On This Birthday

How a birthday became the heartbeat of my debut novel.

My mother, grandmother, and myself.

Today is my birthday. I am older now than I ever imagined I might become, older than the boy who stood in the pitfalls of America and thought he might never climb out.

I am often unsure whether he actually did.

But what I am sure of is that I am graying—mostly on my chin, also faintly on the crown of my head. I welcome it. In fact, I dreamt of it. It means I am still here. Despite it all. I am still here. I learned very young that in a world of genocides and George Stinney Jr.’s—age is truly a gift. Time itself is so precariously ripped from the hands of those who deserve it most.

This is why birthdays matter so deeply to me. They are more than markers of time; they are moments to honor existence, to pause amidst the chaos and affirm the beauty of simply being. This year, that celebration took on a weight I had not anticipated. My publisher and I chose this day—my day—to unveil the cover of my next book, my debut young adult novel. This Thing of Ours. It is the most crucial and dear book of my career. But as I was thinking of my plan to post the cover, to write about the book’s importance, to hope that people might support my work, my mind kept returning to one particular birthday. My thirteenth. The photo main I’ve added—of myself, my mother, and my grandmother—is from that day. I am not sure what caught me off guard about the memory. Perhaps it was the way it felt suddenly sharp, like sunlight reflected in the corner of my eye. Perhaps it was the knowledge that this was the last birthday I can remember the three of us together.

We went to a hibachi restaurant that year, one of those places where the chef works the grill like a stage, spinning knives and tossing shrimp into the air as if they were catching stars. It was my grandmother’s first time at one, and she was all wide-eyed wonder, laughing louder than anyone else at the flames that shot up from the onion volcano. I remember how she clutched her purse tightly in her lap, the way she always did in new places, like the simple act of holding on could anchor her in the unfamiliar.

The last time I’d been to a hibachi restaurant was for my elementary school graduation—a rare treat, one I had begged for endlessly. Afterward, I’d always asked if we could go back. My mother would tilt her head, smile softly, and say, “One day.” I knew what that meant. “One day” was code for “very doubtful.” Not when the electric bill was due or when I had grown out of my sneakers again.

But that thirteenth birthday, she made sure we went. My mother had a way of bending the world when it mattered most. She found ways to conjure miracles, especially on birthdays and holidays, even if it meant stretching herself thinner than anyone should have to. My relationship with her has always been complicated—layers of love and ache and misunderstanding. But on days like that, she managed to make the complications disappear, if only for a while.

I can still see her there, leaning forward as the chef spun an egg on the flat-top, her hands folded under her chin as if she were praying. Maybe she was. Maybe we all were in our own way, whispering our silent gratitudes into the grill-smoked air. My grandmother laughed again, this time at herself, as a piece of zucchini landed on her plate with a thunk. “Oh, Lord, look at that!” she said, as if hibachi was the most incredible magic she had ever witnessed.

My mother and grandmother also had a complicated relationship. Some could easily recall it as hostile, the kind of sharp-tongued exchanges that seemed more like muscle memory than conversation. But an older me prefers the word complicated. Hostility feels reductive, a word wielded by those who see only the edges of a thing and not its depth. Complicated allows for texture—for the love braided with the hurt. Most of my relationships are complicated these days.

But on that day, there were no disagreements, no tense moments, nothing to harp on or bury later under the weight of silence. We just celebrated the fact that I was still here. Older. Growing. Learning. It was as though the three of us had silently agreed to suspend the usual tension, to let the air clear long enough to hold space for joy.

That was the last birthday with the three of us in that way, the last time we sat at a table together and shared something as simple as laughter at a flick of a spatula or the drama of fire blooming on a grill. I realized, as I was thinking about this forthcoming novel, just how much I held onto that birthday. It wasn’t conscious at first, but the traces are there—sprinkled throughout the pages like breadcrumbs leading back to that table, back to the three of us. The way my grandmother marveled at the chef, like she’d been invited to witness some sacred ritual. The way my mother worked sorcery to make that day possible. And me, caught between them, absorbing it all like a sponge, desperate to hold onto their love in all its complicated forms.

Perhaps that’s what writing is, in the end: a quiet rebellion against forgetting. An attempt to press the fleeting into permanence, to take a moment that once was and make it live again, if only on the page. In This Thing of Ours, I wrote my mother and grandmother into the spaces between the lines. Folded their laughter, their stubbornness, their love—complicated and messy and real—into the story. Not because I planned to, but because I had to. Because I wanted to keep that birthday alive.

This novel is not just a story—it is a reflection of our complicated world, our tangled relationships, and the ways we must rise above and lean into those complications all at once. It is about navigating the jagged edges of human connection and finding something tender within the fractures. It is a love letter to resilience and to the moments of grace we carve out despite everything trying to take them from us.

It is meant to honor my grandmother, who taught me to write, who showed me that words have the power to anchor us, to shape our realities, to save us when we need saving most. It is meant to honor my mother, who taught me never to give up, who conjured miracles out of thin air when the world gave her little to work with. Together, they taught me that life, for all its difficulties, can be survived with love, with courage, and with the willingness to keep reaching for something more.

This novel is also a call to honesty and reckoning. It is my attempt to create an open dialogue about the things that weigh on us: book bans that stifle truth, racism that poisons us all, homophobia that isolates, classism that divides, friendship that sustains, literature that invites, romance that builds, and community that reminds us what is possible. It is, without question, the most important book of my career so far.

I am so excited for you to step into the world of this novel, to meet Ossie, Naima, Luis, Grandma Alice, Ossie’s mother, and the whole community that breathes life into these pages.

Cover illustration by Erin K. Robinson.

You can read a synopsis of the book here.

I hope you will consider preordering my debut young adult novel (available wherever books are sold). Preordering books is more than just a transactional act; it’s a quiet yet profound way of shaping what stories are told, shared, and celebrated. For Black authors, preorders carry even greater weight—they send a message to publishers and booksellers that our voices, our narratives, are not just wanted but needed. Preorders determine more than shelf space; they dictate the depth of a book's life, how far its reach will extend, and whether it might become part of the cultural conversation.

For Black authors, a strong showing early on can influence how much marketing muscle a publisher lends to a project or whether it lands on bestseller lists, amplifying its visibility in ways that ripple outward. Preordering is a way to advocate—not only for an author but for the diversity of voices that make literature richer, fuller, and more reflective of the world we live in.

I want to thank you for sharing this moment with me, for celebrating my birthday, and for reminding me, time and time again, that it is beautiful to still be here. Creating, sharing, connecting. And to have you here, reading these words, considering my work, is a gift in itself.

I love y’all.

P.S. For those who want to support but don’t want to order for themselves, you can donate a copy to the Lisa Libraries (The Lisa Libraries, 77 Cornell Street, Kingston, NY 12401, Room 109). They distribute books to schools, libraries, and hospitals around the country.