Writing “I Have a Secret”

Recently, my essay, “I Have a Secret,” appeared in Down Yonder ‘Zine, and Adam Jordan asked me some questions about the essay on Twitter. I wrote this essay back in the summer of 2020 following the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery and the accosting of Christian Copper in Central Park as he was birdwatching. It is one of the most personal essays I have written, and it is one that, when I reread it, my emotions get the better of me and I start to tear up, partly because I think about my kids and the future. Today, I want to take a moment and discuss this essay, expanding some on the questions that Adam asked me during our Twitter chat.

Adam asked me, “What are your hopes for the reader?” When thinking about this question, I also thought about who is the “reader.” Here, I think back to Charles Chesnutt, Frank Yerby, and others who wrote for white readers. In his journal, Chesnutt wrote, “The object of my writings would be not so much the elevation of the colored people as the elevation of the whites.” I think about Lillian Smith who wrote for whites, hoping to get them to see that the same frame they put on others is the frame that they put around themselves. For me, these are who I think about when I think about the “readers” of my essay.

I also think about myself as a “reader.” Whenever we write, we write to discover more about ourselves just as…