Q & A with Randi Pink By Sanina Clark | , is a writer, mother, and advocate for Black lives. Her latest book, Angel of Greenwood , is a YA historical novel that follows teenagers Angel and Isaiah as they fall in love in their Black neighborhood of Greenwood on the eve of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. We spoke with Pink about Black Excellence, redlining, and about how her newfound motherhood reshaped her activism and writing. What inspired you to write a fictional account of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a tragic historical moment? What about it feels timely to you? I’ll rewind to two years ago. I have a folder on my laptop that’s entitled “Therapy.” If I’m going through something especially troubling, frustrating, or something I feel like I can’t get out of I open a Word document in that folder and just start writing. At the time I was a brand-new mother (probably a little bit post-partum) and frustrated, which is an understatement, but frustrated with the fact that I was still trying to figure out which side of the red line in my town to live on. Now that I had a child—a Black child—I had to decide if I should live in the mostly white neighborhood or mostly non-white neighborhood. Those red lines are still pretty stark in Birmingham. I felt the same way my mother felt 30 years ago. So, I opened the Therapy folder and just started writing about a place for myself and my Black children to live. No hope of publication, no plot—a mom and pop ice cream shop here that was Black-owned, a bank across the street that was Black owned, everywhere you can smell flowers. It was beautiful; it was me dreaming.