A love letter to the aunt who did her hair

An exclusive excerpt from the new book "Black Love Letters"

A few years ago, a brilliant young woman named Natalie Johnson helped me set up and build The Ink. Then she went off into the world to do all that she had to do, all the while nursing a powerful idea: to assemble an anthology of “Black love letters,” to pull together, in her words, “a constellation of influential Black figures to write to the people, pl…