I really enjoyed R. Eric Thomas reading the audiobook of this on a recent trip. 

I especially loved the first one based on the children’s book, The Monster at the End of the Book. He writes, 
“I am Grover. I walk with him every step of the way on his journey. The Monster at the End of This Book is a lighthearted book about anxiety—anxiety about being confronted with the kind of person you really are (LOL!), anxiety about the inevitable passage of time (LOL), anxiety about being trapped by forces beyond your control (lol), anxiety about a deep, dreadful uncertainty (…meep). Even when I read it for the first time at age three, I got that.”
…
Grover, too, is struggling. He is using every tool at his disposal to keep the thing that he fears the most at bay, and that thing is himself. 
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But in real life, I’m a Grover. I have always been Black in a white environment, not Black enough in a Black environment, working-class in an upper-class environment, Christian in a secular environment, questioning in a devout environment, gay in a straight environment. Never quite right.”

I felt like these essays are an examination of this thought - how he felt not quite right in the world and how he got through some of these times (especially adolescence and young adulthood) through the time he met his husband, who is a minister.

“Every story, whether truth or fiction, is an invitation to imagination, but even more so, it’s an invitation to empathy. The storyteller says, “I am here. Does it matter?” The words that I found in these books were a person calling out from a page, “I am worthy of being heard and you are worthy of hearing my story.” The Monster at the End of the Book

“I also knew that the way forward wasn’t any less complicated, but no one ever promised me less complication. If anything, it’s always going to become more complicated. Better but more. Better and more. Pride is a party and a riot, after all. And I was here for all of it.” Here for it, or how to save your soul in America