It’s time to make some space on your bookshelf for a new addition because we’re back with another TBG Library pick. Today’s pick is the debut book of essays by award-winning author Morgan Parker, titled, “You Get What you Pay For.”

Morgan Parker is a poet, novelist, and author of works such as the young adult novel Who Put This Song On? and the poetry collection Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. In You Get What You Pay For, Morgan traces the difficulty and beauty of existing as a Black woman through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Morgan joins me today to discuss what it means to experience hypervisibility as a Black woman regardless of class, how as a teenager she advocated for her own mental health with her parents, and the ways in which conversations with her therapist influence her writing, and vice versa.