Hell of a Book

by Jason Mott

White writers don’t have to write about being White. They can just write whatever books they want. But because I’m Black . . .” I pause to look at my hands and reaffirm that, yes, I really am Black. The story checks out. “. . . does that mean that I can only ever write about Blackness? Am I allowed to write about other things? Am I allowed to be something other than simply the color of my skin?

You limit how much you invest into the world and into people. It’s a type of emotional triage.”

The past, the present, the future. They’re interchangeable when it comes to bad news. Tragedy and trauma are the threads that weave generations together.

That’s what I call “Now-stalgia.” When you know a time in your life is gonna last forever, even before the moment is over.

But only certain tax brackets get the luxury of knowing something’ll kill you and being able to choose not to do it.

He can feel the fear in his body as it tells him to run. It tells him to run and it tells him to hide. It tells him to fall down on his knees and beg not to be killed like his father was killed. It tells him to beg not to have a gun put in his back like his uncle had. It begs him not to be shot down like so many other boys and men that looked like him and then went on in life to become nothing more than hashtags and names on shirts instead of living out the lives that they were on course to live.

Laugh all you want, but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you’re told that you’re a plague on the economy, that you’re nothing but a prisoner in the making, that your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it—learning to love yourself in the middle of all that? Hell, that’s a goddamn miracle.