Hi everyone, I'm Brinay Brown and this is unlocking us.

We have a very important episode this week.

It's a special episode. It's an episode that started with a conversation.

Last summer, Toronto Burke, many of you may know her as the founder of the Me Too

Movement, as an organizer, as a writer, as an activist. to me, she's my friend,

as a writer, as an activist.

To me, she's my friend.

She's all those amazing things,

and she's also just a good friend.

She approached me about working on a project together.

And you have to know that I'm always going to say yes if Toronto asked me to do something,

which is a dangerous way to live, but it always pays off.

She asked me if I would work on an anthology with her. She said

that my work had meant a lot to her in her life and had taught her a lot of things but that she often found

herself having to contort herself and change the work and think about it

differently as a black woman navigating the world today.

And she asked if I would be willing to co- edit an anthology with her

on the Black lived experience of vulnerability and shame

resilience and some of the concepts that I write about and I said yes and our episode today is the introduction to that book which is a conversation

between myself and Toronto about why the book was important to us and why we're

doing it then we're actually going to share

one of the essays by Jason Reynolds with you. He read his essay and you're going to get to listen to it here first.

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