my mother’s tomorrow

In 2017, Dr. Kaye began a three-year in-depth ethnographic study within Baltimore’s Black Butterfly neighborhoods, documenting and recording the community stories. In 'you tell them that we’re not invisible, you tell them that we matter,' she met someone from the Poe Homes community, who was filling their pots and pans with water from the fire hydrant after the community had gone four days without running water who asked Dr. Kaye to tell her story so that she and the residents of the city would be 'unforgetten.' This book is for her. It is also for the veterans that Dr. Kaye met and profiled in her 'baltimore is my beirut,' column who said, 'You commit your life to fight for this country, then you come back home and where you live is worse than where you were fighting. It’s like the war never ended.' It is for the ninth grader student who told Dr. Kaye in 'i’m from baltimore, i’m already dead,' when she asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, 'My father is dead. My brother is dead. I had two cousins, they got shot. My uncles are locked up. What do I want to be when I grow up? Nothing. I’m from Baltimore, I’m already dead.' It is also for her parents who grew up in Jim Crow South Carolina and chose every day to survive and then when they raised her, taught her how to thrive. 'My mother’s tomorrow' is a love letter to Baltimore and a love letter to her sons. It is a reminder to them both that even though they were born with wings, Baltimore taught them how to fly.