I guess it’s true what they say about remembering how people make you feel. It was the first time I was proud of the skin that I was in and it was the first time I had believed anyone who told me that I had a reason to be proud of my skin and who I was. Now, it’s been roughly 23 years since I’ve read Miss Flake’s powerful novel, so I can’t sit here and tell you that I remember the entire storyline, but I can, with confidence, tell you that it was the first novel I had ever read that impacted my life. Outside of being my mother, she and my sister are both lighter than I am, so as far as I was concerned, she HAD to think I was beautiful. My mother of course thought I was beautiful. There was nothing I could say or do that convinced the other kids that I wasn’t mixed and I didn’t stand a chance at simply hearing “you’re pretty.” Nope. My lips were full and I had a head full of hair that went all the way down my back to my waistline. At 10 years old, I was struggling with the fact that I was “dark-skinned” and my peers were “light-skinned”. Flake literally changed my life right around the same age my daughter is.
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