You Matter

“Book! Book!” My almost 2-year-old daughter dropped the doll she was playing with and pointed to a high shelf of picture books, ignoring the pile of books in her reading tent on the floor. I smile at her, passing her three books. We sat, she in my lap, our stack beside us, and began to read. The books from this high shelf are different from the books on the floor. These have paper pages which, in the hands of even my careful child, could tear. But these are also different in that the picture books we were reading are banned in the state we live in, not for explicit content or bad language, but for no other reason than that they center Black characters. Those banning these books suggest that the characters within them may make their own children feel bad for who they are. Reading through the pages of I Love My Hair by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley or Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry—books about embracing our unique hair texture—I am reminded that there is, right now, an effort to take these books off public school shelves. And at the same time, there is an effort to end hair discrimination through the passage of the CROWN Act. The struggle between these groups, one that wants to limit exposure to these types of stories and the other that wants to simply exist, is palpable in me as I am reading these stories to my child. This is the reminder on World Children’s Day: that no child should face discrimination, that every child deserves representation, and that creating a world where every child can not only see and appreciate what is unique about themselves but where they can also see and appreciate the uniqueness of others, is a world worth fighting for. Hearing our own stories builds us up, hearing others’ stories builds the connection between us, and building a world where every child feels empowered, from the laws we create or just through these books we read, is worth it.