Black Coffee with White Friends: Cream & Sugar Book Club

[close] After the news of Ahmaud Arbery's death, I needed a way to actively rest from grieving. I didn't want to stop feeling the anger or the despair over another black life taken for no reason other than it was a life that belonged to black people. Yet, I knew that I could easily disappear down the bottomless well of emptiness—a place without air. And so, I turned to my bookshelf, and Ghost Boys met me there.

Although this book is a work of fiction, it reads as if the characters are sitting beside you telling you their whole story. Who better to tell us how to feel about Ahmaud's death than two boys who've been where Ahmaud is going? Jerome Rogers and Emmett Till are ghost boys who take us there.

When I posted about all the underlying systemic reasons that Ahmaud is dead, I never expected to receive over ten thousand comments. It isn't because I thought that ten thousand of us didn't care, I just didn't expect that more than 10,000 would be willing to listen. I was so very wrong and I'm delighted to be wrong. If you were one of the 10,000 plus who left a comment, forgive me doubting you.

But now I hope you prove me wrong again. Will more than 10,000 want to continue the conversation? I, for one, need to continue talking about all the circumstances surrounding Ahmaud's death. And Jewell Parker Rhodes, the author of Ghost Boys, has provided me endless topics to prompt a "10,000 voices" conversation.

Here's the first prompt: Do you believe in ghosts?