all definitions of Brooklyn’s summertime Black girlhood.
By the time I started high school, I had mastered all of those things and could easily blend into New York’s particular brand of teen Blackness, even while tucking away the quirky parts of myself—my love of sci-fi, disco music, and John Stamos.
In college, my small Black world expanded when I met my first roommate, who had the thickest Southern accent I had ever heard. My best friend in high school was African American and I’d been to her big family cookouts and even to visit her cousins in a small Black town in South Carolina. I’d been a little jealous that she had such a big family and at a moment’s notice could be surrounded by a plethora of aunts, uncles, and cousins. This was my first glimpse into African American culture—one with deep roots in the South. But that new roommate of mine with the Southern accent was from Rochester, New York, and her family had lived there for as long as she could remember.
Once I met new friends from Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and even England, my idea of Blackness began to expand. It was only then that I started to connect my own Brooklyn Blackness to a global idea of Blackness. After all, while the girls in my neighborhood teased me about not knowing how to spit out sunflower seeds, they didn’t know how to properly eat a mango, or know Creole or Patois or any of the Caribbean ring games. But before long, I knew there was a fine thread that connected all of these cultural traditions to each other.
Blackness is indeed a social construct. Within the context of American racial politics, there can be no Black without white. No racism without race. But the prevalence of culture is undeniable.
What are the cultural threads that connect Black people all over the world to Africa? How have we tried to maintain certain traditions as part of our identity? And as teenagers, do we even care? These are the questions I had in mind when inviting sixteen other Black authors to write about teens examining, rebelling against, embracing, or simply existing within their own idea of Blackness.
Renée Watson’s opening story, “Half a Moon,” places Black teen girls outdoors, among trees, and swimming in lakes—and yes, there is the common understanding that the hair situation is already handled. Jason Reynolds and Lamar Giles fully capture #blackboyjoy in their respective stories “The Ingredients” and “Black. Nerd. Problems.” There are no pervasive threats to their goofing around and being carefree. The intersectional lives of teens who are grappling with both racial and sexual identity are rendered with great care and empathy in Justina Ireland’s “Kissing Sarah Smart,” Kekla Magoon’s “Out of the Silence,” and Jay Cole’s “Wild Horses, Wild Hearts.” From Leah Henderson’s story of appropriation at a boarding school to Liara Tamani’s story of inappropriate nude pic games at a church beach retreat, the teens in Black Enough are living out their lives much like their white counterparts. They are whole, complete, and nuanced.
Like my revolutionary ancestors who wanted Haiti to be a safe space for Africans all over the globe, my hope is that Black Enough will encourage all Black teens to be their free, uninhibited selves without the constraints of being Black, too Black, or not Black enough. They will simply be enough just as they are.
DAY ONE: SUNDAY
Dad left when I was seven years old.
Mom thinks I was too young to remember Dad living with us, that I am holding on to moments I heard about but don’t really know for myself. But I am seventeen years old now and I know what I know. Mom is much further from seven, so maybe she doesn’t understand that at seventeen years old a person can still remember being seven, because it wasn’t that long ago.
Seven was watching Saturday-morning cartoons and practicing counting by twos, fives, tens. I remember. Seven was fishing trips with Dad and Grandpa, and being crowned honorary fisherwoman because once I caught more than they did. Seven was family camping trips and looking up at the night sky with Dad, pointing to the stars that looked like polka dots decorating the sky. Mom mostly stayed in the RV, and one time—the time when a snake crawled into Mom’s bag—she made Dad end the trip early and we checked into a hotel.
Seven was Dad and Mom arguing more than laughing. Seven was staying at Grandma’s on weekends “so your parents can have some time together,” Grandma would say. At Grandma’s house there was no arguing or slamming doors. Only puzzle pieces spread across the dining room table, homemade everything, and Grandma’s gospel music filling the house.
Seven was Dad leaving Mom. Leaving me.
And now, seventeen is spending my spring break working at Oak Creek Campgrounds as a teen counselor for sixth-grade students, because I have to work, have to help out at home, because Mom can’t take care of the bills alone.
Seventeen is knowing what to pack for trips like this because I’ve done this before at fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen: allergy pills, bug spray, raincoat, Keens for the walking trails, and my silk scarf so that I can tie my hair up at night. I braided my hair before I left so that if it rains, my hair won’t stand on top of my head, making me look like I got electrocuted.
When I was in middle school, I was a camper at the Brown Girls Hike summit. That’s one of the requirements for becoming a counselor. The annual camp is for Black girls living in the Portland metro area. Mrs. Thompson started the camp because she felt Black teens in Portland needed to learn about and appreciate the nature all around us. Every year she tells us, “Our people worked in the fields, we come from farmers and folks who knew how to get what they needed from the earth. We’ve got to get back to some basics. We’ve got to reclaim our spaces.”
This is my last year working for the camp before leaving for college, so I want to make it the best one ever. But as soon as the bus full of sixth-grade girls pulls into the parking lot, I start having doubts that any good will come of this week. Out of all the girls on the bus, there’s one I recognize. She is sitting at the front, all by herself. She is a big girl with enough hair to give some away and still have plenty. As soon as I see her, my heart vibrates and my mind replays ages seven and eight and nine and ten, and eleven and twelve and all the years without my dad, because the girl on the bus sitting on a seat by herself is my dad’s daughter.
Brooke.
She was born when I was seven.
She is the reason Dad left Mom. Left me.
I’ve seen her before, always like this, as I am going about my regular life. She shows up in places I don’t expect. Once at Safeway when I was with Mom grocery shopping because there was a sale on milk. She was coming down the aisle with Dad, the two of them with a cart full of things that weren’t on sale, no coupon ads in hand. We said hello, but that was it.
Another time I saw her at Jefferson’s homecoming football game. The whole community was out, and my aunt kept joking about how you can’t be Black in Portland and not know every other Black person somehow, someway. “It’s like a family reunion,” she said.
Except Brooke is not my family.
She is the girl who broke my family.
During the game, I couldn’t stop staring at Brooke, thinking how much she looks like Dad and wondering how it is
