ABSTRACT
My favorite card game in childhood was Authors. Every card had a picture of a writer, and I never reflected on the fact that they were all white. They were not all male. My beloved Emily Dickinson was included. Each writer was important to me based on whether I found their work compelling. Dickinson was my very favorite and after her Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne. Growing up in the segregated world of the South, attending what the white folks called “colored” schools, I did not associate race with learning. I did not know there was such a thing as a “canon” composed of the writers Western culture deemed “great.” Every smart person in my world—every teacher—was black. They taught me the works of these writers whose words and ideas mattered so much to me in life. Finding an alternative sense of self and identity in the world of books as a girl, I did not think about race and writing.
