“We are not free to go on as if nothing happened yesterday,” begins Nikky Finney. As South Carolina removes the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds Friday, the award-winning poet considers the road before us. “Who are we now?” she asks.

On Wednesday night Jacqueline Woodson won the 2014 National Book Award for Young Peoples Literature. After she left the stage the host of the National Book Awards, Daniel Handler, told the crowd that she, a Black woman, "was allergic to watermelon" and then implored the crowd at the National Book Awards to "let that settle in your mind." I found myself staring at my laptop and choking on a waterfall of watermelon seeds.