I Am Enough
By Grace Byers
This is a beautiful, heartfelt story with a very positive message. The characters are all young girls, and the illustrations reflect their great diversity – in color, special needs, particular talents, faith, etc. The simple rhyme scheme creates easy rhythm, especially for children learning to read aloud. The core message is rendered in the last four pages: “I know that we don’t look the same:/ our skin, our eyes, our hair, our frame./ But that does not dictate our worth;/ we both have places here on earth./ And in the end, we are right here/ to live a life of love, not fear…/ to help each other when it’s tough, to say together:/ I am enough.” It is an inspirational read aloud, which children can easily memorize. It is also an early lesson in empowerment for young girls.
You can listen to author and actress Grace Byers do an inspirational read-aloud here on Netflix, Jr.
For very young children, the pictures alone will provide great pleasure. For older pre-schoolers, this is a read-aloud book that allows for great interaction between parents and children. For each page, there is an opportunity to ask your child a question, and reflect on their responses. For example:
How do you shine?
What can you do with your voice?
Where would you want to fly?
How are you like trees and mountains? like nature?
Who do you love? What do you love? What do you feel in your heart?
How are you like the wind or the rain? (earliest introduction to metaphor!)
What do you dream about?
Can you tell me a time when you were sad? What made you feel better?
Asking questions like these as you read (and re-read!) will help open your child up to the deeper message at the end of the book about living a “life of love,” which is, perhaps, your child’s first encounter with the concept of agape, so often referenced by Martin Luther King, Jr. “Agape is universal love, such as the love for strangers, nature, or God” (this brief article in Psychology Today breaks down all seven kinds of love, as defined by the Greeks).
agape.
As King wrote, “Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action… Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community… It is a willingness to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven to restore community…. If I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do nothing but intensify the cleavage in broken community. I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love.” The wonderful Maria Papova, in a review of a book of King’s essays in her Brainpickings blog, expands further on these ideas.
Byers’ book is an explicit rejection of color blindness. She asserts: “I know that we don’t look the same” – something children are inherently aware of, and unlike too many adults, also willing to acknowledge and accept as a given. To state otherwise, to assert that you don’t see color, is diminishing. This article in the Atlantic Monthly addresses the risks of color blindness, and this one from Psychology Today, all the way back in 2011, brings up the necessity of white people recognizing their “whiteness” and the benefits of embracing multiculturalism. Whites who do not do this, are, in antiracist terms, acting out their white fragility, a word used by Robin D’Angelo “to describe the disbelieving defensiveness that white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged.” As this review of DiAngelo’s book, White Fragility, elaborates: “Whiteness scans as invisible, default, a form of racelessness. ‘Color blindness,’ the argument that race shouldn’t matter, prevents us from grappling with how it does.” Ibram X. Kendi, the author of another antiracist best seller, How To Be An Antiracist, has this to say about colorblindness right at the very start of his book:
“The common idea of claiming ‘color blindness’ is akin to the notion of being ‘not racist’ – as with the ‘not racist,’ the color-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity. The language of color blindness – like the language of ‘not racist’ – is a mask to hide racism.”
Byers’ text and the accompanying pictures assert that we do not all look alike, and that our differences are meant to be celebrated. Her concluding words: “I am enough” are hopefully a mantra for children who all too often are not seen – and loved – for all their multifaceted differences. Too many people misinterpret Dr. King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, where he intoned that he dreamt of the day when his children would be judged by “the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.” But King was not color-blind, and he knew America was not color blind. His dream was that his children would be treated equally, no matter the color of their skin; that their lives would have equal value to that of white children; simply put in today’s terms: that Black lives would matter. Byers, in language that any child and parent can understand, simplifies it even further: “I AM ENOUGH.” It is an all too necessary message.