A Love Letter to the Chaos: Amy DuBois Barnett on If I Ruled the World, Hip Hop & Finding Your Voice

Join Niccara as she welcomes Amy DuBois Barnett — former editor-in-chief of Honey and Teen People, and now the debut novelist developing If I Ruled the World into a Hulu series with Lee Daniels — to the pod! We talk about her late-90s New York media and music world, why she catapults readers straight into the mess of Nikki Rose's journey, and the reckoning threaded through it all — misogyny, sexual coercion, and the complicity of silence.

We get into Nikki's hair as a whole race conversation, being "too much over here and not enough over here," the men who love an idea of you instead of the real you, and how forgiveness — of your friends, and of yourself — becomes the work. And yes, it's still a fun, sexy, glamorous page-turner and a love letter to the city, to hip hop, and to ambitious women.

Perfect for readers who appreciate stories centered on Black women's ambition, self-reclamation, grief and healing around the choices of our twenties, institutional critique, and the courage it takes to take your power back. Make sure you pick up If I Ruled the World from where you get your books!

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