For the @parisreview, I wrote about visiting the National Museum of African American History & Culture with my grandparents and how it reminded me that so much of the violence documented there didn’t happen that long ago. theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/1…
This country tells itself that the worst of racial violence was in the past, but that past is still with us in very real & concrete ways. theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/1… 
This is my grandfather at the @NMAAHC. It blew him away. He said he never thought he’d see a museum like it in his lifetime.
This essay was also an interesting experience in how a piece of writing can evolve over time & move across genres/mediums. It began as a series of tweets, then became a poem, then became prose.
This was thread from two months ago where I wrote some initial reflections right after our visit:
That night I couldn’t stop thinking about the visit when I read this poem by @KavehAkbar. While they’re on different subjects, something about it moved me deeply & inspired me to try & turn the experience into a poem.
The poem was largely that penultimate paragraph of the essay, but I felt like there was more there to be excavated. So after sitting with it for a week or so, I attempted to expand on it, & realized it might be better served as prose.
And then @nicolerudick provided wonderful feedback that made the piece sharper, that helped give it a more central thesis.
Anyway, I’m sharing this because I always appreciate when writers provide insight into the process of how certain pieces came to be, so I figured why not do it myself.
It also just makes me think about all the twitter threads people on here are writing that are actually just great essays. Especially with 280 characters expanding the possibility of craft
