What it took for Nikole Hannah-Jones to write about her daughter’s distress

“Should I have written this?”

In her 23-year career as a journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Nikole Hannah-Jones had never asked herself that question before. Then again, she told me, she had never written a piece as personal and vulnerable as her September article in The New York Times Magazine, “In Fighting For Every Child, Did I Betray My Own?”

The 8,000-word piece grapples with the consequences of her and her husband’s decision to enroll their daughter, Najya, in predominantly Black, low-income schools in New York City. The article is a follow-up to one Nikole wrote 10 years ago about Najya, who is now a teenager — and who now disagrees with her parents’ schooling decisions for her.

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