Piecing Me Together

I don't know what's worse. Being mistreated because of the color of your skin, your size, or having to prove that it really happened.

Those girls are not the opposite of me. We are perpendicular. We may be on different paths, yes. But there’s a place where we touch, where we connect and are just the same.

I know something happens between the time our mothers and fathers and teachers and mentors send us out into the world telling us, "The world is yours," and "You are beautiful," and "You can be anything," and the time we return to them. Something happens when people tell me I have a pretty face, ignoring me from the neck down. When I watch the news and see unarmed black men and women shot dead over and over, it's kind of hard to believe this world is mine. Sometimes it feels like I leave home a whole person, sent off with kisses from Mom, who is hanging her every hope on my future. By the time I get home I feel like my soul has been shattered into a million pieces. Mom's love repairs me.

Sometimes I just want to be comfortable in this skin, this body. Want to cock my head back and laugh loud and free, all my teeth showing, and not be told I'm too rowdy, too ghetto. ... Sometimes I just want to let my tongue speak the way it pleases, let it be untamed and not bound by rules.

Makes me feel like no matter how dressed up we are, no matter how respectful we are, some people will only see what they want to see.

When I learned the Spanish word for succeed, I thought it was kind of ironic that the word exit is embedded in it. Like the universe was telling me that in order for me to make something of this life, I'd have to leave home, my neighbourhood, my friends.

I am ripping and cutting. Gluing and pasting. Rearranging reality, redefining, covering, disguising. Tonight I am taking ugly and making beautiful,

It makes me feel like I'm learning a secret code or something. I don't know. It's powerful....knowing how to read words and knowing when to speak them is the most valuable commodity a person can have.

I write my resolution in black Sharpie marker on top of a background made out of cut-up scriptures, words from newspaper headlines, and numbers from last year's calendar. Be bold. Be brave. Be beautiful. Be brilliant. Be (your) best.

And this makes me wonder if a black girl’s life is only about being stitched together and coming undone, being stitched together and coming undone. I wonder if there’s ever a way for a girl like me to feel whole. Wonder

I wonder if any of these boys ever sit in a room for boys' talk night and discuss how to treat women. Who teaches them how to call out to a girl when she's walking by, minding her own business? Who teaches them that girls are parts—butts, breasts, legs—not whole beings? I was going to eat at Dairy Queen, but I don't want to sit through the discussion of if I'm a five or not. I eat a few fries before I walk out. 'Hey, hold up. My boy wants to talk to you,' Green Hat says. He follows me, yelling into the dark night. I keep walking. Don't look back. 'Aw, so it's like that? Forget you then. Don't nobody want your fat ass anyway. Don't know why you up in a Dairy Queen. Needs to be on a diet.' He calls me every derogatory name a girl could ever be called. I keep walking. Don't look back.

It's kind of not fair for us to feel guilty for getting what we deserve. We work hard....I know so many people who work hard but still don't get the things they deserve, sometimes not even the things they need.

Something is discomforting about a sun that gives no heat but keeps shining.

I hope one day my family gets to a place where we can be thankful just to be thankful and not because we've compared ourselves to someone who has less than we do. - Jade

when the man with the perfect smile asks, “And what have you learned?” I tell him I’ve learned I don’t have to wait to be given an opportunity, but that I can make an opportunity and use my voice to speak up for what I need and want.

Ever since elementary school, I've been making beauty out of everyday things - candy wrappers, pages of a newspaper, receipts, rip-outs from magazines. I cut and tear, arrange and rearrange, and glue them down, morphing them into something no one else thought they could be. Like me. I'm ordinary too. The only thing fancy about me is my name: Jade. But I am not precious like the gem. There is nothing exquisite about my life. It's mine though, so I'm going to make something out of it. -Jade

They can't read your mind. I mean, I get what you're saying - some of that stuff is a little corny, and a lot of it is offensive. But I don't know; what's the better option? Stay silent, leave the program, and they never have a chance to do better? - Lee Lee

There is an old adage that says, "You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day. You can teach a man to fish and feed him for a life time."... "Well, I like what Pedro Noguera had to add. He says, "Don't stop there."..."Help her understand why the river is polluted so that she and her friends can organize to get the river clean and make it possible for the entire community to eat too." - Sabrina

My grandmother called it bearing witness. She'd sit on the porch with her sister and talk the night away. Sometimes gossiping, sometimes praying. I'd hear them confide in each other...it feels good to know someone knows your story, that someone took you in...it's how we heal.

Here I am, so focused on learning to speak another language, and I barely use the words I already know.

Sometimes it feels like I leave home a whole person, sent off with kisses from Mom, who is hanging her every hope on my future. By the time I get home I feel like my soul has been shattered into a million pieces. Mom’s love repairs me. Whenever

There is nothing exquisite about my life. It's mine, though, so I'm going to make something out of it.

But girls like me, with coal skin and hula-hoop hips, whose mommas barely make enough money to keep food in the house, have to take opportunities every chance we get.

... it's kind of hard to believe this world is mine. Sometimes it feels like I leave home a whole person, sent off with kisses from Mom, who is hanging her every hope on my future. By the time I get home I feel like my soul has been shattered into a million pieces.

I don’t know what’s worse. Being mistreated because of the color of your skin, your size, or having to prove that it really happened.

They look like if you walk up to the paintings and say hello, they will say hi back to you.

I'm not saying [she] is perfect, but I am saying that even imperfect people have things to teach you.

I wonder who loves her, who is worried about her, who maybe cared so much but had to give up on her.

Sam leans forward. "But then again I feel bad for feeling bad, if that makes any sense," she says. "It's kind of not fair for us to feel guilty for getting what we deserve. We work hard." It takes a minute for Sam's words to sink in. I have never thought about my deserving the good things that have happened in my life.