Dispatch from Venice - reflections on my first book event in North America!


Getty Museum, LA 
Getty Museum, LA

Getty Museum, LA


First stop: Los Angeles! Thank you for coming out & making my
first North American stop a.m.a.z.i.n.g.

It's been raining almost everyday since I arrived last Friday,
but Venice is still beautiful. 

It's been raining almost everyday since I arrived last Friday,
but Venice is still beautiful. 

It's been almost a week since I've arrived to Los Angeles. The last time I was in Los Angeles, like for real, for real, was in the late 90s when I came out to interview Coolio for OneWorld magazine. That seems like a lifetime ago, and like everything else in the U.S. Los Angeles is so big that it was impossible for me to see it in its entirety back then. This time however, I stayed in Echo Park which I loved and now I'm in Venice which is pretty gorgeous and has such a laid-back vibe. I would definitely visit again.

My book event was awesome. Kelli Curry from The Electric Smoothie Lab Apothecary and Codepink moderated the event and it was so inspiring. She made us sit in a circle and we started with saying our names, naming our mothers and their mothers (for those of us who have access to this information because unfortunately, not all of us do, which can often been a source of deep, traumatic pain that is tied many times to colonial practices).

We talked about the healing properties of nature which seems so appropriate being here, surrounded by the lushness of earth. It is so green here, and with the rain, a freshness embraces me that feels so cleansing.  Stories Books and Cafe on Sunset Blvd. was an amazing place to host my event and I want to take this time to thank Alex from Stories, the incredible staff, my publicist Jonathan Maunder,  Mark Valley, Jason Smalls, Bon Bankole, Maximina Juson Revis, my cousin Jason Nunez who took me to the Getty Museum in the rain (it was beautiful) and of course Kelli Curry and Codepink. If this is a sign of the rest of my tour, well, I'm pretty thankful and full, amen.

I'll be driving to Oakland with Kelli in a day or two where I have another event on Monday evening at Alley Cat Books (3036 24th St, San Francisco, California 94110) with my college friend Elisa Donovan. This starts at 7pm. Then I fly to Portland, OR where I meet up with my former roommate Christopher Yarrow and I'll have an event there at the Stacks Coffeehouse, 1831 N. Killingsworth St., at 6:30pm.

See you on the road! <3 nbsp="" p="">
blackgirl on mars! 

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