Hi everyone. Welcome to the librarian is in the New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next. I'm Gwen. And we are so excited today to be joined by Aminatuso. She is a writer who is currently working on a book and she has an amazing podcast called Call Your Girlfriend, which I adore. So welcome. Thank you so much for coming. Hello. Thanks for having me. Hello. Call your girlfriends with one of your pals, with your main pal, Anne Friedman? You know, she's my

friend. She's your friend. Pal is such a loose association. But are your gal pals? Yeah, just like,

what am I, you know, just some... What are your hundred pals? Business married with a pal. I'm like,

who will do the podcast with me? You will. Yes, Anne Friedman is one of my closest friends, and I host a podcast with her, and we are working on a memoir called Big Friendship. Awesome. I can't wait to read that. Look forward to it. We'll discuss it on the podcast, Gwen. Yes. When it comes out, we'll read it, talk about it. Usually we start by sort of easing people in and being super gentle.

Please ease me in. Oh really? I was about to be like, we're not going to do that with you because

you're an expert. Oh no. Please, please make this easy. Okay, well, you can tell us if you don't

think this is easy and we won't start with this, but here's the thing that I was so captured by as I was like,

just heard that you were going to come on our show. I couldn't wait. And I was like, oh my gosh.

So during one of the most recent episodes about Penn 15, which by the way, it was a totally

hilarious episode, you said that when you were a kid, you always read a lot, but you never really felt seen in the media.

And that as a quote, I'm using your own words and quoting the back to you, that's not awkward.

That as a quote, international black fat person, you didn't see yourself in the media at all.

And that it didn't happen until just a couple years ago with a film.

And I kind of wanted to talk about that and was wondering if there were any books that you have ever seen yourself in, that you feel like you might want to put into the world that you would see yourself in someday, or if it's not as important to you as an adult. Is that an impossible question? It's not important at all. Next question. Thank you. Well, I could see somebody, no, seriously, I could see somebody saying, like, as an adult,

it's not as important to me to see myself reflected in literature. I feel that way, personally.

And I could, I could see someone saying it's more important.

I think that for me, the opposite is what happened is that I, I wasn't aware when I was younger

that I was not being reflected in any of the media that I was

consuming. And I, and I also just didn't have an expectation for it. And I think to, and to be fair also,

I, um, I, like, part of my upbringing was in West Africa. My family is from Guinea. We grew up in

Nigeria. And we did consume a lot of African

media. So I think that, like, to be fair, you know, there were a lot of African authors that

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