You don't have to be 60, wealthy, you know, extort a mogul to have a story that's valid enough to be told.

Right.

And I had to tell myself that through this process.

I mean, my brother even over Christmas said to me,

dude, Elaine, why are you writing, why are you writing an autobiography?

I love what your brother calls you dude.

He's like, dude, yeah.

And yeah, like, even at this point in my career,

I mean, at this point in my career, he's like the only person who will just chop me down to size real fast and just be like, he's like, dude, why are you writing an autobiography? Isn't that like something old people do? Wow. Like, seriously. But, you know, but, but is he older, younger brother? He's older than me. And he, and he didn't mean it to be, like, hurtful. but he's not understanding uh the history of black

literature which is quite often your autobiography is the first book that you publish and you

may publish it in your 20s or your 30s or whatever but like i had to tell my story you know my

name is richard right my name is uh you know claude brown my name is whatever you know My name is, uh, you know, Claude Brown. My name is

whatever, you know, uh, you know, I had to tell my story first, um, before I could tell you

anything else. Oh, that's so powerful. That, when you put it like that, when you put this book,

you know, in this like larger trajectory of black autobiography in the last 150 years oh my god thank you i'm

gonna take that with me because i was like my best comeback was in the moment they don't even call

them autobiographies anymore you asshole and i just like burst into tears so now i have a better i can

come back with some some weight on this.

But no, I think that's powerful when you put it into a perspective like that.

And I just think like, listen, you don't have to be, to me, later I realized I was like, that's the patriarchy talking.

You don't see the value yet in the voice of a young black woman, and that's okay.

You're not my audience.

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