Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

Garry is a recent high school graduate who lives in Rochester. He spent the first 10 years of his life living in Brooklyn with his mom, who often verbally abused him and neglected him to be with men, before Garry moved to live with his father. He returns to the NYU campus each summer for the Hackathon—a programming competition for high school students.

While he is at the welcome dinner for incoming NYU Computer Science majors, he searches everywhere for a girl, Inaaya, with whom he had spent the last three summers at the Hackathon. The two had agreed that they were coming to NYU for school and would meet each other there at the start of freshman year.

Garry remembers the first three hackathons, where he met Inaaya and grew his relationship with her. At the first, he sees Inaaya with her mother—who wears a hijab—but never works up the courage to speak with her. At the second, Garry decides he needs to speak with her, going up to her with her friends and asking her for a walk. Inaaya tells Garry about how her mother wants her to be a strict Muslim and wear a hijab, but she instead practices religion in her own way.