She’d just watched Martin—who knew full well she was observing him that particular period—walk his high-school class through a well-considered discussion of gender, power, and the historical erasure of women and the marginalized. Heard him declare with quiet passion that their stories mattered. That, by inference, her story mattered. That she mattered. Brandi Rose Owens. Born female and poor. Unlikely to appear in any history textbook. She understood her own worth and power. The choices she’d made to honor the former and preserve the latter. Now she knew he did too.
