About the Author

When I wrote NTR ten years ago, it was already a stretch for a middle-aged white woman to write a book in which there wasn’t a single important white character. At the time, I was teaching remedial writing at a community college outside DC, which is where many of my students lived. They were mostly students of color. The world in NTR is their world. It was a world they wrote about for me, and then it became a world I reflected back to them in a book I wrote about and for them. I guess I wanted to show that I understood. If the act of writing is about learning empathy, they taught me that. I am not them. I am not like them. But when I write, I try to feel what they feel, and think the way they think. Over the years reader response has convinced me that I was successful. This is why the book is being re-issued on its tenth anniversary.  A book about young people making choices is as relevant today as it was back then.

Ten years ago, when I did author visits in Brooklyn, the Bronx or Southeast DC, I could see the looks the students gave each other as I walked into the room. And I always asked if this was something they wanted to talk about, me being white and them in most cases being something else. They never wanted to talk about it. They just wanted to talk about Calvin and Deej and Junior.