Our Stories, Our Voices, by Amy Reed, was originally published August 14, 2018. This book shares work from 21 authors including Ellen Hopkins, Brandy Colbert, Sona Charaipotra, and Amy Reed, with their ideas about injustice, empowerment and growing up as a female in America. One of my favorite works in this book is by Tracy Deonn Walker. She talks about how she used to be a Girl Scout growing up and talking with her group of Girl Scout friends. She told her friends that she liked a White boy and they were making fun of her.

They were saying things like, “Wait, is Cody White? Wouldn’t it be funny if Cody and Tracy got together and had babies, because they’d be swirly like chocolate and vanilla ice cream! How funny that would be!” Everyone was laughing at her for her choice. Tracy realized that being an African-American woman was an issue with other girls. “I grew up hating Black History Month. I hated hearing about slavery and the Underground Railroad,” she said. She noticed that “whenever something culturally Black entered her social sphere, it’d be a hip-hop song on the radio or a dance craze.” In middle school, Walker said that she had to act cool because that’s what the White people asked her to be.