Chapter 10: Interlude: Hi(story) & Hope: How the Stories of Our Individual and Collective Pasts Determine What We Believe is Possible

Yes, it matters! This is what I want to say to the young women and men I visit in New York City public schools to facilitate poetry workshops. I wish someone said these words to me when I was their age. I want to rip the earphones out of their ears, push back the fitted caps shadowing their faces so their eyes could meet my own, and scream directly into their souls, “Yes, you matter!” Sometimes I say these actual words but it is but a faint voice straining to make it through a wall of stories built before their grandparents’ grandparents were born. I tell them, “Forget what the world thinks. You matter!” But when they look around, their evidence says different.