Angela Flournoy’s 'The Wilderness' focuses on a Black, female ‘chosen family’

Summary

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NPR’s Book of the Day: Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness Focuses on a Black, Female “Chosen Family”

Date: October 1, 2025
Host: Chloe Veltman (for Andrew Limbong)
Guest/Interviewer: Juana Summers
Guest/Author: Angela Flournoy
Book Discussed: The Wilderness

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode centers on Angela Flournoy’s novel The Wilderness, which follows the evolving lives and deep relationships of a group of Black millennial women as they transition into middle age. The discussion explores themes of chosen family, estrangement, the complexities of Black womanhood, and what it means to find meaning and grounding in adulthood, especially through the lens of “decades-long” friendships.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Nature and Fluidity of Chosen Family

• Flournoy describes chosen family as an active, continual choice, not a one-time selection:
  • Quote: “You have to keep choosing whether it’s because you move away or because your lives are just sort of diverging… You have to keep choosing to be a part of this friendship.” (Angela Flournoy, 01:52)
• The novel centers around four core women—Desiree, Nakia, Monique, and January—whose friendship weathers two decades of shared growth, change, and recommitment.
• Desiree’s estranged relationship with her biological sister Danielle serves as a counterpoint to these friendships, examining rupture and distance within families:
  • Quote: “I’ve always been interested… in the ways that people just cut family members off… it just bloom[s] into this insurmountable distance.” (Flournoy, 02:37)

Millennial Black Women and Their Contemporary Context

• The characters’ experiences are shaped both by their identities as Black women and their coming of age during significant economic and social shifts—late 2000s recession, the rise of social media, city life in LA and New York:
  • Quote: “[I] thought that a lot of their experiences… [are] particular to when they came of age that colors their experiences in the novel.” (Flournoy, 03:35-04:54)
• Flournoy initially considered titling the book The Millennials, highlighting the unique, sometimes under-discussed, millennial perspectives of Black women.

The Meaning of "The Wilderness" as a Title

• The title evokes the uncertainty and lack of roadmaps for satisfaction and fulfillment in adulthood and especially middle age:
  • Quote: “There are just a lot fewer guideposts… To feel you have a satisfied life… as you enter middle age, that is really on you. You’ve got to navigate what might feel just completely opaque by yourself.” (Flournoy, 04:58)
• Friendship among the women is portrayed as “fellow travelers” through unknown terrain.

Personal Reflections on Adulthood and Grounding

• Flournoy examines, through writing, what it means to “feel like a grownup”—not just by milestones like parenthood or job titles, but by cultivating a deep, internal sense of grounding:
  • Quote: “People could take away a lot of things from me, but they can’t take away, like, this feeling... that is something that the people in the book are really searching for.” (Flournoy, 06:31-07:36)

Portraying the Complexity and Humanity of Black Women

• Flournoy revisits a 2016 reflection that only Black women truly see and understand each other’s multi-dimensionality, discussing recent societal shifts that have both idealized and flattened Black women in public discourse:
  • Quote: “Black women have become these kind of, like, superheroes, like, we’re gonna save democracy… that also just does not feel like giving people full humanity, right?” (Flournoy, 08:11)
• The novel strives to showcase not just the "awesomeness," but the full intellectual, emotional, and personal depth of Black women:
  • Quote: “What I was seeking... is just the full complexity... Many of us have deep intellectual lives... not just deep emotional lives... they’re thinking about things that are bigger than just reactions to circumstances.” (Flournoy, 08:11-09:23)

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attribution)

• “You have to keep choosing to be a part of this friendship.”
  — Angela Flournoy, 01:52

• “I’ve always been interested… in the ways that people just cut family members off… it just bloom[s] into this insurmountable distance.”
  — Angela Flournoy, 02:37

• “[A] lot of their experiences... [are] particular to when they came of age.”
  — Angela Flournoy, 04:54

• “There are just a lot fewer guideposts… To feel you have a satisfied life… as you enter middle age, that is really on you. You’ve got to navigate what might feel just completely opaque by yourself.”
  — Angela Flournoy, 04:58

• “People could take away a lot of things from me, but they can’t take away, like, this feeling... that is something that the people in the book are really searching for.”
  — Angela Flournoy, 07:36

• “Black women have become these kind of, like, superheroes… that also just does not feel like giving people full humanity, right?”
  — Angela Flournoy, 08:11

• “What I was seeking... is just the full complexity... Many of us have deep intellectual lives... they're thinking about things that are bigger than just reactions to circumstances.”
  — Angela Flournoy, 08:11-09:23

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:39–02:12] — Introduction to the concept of chosen family and Flournoy’s take on it
• [02:37–03:22] — Discussion of estrangement and rupture with family (Desiree & Danielle)
• [03:35–04:54] — Character backgrounds and defining experiences as Black millennial women
• [04:58–06:12] — Why the book is called The Wilderness; navigating adulthood
• [06:31–07:36] — Personal reflections on achieving a sense of adulthood and grounding
• [07:36–09:23] — Black women’s complexity, societal views, and intellectual lives

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Memorable Moments

• The honest dialogue about feeling like an adult and what “adulthood” or “groundedness” means, outside of external achievements.
• The nuanced exploration of the double-edged nature of society’s recent idealization of Black women—how it can be both empowering and reductive.
• The deliberate portrayal of deep intellectual and emotional lives among women characters, refusing to limit them to tropes or expected narratives.

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Conclusion

Angela Flournoy’s interview offers a rich dive into the themes of friendship, chosen family, estrangement, and the often unheralded complexity of Black women’s experiences. The episode resonates most in its candid exploration of navigating middle age, the nuances of belonging, and the significance of continually choosing the people in one’s life.

Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness is positioned as a literary exploration not just of a demographic, but of the universal search for satisfaction, identity, and connection as we find our paths through the wilderness of adulthood.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, this is NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Chloe Veltman filling in for Andrew Limbong this week. Before we get into today's interview, though, I want to note that October 1st is a historic day. It's the first day in over half a century that NPR and our member stations around the country are operating without federal support. Things may feel uncertain, but here's what is certain. Public media endures and you'll still find us here telling stories that matter. Are committed to continuing this journey alongside you, our audience. Now to today's episode. Many friendships come and go. Someone you're pals with one year may not show up on your holiday card list the next. And then there are those that endure for decades. Angela Flournoy's the Wilderness deals with the latter category. Her new novel captures the long term relationships between a group of black millennial women and what happens to the dynamics as the women move into middle age. In this interview with NPR's Juana Summers, the author, the characters in her book aren't just navigating their relationships with their friends, but also with the changing world around them.

[B]

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[C]

For many of us, the family we choose for ourselves is just as significant, perhaps even more so, than the one that we're born into. That's the case for the group of Black women at the center of Angela Flournoy's new novel, the Wilderness.

[D]

You know, when we talk about chosen family, it's not that you chose them once and you're stuck with them. The thing about people not related to you is that you tend to have these moments where you have to keep choosing. You have to keep choosing whether it's because you move away or because your lives are just sort of diverging. You have to keep choosing to be a part of this friendship.

[C]

The book traces the lives of four Desiree, Nakia, Monique and January. They change and grow over the course of two decades, recommitting to each other as they enter different stages of adulthood. There's also a key relationship Desiree can't recommit to after we first meet her. It's the relationship with her biological sister, Angela Flournoy told me why she explored the dynamics of deep bonds and estrangement in this book.

[D]

I've always been interested, kind of alongside the deep, like, decades long friendships and connections. I've also been interested in the ways that people just cut family members off. So I wanted to think about the beginnings and what it feels like to have a kind of rupture with someone you love or you grew up loving and for it to kind of just bloom into this insurmountable distance between the two of you. And so that is another. In addition to these friendships, there's this fifth person, this fifth woman, Danielle, who's Desiree's sister, who kind of is on the margins of the story for much of the story, because they are not in communication, the two of them. Yeah.

[C]

So there are the sisters, Desiree and Danielle, but there are also several other women who are part of this group of friends, this chosen family who have loved and grown up along each other over years. What is that important for us to know about them?

[D]

I would say that the things that are important to know about them is that they are people who have experienced really the same things to different levels and from different sides. The last 20 years of American life that we've all experienced, that is the, you know, the positives and the not so positives. And they, it has really shaped them in very particular ways. Just, just being here, being in the cities that they live in, which is Los Angeles and New York in different periods of time, but also being on the Internet that we live, you know, with, maybe we live on too much. How it has shaped them. There was a period of time when I thought I was going to title this novel the Millennials, kind of being a little cheeky, but also sticking a flag in a demographic that people don't necessarily agree, associate with, you know, black women. But I thought that a lot of their experiences, though there's certainly, there's a lot that's particular to them just being black. A lot of it also has to do with them coming of age in the late 2000s, after the housing crisis and recession, and growing alongside social media. There's a lot that is very particular to when they came of age that colors their experiences in the novel.

[C]

What led you to change the title and to name it instead the Wilderness?

[D]

Well, a lot of people in my life were kind of, they were thinking, well, not everybody likes Millennials. Some people might be turned off. And I thought, well, maybe they'll hate read it. And then I'll Win them over. But I also thought that there is something that is. It's very specific as far as in our contemporary moment. But there's something universal about the experience of. Of navigating middle life or into middle life, which is that there are just a lot fewer guideposts. You can go to college or not go to college. There's some ways when you're getting out of adolescence to figure out, you know, you just at first and foremost, you know, pay your bills. It's, like, very easy, what do I need to do to pay my bills? But to feel you have a satisfied life, or you're satisfied in your life as you enter middle age, that is really on you. You've got to navigate what might feel just completely opaque by yourself. In a lot of ways, they're the sort of fellow travelers, but you have to decide what is it going to feel like? What is going to feel satisfactory to you? And that is what I think about when I think about the title, is these Women are Navigating the Wilderness.

[C]

I do have to ask, and this is a little personal, but I think we're both probably in that same sort of age cohort that coming into middle age, late 30s, early. How did writing these characters, their journeys, their time in the wilderness, how did that make you reflect on your own life in this phase?

[D]

So many different ways. I think mostly I thought about what will it sort of take for me to feel like a grownup? Like, what will it take for me to feel like I'm the one who has, like, the authority, Like, I have the knowledge. And there's these things that come along, and they're supposed to be the moments, whether that because you have a child or because you get the fancy title at work. But I think outside of those things, because you and I probably both know people who, on paper, they look like grownups, but then if you talk to them, they don't think they've got it together or they've reached that point in their life. Right. And I think it has to do with, like, a true sense of grounding, whether that is you're feeling grounded in your community, whether that's because you're feeling grounded in your professional life, but something that feels like, well, people could take away a lot of things from me, but they can't take away, like, this feeling. And I think that that is something that the people in the book are really searching for. And to various degrees, I think they. Some of them find it, even if it's very fleeting.

[C]

When I started doing research for this interview, I read this old profile of you from BuzzFeed. And it was written back in 2016, around when you would have been starting work on this book. And in that profile, you make this observation that the only people who really understand Black women or even care to understand Black women are ourselves. We see our own complexity and our own potential in a way that others either don't recognize or don't care to recognize. And you also make the point that the awesomeness of being a black woman isn't really explored in literature. I wonder, do you still feel that way?

[D]

I absolutely think that there is a way that most people. Since 2016, I'll say there's been, like, an interesting reversal where for some reason, in some circles, black women have become these kind of, like, superheroes, like, we're gonna save democracy, we're gonna be the ones who always vote appropriately, et cetera. And that also just does not feel like giving people full humanity, right? So I think probably more than thinking about, like, the full awesomeness of black women, what I was seeking and what I always am sort of charging myself with in my fiction is just the full complexity. And I do think that there are many writers now that are providing those portraits. Many of us have, like, really deep intellectual lives. And that's something that I tried not to shy away from in this book, was just showing that these women, they don't just have deep emotional lives, but they are, you know, thinking about, thinking about the world. They're thinking about art. They're thinking about things that are bigger than just reactions to circumstances.

[C]

Angela Flournoy's new novel is the Wilderness. Angela, thank you so much.

[D]

Thank you.

[C]

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[D]

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