The theme for this issue is foregrounded in Kevin Quashie’s (2012) concept of “the quiet”, a term he coined to capture the limitations of blackness as a public discourse that privileges resistant expressiveness as a singular framework. Grounded in African American culture, Quashie asks, “is it possible to engage in public discourse of black identity beyond the imperative of resistance?” (p. 27) With this, Quashie offers us another way of reading Black life beyond defiance and un-livability that welcomes the whimsy of the interior—describing a space of personal inwardness, aliveness, that allows for the unexpected to be possible.