11-Year-Old’s #1000BlackGirlBooks Campaign Is Inspiring For So Many Reasons

– 11-year-old Marley Dias, who was born in Philadelphia and lives in New Jersey, noticed recently that none of the books she was assigned at school featured anyone who looked like her.

In fact, Marley Dias is leaps and bounds ahead of most people, at any age, when it comes to being an awesome human being.

Dias said she also discovered the book Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry from her work on the project (I’ve read it, and it’s amazing).

The 1,000 books Marley hopes to collect by February 1 will be donated to children in Jamaica (Marley’s mom is from the island) – as well as to schools and libraries. According to Jezebel, Dias is a former Disney Friends for Change scholarship recipient, and she’s traveled to Ghana to help feed orphans. “‘What are you going to do about it?’ [my mom] asked”.

So, Dias did what any reasonable young adult would when faced with a problem: she created #10000BlackGirlBooks and started a book drive, a “specific book drive, where black girls are the main characters in the book and not background characters or minor characters”. She is reportedly halfway to her goal, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The book collecting campaign is one of the activities in the GrassROOTS Community Foundation Super Camp, which was founded by Marley’s mother, Janice, and Tariq, “Black Thought” Trotter of the Roots.

Don’t you just love when the future leaders of tomorrow see an issue and feel empowered to take matters into their own hands?

Marley Dias: “I was sick of reading about white boys and dogs”. I think what this young lady is doing will impact the lives of not only brown girls, but also everyone who enjoys reading something new and exciting.

So far, Marley Dias has collected a sizable 400 books for the #1000BlackGirlBooks project, which her mother’s foundation is helping to run.