Learning to Listen #10 - The Day You Begin

 This week I read "The Day You Begin" by Jacqueline Woodson. Jacqueline wrote that "[I wanted] to write about communities that were familiar to me and people that were familiar to me. I wanted to write about communities of color. I wanted to write about girls. I wanted to write about friendship and all of these things that I felt like were missing in a lot of the books that I read as a child."

"The day you begin to tell your stories..." This theme is a little heart-breaking for me, because it reminds me of the terrible white supremacy that has silenced so many people for so many centuries. This book tells the story of feeling left out or set aside because of differences - both general (language) and very, very specific (kimchi). The generality hurts because the differences are so common, and the specificity hurts because the differences are so real.

I am coming to understand that even without consciously silencing others, they have walked through my white world feeling less than, judged, and that silence is the only way to survive.They have seen my clothing, heard my language, watched my movies, ate my food, and felt that theirs ranked lower on an invisible (or perhaps very visible) cultural hierarchy.

This book is about empowering voices to begin to tell their stories, to help them know that we need variety in our tapestry, that the differences are what make life beautiful.

My heart hurts that this book needed to be written, but that hurt is minute compared to the hurt of the generations who have never felt they could share their stories and their lives. May this be a moment of true change.

"There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you."

"There will be times when the world feels like a place that you're standing all the way outside of."

"And all at once, in the room where no one else is quite like you, the world opens itself up a little wider to make some space for you."

"This is the day you begin to find the places inside your laughter and your lunches, your books, your travel and your stories, where every new friend has something a little like you - and something else so fabulously not quite like you at all."