's just because we're being annoying,

but um but yeah, so I mean this story came to us, One of the Good Ones is our second book, um and we

knew that we wanted to write a story that tackles racial injustice in America and essentially like,

we're from Miami, Florida, you know, born and raised in the county Miami-Dade, right,

even like I was born in Boston it's like whatever okay but you know for the most part part we were

born and raised in the county of Dade and um, you know, when you see things happening on a national

scale as it relates to police brutality or vigilante people taking things in their own hands,

Miami-Dade is not a stranger to that either. So we had our great aunt who passed away and we were

walking through the cemetery and we were looking at the names of some people who had passed on and

one of those names was the name of someone who a vigilante person came in and took his life. And it

was very much a moment of, you know, everyone sees these things playing out on the national scale,

but they don't realize how they these are real people, right. And this person's Miami was our

Miami, right? Like the schools that he went to our youngest sister went to at that same point.

So it was something that we carried with us, but we knew that we wanted to tackle this story of

racial injustice, but by focusing and looking at it through the lens of a young queer girl

and a young queer Black girl because there are definitely times when we say Black Lives Matter,

but it feels like it's only certain Black lives that matter. And we wanted to uh to unpack that

and essentially really look at, you know so many people call themselves allies and what does that

mean right, when you say you're an ally and we um untangled this by looking at it through a lens

of sisterhood. Because it's our main character's sister who embark on this journey in her memory.

I love that um. I saw that when you said the word allies, both Gilly

and Kimberly were nodding. So should we talk a little bit about allies and how they exist in

fiction and how you imagine them? Um do you guys want to jump in, Gilly and Kim?

Yeah so so how we imagine an allies is is not um, you know, Gilly and I don't write morality tales.

We don't write fantasy. We write contemporary. So we don't write things as they should be, which a

lot of people have suggested that we should. We write them as they are. We write it as as as as

it is, people's real lived experience. And so allyship does not often come without bumbling

around, without making mistakes. This idea that we should write allyship as if though the person just

is like, the allyship um convention center and has all access to all the resources necessary to

do it with precision and perfection. And also you want to really know what grinds my gears?

This this notion of perfectionism, that if you make a mistake, that any human is without flaw,

and then if you make a mistake that we should offer you no road to redemption

to correct that mistake. You can have all the good intentions in the world and still screw it up. And

that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try again and that means we shouldn't bombard you with hate mail

to the point where you don't try again. Where we fear you out of even attempting to

know when someone makes a mistake, you know. I look at it like this: as a as a Black person who

has taken up the charge um to fight against, you know, to participate in anti-racism work

then I don't expect every Black person to do it, but I took on the responsibility to do it and so

when someone is working within the framework of allyship and make a mistake, it's not it's not my

job just to call them out. It's my job to pull to them to the side quietly like an auntie in church,

hand them a peppermint and say, this is what you did wrong, beloved. And this is how we fix that.

And it's okay because I understand your intent and this is how we move forward and this is where the

mistake was. So the allies in our books are not perfect. They're making huge sweeping mistakes

um. Our book Why We Fly is almost centered around this notion of the ally charging in thinking that

they have all the right answers and getting it wrong and needing support on their journey um to

seek a road to redemption and to to get it right and to make fix the mistakes um that they make.

I don't want to live in a world where we tell people here's the perfect page of how to do it and

if you're doing it like this then that's okay, but if you're not, you can't. Because what you will do

is, you will lose allies out of fear of making the wrong mistake and not being offered a wrong road

to redemption when you make the mistake. And I can tell you this as a as a Black woman

um as I work in allyship with other groups as we saw with you know stop Asian hate and the the

growth and you know abuse we've seen you know um towards Jewish communities and things like that,

you know, the first thing I learned to do as allies to shut up and listen. Listen to the

community that I am supposed to be supporting and ask them how would you like for me to stand with

you. Where can I be of service? What of my service makes sense in this moment? I am I people who I

laugh sometimes even with my own work I'm like, you do know I'm not a savior right? I'm just a

person hunting solutions and wants to implement solutions on your behalf, but deity I am not.

I love all of it, especially the auntie and the peppermint point because that is so real and

I think it's something that our community has done again and again in the making of America,

you know, we've taken imperfection and moved it like one step forward with like grace. And just

to reference if by chance you're one of 12 people who didn't see it, Kimberly's amazing video from

last summer, game changer, will never forget it and Kimberly I just want to just tell you that

it is extraordinary. And also can I just ask as an aside since I'm moderating this panel?

Can I get an arc of Why We Fly because I can't wait because I'm looking like October what. Yes

I'm like since I'm here can I be down

um okay I was gonna ask Gilly, did you want to say something about allies or do you feel? Like?

I mean Kim said pretty much all of it the only thing that I would add is you know and this is

also something our second book touches on is what's the difference between an ally and an

accomplice right and and where we are in June of 2021, it's time for people to move beyond

being allies into being accomplices. And I kind of view this as an ally as someone who's like,

right on I support your cause and an accomplice is someone who is willing to put something personal

on the line to to create change and the first step of course is listening to the community

that you're attempting to be an accomplice to and doing it in a way that that community desires,

but the second thing is it's not enough to just say, I support that, I'm in favor. The question is

what is it that you can actually do to move that forward even if there's a personal toll to it.

Whether that's speaking up at your place of work and saying I'm looking around this table and we

don't have a diverse group of people here or being at the table with a diverse group of people and

taking up space that should belong to someone right, so all the steps of justice diversity,

equity, inclusion, really living those even if it means that your superiors might have a challenge

with that. It could be within your own family right speaking up within your own family. So

that's the only thing I would add about moving from allied to accomplice. I love that

um Maika and Maritza I have a different question for you which I'm also going to ask Gilly and

Kimberly is what would you say your co-author's biggest strength is? Yeah that's good okay so

okay okay so I think that my co-author's biggest, oh my god, what is my biggest strength? is

oh okay I got one. I've got three. But I've got one So I would say that like I will joke around

and say that Maika is like, we have an agent, but also like my agent, like our agent and that comes

from her being my older sister and like the switch doesn't turn off and I really appreciate that like

I know that she always has my back and our back and is it like afraid to put herself out there

for me. I really really appreciate that. And then also just uh in a craft or on a craft level

um world building is something that I could always get better at. If it was up to me like

all characters would just sit in an empty room and just like say things or like think deep thoughts

and make us like really into like oh what's going on and stuff. So um yeah I I would say that yeah.

Yeah so I would say for sure um one of Maritza's strengths is she's a plotter, right, so she's very

much like, we have an agenda, we know what's happening. I'm kind of like let's let's write

and see what happens. Which is a terrible way to write when you're writing with another person. You

have to know where the story is going or you know you're about to write like a 5,000 page tome, but

Maritza very much is really good at um keeping us on task in terms of like craft and knowing like,

here are the beats that we need to hit. Um and then also Maritza is really good like

a lot of the things that I want to say I don't say it and I say it to Maritza first which is great.

So I'm not one of those people that's on Twitter wilin' out even though my instinct is to do it,

but I go to Maritza first and she's like don't put that anywhere just, you don't need to put that. So

that's really good, but I did want to answer your question about allyship really quickly,

um. You know I think it's really great that we have this like evolving language around allyship,

right, like you know and it's not about allyship. It's not about um it's not just about being an

accomplice in all of this um for our characters in One of the Good Ones. You have different

folks considering what an ally means in different, excuse me, in different contexts. So because

our main character is a young Black lesbian girl, her family members in the wake of

her death have to consider what it means when you say you're an ally to the LGBTQ+

community. Are you just saying, yes oh my gosh, you're so brave, I appreciate everything. And then

when it comes time to actually take some action you are quiet and you don't say anything? And

also understanding that even when you mean well, you're gonna get things wrong and understand that

even in those moments when you meant the best it might not be received that way. And to realize

that the way that people interact with you will be based on how they felt harmed. And if you are

put off by that, you know, um maybe initial uh reaction that you get to your wrong whatever

it was or something that could have been done better, then you might have to reevaluate like

well, what does that mean? Does that mean that I only feel comfortable being an ally if I can

get everything right? Because you won't. Am I only comfortable being an ally if nobody calls

me out on whatever it is that I did? Am I only and uh uh comfortable with being an ally if you know

I am the one who's in charge and I don't want to listen to somebody who's living this experience

and literally telling me that what I'm doing is causing harm right? So like there are different

ways I think in how we um approach, but also understanding that it does need to come from

a place of people are going to get it wrong, but what does it look like when they make that work

and understand that sometimes when you do get it right it's enough for somebody to be completely

put off by you forever right? Like you just may be like you got it wrong, nobody wants to handle

you anymore, deal with you, and kind of like navigating with that. I don't it's not that

it's fair but it's um it's one of the the things that happen, but understanding that if you are

trying to be an ally in the way that you say that it's not going to be a seamless process. It is

going to be messy and sometimes feelings will get hurt. But it's constant work and um finally what

I'll say is like it's really weird like when I hear people say like, you know, I'm an ally or

I'm an accomplice or whatever. It's like I don't know, people don't talk like that in real life.

If I'm with somebody like, you know, I come with my friend and she's white and I'm bringing her

someplace people kind of looking at her like, why is she here? I'm like now, she's good she's good.

Right so you have to understand that you're not going to have like an ally badge that someone's

going to be, they're one of the good ones you can trust them it's like no this person is good

and you know you kind of have to navigate with with that so I I love that so much I

I say like this I say the same thing I'm like you don't get and also you don't get to stick the ally

badge or the woke badge on yourself right. Like I don't decide if I'm an ally. That's

for the community that I'm seeking to be an ally to to decide and if I'm not safe to them

I can't change that by saying that I am I have to earn that.

Yeah I love that I love the badge metaphor, it's very powerful um. I wanted to ask Gilly

what um Kimberly's best quality is. What's her biggest strength as a coach?

I really love this question. I really love this question because a crucial part of our partnership

is that we say we lean into each other's strengths and shore up each other's weaknesses. So by far

Kimberly's greatest strength as a writer is she's a master of dialogue and pacing

uh, which is not a surprise now that you've talked to her for a few minutes. Like she's incredibly

witty and incredibly um quick and sharp and brilliant and that comes across on the page really

beautifully. She also comes from a screenwriting background where, you know, you don't have 500

pages to get to the point. You have an hour and 20 minutes and so working with her is a gift because

she just moves that pace along and she's got that crafty, snappy dialogue down like a charm.

That's great. Kimberly, what would you say?

I would say Gilly actually knows how to write books which I don't um which is...

I was in our pages and pages of dialogue because I'm a screenwriter and she would be like this is a

script, not a book um and so what she though what she is really um and she's got so many qualities,

let me just try to categorize them really fast um. What she's really beautiful at is painting

a picture um, making you feel like you're in the room and and knowing what it smells like and what

it looks like and like who's around and how that is making them feel and what it takes for them

to get from, you know, how hard it is to get a character from one side of the room to the other.

It's like way harder than people realize like just to get them from one place to another

and to do that in a beautiful way. And she is brilliant at that like figuring out why they would

get there. How they get there. What that looks like. How what that sounds like. How to do that

and make it so that the the person reading the book can understand that she really is a painter

when it comes to words. And so yeah she's absolutely brilliant at that ,but also

Gilly is way better just in terms of our business life. Gilly is way better at adulting than I am

I am. I I was literally not even jokingly a circus clown that's not a metaphor like, I was actually

in Ringling Brothers and that is how I live. I am a legit circus clown in real life all the

time. I'm irresponsible. I'm an adult baby and so Gilly is really good at adulting on our behalf,

but I would say we balance that because she's good at making sure we're like on time and doing what

it is we're supposed to do and meeting deadlines and emails are getting sent and all of that,

but I'm the networker. I'm like, I'm gonna go out here and get us this interview. Let me go

talk to this man. She's like, what man? You know, that man. No I don't know that man. I don't know

that man in five minutes so you know, but once you do that then someone has to be responsible

and follow through and send an email and make sure that we know what time was supposed to be there,

that the publicist is on board and all that stuff. So yeah she's a brilliant painter of words, but

she's also like really dope at being a grown-up. I love that. I aspire to be both of those things,

a brilliant painter words and dope at being a grown-up. One day, one day um. I wanted to,

you know, I feel like this is such a weird time as, you know, we get to wherever we are

in this pandemic and, you know, a phrase that you hear again and again is "what is time."

So I wanted to talk about time with both of you, both sets of authors,

in regards to your book. And so first for Kimberly and Gilly. How did 2020 deepen the

lens of this book given that you wrote this book in 2019? And then in 2020 we had the

biggest protest movement in American history and some parts of the world global history.

You know, I think I think we wish we had written a historical novel, but it it never

was right. And interestingly enough about when the book sold um, we had people asking us like,

do you think this is going to be relevant in a year when it comes out? And we were like,

have you met America? Um so how did 2020 deepen it? I mean it's it's it was in some ways it was

very jarring, right, to see sort of scenes that we had written in the book literally come to life,

but I think also those scenes have been happening in smaller and sort of more pocket ways forever,

right, since the founding of this country and so uh there are pieces and parts of the book that are

as relevant as ever and I what's different now, is that it was seen on a wider scale.

Oh Kimberly, you're muted. My bad um, it's funny because I don't even think

our book really like picked up steam of interest until 2020. I mean we had

marginal success um in 2019. You and I like to joke to say that, like, we were, you know,

we spent 2019 pretty much kind of on like the chitlin' circuit of authors, you know, and so.

I hate you and I love you. It's amazing. That was awesome.

Um you know, we, you know, we but you know it's funny because we we love the chitlin' circuit

because that's where all the cool people are. Teally honestly um but you know we we were kind

of like mid-listers if you will in 2019 and and we did get lucky and have a few big events like

BookCon and stuff like that, but for the most part we were with all the kind of like midlist authors

and touring and excited about that because it's a blessing to be on the road when you're an author,

you know. There's a certain level of privilege to do that even if you're not one of the superstars,

you know, and so, you know, we had enough success. I think our publisher was happy with us

um, happy with where we were, but we weren't the superstar authors, you know what I mean?

But then in 2020 when we had the global civil unrest of 2020 and everyone started looking for

resources and tools to help themselves navigate, I'm Not Dying With You Tonight

kind of became a no-brainer um because it's it sets smack dab in the middle of civil unrest

and what that looks like and what that feels like. And so it gained a new sense of relevancy.

We hit the New York Times bestseller list a year after our release, a full year after our release,

um because of the relevancy of the time um. It's you know sometimes there's a there's a book that

reflects the times, but sometimes there's a book that's for the times. And I felt like this was a

book that was for the times um, and like Gilly said, I wish it wasn't you know. I wouldn't

it wasn't I wish that you know we didn't need it anymore. I wish that it was like, oh we wrote this

beautiful piece of historical fiction about the way things were um, but it's not and it's still

relevant and it's still happening. And, you know, especially for me um, you know, in my charge of

life like it's more relevant than ever, you know, for, I tell people all the time, for every case

that you hear about, I hear 20. And for every 20 that I hear, there's a thousand that I don't know

of um, that I'm hearing from other activists that I'm talking to around the nation, you know. And so

it stays relevant unfortunately unfortunately also let's let's be real. Kim made a video that spoke

to the moment with such extraordinary power and strength I mean this is as long as I've known her,

this is who Kim is. That she's been this activist, you know, there there are elements sort of that

resonate through the book because that's who she was back in 2015 when we started writing it,

but How Can We Win was so beautifully powerfully, you know, like I said she's sort of brilliant at

encapsulating things in that way. So I mean clearly that was also an enormous part of this

book, reaching people you know. I I even though where the audience isn't live with us in this

moment, I think it's so important to just take a moment to remind people to write the book you feel

you have to write, that you feel needs writing. I I just applaud all of you for doing that

um and I think, you know, it's hard like the fact that some people were saying you will this

Black lives matter still be relevant when you were working on this years ago is isn't incredible so I

think that level of learning how to trust yourself as an author is a huge leap and we shouldn't just

bypass that because it's tremendous inside work you know. Angela Davis once said freedom is an

inside job and I think that for authors that is especially true. Yeah and it's true of Why We Fly,

too, because we have the same thing from Why We Fly. People were like, you're gonna write

a book about taking a knee? That, isn't that over? Aren't people not doing that anymore? Are athletes

really still getting involved in activism? Like when that comes out and is it still gonna be

good and so you know it it's like man we we want these books to be around. We want to be failures

at these times we would love to fail at these topics. We don't want to be successful at these

topics. But they still, you know, even just as recently as a few months ago when the young ladies

took a knee and the newscaster said what he said and, you know, there's there's still conversation

about is Kap ever going to get a job again you know? And um you know, so it stays true, but

sometimes, too, the more specific you are, the more global the thought um because even

though this is abou,t Why We Fly is about two cheerleaders who take a knee, the real theme is

about athletes and activism and how we respond to them and how we treat them. I mean you're

talking now we're having conversations about the Olympics banning anything BLM at the Olympics and

we just recently lost, you know, an athlete who was a crusader in this fight. And still,

you know, there's to me there's no photo more striking um than the photo from the Olympics

um with the with with with the fist in the air. And so it's significant and it's important and

it's relevant and so even if it becomes a story of, you know, we felt like even if it becomes a

story of people are not taking a knee anymore at this moment, it's still important to tell

that story. It's still important to put it on the page and it's still important that we talk

about the times of the day and I'm going to say this because I'm so wordy, I'm so sorry you guys,

but one thing that's like key and critical and essential that we have to think about is when we

talk about the classics, right. We talk about all the things that they want us to read in school,

Lysistrata and, you know, The Great Gatsby and all of the classics. The part that people miss,

the part that people miss that I think people miss that is most important is that those stories

were told in the truths of the day and the reason we consider them classics now is because they

cemented a time and a sentiment that was so relevant, not only when they were being told,

but that it allows us to see history in a more beautiful and painted way 20, 30, 100, 200 years

later. And so authors of today are responsible about doing that for our great-great-grandkids

and our great-great-grandkids grandkids to capture this moment. When I was doing work

on reconstruction, I read W. E. B. Du Bois books because I know he lived it

and I knew no book that I could read on reconstruction was going to be more relevant

than what he wrote when he lived it. So 50 years from now when some kid is talking about writing

a paper about Colin Kaepernick, they can read Why We Fly and hear the voices of today. Absolutely,

you know, and there's a great historian named Martha Jones who wrote a book about Black women

voting called Vanguard and one of the things she talks about is how you have to build the room

for Black history. That the room doesn't actually exist. That people like DuBois and all of those,

you know, Ida B. Wells, they were literally building a room for ideas that didn't exist. Um

Maika and Maritza, I wanted to ask you guys about time because how did 2020

where were you when you in that point with your book and how did the last year sort of shape

your vision of the work that you created and the work that you want to make going forward?

So 2020 was obviously a very difficult year for everyone um, you know,

we lost some family members and so many people were just siloed away from each other

and just trying to get by. So it was extremely jarring to witness some of the themes and

motifs that we included in our own work, you know, like in in real life. But that was also

a reminder that like so many of the the, not the highlights, but the the the major moments of 2020

weren't new. They were new individuals, we were adding new names, but these these terrible things

that have happened at the hands of police and vigilantes who feel they have the right

to take lives, that that is something that has been happening for for centuries. So you know

people have pointed out that because of the pandemic for example most of us were holed up

inside and unable to go anywhere and we had nowhere else to look when you saw someone

attacking a man, a Black man, in broad daylight. We had nowhere to go, we had nothing to talk about

when we were discussing a young woman, a young Black woman, shot and killed in her own home

sleeping, you know. Like these were things that you could not look away from like we didn't have

the uh the mundanity it's not a word, the mundane to to distract us from these things you know um.

And even when um One of the Good Ones finally came out in January 2021 um, like by the time we

submitted our final edits we had, we we we wrote down additional names in the list of people that

we were acknowledging were here are no longer here because of terrible injustices and countless other

names that we do not even know you know um. And and and that's just such a terrible thing,

but as Gilly and Kim have said like these books aren't um they're they're they're showing what is

what's happening you know. The the things that we have been writing about aren't surprises to many

people. There are people out there who have not been paying attention or as much attention and

it seems like this has come out of nowhere or it's very convenient that we luckily have these books.

Like no, these have been conversations that have been going on for years and years and years and um

more people are paying attention now, but the work has always been being done, you know,

whether or not thousands and millions and billions of people are paying attention.

Yeah and even within One of the Good Ones, we talk about time like it was important for us because we

know that you can't have a conversation about race relations in America today without taking a look

at the past. So it was really important for us to have our characters look at the state of the

country through the lens of their ancestors from the past. So you have um you know their

family members as they're going through the Great Migration, as they're going through World War II,

where you had Black folks who had already enlisted for World War I thinking yeah, when we come back

they're gonna treat us like citizens because we fought for this country. No, and then World War II

came around it was like we're a little reluctant to go and fight for you again because you didn't

treat us right. So then we had the double v for victory campaign right where you're fighting the

enemy without an enemy within. So it was important for us to incorporate these things that we did not

learn when we were growing up and so much of how we create modernity right, the things that um

represent the times right, like Kimberly was talking about you know The Great Gatsbys and

all of these types of books, part of that is because in the future certain books are elevated

and we want to make sure that the stories that carry some of the voices of people who look like

us are reflected in those 50s excuse me, 60, 70 years into the future and it's important for us

to make sure that it isn't only certain types of voices that are elevated and um you know I

have to be honest it's hard to talk about One of the Good Ones. It's really hard like writing this

book was an act of labor. It was love, but it was also labor. It was heavy as we carried it with us

and then when we were done and it was out into the world it was also hard and seeing

the ways that things we had written on the page were manifesting in real life, how you

had these conversations about respectability and who deserves to live and who deserves to die. And

when somebody is killed, how they are commemorated and how they're spoken of how,

we can see differences in how you know Black men are represented when the worst happens to them,

when they're brutalized. And how Black girls like Ma'Khia Bryant are discredited because of their

past, right, or what people think somebody should be what, the perfect victim should look like

so um. It's been really hard to talk about One of the Good Ones um you know whenever we we say we

have the opportunity to be on these pa- excuse me on these panels, it isn't just this like removed

thing for us right, like it's impacting people's lives and um, you know, I think the folks who

had the privilege really of not knowing what was happening and who had the privilege to turn away

and kind of coming into all of this right now, you know, in 2020 and beyond um, it might feel

a little bit jarring, but know that people have been talking about this for a very long time and

unfortunately it seems that we will continue to be talking about this for a very long time because

even as we have this one, you know, the summer of racial reckoning and people put up their black

squares slowly, it's like everyone's forgotten right you know the hashtags come out uh the BLM

hashtags and the bios come down the the the card links come down, you know. The things

move the content everything goes back to normal. But I don't want there to be a normal after this,

like I want people to know that it's up to us to make this constant change even when it gets hard.

I'm so happy that you mentioned that. I definitely had a feeling where I was like oh the black

squares are going down and the pictures of the avocado toast are back and I'm like,

some people's lies are just a little bit different um. You mentioned something that I really wanted

to address, we actually at the Times we've been working on a book for young readers about photos

of the last year of the movement, of the Black Lives Matter movement, and I had moments we went

through probably 3,000 photos for 2020 to curate them down and I had moments where I literally

would like just before I started work having seen all these images just felt so much weight and I

I think you brought up something that's really important because I think when people see

an author like any of you holding a book that's so critically acclaimed and beloved, there's

this feeling of author and celebration, but I would love it if you guys would each talk about

how you take care of yourself during the emotional labor of the book and during the hardest moments

when you like literally could barely pick yourself up from what you were facing on the page, and um

and how you dealt with that. If you want to start, Maika and Maritza, and then we'll go

to Gilly and Kim- Kimberly. Sorry, I didn't mean to shorten your name. Oh Kim is fine.

Well I love to eat to survive, so I eat. I love to procrastinate. I don't do it well, but I try and

um I just like watching joyful things like right now I'm going through Kim's Convenience and

I mean just watching a fam like an immigrant family, and that dad is basically our dad, so like

I I mean that gives me so much joy um, being able to kind of pause things and see something that

makes you happy is good, but I mean it's also important to just you know always take care of

yourself and and not as a not a retaliation or trying to bounce back against something but as

just uh being a human being in the world. Like you deserve to feel good and feel nice. Yeah um I

would say like for us, our book came out January 5th and then January 6th was the insurrection,

right, so we had this moment of extreme euphoria. The book was out, we had um, we were on Late Night

with Seth Meyers. We were like, this is amazing. And then literally not even 24 hours later we were

on a call with our agent talking about things that were happening like with our publisher. We got

off the phone it's like, the world's on fire. So that is, you know, the reality of the world that

we live in, right? You can have great personal success and achievement and then understand that

collectively what this represents for a country when people can storm your nation's capital

and say that they want a certain future where people who look like you just aren't included,

right? So it was totally jarring um for myself self-care looks like uh having a therapist.

Get a therapist if you can, um. It's really helped to be able to like unpack things that

aren't just related to like the world today, but just life in general. But it's really important to

work through your emotions with someone who is qualified um because there's just

so much heaviness in the world and sometimes that heaviness feels like a physical weight,

but it's important to make sure that you get help when you need it and to have like the community

right, like my family is a wonderful source of headache, but also love and they just, you know,

like really keep keep um keep me in a uh good spirits. And having people around you who notice

like when you are a little off, like hey, you know, maybe you know you should talk to somebody

or you should do things or let's go out and go for a walk, but all of these things together.

I think go ahead go ahead give you no go ahead baby. I think it's a cheat code to have a

co-author, too um it is completely a cheat code to have a co-author. Definitely yeah. You take

all of this journey with someone else who can be the strength when you're weak and then you can be

their strength when when they're weak and so as Gilly and I went through it and we have there,

you know, I can't think of too many days where it was like we were both just like, oh man you know

what I mean? It would be like it would be one day where you would be like psyched and like no we're

not gonna get defeated today this is you what buck up kiddo. Like we're doing good. Look at this

plan and blah blah. And then there will be days where I have to do that for her like, no no no,

it's happening, you'll see, you'll see you'll see us get the ball. But you know and so

I low-key feel bad for authors who travel this journey alone. I do and I've unfortunately had

to learn that for myself this year because I'm writing an adult non-fiction and it's

the first solo piece because everything else I've written with Gilly and I was like, I realized how

I I think I always knew how blessed I was to have her, but I think I really realized it when I had

to go it alone and was like, I mean this isn't this isn't as lit as doing it with somebody else.

Um self-care I think boundaries are the most important thing in the world. I think we get to

decide what our boundaries are and enforce them and so when you have given as much as you have

to give giving yourself permission to step back and and be at you know sort of take a break from

the conversation from the action whatever it is and not feeling bad about that. No is a complete

sentence, um which I think is like a sentence in itself is a revelation right. When I need

to step back, when I need to sort of maintain some boundaries, I do that and I say no and I

don't feel like I owe everybody on the planet an explanation for it. And just sort of I didn't own

that until I was 40 years old by the way. Like it took me a while to get to that being like,

no, thank you and that's enough. But boundaries are my form of self-care. We also are glam

junkies, so you and I love like, hair and nails and makeup, as you can see look at our nails um so

Atlanta the glam tour. I need it yes. We like we take care of ourselves when we were when we were

on tour. I would like I have these things called travel lashes right. I would like treat myself to

these like opulent expensive eyelashes for travel that made me feel good. Gilly loves a good blowout

on her hair so like every city that we landed and she had a blowout appointment that morning.

I, you know, it's like it makes her feel, you know, good and confident

and like fun and taken care of at the top of the day so we can get through the day. So we also use

our glam as part of our like self-care and like and that and that kind of stuff is like okay.

I love it. So I have one more question, but I wanted to make a note that I meant to say at the

top, but I was just so excited to see all of your faces on the screen I sort of forgot I just wanted

to say a shout out to the Bronx Book Festival. I'm such a fan of the Bronx. It's the reason why I'm

doing this and I just want to acknowledge that you know this is the perfect festival to have

this conversation because Bronx is a community with a deep history, a deep sense of culture,

music, poetry, narrative. And I just want to really give um that hometown shout out to

the Bronx um. My last question for you guys is that reading itself is a kind of collaboration

right. The best readers offer insight that we ourselves as authors might not have seen.

So I was going to ask can you each talk about what you've learned from your most passionate readers.

So whoever wants to go first. I have a great I do I have a great answer for this. So um there's

a character in I'm Not Dying With You Tonight. It's Lena Lena. Lena's boyfriend is Black um and

he we sort of thought he goes on a little bit of a journey right. He's not exactly the same character

that he um and that ends up as starts out and I think we both sort of felt like yeah

you know we're pretty confident he goes on a little bit of a journey. No one ends up perfect

because like Kim said we don't write morality plays, but we were that same group of college

kids who did not recognize Jerry Maguire we were talking about that and they brought up

this notion of Black and they pointed out that a choice that he makes at the end that we saw

as sort of redemptive they took as much more selfish and when we went back and we were like

canonically it's there right like the selfish motivation is on the page and we were like oh

first of all you girls are all right because I did not have that prescience when I was a 19 year old

child about romantic partners um, but also like I we really had seen him as having a much more

redemptive arc than these readers took away but I I get they're right. It's there it's on the page.

They were like, he did that for himself. That was not about her. We were like, oh damn okay. I love

it. Kimberly, do you have the same thought about a reader that like added something

to your understanding of the book? Yeah no I think that was the one she and I talked about that like

the whole way home. We're like dang thing, it took those girls got us together like and you know

the funny the funny part about it is you know we wrote Lena as a very strong character and she had

this unhealthy relationship essentially. And so that was one of the things that the critics

took issue with with the book um in our very early on reviews. But we said we could say

even you know as 40 something year old women, that often strong women make bad romantic choices.

That that is not an abnormality. They they they are not mutually exclusive. um to be a strong,

bright, courageous woman and then be weakened by the notion of love or make bad romantic choices.

And so you know that having that conversation with them allowed us to um unpack a lot of things,

especially since one of the things that connected Gilly and I when we first met is that we have

both divorced professional athletes and so we're like, oh we're strong women who made interesting

romantic choices and it's not a failure right. lLke making a bad choice, we are all more than

our worst mistakes, especially writing for kids like, that is my mantra for the coming year.

We are all more than our worst mistakes. No one show this to our ex-husbands. They're

both going to text us like, worst mistake eh? Sorry to my children and the children. I love a

zoom that we just have to keep between like 50 11 of us um. So Maika, Maritza, how about you?

How have the readers like elevated your understanding of your own work?

Okay first I want to say something humbling because I think it's absolutely hilarious.

One time we were at a school visit I think in Denver, and a student like runs up to us after

our presentation. We killed it. And she was like, oh my gosh you're my favorite authors.

And then we're like, whoa thanks. And she said, wait oh third favorite, third favorite.

So um I think about that sometimes and it's funny, but then also um so something that

like we've known, but we see in our work that um we get back is like the universality

of specificity. How you can have something so specific about your Haitian culture household

story, whatever, and you will get some um readers reaching out and talking about how

they know exactly what that is like because they too have a Haitian relative who did x.

But then also you have people who may not know anything about Haitian culture, for example,

but then they can still read something like Dear Haiti, Love Alaine and then get something from it,

from her best friend, from Alaine's best friend or Alaine herself or her dad who is really just

trying his best. And you know that's what a lot of parents are doing, regardless of that problem,

you know. So um that is also something that I really appreciate from the readers, the fact that

honestly and and I mean I feel like I always mention this in uh like publishing panels

and stuff, but Rudine Sims Bishop who is like the patron state of literacy studies,

she uh talks about uh windows, mirrors, glass doors, and like you know, everyone can have the

opportunity to look in a mirror and see themselves or look through and get an understanding of a

culture or uh identity that is not the same one that they share and then maybe even walk through

and like go on that journey with the characters in the story. And that just being able to know

that like I read books and did that and now there are other readers who are reading our books and

doing that is very very humbling, but in a fun way. That time also for One of the Good Ones,

something that's been really interesting is how different people will read the same part and

interpret it through different lens. So one thing that really sticks out to me is there you know our

main characters what sets off the story is that um Kezi ends up dying under mysterious circumstances

after attending a social justice rally and she's killed in police custody and her sisters go on

a journey using the Negro Motorists Green Book as their guide right. So they're traveling the

country um and interestingly when they're on the road trip they get into the car and um the

uh Kezi's girlfriend ,she's um uh maybe like white presenting

um, she puts her purse and she's about to put it in the back seat and then Jenny, the older sister,

says, put your purse in the front because if we get pulled over, you don't need to be reaching

back here when an officer comes to you. And so it's been really interesting to see how white

readers will read that and be like I had no idea. I never think about that. I never think about

you know when I'm being pulled over if my purse is behind me that this might be

interpreted as something in one way. And all of our Black readers are like, yeah we knew that

the the bag stays in front with you, like you don't need to do anything where you're, you know,

you're um you know doing anything that might say that although officer was afraid for their

well-being even though they're ones who are with the weapon. But um it's been really uh interesting

to see how the same parts get interpreted in different ways um. And it just shows how like

what we were talking about at the beginning of our conversations even when you consider yourself

an ally and you're really trying to do the work, there are just some intricacies and nuances that

you might not be aware of. And it doesn't mean that you're a bad person because you don't know,

but it's just an opportunity for you to listen and grow and move forward. Thank you so much.

I am afraid that we're out of time although I just love this mix of powerful, thoughtful

women. Thank you, Maike and Maritza Moulite, Gilly Segel and Kimberly Jones. I'm Veronica Chambers

and this is a wrap. Have a great evening. Bye. Thank you for having us. Thank you.