I don’t think technology failed me this weekend. I think it serves us well now, coming together however we can in the middle of a pandemic to honor a woman we all love. It’s thanks to the internet, and the tech savvy of people she loved—still loves—that we can gather here today, despite disease and distance. Here, in New York, it’s about three o’clock in the morning. Mom used to yell at me for staying up late on the computer. Now, I think, I have a good excuse.

This year, the June 2 that we got was not the June 2 I’d hoped for my book—my book about disentangling an anti-Black colonial mentality, about the loves and losses of my life, about my mother. However, as Ashley told me on our phone call this morning: “The timing is not perfect,” she assured me, “but it’s a perfect book for the times.”