Wednesday on The Nightly Show, Larry Wilmore had on Marley Dias, the New Jersey 11-year-old who—after becoming sick of reading almost exclusively about “white boys and dogs—made it her mission to collect 1,000 books featuring black girl protagonists and distribute those books at schools in both the U.S. and Jamaica.
Dias, who’s collected “about a thousand books” so far explained the importance of seeing reflections of yourself in fiction, saying, “When you read a story about a person you connect with—like, well, you host a TV show, so if you were to read a book about a black man who hosts a TV show, you would remember whatever he learned and use it on the show.”