Growing up in west Baltimore, R. Eric Thomas often felt like an outsider. He was a Black student at a mostly white private school; he was gay in a Baptist family.

Thomas’ memoir, Here For It, or How to Save Your Soul in America, follows humorous and heartfelt detours in his journey of self-acceptance.

"And when I threw off the shackles of trying to be enough of who I implicitly am, it became much easier for me to build a bridge of community.”

We hear how code-switching helped him hone his writing … and why his family’s lexicon included an opera from Mister Rogers neighborhood.

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