Howard University

Howard University links Diana Gordon and Imani through their college years and marks the beginning of Diana’s work on Burning Heart. In Diana’s account, the university is more than a biographical detail: it is where a private writing ambition began, and part of the shared past that gives later professional success and reunion their meaning.

Identity and Setting

A section identified with Diana and dated October 22, 2018, is headed by the location Locke Hall, Howard University, in Washington, D.C. The passage then turns to Diana’s recollections, placing the university within a narrative that moves between personal memory and the consequences of her writing career.

Diana and the Beginning of Burning Heart

Diana recalls that she began writing Burning Heart while at Howard. At first, she doubted that her closest friend, who had only three books behind her, was the right editor for the project; Diana had hoped to work with a celebrated publishing figure and imagined she could bring her friend along later. In retrospect, she says that the partnership worked exceptionally well. Her friend’s editorial guidance urged her to write for herself, take greater risks with the character Evie, and give the story more room. Diana revised accordingly, and the finished book found a wide readership. The recollection makes Howard the starting point of a creative ambition whose eventual scale Diana could not yet have imagined.

Imani and a Shared Past

Diana also recalls encountering Imani in the freezer aisle of a Wegmans in Newark after they had lost touch following graduation. Imani had earned a PhD in chemistry from George Washington University and recently begun working for a cosmetics company. Diana describes that career as the fulfillment of a dream Imani had shared back when they talked about their futures; Imani, in turn, congratulated Diana on the success of Burning Heart, the ambition Diana had once described as her own dream. Their exchange links Howard-era plans to distinct adult achievements. Diana began to cry in the aisle, then showed Imani an article about the controversy surrounding her friend and the book. Imani was unsurprised that a different professional world had its own problems.

Narrative Significance

Howard’s importance in these recollections comes through the lives and work associated with it, rather than through an institutional history. It is the setting of Diana’s early writing and a shared point in the educational past of Diana and Imani. The narrative’s movement from that beginning to the book’s reception, and then to the women’s chance reunion, gives the university a quiet structural role: it anchors the ambitions they formed before their later accomplishments and conflicts became public.