I am a writer. I mean that more in the life-calling sense, rather than the vocational sense. I wrote my first coherent story in the 2nd grade--a memory I vividly remember because of how my teacher responded. It was about a child who was stuck in a toy store and spent the night there alone. Everyone in my class had been assigned to write something on this prompt; but I had weaved a narrative with detail and depth that had apparently surpassed what was expected of a second-grader. My teacher was so shocked by the story I wrote that she went on to inform everyone from my mother to the principal. She even got me featured as a highlight in the school newsletter for it. It was honestly life-changing; before then, I remember feeling like the odd one out, even as early as kindergarten, because I didn’t feel like I had any talents. But from that incident onward, I finally found my gift.

However, about two years ago, another truly startling realization came to me:

That the characters in my fiction pieces were, and always have been, almost exclusively white.