I'm from

I’m From is a moving picture book that offers a look into author Gary R. Gray Jr’s childhood growing up in Canada’s oldest Black community, Preston, Nova Scotia. The title refers to a common question people of colour are often bombarded with throughout their lives: “Where are you from?” I’m From realizes that the answer to that question is much more complicated than a simple place name, and the boy of the story slowly lists just exactly what it is that makes up where he is from. He includes his favourite foods, his father’s impatience during the morning rush, the diversity of hairstyles of all his friends at school, the games he plays at recess, the racially loaded questions he’s asked by white schoolmates, the books that “don’t click” that he is forced to read in class, and his cozy bedtime routine at home. The book ends simply with the statement, “I come from somewhere”, making it clear that the person being asked is so much more than the answer.

Gray Jr.’s prose is clearly deeply rooted in his own experience, giving the narrative added weight and significance, particularly to any reader who has been made to feel different. Black joy is lovingly demonstrated on each page alongside the struggles people of colour face when they are forced to defend their identities and unwillingly serve as representatives of their entire race. Oge Mora’s use of different types of paper in creating the book’s images gives the story a textured, lived-in quality, emphasizing the humanity of the children and families depicted. Dialogue is also cleverly formatted to communicate its real world tone; Mora depicts the racist stream of questions the little boy is assaulted with as large, harsh, zagged lines attacking the boy’s figure physically. Comforting or nurturing statements are presented in contrast as rounded or cursive text that gently move around the little boy rather than invading his space menacingly.