As I write this, we are in a heartbreaking, enraging, and also potentially transformative moment, confronting the systems that make up structural racism, including state-sponsored and sanctioned murder and the inequities in every system from housing to the job market to health care. When Ezra Klein asked Ta-Nehisi Coates what he saw when he looked at the country, Coates said that he couldn’t believe he was going to say this, “…but I see hope. I see progress right now.” The anguish has been going on for a long time now, but this is the first time we’ve seen it erupt on such a massive, international scale, and in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that underscores our sense of urgency. We are remembering George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Nina Pop, and too many more. We remember them in action, in protests, in voting, and in our commitment to standing with the Black Lives Matter movement.

So what is the role, in this moment, of fiction, whether reading or writing?