How to Find a Missing Girl can be fun, silly, and fast-paced and defined by grief and hope. The feelings are still there. They can co-exist. I know they do.
It wasn’t until writing Amina’s story that I truly learned to believe that I am not at fault for not reacting a certain way to an event that should never have happened.
In multi-voiced, first-person poems and dramatic scratchboard illustrations created by my son, Jeffery Boston Weatherford, Kin conjures the voices and stories of our ancestors and their contemporaries on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
I hope the proliferation of fantasy books grounded in African societies will create familiarity for readers and a new shorthand. I hope it will inspire readers to learn more about the real places and people that underpin the stories.
These attacks, these attempts from a system that does not value so many of us creates a world where the outcome of these actions negatively affects us all, regardless of race, ethnicity, whether you’re queer or trans or not, whether you’re currently disabled or whether you’re currently not.