The writer Jamaica Kingade never really got what was so great about being white.

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

And it always looks so unappealing.

There wasn't anything about being white that I thought, God, I would love to do that.

Jamaica Kincaid 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 was full of these, I later admit I was wrong, but it was full of these white men,

you know, who wrote five different articles about gray.

And they just seem 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, 74.

Last month, I hosted a conversation with Jamaica and the writery Numa Okoro, who writes the

weekly FD column, The Art of Life. It was live at the FT Weekend 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.

So 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 weekend festival. First, we bring you my conversation

with Jamaica and Dinuma. And then we hear from you.

We had a table set up in the middle of the action,

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