The December she died, in 2021, grief had already lodged deep in my chest after I lost my beloved friend Greg Tate. It was hard to breathe, but harder to imagine returning to Harlem, where we’d spent afternoons that equaled years, writing, talking and walking. I began making this short documentary earlier that year, unable to know we’d lose Didion, Tate and bell hooks, three writers who meant the world to me. This is a short film about loss and memory, the flooded Midwestern basements where we collect family ephemera. But when I’m home and moving through spaces that hold my deepest memories, I feel mournful.

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Persons: Joan Didion, Greg Tate, we’d, Detroit, I’m Organizations: Detroit Locations: Harlem