"Now, I want to go beyond the books. Before, my whole thing was making sure that we had these books because there's research that shows fiction builds empathy. I also wanted to make sure not just Black and brown people had books they could see themselves in but that everybody had books they could see Black and brown people in, that was important.
Within the last two years, I started discussions because I feel after 2020, yeah, you have these books but are we talking about them? What are we doing as a result of having these books? In 2020 there were 10 to 13 books that everybody was buying across the country but were we reading those books? And as a result of reading those books, what were we doing?
Because how are we where we are now with books that are out there? How are we still in the same kind of divided place that we are now? So what I would like to do going forward is making sure these discussions are happening, making sure that I can see a change in the community and the neighborhood based on the readings and discussions of these books."