Let me begin by saying this: Toni Morrison wrote for the Black community — as much as I idolize her work, it would be presumptuous to claim she wrote for me. Still, I found myself transfixed by the ways she wove stories from her rich heritage, the way that her own identity became fluid, and the way she unapologetically created characters so real you smelled their tears, in words so sharp they bit you back.

I was at work when I got the text from my friend: “Toni Morrison passed away. Didn’t want you to find out online.”

I suddenly realized I was the youngest person, and the only South Asian woman, in the room. I tried making eye contact with the brown woman beside me. I don’t know why, but I needed her to glance back. I needed her to see me. She didn’t, and I started to cry. The white man behind me — the one who previously asked me how old I am, as if confirming I don’t belong — wanted to know what was wrong. “My favorite author died,” I said, and it hit me all at once. I texted my friend, a poet, reminding him to take care of himself. He responded that there were no other Black people in his office: He didn’t have anyone to talk to, either. At that moment, we’d never felt more alone.

The copy of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere in my purse provided some comfort — the sense of security knowing that I, a writer of color, was not alone: that there is a lineage of women of color whose successes made it easier for all of us, even though our oppressions are very different. I haven’t always felt this way.

I discovered Toni Morrison three years ago, in my freshman year of high school. Our class had just read Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and it was the first time I’d heard the phrase woman of color used in a literary setting. After class I googled the term, followed by writer, and that’s how I found Toni Morrison, how I read The Bluest Eye, and how I fell in love. I melted into her novels, memorizing passages like I was studying for an important test. And in many ways, I was.

I’m only 18, but I remember a time when representative literature was a rarity, not the norm. I grew up on a literary diet of J.K. Rowling and Rick Riordan, avidly devouring stories of white children whose heroism I never once questioned. These stories awakened a hunger in me, a snarling brown girl with a big mouth, too much to say, too smart for her own good. When I was ready to harness that rage, I became a writer. I identified most strongly with girl characters, convincing myself that I could invent the stories, but not belong in them: that by writing about heroic white girls, I could try to make up for all the trouble I’d caused since birth.

By the time I was 15, I had written my first novel, The Bookweaver’s Daughter. It was a chaotic young adult fantasy featuring a green-eyed white girl named Rose. When writing it, I felt hollow, the way I’d felt as a child, walking through shelves of books that weren’t written for or by girls like me, and I soon abandoned the manuscript. What I was feeling, I now realize, was a fear of not being taken as seriously by the Great White Writers who had long dominated literature ... until Toni Morrison changed the game.