Story Behind the Story

I am from huckabucks and red beans on Mondays, Zulu coconuts, and a place where Orleans is a parish, not a county.

I am from a teacher who couldn’t teach, and an electrician who wrote whenever he could—who taught me to read, to write, and to keep my hands soft.

I am from a city that drowned my childhood home—family photos, keepsakes, and the quiet hope of passing some things down.

I am from loss—and being found.

By my high school sweetheart. In so many places across the world where I have left footprints. In book after book.

I write about what survives.

About what remains when power shifts,
when homes are lost,
when names are taken and futures are rewritten.

My stories live in the space between memory and becoming—where people are reaching, falling, and finding.

I am a teacher.
A storyteller.
A mother and a nanya.

I am—and will be.