i grew up with images that looked just liked me.
doll babies and artwork and books by brown authors, all the time my world full of color, all the time untainted by anything that stripped away me'ness.
(the first time i experienced harsh racism first hand, my heart sank with confusion)
tonight, sitting in my mother's basement, statues of masai warriors towering over room (they belonged to my father), i smile in a memory. she never stood on a soapbox, but all my life she has been standing for us, the cocoa, the brown, the so black they seem blue, type people. silently expressing her deep love for those people. i look around. figurines of black mothers with black babies taking walks along bookshelves, slave papers and auction ads, frayed and hanging on walls. she bares her heart, gracefully silent, silently bold, each statue like a piece of her very own soul...
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