A Note from the Editor
When I was asked to write a note for this book, I was first, honored, and second, stumped. Darien's book is unlike any book I have edited before. I wrote and rewrote prose, powerful words of congratulations on success, erased and rewrote, and sat blankly in front of a clean document. It wasn't that I had nothing to say, it was that the power of his story left me contemplative. So, I began to read through one of the first books that came to my mind when I started editing this one, Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. This is when one specific quote stood out to me, made me think of Darien and his life.
"You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable."
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
That poignant quote stuck out to me for multiple reasons. One, because of Darien's own personal motivation to do better. Better than generations before him, better than he thought he could be, and better than the stigma that society put on his back. He doesn't just want better, he wants to be the catalyst for change.
The second reason were his prose. The way he told a story through his words, his reason, his dialect. As editors we receive books and sometimes, we become so engrossed with the story we forget that the words don't have to be perfect. The grammar can be what the writer makes of it. The structure can be part of what drives that message home. So, when I edited Darien's work, I may not have stuck to the Universal stamped guidelines of what a book should be written like, but his message was authentic, and I wanted his delivery to be as well.
This book offers readers so many different ideals. This country has an enormous blinder on. We walk through our suburbs with our white picket fences, turning our heads away from the continued, Jim Crow-esque, discrimination that is alive and well..