A week ago, I finished "Wench" after a whole weekend of reading and thinking and, well, being sad. I went to class excited to tell my professor I read the book in a weekend. She was surprised; now three of the the twelve students read the book!

It's a week later and now whenever I think about the girls I see at my beautiful HBCU, I see slave girls. I see Mawu, Reenie, Sweet, and Lizzie. It only makes things worse because I see them even more in the African girls I know on campus. The Black faces I see today can't be too different from the Black faces 150 years ago. Seeing this makes it harder to think about slavery, as I can see it in real, living people. I see it in my friends, my family, my professors, my associates – everyone.

But, in all of this, I feel pride. I go to an HBCU. Here, is where I learned to love myself and my skin. While I had the confidence before, it is here that I feel complete. It is here that I see other talented, Black people like myself and feel part of a community. I walk on the steps of legacy. I walk on the paths of struggle and triumph. I walk on the trail that overcomes adversity. I walk.

I tweeted the author, Dolen Perkins-Valdez about the book and my disappointment in the ending. It wasn't a disappointment in that it was a bad book; oh no! It was more like a post-partum depression; the feeling when you leave a movie with a cliffhanger. That feeling when your mind asks Well, something happens next?

She made the characters as real as I had, and I felt it was by magic. I felt the weight of these people who were supposed to be words on a page. Real-world emotions were felt and Perkins-Valdez made them just as real as I imagined them to be.

Maybe they do exist after all.