Jenisha Watts, a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of their October cover story, is no stranger to self-expression at this point in her career. But, in her cover story “Jenisha From Kentucky,” Watts, 38, goes further than she’s ever gone before, detailing the complicated story of her upbringing in a “crack house.”
Watt’s delicate prose offers an unflinching and compassionate window into her mother, Trina’s addiction, generational trauma within a Black family, and the psychological impact of poverty. The result is a story that is both deeply personal and profoundly relatable.
“The story has always been inside of me,” says Watts, who spoke to the Root shortly after her piece’s digital debut. “It was always a matter of timing.”
That doesn’t mean telling her story was easy. Watts spent two years working on her piece and even longer hiding her childhood from her peers — trying to emulate the experiences of the wealthy Jack and Jill crowd who dominate New York’s Black media landscape. “It got easier [to share my story] when I was becoming more successful in journalism,” says Watts matter-of-factly. “For example, when I graduated from Columbia, when I was hired as an editor at ESPN, and I was actually starting to be in that world.”
Therapy, the recent birth of her son, and space from her childhood have also shifted her perspective. “I wouldn’t have been able to write it maybe like ten years ago because I would have been so angry,” she says.
Many aspects of her childhood were still difficult to write, including the history of sexual abuse within her family and the strong possibility that she may have also been abused. “I didn’t want to write another story about something traumatic happening to a Black woman,” Watts explains, “But I had to say, if I tell this story, is it still connected to Trina, and does it tell a larger story, and the answer was yes.”
The hardest part by far has been anticipating and dealing with the reactions of her family. “Most people are private,” she explains. “They don’t want people to know their flaws, or they don’t want people to pull back the layers of their lives. It’s hard to tell those stories from an honest perspective.”
Interestingly, her mother, whose addiction issues are a central theme of the story, has ended up being her biggest champion in the family. “My mom has been the most supportive,” Watts says, adding that there were moments when her mother became emotional during the fact-checking process.
“I think there’s something about when stuff is written out versus just talking about it, and I think it hit her,” she says. “She just kept apologizing and kept saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ I think when she read versus heard the story, I think it really hit her.”
Watts says she’s found compassion for her mother over time. “I think it was just me getting older and realizing that you can’t just be angry and hold that anger your whole life about something.”
Her story is incredibly personal. But that hasn’t stopped readers from finding things to relate to. “I didn’t know so many people would be so touched by it,” she says. “I have been so close to it for so long. So when people send me notes, I’m still floored and really grateful.”