Some books stick with you and become a part of you. It's part of the reason reading will always be political. It's one of the only ways we can step into the shoes, thoughts, feelings of another person.

Legendborn is a book I will never forget. Not because of its beautifully written Arthurian plot, which definitely was not on my bingo card for books I must read, although I'm glad I picked it up. Not for the love triangle that has the YA crowd frothing at the mouth to see which boy the heroine will pick (I'm for neither boy - I'm team Alice!) But for the way I was able to experience how microagressions felt.

As a white passing person with a Mexican heritage on my mother's side, I've been at the same time sheltered from racism while being wholly aware of it. I may have passed, but my brother didn't. While I could see the macroagressions, and sometimes spot the microagressions, and felt the vicious rage only a big sister can feel when her younger siblings are slighted, I never felt it directed at me. Until I read this book. Until I walked a mile in a black character's shoes who is trying to fit into a world of bigotry, of stodgy old white men who have passed their prejudices down to their children and grandchildren in a system built entirely on a system of oppression.

Dismantling a lifetime of isms takes work, but I don't think it would truly be possible without books like Tracy Deonn's.