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The writer Jamaican kid never really got what was so great about being white.

I never really understood the concept of whiteness and white spaces and

it always looked so unappealing. There wasn't anything about being white that I thought,

God, I would love to do that. Jamaican kid is black. She was born on the island of Antigua.

And today she's one of America's most respected writers on race and colonialism.

She's published five novels and many short stories and essays, mostly for the New Yorker

where she was a staff writer for 20 years. Though it's worth mentioning that she found the

magazine pretty ridiculous when she started. The New Yorker is full of these, I later

admit I was wrong, but it was full of these white men who wrote five different articles about

grain. And they just seemed so old and full of themselves. And I have no idea

why I was so arrogant as a young black woman in America in 1973, 1974.

Last month, I hosted a conversation with Jamaica and the writer Inuma Okoro, who writes the weekly

FT column, The Art of Life. It was live at the FT Week in festival in London. And it was really

interesting to hear two black women writers reflect on their journeys, which were similar in some

ways, but different in many others. And a few decades apart. I'm always trying to get people to

think about how do we live our lives. That's all I'm doing. It's how do we live our lives and how

do we do it with intention and how we do it, recognizing that we all have responsibilities

to ourselves, but also to each other.

Today, we spend the whole episode at the FT Week in festival. First, we bring you my conversation

with Jamaica and Inuma. And then we hear from you. We had a table set up in the middle of the

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