[5] She planned to move to New York after graduation, but had difficulty finding a job in the publishing industry despite her degree in comparative literature, for which she said she learned five languages.
[10] Jerkins' first book This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America was published on January 30, 2018, by Perennial/HarperCollins.
[11] The book is a nonfiction collection of essays including topics such as experiencing bullying as a child, feminism, dating, and attending Princeton as a Black student.
"[4] Roxane Gay stated in Elle, "This Will Be My Undoing is not a perfect book—there are places where I wanted her to push her conclusions further—but the prose resonates with the promise of a talented writer coming into her own.
[16] Her second book, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots was published in August 2020 under HarperCollins.
[17] In January 2020, Jerkins led the assembly of The Zora Canon, a list of 100 great works by Black women writers.