Growing up in Portland was so fun. I loved my neighborhood. I grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood, and all my friends, we would see each other at church, at school, we’d play together on the weekends. So it was a very close-knit community, and I just have so many fond memories of playing outside of neighbors, being able to chime in and maybe chastise you if you were doing something wrong. It was a beautiful, loving, vibrant Black community. And then when I went to middle school, things changed. My middle school was in a predominantly white neighborhood across town, and so I didn’t have that same kind of nurturing and seeing my friends all the time. So middle school was hard in Portland. But then in high school, I went back to my neighborhood at high school and again, just felt loved and nurtured by that vibrant community and just learned about the different areas of New Portland.
And they’ve all kind of shaped me and informed what I write about, how I write, how I think about friendship and storytelling. And I think a lot about the Ramona Series. When I was a kid, I read that book, that series, and I loved that. I knew where Klickitat Street was, and I knew the library and the store that Ramona was going to. And so seeing my city in a book was liberating and so encouraging, and it is definitely what has inspired me to write my city and put my story and the story of Brown and Black girls in Portland on the page.
