 Hi, my name is Melissa Valentine. I'm the author of The Names of All the Flowers. This memoir is a coming-of-age story of Melissa and her older brother, Jr., in 1990s Oakland. Melissa and Jr. are two of six children to a white Quaker father and a black Southern mother. The story follows two black mixed-race kids trying to grow up and thrive in the face of a rapidly gentrifying city, chaotic family life, and school-to-prison pipeline policies meant not to help teens like them learn but track them into prisons. As Jr. approaches adolescence, he falls into drug dealing. He spends the first year of his adult life in prison and less than two weeks after his release, right before his 20th birthday, he is gunned down in a drive-by shooting. This is the story of one Oakland family, but also very much an American family story. The title of this memoir, The Names of All the Flowers, is a metaphor meant to honor the lives of all the many, many lives lost to gun violence. The names we don't know, but should. You can find my book at the San Francisco Public Library, your local indie bookstore, or anywhere books are sold.