And yet, in writing my book Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration, I’ve learned that the ancestral legacy of our joy tells me I don’t have to choose. And so is allowing ourselves to feel our grief.” They knew that joy and pain, joy and rage, joy and grief occupy the same vessel. Joy is Black when it lives within the particular historical and cultural experience of Black people across the African diaspora. It looks like joy, and Black joy especially, taking its rightful place within our emotional canon. Black joy is a kind of currency, and when we learn to spend it recklessly, the results are glorious.