Ri’s Read: On Feeling Seen with Gloria Edim’s Well-Read Black Girl
I don’t know what I was expecting when I began reading Well-Read Black Girl by Gloria Edim. When I first discovered the book, something in me stirred. I was intrigued. Wait, I’m a well-read Black girl! I thought.
Turns out, it wasn’t what I expected, but it’s everything I needed. Well-Read Black Girl is an anthology of inspiring essays written by 21 Black women who consider the question, “When did you first see yourself in literature?”
The women describe their relationships with the works of literary legends such as Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison, to name a few — reflecting on the way that, for once and at last, they could read a story and see their own within it.
This book… is a tribute to the brilliant Black women who have made us… All of the writers in this anthology pay vibrant homage to the stories and storytellers who shaped their lives as creators.
Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves
I can’t begin to describe how refreshingly necessary this book was for me.
I was nervous that essays wouldn’t hold my attention, but I bulldozed through them in about a week, reaching for it whenever I had a free moment to hungrily consume a couple of the short, yet powerful discourses. Like me, many of these writers recalled being enthralled by the joys of reading, despite being unable to relate to the characters… until they were introduced to a Black writer who not only affirmed their love for literature, but affirmed their existence within a world that has too often tried to diminish our power, importance, and being as a whole.
When You Look in a Book, What Do You See?
Jesmyn Ward tells us in “Magic Mirrors” how she loved fantasy books as a child, but never saw anyone that looked like her being depicted as magical or enchanted or special. She describes the feeling of finally finding a familiar character in Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth. Not only was Jennifer a sorceress, imbibed with magical abilities and wonderfully Black, but she was quirky, confident, and insistent on being her own person, however odd that person may be.
While seeing ourselves in ways that allow us to hope and dream and feel like magic is crucial, it’s equally as important to find characters that truly look like us, in real life. In “Need For Kisses,” Dhonielle Clayton explains how books about Black girls are often accompanied by painful narratives; broken homes or broken hearts or, in historical contexts, slavery and racial injustice.
Clayton longed for a story in which a Black girl was like her, dealing with everyday Black girl things. She craved a story whose underpinnings weren’t centered on Black girl trauma. “I wanted to see girls who looked like me being desired, touched, and most important, kissed.” She found herself in April Sinclair’s Coffee Will Make You Black.
Renée Watson writes of the healing she experienced after discovering Lucille Clifton’s poetry in “Space to Move Around In”. She describes how Clifton’s words, that her hips needed “space to / move around in” because they didn’t “fit in / petty places” freed her from the physical and emotional confines that she constantly contorted herself to fit into. If she wasn’t struggling with her Blackness, it was her weight or her hair. “What does it mean to celebrate the parts of you that others demean, disregard, disapprove of?” Watson asks.
Legacy of Literature
It took me a while to realize that Rebecca Walker, who penned the essay “Legacy,” is the daughter of Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar. She provided us with perhaps the overarching takeaway, and the reason I feel like this book is so important:
I feel very connected to the legacy of Black women writers, who, by telling their own stories and the stories of others, have created a rich body of work that reveals the complexity of Black women’s lives. Our work is making sure that our stories are told and told true. Our work is making sure our artistry is cultivated and expressed, shared and appreciated. Our work is refusing to surrender, refusing to be silenced, refusing to be referenced simplistically. Our work seems endless, and probably is. But our stories are at the core of our identity, and if they don’t exist, in some critical way, we won’t exist, either.
Rebecca Walker, “Legacy” from Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves
In Well-Read Black Girl, we discover the literary moments that contributed to the transformation of well-read Black girls into well-written Black women. And, if you’re a reader and a writer, you see yourself beautifully reflected in these moments.
Final Thoughts
This book has prompted me to more intentionally examine the way Black women writers show up in my life, and sit with the relationship I’ve had with being a Black girl reader and later a Black woman writer myself.
The feelings of inadequacy.
The raging imposter syndrome and subsequently, the departure from consistent reading and the suppression of my desire to write altogether. It’s the way I felt seen and represented in this book, for me. Each of these individual stories reminds us that ours are valid. Our experiences are not singular and our voices are not insignificant. Read enough books, and you’ll begin to find yourself in them.
Perhaps most importantly, it also encouraged me to explore the phenomenal authors with whom I’ve never taken the time to become familiar. Clearly, there’s something valuable to be taken from their stories that just may help me tell mine.
WRBG makes this easy. Throughout the book, there are little pauses with different categories of book recommendations, which I loved. Then, at the end, there’s a master list of all the works mentioned throughout the book. I guess it goes without saying: going forward, if you’re looking for me, you know where to find me — somewhere buried in a book.
You know the drill! What are you currently reading? Put me on in the comments! Need some inspiration? I got you, of course — check out my list of must-read books by Black authors. Next up on my list is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
