My publisher emailed saying the paperback of Divergent Mind is doing great, and I’m so grateful to you all. Read on for a couple updates and event announcements.
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is how none of us want to be pinned to one single aspect of our identities...to slivers of our selves. I hear this all the time from friends of color, fellow neurodivergents, and disabled creators and writers. Black editors don’t want to only edit books about race or only work with Black authors. Neurodivergent writers don’t only want to write about neurodiversity. Asian American actresses want to engage in everyday situations on screen, not only specific to their particular ethnic backgrounds.
We all want to ground down in our humanness, in our bodies, and share this experience, this strange existence. In other words, we all want to live in, and be seen in, our fullness.
I’m grateful these conversations are happening, and blooming across social media, news coverage, and in op-eds. My experience growing up immersed in a wide array of neighborhoods and communities makes me gravitate toward those with similar experiences. Finding each other sometimes feels like time travel, stopping here for a moment to connect from some future that few others have visited.
Sometimes I take to Twitter or Instagram to share these thoughts…but mostly what I think many of us crave is in-depth dialogue.
On that, a couple events:
April 18th at 4pm PT I’m interviewing HBO’s Insecure actor Neil Brown Jr. along with composer Jongnic Bontemps and director Sean Gannet about their new film, Last Night in Rozzie. Neil is such a dynamic actor, director Sean Gannett’s experience ranges from public radio to TED to film, and Jongnic (JB) is *the* composer of the era, scoring films including My Name is Pauli Murray, We Are: The Brooklyn Saints, The People v. the Klan, and The March on Washington: Keepers of the Dream. Follow us on Instagram to catch the conversation.
Then on April 22nd at 9am PT I’m being interviewed about Divergent Mind for the New Haven Public Library by activist, lawyer, and creative writing professor Melody Moezzi, beloved author of The Rumi Prescription, War on Error, and Haldol and Hyacinths. Reserve tix here.
I hope you’ll join us.
It’s meant so much to hear your questions as Divergent Mind gets legs in the world. And as you can tell, neurodivergents know worlds beyond neurodiversity ;-)
Stay well,
Jenara