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