It was a lot to deal with on top of the universal American adolescent struggle. Almost overnight, those same boys who once played baseball with me at the park in front of our house started calling me Fro and would routinely spit on the back of my head when they sat behind me in class or on the bus. The blond boy who gave me a ring and had asked me to “go with him” in fourth grade stopped talking to me altogether.
After Maya’s American History teacher showed Roots to her class, with no context. Maya instantly became the, “other”, among her classmates.
