Mama Nyla, a former manager of a D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office, was a straightforward, blunt woman. For her, the world was divided into the right and the wrong. The right thing was for a woman to be in the kitchen, raising children, and obeying her man. Everything else was wrong. And my dissertation was the height of wrong.

“She’s too smart, son,” she’d tell Amari when she thought I wasn’t listening. “Men don’t want those kinds. Her little books won’t take her anywhere good. She sits there ruining her eyes while my Amari is hungry.”