I knew my father loved me. He made that very clear. I think what happens is we throw

around this weird language like broken home, right? It was like, oh, you come from a broken

home. And I don't like that. Because a broken home connotes that it makes broken people.

I'm out of broken person, nor were my parents.

From the Ted Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Milman.

For 18 years, Debbie Milman has been talking with designers and other creative people about

what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working

on.

On this episode, Jason Reynolds talks about his life as a writer of books for and about

young people.

All I ever want to do in my books is just show, for me, it's specifically black children

as human beings.

JasonRightsbooks.com

That's the URL of Jason Reynolds' website and man, he's not kidding. Jason writes a lot

of books. He's not yet 40, and his first novel was published until 2014. But he has been

writing books like there's no tomorrow. He's the author of some of the most celebrated

YA fiction of our time, including All American Boys and the best-selling track series.

He also writes comic books and books of poetry, and is collaborated with Ibram X Kendi on

a young person's book about racism and anti-racism called Stamp.

He joins me to talk about his career, and a few of his latest books.

Jason Reynolds, welcome to Design Matters.

Thank you so much for having me. I feel like I've made it now. This is it.

...