Excited Well Read Black Girl

Today I bought the best book I could ever own.

A book about books or stories with black women, written by black women, and supported by other black women.

All my life, I've yearned to see representations of myself in books, movies, tv shows, etc. For most of my reading life, I spent so much of my time trying to picture the main female characters in the stories I read to look like me: black girls with curly, textured, sometimes untameable, hair.

And yet, every book I chose seemed to have the same kind of girl: an average white girl with blonde or brunette hair that lived in a world where one or many attractive male characters, were massively attracted to her despite all odds (Twilight, I'm looking at you).

I read a lot of teenage romance books. Don't judge me.

And don't get me wrong, I have nothing against those kinds of stories. But it was always difficult to fully enjoy stories that I couldn't relate to. It also didn't help to be one of the few African American girls living in a dominantly white neighborhood and most of the books that I read or were recommended to read were books written by white authors with white characters.

The first time I ever experienced a character that I could actually relate to was Cassie from Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I became obsessed with Taylor's books and the Logan family after I read Roll of Thunder. Not because I could relate to Cassie in every way, but because it was the first time I was reading a book of novel length by a female black author about a young black girl trying to understand the society around her. I didn't grow up in the segregated south, I didn't have brothers, and my family didn't own a farm but when Cassie would describe the richness in the different skin tones of her family members, how she learned more and more about her blackness and how it separated her from the white children, and how she saw the love her mother and father had for her even in their anger, it blew me away.

Through her eyes and through those moments throughout the book, I saw myself.

Fast forward to over ten years later, I've realized how much more I've desired to read about characters that looked like me. Through my graduate program I've read books like Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. I have also learned more about other books by acclaimed authors such as Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

Resiliency is a word I've used many times the last couple of months and it's the word I think about when it comes to these books and these female authors. Each character they have portrayed has a resilient nature about them that is different given the circumstances they are living in. Through their resiliency, I've seen myself. I've seen my mother. I've seen my sister. I see my grandmothers, my aunts, my cousins, my friends, and my peers. Each of them has a story to tell and I finally see their stories or characteristics being represented.

It's probably the most refreshing thing I've ever experienced.

But that doesn't mean that the journey to finding more books with black female representation has ended. In fact, it has just begun.

I've already started to read Well-Read Black Girl and tears instantly began to come to my eyes because I feel so honored to be living in a time where so many black female writers are being recognized for their works.

It is my hope that someday I earn the privilege to be named alongside them as someone who inspires a younger generation with the desire to see themselves being represented.

Until that day happens, I'll continue to be a well-read black girl.