A lot of us feel like our lives should have come with instructions. Or maybe they did, but we lost the only copy a long time ago.

I come from a long line of strong Black women. My grandmother used to share stories about how she caused “trouble” in town when a white man hired her to put up the displays in his store window. At that time, all the Black women in town worked as domestics in the homes of white ladies, or in the...

Black people are so accustomed to being ignored and invisible that a simple acknowledgement—a simple I see you—from a peer goes a long way.

If a friend were in my situation, I would have seen their failings as human. So why hold someone to an unforgiving standard just because that someone is me?

Oh, the comfort—the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—having neither to weigh thoughts nor mea­sure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then...

I want to tell you a story about being new—and how sometimes it’s fun and sometimes it isn’t. Once there was a second grader named Paul. In September, he moved to a new town, had a new teacher and a new class and a brand-new desk. There was a boy sitting across from him with bright red hair,...