How reading books by authors of colour helps us reclaim our humanity

[Music]

the first time i ever read a novel by an

author who wasn’t white

i was 15 years old

my family had just moved from the uk

to qatar and being the book nerd that i

am the very first thing i wanted to know

when we arrived was

where is the library

it was the summer of 1999 and my parents

two younger brothers and i had packed up

our entire life and moved halfway across

the world to start a new adventure

we landed on august 1st which if you’ve

ever been to or lived in the middle east

you’ll know is the height of summer in

the hottest part of the world

there was still about a month to go

before the school year started so we had

some time before we could start making

friends but

i wasn’t worried

because books are my friends

and i knew that if i could just find a

library

i would be fine

finding a library wasn’t as easy as i

thought it was going to be but we did

eventually find one

but this library was actually just a

small room at a family club that we had

membership to

because the library was so small they

didn’t have a big selection of books so

i couldn’t find the usual types of books

that i like to read

but i figured that’s okay

as long as i could find the biggest book

they had on any topic i would be fine

because a big book would take me longer

to read and would help pass the hot

summer days

i remember searching and

scouring through the shelves trying to

find this big book until bingo

i found it

i pulled it off the shelf and

looked at it

opened it up to the back because i

wanted to see how many pages it had and

it had more than 700 pages which is the

biggest book that i had read up until

that point of my life

this big book that i chose is one that i

will never forget

for two reasons

first

because it was the first time that i

ever read a novel by a black author

and second

because of its subject matter

it was a

1976 novel

that told the story of an 18th century

african

captured as an adolescent

sold into slavery in africa and

transported to north america

and it followed his life and the lives

of his descendants in the united states

all the way down to the author himself

does anyone know which book i’m talking

about

roots yes

it was roots by alex haley

now my favorite subject in school was

history

and in the british schools that i went

to i remember we studied ancient greece

and ancient rome

the tudors and the stewards world war

one and world war ii

but i don’t remember ever learning about

the history of european colonialism or

the transatlantic slave trade

i didn’t learn about systemic racism or

global white supremacy and i definitely

did not learn about

pre-colonial africa

and then i found this book roots by alex

haley

and it opened me up to a part of history

that was so violent

and so dystopian and disturbing

that it felt

like fiction

it felt like a nightmare

it felt like something that should not

have been allowed to exist but it did

and not only that

but it happened to people who have the

same black skin as me

and who come from the same continent

as my parents

and my ancestors

now i don’t remember a lot of the

dialogue or stories in the book but

there’s one part that always stuck with

me

the black enslaved characters in the

book

were described as not having a soul

not being human

in the same way that their white

oppressors were human

and at 15 years old i remember feeling

confused

at this idea that human beings could be

thought of as not really human just

because of the color of their skin

now don’t get me wrong

i knew that racism existed

after all

my own experiences from a young age

growing up as a black girl in a

predominantly white society had taught

me that

but what i just

couldn’t wrap my brain around was this

idea that black people could be thought

of

as not human at all

dehumanization

what i realize now at 37 years old and

as an anti-racism educator is that this

dehumanization

of black people indigenous people and

people of color

which began

before the transatlantic slave trade and

is with us here now in 2021

is purposeful

it is systemic

and it is a threat

to our collective humanity

but what i also believe

as a black woman writer

and a lifelong book nerd

is that books

written by black people

indigenous people and people of color

can help us to fight this dehumanization

and help us to reclaim

our humanity

now i’ve told you about the book that i

read when i was 15 years old that

changed my life but in order for you to

truly understand the significance of

that event you have to understand

the entire context of my history as a

reader

i’ve always loved books

but the books i’ve read haven’t always

loved me back

at age five i was reading children’s

books about a little white boy and a

little white girl called peter and jane

who looked nothing like me and my

brothers

at age 11 i was reading nancy drew

the hardy boys

agatha christie and a little bit of

sherlock holmes

i was really obsessed with detective

stories at this age but

all the detectives i read about were

white

at age 15 as i said i read roots by alex

haley it changed my life it was the

first book by a black author but it

would be many many years before i would

read black authors and authors of color

again

by age 21 i was reading personal

development books

largely written by

old white men

somehow i believed that they could help

me a young black woman

fight the anxiety and depression that i

was experiencing at this time of my life

then by age 30 i was reading personal

and spiritual growth books largely

written by

white women

somehow i believe that they could help

me

a black woman feel more empowered and

feel more comfortable

in my own skin

it wasn’t until age 33 that things

really changed

it was 2017

and in the aftermath of the white

supremacist unite the right rally in

charlottesville virginia i’d written an

article that had gone viral

it was called i need to talk to

spiritual white women about white

supremacy

and it was the first time that i’d ever

written a public piece about racism it

was actually a time of my life where i

was coming into a deeper understanding

about what it meant to be a black woman

in an anti-black world

in the wake of that article going viral

i found myself suddenly thrust into

non-stop online conversations with white

people who were either inspired or

enraged by what i had written

and very soon i found myself

very burnt out

not just physically but

psychologically

you see

when you as a black woman stand in the

public eye of a largely white audience

that wants you to

explain to them show them guide them

validate and forgive them

and somehow

alleviate the feelings of helplessness

and guilt that they’re feeling on their

anti-racism journey

it can leave you feeling so

worn out

that you feel like a shell of yourself

and what i soon realized after many

months of these conversations was that

i was actually reenacting the dynamics

of white supremacy against

myself because i was allowing myself to

be used by white people for their gain

but to my detriment

instead of trying to find ways to heal

and liberate myself from the impact that

white supremacy was having on me

that winter i decided to take a

sabbatical and i sought refuge in the

one place where i can always find

comfort

and wisdom

can you guess where i went

the library yes

it was now 18 years later and qatar had

built the biggest and most beautiful

library that i’ve ever been to

i remember i went in there on a mission

because i wanted to know what black

writers and activists and thought

leaders had to say about how to survive

and thrive as a black woman in the grip

of white supremacy

i submerged myself in these books and it

turned out to be this healing bomb that

i didn’t realize i’d needed my entire

life

i had needed children’s books about

little black boys little black girls

i’d needed young adult books about black

detectives

i needed personal and spiritual growth

books written by black coaches black

healers and black therapists

and now what i needed

was feminist analysis

liberation pedagogy

spiritual nourishment and just

radical truth-telling

that i could only get from black writers

so i dove into the work of writers like

audre lorde

and tony morrison and octavia butler

bell hooks

and maya angelou

and so many others

and through these books i began to

really see myself

see the ways in which i could begin to

reclaim my humanity from white supremacy

patriarchy

capitalism and these other

interconnected forms of oppression

that sabbatical sparked for me a

lifelong obsession with

reading black writers

and being a black writer

in 2020

i published my first book

me and white supremacy

i saw myself following in the footsteps

of these literary ancestors who had come

before me

i wanted to write a practical

interactive workbook for people who have

white privilege

to do the inner personal work of

anti-racism

white supremacy tells us that people who

are white or who look white are complex

multi-layered full human beings who are

worthy and beautiful and who deserve to

live in the fullness and dignity of

their humanity

even more so if they are also male

cisgender heterosexual able-bodied and

wealthy

at the same time it tells us that people

who are black indigenous and people of

color are broken

one-dimensional stereotypes ugly

unworthy people who have no humanity

and who deserve

no dignity

even more so

if they are also female

lgbtq

disabled and poor

white supremacy leaves no room for real

humanity to exist because it tells us

that white people are super humans and

the rest of us are sub-humans

but this process of dehumanization

actually dehumanizes both the oppressor

and the oppressed because there’s no way

to hold on to your own humanity when you

are dehumanizing another human being

reading books by black authors and

authors of color has become this

rehumanizing practice that has

completely changed my life

it’s changed how i parent

how i love

and how i work

today i host a podcast and run a book

club that centers and celebrates

upcoming and contemporary offers of

color

i do this work for two reasons the first

is purely self-serving

i was so starved of these books my whole

life that i feel like i’m now rushing to

make up for it

but the second reason is because i know

i wasn’t the only one who was starved

we all were

writers of color have been writing

essays and composing poems and telling

stories since the beginning of human

literary history

it’s not because these authors and books

don’t exist that we don’t get to hear

about them

it’s because they go against an agenda

of white superiority an agenda that says

that the only way to be right

is to be white

now

don’t get me wrong

i’m not saying we shouldn’t read books

by white authors

hashtag don’t come for me

all authors matter

i still read books by white authors and

i enjoy them and i get a lot from them

but they are the exception for me not

the rule because i spent an entire

lifetime reading white offered books

i’m guessing you probably have too

they are already over represented in our

personal reading histories and they are

certainly over-represented in our

publishing histories

the book publishing industry itself is

extremely white-centered both in terms

of who gets to work in publishing and

whose books get published

there are also huge economic disparities

between how much white authors get paid

versus authors of color

in december 2020 an opinion piece ran in

the new york times titled just how white

is the book industry

in it the authors richard geneso and

guest gus wesrec were trying to show

these disparities so they ran a study

where they analyzed

books english language fiction books

that were published between 1950 and

2018

what they found out of the more than 7

000 books that they analyzed was that a

whopping

95 percent of these books

were written

by white authors

it is

completely unacceptable to me and i hope

it is unacceptable to you that in a span

of almost 70 years only 5 of those books

were written by authors of color

now i know it may seem right now

especially after the black lives matter

protests of 2020 that books by black

authors and authors of color are now

everywhere that those are the only books

that are talked about the only books

that are published

but go into any mainstream bookshop

and tell me who are the majority of the

authors in those books

we still have a long way to go

and also and this is something that i

just feel very personally about but

authors of color shouldn’t only be

published or only paid well when they’re

writing about anti-racism or their

trauma and pain as it relates to to

white supremacy

we should be reading them across a range

of genres whether they’re talking about

whether they’re writing about money love

business feminism coming of age politics

history you name it

i want to read it all

we should all

want to read it all

and we do

more and more readers of every race want

to read books by diverse authors

black indigenous people of color have

always wanted to be rendered more fully

in stories and more truthfully in

histories and socially conscious white

readers are looking for ways to break

out of their bubbles and challenge their

biased ways of thinking and reclaim

their own humanity

this is what i believe about books

i don’t just see books as words that are

written on pages and that are bound

between two covers i actually see books

as

portals

portals that offer us doorways

into new ways of thinking and new ways

of being

and i believe that books written by

black people

indigenous people and people of color

help us to open doorways that lead us

back

to our humanity

thank you