
Yesterday, I handed LaShea a book — The Skin I’m In. It was gifted to her by a colleague of mine who teaches ninth-grade English. LaShea, just nine years old, was clinging close, wanting to bask in the nearness of me, her older cousin, like a sunflower turning to the sun. But the day was heavy with work, tasks that called for my attention. The Holiday Market needed tending, Black Santa needed his due, and Sharee — who spun magic with her interior decorating — needed to be paid. My feet were planted in the rich soil of responsibility, as they often are, grounded by my work with the Gullah Reclamation and Empowerment Initiative. The work of gathering lost roots and replanting them so they might grow strong again.
I wanted LaShea to have her own soil to dig in while I managed mine. So I told her, “It’s important for you to be reading this book while you’re with me. You can read this book, use your phone or iPad, write, play Simon.” I gave her a list of things to keep her busy, but it was the reading I hoped would take root.
She paused, her young brow furrowed with a question that bloomed quietly but shook me like a summer storm. “Wait,” she asked, “Who do you want me to read this book to?”
I stopped. Her question hung in the air, clear and round like a ripe berry. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, do you want me to read the book, but who do I read it to?”
I told her, “Read it to yourself.”
She nodded, but I could see her mind grappling with the notion. She was standing on a threshold, puzzled by the idea of reading — not for show, not for someone else’s ear, but for her own soul. She was trying to figure out how one reads to the self, how knowledge could be something gathered like water into your own vessel, without a single drop being poured out for an audience.
It struck me then, deep and raw. Her question spoke to something more. Maybe it was the way we live, always performing, always making sure someone else sees and hears and understands. In the world I’m working to reclaim — the world of the Gullah people — there is a rhythm to life where stories are both told and held. They are shared, yes, but they are also kept close, braided tight into the spirit. LaShea, in her innocent query, was asking about that dance between sharing and holding.
I wondered if she could taste the sweetness of reading for herself, for the simple joy of it, for the way a story can swell in your chest and make a home there. Because that’s where liberation starts — when you realize that your mind and your spirit deserve tending, even when no one else is looking.
In that moment, I saw her as both the child she is and the ancestor she’s becoming. A girl standing at the edge of understanding that she belongs to herself, that she can reclaim pieces of her identity through words and stories, the same way we are reclaiming the Gullah heritage.
Maybe reading that book wasn’t just a way to keep her occupied. Maybe it was an invitation to plant her own seeds of selfhood. And just maybe, in handing her that book, I was reminding myself of the same thing: that this work — my work — is as much about looking inward as it is about reaching out. It is about knowing when to tell the story out loud and when to whisper it, quiet and sure, to yourself.
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