Reading, Writing, Research, and Reflection as Revolutionary Tools of Healing & Liberation

From a very young age I was into books, even before I had a grasp on reading. Of course, I was drawn to the pictures and colors in some publications, but my dad always read books, and, in the beginning, I think that was part of the intrigue with wanting my own.

As I grew older, intrigue shifted to intentional interest. I remember the day that reading became my first form of resistance.

It was the day I asked my mother why she always had so much reading material around. Small piles of magazines and newspapers were stacked and scattered like furniture in the family room. By my mama’s bed she had a mound of papers that sat there like a permanent fixture, never seeming to shrink, always somehow growing. Books stayed stacked on her nightstand and lined our shelves. There was no shortage of words on pages surrounding us.

That day, I inquired about her “obsession.” I remember asking her a question about something else first and, per the usual, she said: “Go look it up.”

I should’ve known better. This was her regular response to my consistent curiosity as a child and young person. Huffing, puffing, and talking under my breath, I lightly stomped away to stand in front of the row of dictionaries and encyclopedias on the bookshelf in the family room, face scrunched up like I was personally offended by learning.

“Why I always gotta go look everything up?” I asked with a twang in my voice. “Why can’t you just tell me, ma?! Dang! Go find this, go read that. Why? You have all this reading stuff around here! What is the point?”

I turned around, already regretting the attitude I let lace my words, and automatically saw that she had caught it. She stood there glaring at me.

“Little girl. Do you know that there was a time in this country when Black people couldn’t read or write?!”

Stunned, my mouth fell open... WHAT?! HUH?! WHY? HOW?

That moment unlocked another load of questions… and of course, I had to go look it all up. I’ve not stopped researching and reading since that day.

That conversation ignited something inside me. It made me angry. It catalyzed me. What I learned about the laws and the legacy of lockout in this country against Black people is something I could not get out of my head. Because it wasn’t “by accident” that Black folks were kept from literacy. It was policy and strategy. It was power protecting itself which is a familiar pattern I know well, now as an adult.

There were laws across Southern states that criminalized teaching enslaved Black people to read and write. Both the teacher and the taught would be punished because literacy threatened the entire system. If you can read and write, you can interpret and document. If you can learn and organize, you can tell the truth and testify.

My mother was born in South Carolina in 1940. Two hundred years before her birth, South Carolina’s 1740 “Negro Act” is one of the most cited examples of an explicit effort to restrict literacy, especially writing, out of fear that Black people would forge passes, communicate, and resist their atrocious conditions and treatment. Virginia’s legislature later moved to prohibit gatherings intended to teach Black people to read or write, just another way of stifling learning and community at the same damn time.

A consequence of my mama’s instruction to “go look it up” was that I didn’t take every answer at face value or believe everything as truth without doing my own exploration, especially if the answer, for whatever reason, didn’t satisfy me and/or a gave me a gut feeling. Even if my teacher proclaimed something inaccurate. Just because they were older and in a position of power didn’t make them right. I struggled with that in school as there were often disconnects between what I learned in the classroom and what I learned in my household. I began challenging power structures in elementary school and that followed me as I entered the workforce in my 20s.

By the time I first heard the statement, “If you want to hide something from a Black person, put it in a book,” it filled me with rage because I never forgot what my mother explained that day. And I went on to learn all the ways that the Black mind and body have been controlled since the founding of this so-called “land of the free.”

“Knowledge is power” has become more than just words I value. It’s a way of living. bell hooks said, “to educate is the practice of freedom.” I’ve taken that seriously my entire life and career, committed to educating myself and others in some form or another. Exploration, expression, education, and mind expansion through knowledge and relationships are core to who I am and who I am growing to become.

Writing and reflection have always been healing and liberating for me, powered by research and reading. They challenge me to change me, shaping my values and beliefs, and as a beautiful byproduct, bringing me back home to myself. Teaching me who I truly am outside of whom I’ve been socialized to be… and told I need to be… by people who don’t know me at all and never will.

Through various bouts of difficult and depressing times, especially as I’ve taken leaps toward my mental freedom over the last decade, jumping from comfort into deepening consciousness, reading, writing, research, and reflection have been intentional practices that connect me more deeply to myself through the wisdom of those who came before me. They pour into my responsibility to keep the torch lit for those who come behind.

They remind me that here and now mirrors back then because revolution is continuous and we’re still not free. They make space for my gifts to expand outward from the inside of my deepest knowing. They validate my feelings that guide me forward… if I’m open to receiving what they came to teach.

And I will always acknowledge my privileges. I have access, resources, ability, and even the time to read, write, and reflect as part of my self-caring and loving.

Growing up, my life drastically changed when my parents split up and my mother became a single parent. She settled in North Carolina with her family and village, while my dad ventured out to the West Coast, California, where he remained for most of my life. With him went so many things I was accustomed to… the nice home, the car… and family vacations became distant memories.

My mother, the most resourceful woman I know, was able to get my brother and me scholarships to summer day and overnight camps, experiences we would not have had otherwise. We even attended a prestigious private school on scholarship for middle and high school. I am so grateful, because even when things were hard and we didn’t have a lot, we never lacked a thing.

No matter how she was treated by social institutions, my mother always tried her best and kept her head up, making a way out of no way. When I talk about the Black cultural magic of conjuring up something wonderful out of nothing, my mama could be the spokesperson! From outfits, to meals, to makeup… I have stories!

She would find old dictionaries, encyclopedias, and thesauruses at random thrift stores… often not even complete sets… and she’d bring them home anyway for our “reading museum” (that’s what I called it). She was a secondhand store finds whisperer. Even now, reminiscing, I’m in awe of her skills, though as a child I didn’t appreciate it.  

And the library? Whew.

The library was so much more than a place to do homework after school and on the weekends. It was where I got lost for hours deep inside pages visiting new worlds and faraway places. As my single-digit age became two digits, books became an invitation to a community of like-minded souls I struggled to find in real life. Words upon words that validated my struggles, my rage, and the ideas I kept tucked away because I knew they wouldn’t be accepted.

I couldn’t afford to buy many books growing up, which is why I’ve been adamant about building my own collection as an adult. But at the library, there was an unlimited source as long as you had your trusty library card… and I protected mine with my whole being.

The library was also a safe, free place my mama could take my brother and me in the summer when it got too hot and she couldn’t afford to keep the air conditioning running all day. It’s why I think about my privileges even with the barriers I face systemically. Access and opportunity are never abstract when you’ve experienced the difference between having them and not having them.

Which is exactly why what we’re seeing right now hits a nerve.

Attacks on books and libraries over the last few years have angered me, but they have not surprised me. If anything, that nagging feeling of familiarity has been more prevalent. Almost like we’ve been here before.

Because we have.

Today’s playbook may look more “polished.” It may come dressed up in words like “parental rights,” “protecting children,” or “community standards.” But at its root, it’s still the same old practice: controlling what people can access, who and what people can learn, and who shapes and perpetuates what narratives.

Let’s be clear… these aren’t isolated incidents. The American Library Association documented 821 attempts to censor library materials and services in 2024, with 2,452 unique titles challenged, numbers that remain far above pre-2020 levels (Google is free). And much of the pressure comes from organized groups and officials, not just individual parents stumbling into concern.

When books are banned, when librarians are threatened, when classrooms are stripped of honest history, when stories about race, gender, and liberation are labeled “dangerous” … I don’t hear “concern.” I hear control and opposition to freedom without consent.

I hear: "Woke no more." And when we’re not awake, the question is: what’s happening while our eyes are closed?

Oppressed people have always known this truth, that when power wants to remain unchallenged, it goes after the storytellers, the teachers, books, archives, curiosity and the questions. It goes after the places where the truth can be found.

That’s why for me, reading is resistance and writing is not only a weapon, but

simultaneously, a balm. Research and reflection have been both a sanctuary and strategy for getting free mentally, even if not physically. Processing, coping, and healing, ongoing.

That’s why I’m not letting go of the tools my mother handed me, the tools that helped me survive, helped me name myself, and that have led me back home to myself.

They tried to lock us out before. We learned anyway. They’re trying again. And I’m still reading, writing, remembering, and refusing. I won’t stop... because those who paved my way and kept it lit, didn’t.