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This, while explaining to the white girls why my pressed hair could not get wet in Portland's rain, while debunking the stereotypes some of them had about people who lived there, the place that was my home, was emotionally exhausting.
I spent my adolescence feeling free, loved, and beautiful at home and suffocated, interrogated, and abnormal with these girls. I learned how to contort myself - physically and emotionally - in order to fit into the confined spaces available for me. Black girls could not be too confident, too loud, too smart. Fat girls could be cute but not beautiful, could be the funny sidekick or wise truth-teller in school plays, never leading role or love interest.
There was an internal tug-of-war with my self-esteem...
These poems healed every aching part of the seven-year-old girl in me. They were confirmation that my mother and all those women who ever told me I was worth something were right.
-- "Space to Move Around In" by Renee Watson
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