“That’s why I quit politics,” a teen says into his cellphone, juuling with his free hand.

“If there’s a kind of sculptor who finds her way by diving blindly into the fog, hands extended, that’s the kind of writer-sculptor that I am.”

“I came to the Beastie Boys because I had heard my peers talking about them, and I believed talked-about things were things worth knowing. My personal mission was to learn a little bit about everything I heard referenced, and to have at the ready my own opinion on each topic.”

The point is that they worked to create a platform for themselves—for Black youths—to say whatever they wanted to say. That’s their most powerful legacy.

There will always be political and social unrest, but a pandemic filters everything—we are all characters in its story.

With the closure of bookstores and in-person readings impossible, sales opportunities for small presses have largely been stymied to the point of near fatality, and the fallout is widespread.