Her Story: Ladies In Literature is a special, month-long series on Pop! Goes The Reader in which we celebrate the literary female role models whose stories have inspired and empowered us since time immemorial. From Harriet M. Welsch to Anne Shirley, Becky Bloomwood to Hermione Granger, Her Story: Ladies In Literature is a series created for women, by women as twenty authors answer the question: “Who’s your heroine?” You can find a complete list of the participants and their scheduled guest post dates Here!
About Kim Johnson
Kim Johnson held leadership positions in social justice organizations as a teen and in college. She’s now a college administrator who maintains civic engagement throughout the community while also mentoring Black student activists and leaders. She is also the graduate advisor and member of an historically Black sorority. This Is My America is her debut novel and explores racial injustice against innocent Black men who are criminally sentenced and the families left behind to pick up the pieces. She holds degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of Maryland, College Park.
Reading young adult literature is a space where endless possibilities exist. That coming of age time where your dreams can still be imagined. You can escape into a story or place yourself as the main protagonist. That is the magic of books and what draws me to step away from the world to read young adult literature. Because in young people, I see hope. I see our future.
When I was a young, the library was my palace. During those magical times, I searched for ways to be seen in books — even though finding characters that looked like me often felt impossible. So I found slices of myself in the margins, no longer thinking of myself as the main character but part of solving a mystery or exploring new things. Early on I flocked to mysteries like Nancy Drew Detective Series. It wasn’t Nancy I was interested in as much as solving the mystery. My ghost hunting adventures or neighborhood secrets were my way of being in a book. It was also my way of expressing my thoughts around right a wrong since I held a strong sense of justice as a kid. Nancy Drew gave me a place to resolve that tension of righting wrongs.
But as I got older in high school I left reading for pleasure. That is until I reached college and I found real life Black heroines and writers from the narratives of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Harriet Jacobs, to fiction from Frances Harper, Zora Neal Hurston, and Toni Morrison. I looked to them for resilience, for history, or for guidance on how to move mountains when there felt like no way.
Almost a decade later a resurgence of young adult books came after the We Need Diverse Books movement. I was then able to re-enter young adult literature and rebuild my literary heroine’s slowly.
In 2020, we find ourselves in unprecedented times. As young people look for their heroine’s in these times, they can find the magic in Black story tellers. Whether that’s an amazing adventure like A Blade So Black, something witchy in Kingdom of Souls or Legendborn. Young people can see how to use their voice like Starr Carter in The Hate U Give or Effie and Tavia in A Song Below Water. Break the mold and run for prom queen like Liz Lighty in You Should See Me In A Crown. Escape to Wakanda with Shuri. Take down the patriarchy in Cinderella Is Dead or Agnes At The End Of The World. Prove there are monsters like Jam in Pet. Challenge the notion of beauty like Camellia in The Belles, or jump into a west African inspired fantasy like Karina in A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, Deka in Gilded Ones, or Tarisai in Raybearer. Or be relentless, fighting for justice, like Tracy in This Is My America.
The windows and doors of literary heroines have expanded with readers immersing themselves in new worlds. As young readers find their ever-growing list of possible heroines, I want to leave you with one last heroine I used when I searched far and wide “in the canon” and came up empty with ones that looked like me. Through Maya Angelou’s poetry I found ways to create my own heroine by exploring hope, inspiration, understanding, confidence, and even frustration.
When I felt beat down, I’d read Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise and let the rousing stanza bring me in:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Or when my beauty was denied and tried to fit in I chanted from Phenomenal Woman:
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Or now, when the world is harsh and I feel swallowed up and unable to take up space freely, I read Caged Bird.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
When I read the full poem today, I hope there are free birds who have stopped to help those caged birds find their freedom to leap, to go downstream, to sing with their full voices.
Find I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings on Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● The Book Depository ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
Title This Is My America
Author Kim Johnson
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Genre Contemporary, Mystery
Publication Date July 28th 2020 by Random House Books for Young Readers
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● The Book Depository ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
The Hate U Give meets Just Mercy in this unflinching yet uplifting first novel that explores the racist injustices in the American justice system.
Every week, seventeen-year-old Tracy Beaumont writes letters to Innocence X, asking the organization to help her father, an innocent Black man on death row. After seven years, Tracy is running out of time – her dad has only 267 days left. Then the unthinkable happens. The police arrive in the night, and Tracy’s older brother, Jamal, goes from being a bright, promising track star to a “thug” on the run, accused of killing a white girl. Determined to save her brother, Tracy investigates what really happened between Jamal and Angela down at the Pike. But will Tracy and her family survive the uncovering of the skeletons of their Texas town’s racist history that still haunt the present?
Fans of Nic Stone, Tiffany D. Jackson, and Jason Reynolds won’t want to miss this provocative and gripping debut.
One Response
Amazing and so powerful. Thank you Kim for writing and Jen for sharing! I’ve already pre-ordered this novel and can’t wait to get my hands on it!
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