Dear Jesmyn Ward

The accurate and real depiction of your life and those who you have lost is a text and story that I will genuinely never forget. It seems that we either hear these stories every day or not at all. Black people are killed and a lot of times there is no coverage. The only time there is serious coverage is when the black community makes a complete civil rights movement around these deaths. It is crazy to think that black men are killed at such high rates. Black women are often forced to take upon unrealistic roles as two parents when their husbands or partners are killed. Black girls are also forced to take upon unrealistic roles as a result of the mother taking on the "father" role. Black girls are forced to mature at insanely low ages in order to keep the family from falling apart while the mother is making money for the family. The way our society is set up, there is no real way to get out of this cycle of death, leading to trauma, leading to unnatural maturity at young ages by young black children. We have a lot of conversations about how women mature quicker than men, but I think one of the main reasons for this is the fact that women are forced to endure more at younger ages. There are obviously other factors, like the fact that men aren't held accountable for their actions until late adulthood, and maybe not even then, but I think the trauma that women, black women specifically, face at such young ages has a lot to do with their "maturity."