Family stories provide a sense of belonging while also setting expectations that the next generation must negotiate. In Take What You Can, Naima Coster explores friendship, motherhood, class, and independence, bringing an adult perspective to the relationships that shape family life. Samarra St. Hilaire’s Brushed Between Cultures follows a Haitian American teenager in Brooklyn, New York, whose artistic ambitions and private desires complicate her relationship with her family’s hopes for her future. Mervyn Taylor’s Unpainted Houses: Poems revisits childhood, music, and the landscapes of Trinidad and Brooklyn through poetry. Writing for adults and younger readers, these authors explore what families preserve, what children question, and how the stories we inherit change as we make them our own. Moderated by Nadine Pinede, author of Uprooted: A Journey in Poems.