Last month we wrote about 11-year-old activist Marley Dias, who launched a book drive to collect 1,000 books with black girl protagonists after she became frustrated with always “reading about white boys and dogs” in school.
Dias has now collected around 1,000 books, which she’ll be donating to schools in the U.S. and Jamaica. To celebrate, she went on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore to talk about her favorite book (Jacqueline Woodson’s award-winning Brown Girl Dreaming), how her classmates reacted to the book drive, and why she thinks it’s so important for people to be able to see themselves in the media they consume. As Dias explained to Larry Wilmore,
When you read a story about a person you connect with—like, well, you host a TV show, so if you were to read a book about a black man who hosts a TV show, you would remember whatever he learned and use it on the show.
What a star!
(via Jezebel)
—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—
Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
