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WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

This is on point. I'm Amory Sievertsin, in for Megna Chakrabardi. It depends on who is doing the looking. That's how journalist Alexis O'KO opens her new book, Blessings and Disasters.

Alexis herself has done a lot of looking and telling.

She's a staff writer at The New Yorker.

She won the 2018 Penn Open Book Award for her debut,

A Moonless Starless Sky,

which tells the stories of people standing up to extremism in Africa.

She's worked as a foreign correspondent reporting from Mexico, Cuba, South Africa.

She's covered gay rights in Uganda, religious violence and terrorism in Nigeria, slavery in Mauritania.

Now, in blessings and disasters, Alexis O'Kewo is looking at what's possibly the most complicated, definitely the most personal place for her yet.

The place she grew up, Alabama. Alexis O'Kewo, welcome to On Point.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much for being here. And I guess I want to start with that opening line of the book.

It depends on who is doing the looking, because that's

...