This misunderstanding shaped my early reading years and over half of my life. And that mostly came from making an active effort to read diversly because otherwise, the default remains white. I wasn’t able to begin to unlearn this until my 20s. This continued throughout my entire public school education, even including AP classes. However, unless the characters or scene made it clear and reminded me more than once, I assumed white. There were exceptions, like Rue from The Hunger Games. Growing up, most times I read books with characters of color, it went over my head. In graphic novels or the visual mediums of film and TV, I can see and hear it. Representation is a weird thing when it comes to traditional books. Despite generally disliking assigned readings, this book was the first time I felt connected to a story so deeply. There’s no better place to start this than the first book I remember this ever happening with: James McBride’s 1995 award-winning memoir The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother. Maybe I saw myself in them or was influenced by their words. This Black History Month 2023, I want to share some books by Black authors that shaped me in some way.
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