Literature and history are the pathways to understanding the world around you, especially one that does not reflect your identity. Imagine walking around your whole life and not seeing one person representing an often-complicated existence, be that because of skin color, disability, sexuality or gender. Books and history shake up someone’s lived experience and make others aware of experiences that do not or will never align with their lived experience.
The first book that helped me with my identity was “Annie On My Mind” by Nancy Garden, written in the 1980s. I was lucky enough to find it in my middle school library in Orlando in the late 2000s. Books have always been and continue to be an escape path for me. “Annie On My Mind” was no exception. This was the first book that helped me see and understand becoming a lesbian and the ever-changing complicated aspects of living my truth. The book explores a relationship between two girls that meet at a museum in New York City, and things become complex. Growing up without a direct representation of this identity, I was left attempting to figure out a significant hole in my lived experience alone. This book permitted me to seek more literature and some remnant of community through books I was soon to discover.
As we all know, literature and history in Florida are under attack. I can’t imagine not being able to find a book to help me with complicated feelings no one around me could guide me through. Florida has been attempting to devalue the presence of the LGBTQ community for over a year now by enacting “Don’t Say Gay or Trans,” which persecutes those in the education system attempting to discusses the LGBTQ community in any capacity. It leaves unsafe spaces for children to live authentically, spaces that they may not be offered in their homes. Not being able to read books to help figure out life seems to be the cruelest thing in the world. Books are as important as food to a child; they are food for the mind, spirit and heart. They give you a soft place to land when everything around you looks like boulders coming out of the ground. Florida is building boulders for children that cannot even spell it yet. We need safe spaces like schools and the library to unfold because those cost no one anything. Now those spaces will cost so much more than the world has to offer. It’s akin to starving children of joy, community and compassion.
When it came to being a Black person in this country, watching our existence be treated as if our flesh is disposable, “Between the World and Me” helped shape my understanding beyond what I have already witnessed and read. This fantastic book by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a letter from a father to his son after the verdict that the police who killed Michael Brown would not be persecuted. His son’s reaction to this was one of pure heartbreak. Coates attempts to comfort his son with the reality and the delusions that plague life as a Black person in the United States of America. This book prompted me to write dozens of poems about the many Black spirits left behind because police targeted them. Florida is attempting to take away the awareness that could save lives. They want to quiet our history for no other reason than to spread hate and bigotry and insert control in a nation built in large part by slave labor. When you read “Between the World and Me,” you are taken through several pathways Coates shapes to provide extensive context as to why those people were not persecuted for murder. Florida is setting the stage for this nation to further devalue the most vulnerable groups of people since the beginning of time.
A generation being born could be without the necessary literature and history to inform them of others and possibly their experience. These laws being enacted are missing key elements such as compassion, freedom, joy, understanding and love. We as a nation are being transported back in time when I would not even have the freedom to write what I am writing to you. Where my words would hold no value in any room I walked into that did not reflect my identity, which was 50-60 years ago. Why is this not a nation that considers the natural history of marginalized people and makes it an even field? Imagine not being able to consume Nancy Garden, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Sister Soulja, Toni Morison and James Baldwin. These writers inform us of lives beyond my experience and provide us with much-needed history within the borders of this nation and beyond of how Black and LGBTQ people were treated.
More importantly, children are being left without support, love and comfort within the structure of a free education, which many people within these marginalized groups will only receive up to 12th grade. Florida is attempting to take away the power of awareness, which can only create better people to enact better laws — breaking away the chains of the trauma associated with living your truth if it does not align with the vast majority. Being the minority should never feel powerless, but sometimes it does. Love should always be at the forefront for people, especially children. These children deserve to be empowered through literature and history. Intentional love is the most necessary ingredient to sustain, grow and become.
Bryana Saldana is an Afro-Latina poet born and raised in Orlando. Saldana had her first published poem through “Women Who Roar.” Saldana’s pronouns are She/Her/They.
