COLORING BOOKS, a personal essay by senior Sanya Bery is slated for publication in the Spring 2017 issue of the Blue Marble Review. Sanya’s short story, “12-16” is forthcoming in the Canvas Literary Journal. Enjoy this thoughtful reflection by Sanya.
In 2nd grade, I fiddled, cross-legged, as I listened to my teacher mumble about the beauty of books. “Reading is like giving vague instructions to your mind,” she whispered, “like a coloring book: you give your brain an outline and allow it to figure the rest out by itself.” I couldn’t help but let her enthusiasm enter me—it was wonderful, what our brain would think, what it was taught to think, with no instruction.
Soon, the bookshelves in my room overflowed with stories I could never forget. At night, I would pray to be those characters, trapped in the confines of pages, fighting evil. I could almost envision my blue eyes twinkling in the sunlight as my blonde hair flew behind me. My long, pale legs would pump faster and faster, leaving the villain in the dust. Maybe this vision of myself was my first mistake.
My second mistake was quite similar: I always imagined myself as princess Ariel, caring and good-natured but just a tad rebellious. In elementary school, at a lunch table, we were talking about princesses. I said that I was Ariel, and everyone laughed.
“No, you’re not Ariel. That doesn’t make any sense,” said Lyla, a girl with fair skin and dark hair who we called Snow White.
“She is Ariel,” Lyla said as she pointed at a shy girl sitting on the corner of our table. The girl had fire for hair, light eyes and even lighter skin.
“Who am I then?” I asked. Lyla paused for a little, and looked around at everyone else.
“I don’t know. No one, I think. Not everyone has to be a princess.”
After lunch, I immediately approached the girl who was said to be Ariel. I let my mind wander about all the insane adventures we would go on together. I found out soon enough that she was a timid girl, deathly afraid of the sea and breaking rules. I was confused.
That night I took a good look at myself in the mirror, the conversation still echoing in my head. No one. Not everyone has to be a princess. I was upset, but also confused. I looked up to these fictional girls because I saw bits of what I was in them, and pieces of what I wanted to be. I thought that our personalities were very similar. But, everyone else seemed to be drawing comparisons between these characters and my classmates on the basis of something as empty as appearance. I then understood. I would never be called Ariel because she was white, and I was not. There was something cynical in reading now; each marvelous heroine was just a character, a figment of my imagination, something I’d never be.
The more books I read, the more I see that authors often stick to simplicity when it comes to detail. For example, everyone has a nose and authors often do not include this detail in a characters profile because they know that the reader will be able to imagine it. My teacher was right—we, as readers, are able to fill in aspects even when there is no specific instruction. The author only mentions a nose in extreme cases: when he or she believes that without a proper description the character cannot be complete or fully understood (think: Voldemort). Oddly enough, I have noticed that ethnicity in literature works the same way. The standard of race has become so embedded in our head that like an ordinary nose, explaining that a character is white is a waste of words that can instead be spent on painting a better picture of the character.
If there are two characters, Sasha who is white and William who is not, the character development for Sasha will always be much more in depth. The reader learns small quirks like how Sasha takes her coffee in the morning. But, William is treated like a character with an extremely unique nose, and suddenly the reader knows nothing about his personality, but rather knows too much about the exact shade of his skin.
When we read about Sasha we allow our mind to think. We know Sasha likes coffee in the morning with no sugar because she is trying to loose weight for her brother’s wedding in two weeks. This detail sparks a flame that allows readers to relate to Sasha. But when we read about William we think, “Oh that’s the kid who is black,” and that’s all we think because that’s the only description we have received. We don’t see William away from his race as we do Sasha. We have confined him.
Don’t get me wrong I believe that race is important in development of characters: fictional or realistic. However, race should help us grow, not stop us. When I was young, what I struggled most with about that lunch table conversation was not realizing that I wouldn’t be seen as Ariel, but that I wouldn’t be seen as anyone. No one who my friends and I adored looked like me. My young mind failed to see me painted as a hero. For the longest time I thought that I was the problem. If no one wanted to write about someone who looked like me, or had parents that looked like me, isn’t that an issue?
Whether we want to believe it or not, there’s something in all of our brains forcing us to perceive some people differently than others due to small, and in hindsight meaningless, characteristics. These unfair stereotypes, which begin as whispers and progress into screams, build a wall that not only divides us but sometimes, in the worst cases, bury us alive.
I wonder how long it will take until we realize that maybe our brain instinct is not correct. Maybe, corrupt from the generations before us, our brain is begging for a change: to not only have coloring books but also to celebrate any color that appears. Maybe we need a rainbow of Ariels, and to equally accept those with tails and those with legs.