This piece in the Sunday magazine section of the New York Times brought me to tears, how Jacqueline Woodson, famed author of the National Book Award winner BROWN GIRL DREAMING, among other significant children's books, talked about waking up and the grief of her son's down-cast form when he heard the result of the election. He is eight. He has only known a Black president. His response, "This wasn't supposed to happen."
And what does his Mama say to him? "It was time to tell him the deeper truths of our country. It would be time to tell him what I saw this year: the Confederate flags in my own childhood home of South Carolina and in Alabama, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Virginia, Georgia-even in his home state of New York. It would soon be time to tell him that this country's earliest history is one of unkindness. That the blood of his ancestors was expendable, priced along with stocks of cotton and gold. Will they really build a wall? he asked. Will they really send my friends away?" But then she concludes with the positive-you have always made a way out of no way. We'll get through this."
I pray!
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