America, Do You Love Us?
Black is beauty.
Beads and barrettes at the end of braids. I love you’s to mommas and grandmomma, cousins, too. It’s double Dutch in the park on Saturday and patent leather shoes on early Sunday mornings. To be Black is to reflect the sun, then radiate its light when we hold those we love tight. Cause with us we know they are safe.
Daria People’s Riley has crafted another beautiful and thought provoking book. This time, one that puts the spotlight on a question with no easy answer. To be Black and Brown in America, it is one that is a constant ride between lip and tongue.
America, do you love us?
Us who share the same skin
as Black kids handcuffed by police,
a daughter asleep in her bed,
a father who never got to come home ,
who faced bullets to skin,
when all we’ve ever wanted to do was to breathe.
Early on, Black and Brown kids recognize when the rest of society sees them as different. It can be as simple as a look. Or, the look that never comes.
America My Love, America My Heart, asks if this America loves us in all of our entirety.
When the laugh out our mouths is a boom box and the words the follow are even louder.
When our names scream our culture, a claim to our identity. No, these are not hard to pronounce.
When English is not the language that comes off our tongue. AAVE, Creole, Spanish.
America, sweet land of liberty? This question is not a new one. As Daria has penned, “From then to now.” We’ve been asking.
When we kneel because the chains, the shackles, the cages ARE NOT to be left in the past, they are a constant presence. It’s not hard to know why this question is not an easy one to answer. Because ow has any of this ever been love?
To love us is to love ALL of us.
When we march in the streets, fists raised to the moon, chants flying out our mouths.
I love being Black!
Say her name!
No justice, no peace!
Our hearts are worthy of one more beat. And then another. And another. We know this, but America, do you?
To love us is to love ALL of us.
America My Love, America My Heart, inked in monochromatic colors, each page holds aspects of red, white and blue. Monochromatic- because it’s easy to feel unseen in a country that chooses to see who it wants to see. Chooses to love who it wants to love.
America My Love, America My Heart, reflects the question Black and Brown kids have held
For
Too
Long.
America My Love, America My Heart is a question for the adults, too. - The adult who has never had to wonder, to worry, to ask.. And the adult who always
always
does.
This is a book for the classroom. The library storytime. Before bedtime and upon waking up. This is a book for the young ones who don’t yet know how to read, but do already know what it feels to wonder. This is a book for the not so young, but still young at heart, who have always held this question, but never said it out loud.
This is the book, America.
America My Love, America My Heart releases Tuesday, April 6th.