What is the story behind the title of the book?
We were playing with a bunch of different names at the time. I was listening to some Charles Mingus because I’m a big jazz head. I was listening to Mingus, Monk, and Coltrane and this book feels like the blues.
What was hard about writing this book?
I think the hardest part is being vulnerable. In this book, I talked about some really serious topics. One example I talk about is the issue of young Black men being molested and raped, and to do that, I had to talk about my past, and my history of being molested and raped by my babysitter and how her actions affected me for the rest of my life. I spent years of my life trying to fill a hole of something that she stole from me with the pains of other women. There are depths that I go to in this book that I think hurt, but they also heal.
