to President Obama, advising on economic and domestic policy matters. Green co-founded SkillSmart, a company that reshapes how communities measure economic impact, and is CEO of EverGreen Labs, where he supports visionary organizations working to expand economic opportunity and strengthen community. Green serves as trustee to the Pleasant View Historic Association and supports its efforts to preserve the historic site. His award-winning documentary, Finding Fellowship, explores the rich history of Quince Orchard and the fight to preserve its legacy. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and Yale Law School, Green remains rooted in the work of truth and justice, investing in stories that remind us who we are. He currently spends time between Maryland and Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Ritu, and son, Aidan.
Green applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility, with the following results:
Page 99 of Too Precious to Lose captures a moment from my childhood when while I was walking home along our dirt road I was first called the N-word. I was walking down the very street my family had lived on—and ironically helped name Fellowship—when that word is hurled at me. The page ends with a question that lingers far beyond that moment: do I belong?Visit Jason G. Green's website.
Does the Page 99 Test work?
Remarkably the last three words on page 99 are, “Do I belong?” Though page 99 is not representative of every scene or theme of Too Precious to Lose, it does distill the emotional and psychological core and motivation of the story. The book wrestles with belonging, identity, inheritance, and what it means to claim space in a world that can both affirm and reject you. That single moment on page 99 crystallizes those tensions. A reader opening to that page would encounter the wound, and also the question that drives the entire narrative forward.
Beyond page 99...
While page 99 captures a pivotal rupture, the book as a whole traces a longer arc, that moves through family legacy, place, memory, and resilience. The question “do I belong?” doesn’t stay confined to my childhood moment; it becomes a throughline that shapes how I move through the world.
Much of my work, especially in building community, is rooted in creating spaces grounded in dignity and respect, where people can feel a genuine sense of belonging. In that way, the question that closes page 99 is not only a moment of harm; it is also a catalyst. It pushed me to explore, be attracted to and ultimately help build the kinds of spaces I once needed but did not always have.
At the end of the day, one of the things that is too precious to lose is the hope—the quiet, persistent idea that we have the capacity and responsibility to build something lasting and better where people feel like they belong.
--Marshal Zeringue
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