I started writing poems in middle school. One of them was about colorism, others were about being a Black girl or social issues I felt passionately about, and some were more lighthearted or whimsical.
If you remember Microsoft Word in the 90s and early 2000s, we were really excited about playing with fonts and colors and adding gratuitous borders and text effects to our documents. So I typed up and “styled” my poems and printed them out in color or on colored paper, then collected them in a 3-ring binder.
By the time I got to 9th grade, I was already politcally conscious, so I cut out a magazine cover featuring Malcolm X with his index finger pressed to his temple, and I slid it into the cover of my binder. I hadn’t heard of a chapbook yet, but I recently realized (while writing my book, lol) that I’d made my first one!
Although the binder is gone, I still have the original prints!
Sincerely,
