12-year-old girl writes book to 'help others overcome' after experiencing racism at school
"I want to teach people that it's OK to speak up," Saily Bah told ABC News Live.
When Saily Bah, a 12-year-old Black girl from Iowa, experienced racist incidents as a fifth grader in school last February, she came home feeling hurt, her mother recalled.
"Within a span of a couple of days, there was an incident in class where kids were saying racist things -- that Black people can't do certain things and saying words like the N-word," Saily's mother Rohey Sallah told ABC News. "[Saily] was very disturbed and told them you shouldn't talk like that."
A couple days later, racist language was directed at Saily on the playground, Sallah said, promoting the then-11-year-old to open up to her parents about her experience.
"She was really upset and she was crying, asking, 'Why do people think it's OK to do this? Why do they think Black people are different?'" Sallah said.
As the middle schooler processed the experiences with her family, she decided to channel pain into purpose by writing a speech about why racism is wrong -- one that would inspire Saily to become an author and share her message more widely in the form of a book.
Saily, who wrote and illustrated "Rise Above: How to Turn a Negative Situation into a Positive One," reflected on her experience in an interview with ABC News Live Prime's Linsey Davis.
"I had felt horrible at the time," she said, recounting the racist incidents that she experienced.
"I thought that I was going to just bottle my emotions up, but I decided that I was going to help people," she added. "I want to teach people that it's OK to speak up and find your voice and advocate for this type of stuff."
Sallah said that Saily initially wrote a speech about racism that she shared with her teacher and the principal of the school.
"My message to you is, never ever let someone tell you you don't belong somewhere based on what you look like or believe," Saily wrote in her speech, a copy of which was shared with ABC News.
"If you want to turn on your light and make sure it never burns out, you have to first make sure that you are positive you will never extinguish someone else's light," she continued in the speech. "We all have different cultures, different mindsets. But we are all human beings, and we deserve to be treated that way. The same God that created you is the same God that created me."
According to Sallah, after reading Saily's speech, her teacher nominated her for an award because she turned a negative experience into a positive one.
Though Saily did not get the opportunity to read the speech to her classmates, Sallah said she was still committed to sharing her message wider.
Reflecting on her experience, Saily told Davis that she realized that the issue of racism is "universal" and she wanted to empower others to speak out when they see it or experience it, which is why she decided to write her book.
Reflecting on writing and illustrating "Rise Above," Saily said that the process "brought me some joy" during a challenging time.
Asked if she plans on writing another book in the future, Saily said that if she feels that she needs to speak out about anything else, she will "definitely jump into action."
"I just want to help people overcome things," she said. "And know more about things that need to be brought to [our] attention [rather] than just being brushed aside."
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