Marley Dias grew tired of reading books about white boys and dogs and complained to her mother about the lack of literature that reflected black girls as the protagonist. Dias’ mother– unwilling to simply accept her complaints–challenged her 11 year old, and what her daughter did next makes her eligible for the 2016 Awesome Person of The Year Award.
” ‘What are you going to do about it?’ [my mom] asked. And I told her I was going to start a book drive, and a specific book drive, where black girls are the main characters in the book and not background characters or minor characters.”
Marley kickstarted her #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign in which she hopes to collect 1,000 books with black female lead characters by February 1 and so far she’s halfway there. Once collected all the books will be sent to children’s book drive in Jamaica.
“I used the resources I was given, and I want people to pass that down and use the things they’re given to create more social action projects—and do it just for fun, and not make it feel like a chore.”
Awesomeness. Pure awesomeness. Check out her interview below.