How on EARTH could I grow up loving reading, but evolve to HATE it?

Good afternoon everyone, and happy mid February! Today, I want to drop a quick blog post to give you some exclusive insight on the origination of Books by Janee, and the story of my own reading practices that have led to the creation of this brand.

When I first had the idea of creating Books by Janee, I had a twofold vision. I always knew I would be releasing my own literary work through this brand, but the foundation of its creation lied in returning to my love of leisure reading Black books again. Growing up, I was a girl who always had a book in her hands or read on forums online, thirsty for knowledge. Thirsty to be entertained by a world that wasn’t my own. I read all kinds of entertaining Black teen fiction like the Cheetah Girl Series, Bluford Series, Sharon Draper novels, and more. When high school came, I began to notice a gradual, but visceral aversion to reading, particularly as I moved from Sophomore to Junior and Senior year. I didn’t love reading the way I used to. I often asked myself — why? Why did I hate reading, now?

Now that I am older and can now reflect on my reading practices, my innate love for reading was stripped because of our school system forcing a Eurocentric literary canon down our throats. No authentic, realistic, modern, and edgy Black experience was good enough or “rigorous” enough for an IB English class. The only Black experience that was good enough for our schools were stories about life post slavery, into the Jim Crow era, and exposing Black pain of navigating a racist world as a consequence of white violence. Titles like Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and even titles by Black authors like Beloved and Their Eyes Were Watching God… I disliked them. Greatly. I appreciate their contributions to literature, but at the same time, these literary works drained my soul and often left me depressed in a sea of white students in a IB English class. I didn’t want white folks’ pity and their prying eyes as I felt squeamish in my chair at moments when Black narratives got to be to hard to bear in these books. I didn’t ask for that. I wanted to scream this out, but knew it would fall on deaf ears: We ARE more than our oppression. Black people and the way we experience life is so much more dynamic than suffering through the consequences of anti-black racism!

These experiences are what spurred me to not only create a brand where I share books that do not put us in a sunken place of helplessness and hopelessness that white violence often makes us feel, but to also write a book I wanted to read. I know there are people out there whose experiences with reading are similar to my own. And so here we are, tribe. Finally, a digital space where we can relieve ourselves from the violence and exhaustion of racism and can enjoy literature for us, by us, capturing all of our greatness and experiences within the pages. Because to be honest? We ain’t even thinking about white folks 99% of the time, so let’s read something more than the pain they left us with!

-Janee