The Importance of Appropriation

I think that where we get work that's appropriate is where we start to make insistent arguments that this racial identity is going to mean these kinds of things. We're not writing over someone. You know what I mean? We're not telling their story for them while they actually could perfectly tell themselves, like, no, they didn't and they won't because now they're dead. It's about understanding how a particular kind of racial identity can provide a relief that the rest of their lives wouldn't give them. And that's what that poem is about.