Kekla Magoon: Seeing Yourself in Books

We talk a lot now as authors about the experience of not seeing ourselves in books when we were young. And I don’t know if it’s anything that I was aware of or really thought about as a child. I mean, I found plenty of things to read, plenty of things to be excited about. But I do remember the first time I encountered Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor, and you know just turning that rickety paperback rack around in my seventh grade classroom and seeing that book cover and grabbing it and taking it home and reading it and so I definitely have that really powerful memory of a specific image of a young Black girl on the cover of a book.

And, you know, I still think about that reading experience today.