Over the course of my life, I’ve read about a lot of carefree white girls with big bank accounts and even bigger love stories. These stories were everything to me. (Seriously, ask me anything about vacationing in the Hamptons and falling in love with a cute boy who works on the docks!)

Even in the years when my family struggled to make ends meet, when the Scholastic Book Fair came to school, my mom somehow always found a way for me to purchase at least one book. But, full disclosure: I have never been a carefree white girl with a big bank account or had a swoon-worthy Hamptons summer romance.

I didn’t see many characters who looked like me or had problems like mine, especially not in romantic comedies. That’s where You Should See me in a Crown was born: a story about Liz Lighty, a Black girl from a small Midwestern town who, despite mastering the art of being a wallflower, must run for prom queen to win a scholarship to attend her dream college.

Here, Liz is given the space to be queer and confused, anxious and awkward, broke and brilliant, scared and smart. And most importantly, in this book, Liz is given the space for a happy ending.

“I didn’t see many characters who looked like me or had problems like mine, especially not in romantic comedies.”

This book is a love letter to Black girls, to all the amazing women I see in Liz Lighty––my brilliant sisters, my tenacious nieces, my fierce grandmother, my compassionate mother––in all their glorious imperfections. And hopefully you see yourselves in her too.

The great Ntozake Shange once said, “I write for young girls of color, for girls who don’t even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive.” So in keeping with that tradition: This book is about you, my sisters, both present and future.

Although this is a book about what it takes to become queen, I didn’t have to write it in order for us to become royalty. But thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for allowing me to.