I have extremely low expectations in this regard. I’m wondering, at this point in your life, how do you feel about these waves of discovery and rediscovery? And it’s like each time it feels like starting over. My first and second books came out roughly around the time yours did, so I always consider you of my graduating class. I always liked that kind of intertextuality and paying homage. Different people have different kinds of experiences. To what degree do you think it’s important for readers to know those books in order to enter your universe?ĪSALI SOLOMON: It’s one of those things that functions at a level for people who have already read those books and functions at a different level for people who haven’t. Dalloway, Toni Morrison’s Sula, and Audre Lorde’s Zami also made it extra-satisfying to read. The fact that it is inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. I just love how you’ve created this incredibly intimate and yet expansive portrait of the complicated friendship of two women at middle age, who have all sorts of identity issues to reckon with-race, sexuality, class, everything. POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR: The Days of Afrekete (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26) is another outstanding book, following up on your 2006 collection Get Down and your 2015 novel Disgruntled.

Disgruntled by Asali Solomon