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The intent of these questions are to measure the breadth and depth of my professional network. At the end of the exercise, on the outside, I can potentially have 28 people to whom I turn and rely upon for advice.I had always taken it for granted that my network is a wide one and that I know all of the right kinds of people. After answering Jarche’s tough questions, which took me roughly 30 minutes, I was stunned again to discover my real network comprises only eight people. These include people I work with, my family and two close friends. Is something the matter with me?

Junot Díaz’s Drown and Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!—both of those collections, from the late ’90s—and James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” which I still think is one of the most perfect short stories ever written.

Zora Neale Hurston and Mules and Men. In that book, she writes, “Mouths don’t empty themselves unless the ears are sympathetic and knowing.”

And this tends to turn into the idea that writers of color are in some sort of “identity corner,” whereas white writers just get to write about life. I will never forget one night in workshop when the professor asked our brilliant mutual friend Brit Bennett to explain what her story had to say about the black experience. Like her story had to be some after-school special, either harrowing or uplifting, just because her characters were black.