When I heard that Ibi Zoboi was editing a collection of short stories about black teens, I was super excited. And then I saw the lineup of authors writing stories for the collection, and I was even more excited.

Being black enough, in one form or another, is something I struggled with as a kid. I didn’t have positive nerdy black role models (I was not a fan of Steve Urkel) who showed me it was okay to be a nerdy Black kid. And I can’t think of any Black queer people I really looked to as a kid, either.

And so I thought black people couldn’t really like scifi, and that queerness was not acceptable. And that was really depressing. Honestly, I think that’s why I latched onto RENT so hard – even though I didn’t know I was queer when I fell in love with it (and the character Joanne)

This is why representation matters. And this is why I stan for this collection of kids just being.