It's Time to "Take the Mic"

Sometimes I feel helpless. Or rather, I can’t help anyone.

I can’t help the people who were told to go back to their country. I couldn’t help the young black man fatally shot for wearing a hoodie. I don’t know how to help children kept in cages. Sometimes I don’t know if it is possible to make a difference just by myself.   

Really, how can we do anything? How can we help those who are wronged by our country?

Take the Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance edited by Bethany C. Morrow shows everyone, from children to adults, how to take a stand in the real world and make a difference.

The Helpers by L.D. Lewis is a particularly striking story, surrounding a young girl, Allie, during a sudden city-wide blackout. Unable to find her older sister, a medic named Sasha, Allie leaves her house and goes around the city to find her sister and giving help along the way. She first does seemingly small acts, like providing clean water to help clean a cut, then finds a collapsed building. She begins to help dig people from the building, putting aside her personal goal of finding her sister.

Allie must step into the role of a medic and helps her neighbors hands-on. She runs into a cast of characters, including a white man and a brown man fighting, and the brown man shouting, “I know you did this!” and later says “Nah, his [the white man’s] people came out here and blew all this shit up trying to Make America Great” (44), a reminder that tragedies aren’t just tragedies, they’re political, and they need to be discussed.

This isn’t the only time the current American president is alluded to. In Yamile Saied Méndez’s Aurora Rising, Aurora, an Argentian-American, encounters many instances of racism while staying at her friend Sadie’s house, these instances sounding all too familiar. Sadie’s father comments on Aurora’s cleaning, saying “I guess it’s in the blood, right?” (86). Later, he misidentifies her as Spanish: “Spanish?...But your English’s perfect!” (87).

When things can’t seem to get worse, after ruining her shirt, Aurora is handed a shirt with the words “Clean Up America”, an echo of current misconceptions of immigration. Aurora struggles, thinking: “wearing [the shirt] would be going against my family values…it would be sending a big F-You to my parents’ sacrifices as immigrants in America” (90). She later realizes “any crumb of friendship I’d had with Sadie had died too” (99). In this eerily familiar story, we are reminded of those ridiculed, hurt, and ostracized in our current political climate.

Although we can never go back in time and help those unjustly treated, these two stories served as important reminders: While The Helpers reminds us that we can help others even in small ways, Aurora Rising reminds us of why we need to help others. We not only can be involved in helping a community tragedy, but perhaps as importantly we can try to use our voices for those who may be silenced.

But how can we help right now?

We can educate ourselves on our current political and social climate and learn how we can get involved. Be involved by voting or participating in community marches. Just as important, we can learn to listen to and support others who are faced with injustice. Take the Mic reminds us we need to open both our ears and our hearts to others.

Maybe we can stop another life from being taken of another voice from being silenced, by either taking the mic, or passing it to others who can’t quite reach it.

We can do something. We can make a difference. We are not helpless, as long as we hold out a hand, a heart, a mic to others. 

Take the Mic will be published October 1, 2019.

Thanks to Arthur A. Levine Books for sending this great book to us.

-SS