A book reads us as much as we read a book. - Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Oh, so many things, especially the joyful moments that we shared. I remember, for example, the laughter between old friends Wole Soyinka and Henry Louis Gates Jr. as Soyinka reminisced about Morrison teaching him the phrase “knock your socks off” but then failing to deliver on the promise of knocking his socks off with the choice of a restaurant that Soyinka found lacking—not enough pepper! Or the moment when I asked Morrison if we could talk about sex, to which she responded with a wry smile, “Yeah! I’m in a good position to talk about it, since it’s been like a thousand years. What do you want to know?” Or the day, when walking with 102-year-old Willard Harris, that she insisted I seize the opportunity to travel to the South Pole, repeatedly saying, “You go, girl!” And so it was that the stories and the laughter flowed. I also love the adage that several of them cite, from Michelle Obama to Lord Michael Hastings, Margaret Busby, and Senator Cory Booker—plant trees under whose shade other generations will sit. Each of those featured embodies this evocation.

I wonder if I should explain that it’s not that I don’t want to make love, only that after a long day of attending to others I’m craving space.

Whenever I can’t find stories that I want to read, I try writing them for myself. In this case, I’d met many older women who’d lived colorful lives and yet when it came to fiction, I didn’t find stories that mirrored these lives, especially so when it came to the lives of Black women.