There are things you can learn from a syllabus, and things you can only learn from living inside something. FAMU taught me both. But it's the second kind that I still carry.
I didn't go to Florida A&M planning to become a writer. I went to figure out who I was becoming. And without knowing it, I was walking into one of the richest storytelling environments I'd ever encounter.
What community actually feels like
Before FAMU, I understood community as a concept. Afterward, I understood it as a lived thing — something you feel in how people move through a space, how they hold each other accountable, how they celebrate. An HBCU isn't just an institution. It's a frequency.
That frequency changed what I notice in a room. It changed what I reach for when I write. I learned to pay attention to the texture of how people exist around each other — the small loyalties and quiet tensions that make a community feel real.
An HBCU isn't just an institution. It's a frequency.
Why it lives in the novel
When I set Smiling Faces Tell Lies at FAMU, I wasn't reaching for an exotic backdrop. I was reaching for the truest place I knew. A place where the stakes feel higher because the community is tighter. Where a secret doesn't just threaten one person — it threatens a web of belonging that people have worked hard to build.
That's the kind of story I wanted to tell. And FAMU is the only place that could hold it.
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