#AuntAlma: ‘You Want Me to Tell You What I Really Think?’

People care about what #AuntAlma thinks, so they ask me. One common question is, “What does #AuntAlma think about all this?”

“All this” typically means the love that people—most of them strangers—have bestowed upon her. Now, with the release of my new book, #AuntAlma: Raisin’ a Little Hell Heaven on Earth, that question has been asked in reference to her reaction to it.

This week, as I spoke on the phone with my aunt, she told me exactly what she thinks, prefacing it with, “You want me to tell you what I really think about that book?” I got a little nervous at the question. After all, you never know what she might say. But she continued, “I don’t think nothing about the book. What I think is that my niece thinks enough about me to write a book about me. That’s the whole essence of what I think—that you think enough about me to write a book about your auntie. I wouldn’t care what the book is about.” She went on to say, “You see anybody else out there writing a book about their auntie? So that’s what I think.”

I tell you, that one conversation makes it’s all worthwhile. In addition to page after page of laughter that this book provides, it’s also a tribute to Alma Ross, my auntie. It will always exist as a part of her history, her legacy. So when I consider that it means something to her to be thought of highly enough to merit her name on the cover and her words inside, I am most pleased. I am most pleased to have pleased her.