Like Vanessa by Tami Charles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There is a story about Nichelle Nichols, who played Urura, in the original series of Star Trek, that she wanted to quit, after the first season. She felt she wasn’t doing anything special on the show, and felt she could do better elsewhere. But Martin Luther King Jr. told her to stay. That her being on the show as showing girls that looked like her, that they could be more.
And, in the 1983, for the first time since the Miss American contest began, a woman of color won. Vanessa Williams. Black girls, who thought they could never be Miss America now saw that they too could aspire.
Representation is important. It is important because, while we can imagine that we can be something, it is hard if we don’t have role models that show that yes, it can happen.
And while I had a feeling that some things in this book would turn out the way they did, this doens’t mean that this was all slapped together. This book made me cry at the right points, and feel for Vanessa at the right points, and all the feels were there.
And this is probably, although as the author says, she did not come from quite such a hard place as the Vanessa in this book, she too tried the beauty content route, and knows from where she speaks.
Well researched (I like that in an historical novel), and well written, and just wonderful.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.