I was 23 years old when I started writing my dissertation on The Boondocks. And the truth is, academia wasn't convinced that it mattered ... not in the “let’s put this in the canon” kind of way. But I kept writing. Kept researching. Kept building my case that The Boondocks wasn’t just satire—it was literature. It was legacy. It was disruption. And years later, I realize: I wasn’t just writing about The Boondocks. I was learning from it.