Read an Excerpt

february 12, 1963

I am born on a Tuesday at the University Hospital
Columbus, Ohio
USA—
a country caught

between Black and White.

I am born not long from the time or far from the place where my great, great grandparents worked the deep rich land unfree dawn till dusk unpaid drank cool water from scooped out gourds looked up and followed the sky’s mirrored constellation to freedom.

I am born as the south explodes,
too many people too many years enslaved then emancipated but not free, the people who look like me keep fighting and marching and getting killed so that today—
February 12, 1963
and every day from this moment on,
brown children, like me, can grow up free. Can grow up learning and voting and walking and riding wherever we want.

I am born in Ohio but the stories of South Carolina already run like rivers through my veins.



second daughter’s second day on earth 
 
My birth certificate says: Female Negro 
Mother: Mary Anne Irby, 22, Negro 
Father: Jack Austin Woodson, 25, Negro
 
In Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. 
is planning a march on Washington, where 
John F. Kennedy is president. 
In Harlem, Malcolm X is standing on a soapbox 
talking about a revolution. 
 
Outside the window of University Hospital, 
snow is slowly falling. So much already 
covers this vast Ohio ground. 
 
In Montgomery, only seven years have passed 
since Rosa Parks refused 
to give up 
her seat on a city bus. 
 
I am born brown-skinned, black-haired 
and wide-eyed. 
I am born Negro here and Colored there 
 
and somewhere else, 
the Freedom Singers have linked arms, 
their protests rising into song: 
Deep in my heart, I do believe 
that we shall overcome someday. 
 
and somewhere else, James Baldwin 
is writing about injustice, each novel, 
each essay, changing the world. 
 
I do not yet know who I’ll be 
what I’ll say 
how I’ll say it . . . 
 
Not even three years have passed since a brown girl 
named Ruby Bridges 
walked into an all-white school. 
Armed guards surrounded her while hundreds 
of white people spat and called her names. 
 
She was six years old. 
 
I do not know if I’ll be strong like Ruby. 
I do not know what the world will look like 
when I am finally able to walk, speak, write . . . 
Another Buckeye! 
the nurse says to my mother. 
Already, I am being named for this place. 
Ohio. The Buckeye State. 
My fingers curl into fists, automatically 
This is the way, my mother said, 
of every baby’s hand. 
I do not know if these hands will become 
Malcolm’s—raised and fisted 
or Martin’s—open and asking 
or James’s—curled around a pen. 
I do not know if these hands will be 
Rosa’s 
or Ruby’s 
gently gloved 
and fiercely folded 
calmly in a lap, 
on a desk, 
around a book, 
ready 
to change the world . . .
 
 
 
it’ll be scary sometimes 
 
My great-great-grandfather on my father’s side 
was born free in Ohio, 
 
1832. 
 
Built his home and farmed his land, 
then dug for coal when the farming 
wasn’t enough. Fought hard 
in the war. His name in stone now 
on the Civil War Memorial: 
 
William J. Woodson 
United States Colored Troops, 
Union, Company B 5th Regt. 
 
A long time dead but living still 
among the other soldiers 
on that monument in Washington, D.C. 
 
His son was sent to Nelsonville 
lived with an aunt 
 
William Woodson 
the only brown boy in an all-white school. 
 
You’ll face this in your life someday, 
my mother will tell us 
over and over again. 
A moment when you walk into a room and 
 
no one there is like you. 
 
It’ll be scary sometimes. But think of William Woodson 
and you’ll be all right.
 
 
 
the beginning 
 
I cannot write a word yet but at three, 
I now know the letter J 
love the way it curves into a hook 
that I carefully top with a straight hat 
the way my sister has taught me to do. Love 
the sound of the letter and the promise 
that one day this will be connected to a full name, 
 
my own 
 
that I will be able to write 
 
by myself. 
 
Without my sister’s hand over mine, 
making it do what I cannot yet do. 
 
How amazing these words are that slowly come to me. 
How wonderfully on and on they go. 
 
Will the words end, I ask 
whenever I remember to. 
 
Nope, my sister says, all of five years old now, 
and promising me 
 
infinity.
 
 
 
hair night 
 
Saturday night smells of biscuits and burning hair. 
Supper done and my grandmother has transformed 
the kitchen into a beauty shop. Laid across the table 
is the hot comb, Dixie Peach hair grease, 
horsehair brush, parting stick 
and one girl at a time. 
Jackie first, my sister says, 
our freshly washed hair damp 
and spiraling over toweled shoulders 
and pale cotton nightgowns. 
She opens her book to the marked page, 
curls up in a chair pulled close 
to the wood-burning stove, bowl of peanuts in her lap. 
The words 
in her books are so small, I have to squint 
to see the letters. Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates. 
The House at Pooh Corner. Swiss Family Robinson. 
Thick books 
dog-eared from the handing down from neighbor 
to neighbor. My sister handles them gently, 
marks the pages with torn brown pieces 
of paper bag, wipes her hands before going 
beyond the hardbound covers. 
Read to me, I say, my eyes and scalp already stinging 
from the tug of the brush through my hair. 
And while my grandmother sets the hot comb 
on the flame, heats it just enough to pull 
my tight curls straighter, my sister’s voice 
wafts over the kitchen, 
past the smell of hair and oil and flame, settles 
like a hand on my shoulder and holds me there. 
I want silver skates like Hans’s, a place 
on a desert island. I have never seen the ocean 
but this, too, I can imagine—blue water pouring 
over red dirt. 
As my sister reads, the pictures begin forming 
as though someone has turned on a television, 
lowered the sound, 
pulled it up close. 
Grainy black-and-white pictures come slowly at me 
Deep. Infinite. Remembered 
 
On a bright December morning long ago . . . 
 
My sister’s clear soft voice opens up the world to me. 
I lean in 
so hungry for it. 
 
Hold still now, my grandmother warns. 
So I sit on my hands to keep my mind 
off my hurting head, and my whole body still. 
But the rest of me is already leaving, 
the rest of me is already gone.
 
 
 
the butterfly poems 
 
No one believes me when I tell them 
I am writing a book about butterflies, 
even though they see me with the Childcraft encyclopedia 
heavy on my lap opened to the pages where 
the monarch, painted lady, giant swallowtail and 
queen butterflies live. Even one called a buckeye. 
 
When I write the first words 
Wings of a butterfly whisper . . . 
 
no one believes a whole book could ever come 
from something as simple as 
butterflies that don’t even, my brother says, 
live that long. 
 
But on paper, things can live forever. 
On paper, a butterfly 
never dies.