Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

I read this on the recommendation of the great Roxane Gay. Like everything she recommends, it's excellent.

grant me a few free hours each day. Grant me a Moleskine pad & a ballpoint pen with some mass. Grant me your gift of this voice. Pages & pages of this voice, in a good book from a loving press. & grant me a great love, too. Grant a way to provide for my love. Like, a tenure-track job at a small college in the Midwest.

Wicker draws the reader in with this likable, conversational-confessional frankness. His project isn't to emphasize our shared experience, though. It's to draw attention to the cracks.

The danger in consuming the Grey Poupon is believing that you, too, can be a first-generation member of the elite, turning your nose up at soul music, simple joy, fried foods, casual Fridays—essentially everything I’m made of.

Under late capitalism, we are all subject to precarity, but no one more so than a black man in a police state. Wicker challenges us not to look away.

What’s the use in playing it like everything’s going to be OK for me in the event of mortal catastrophe

Grant this guy tenure, and bulletproof skin.