Letter to the Young POC Girls Out There by Ananya Gondesi

Dear little POC girls,

I have to start this letter off by saying that you are going to have some weird experiences growing up. People will say things to you, will act like the way you dress or look is weird because it isn’t what’s normal here. I say this to you: love your culture. If you want to bring your ethnic food to lunch, do it. If people call it smelly or disgusting, they are wrong. Eat what you want because no one else’s opinion matters. Wear your ethnic clothes if you want. Whatever people say is irrelevant. If you want to wear mehndi or something along the lines of that, wear it. Basically, embrace your culture, your heritage, and your skin color. There are going to be people that try to bring you down for it, to judge you for it, or to make you feel inferior. There’s going to be a phase in your life, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, that you’ll feel like you want to be white so you can be the “normal” person everyone “likes”. I say that you create your normal. Normal shouldn’t be a thing.

Embrace your uniqueness.

Love,

The older POC girls