2021 theme: RUPTURE

ABCs FOR MY 1, 2, 3 An Alphabet Story for My Daughters Jamie K. Corbin A is for adversity. Its inevitability is the cause for your instruction.

B is for Black girl magic. You possess an innate beauty, power, and resilience. Generations of perseverance will lead you to accomplishment despite the systems surrounding you, designed to stile your success.

C is for childhood – interrupted. Your father declared it time to protect you with the explanation and education of what it means to be Afro-Latinas in America when you were just 7, 5, and 3.

D is for double standards. They are diicult to accept, so don’t. Speak up for yourself and for others, ight for justice and equality, and don’t yield to discouragement.

E is for education. This is your path forward into progress, and the reason you’ve never lived a day without books; the reason we teach you to read and think before you step foot in a school building. Commitment to your education is a strategic, rebellious shot ired against the injustice that awaits you, an indignant response to the severely punitive literacy laws of the past. Your ancestors fought to open the doors to educational opportunity for us, and we will not waste their sufering and sacriice.

F is for freedom. It’s a declaration, a promise, and a dream that will never come to fruition as long as we allow unjust systems to stand from sea to shining sea.

G is for gun rights. This constitutional guarantee to self-protection exists in writing only. Tamir’s mother knows all too well that in the hands of a Black child, toy guns can be life-threatening. No, darlings, you may not play with your friends and their water guns this summer, or next...or ever.

H is for Holy Trinity. They who decree the imago Dei with each breath of life given, spoken into every shade of lesh found in creation. You are imagebearers of God, beautiful contributions to the kaleidoscope of cultures and souls that constitute the citizenry of Heaven. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 77