"Viewing literature through a lens of windows and mirrors helps us understand that, in addition to texts being stories to be enjoyed, they are powerful tools of social justice" (Everett).

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
From the author's website: "Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter navigates between the poverty-stricken neighborhood she has grown up in and the upper-crust suburban prep school she attends. Her life is up-ended when she is the sole witness to a police officer shooting her best friend, Khalil, who turns out to have been unarmed during the confrontation – but may or may not have been a drug dealer. As Starr finds herself even more torn between the two vastly different worlds she inhabits, she also has to contend with speaking her truth and, in the process, trying to stay alive herself."

"Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books" (qtd. in Harris).

Everett, Chad. "Windows and Mirrors: Why We Need Diverse Books." ReaderLeader
Blog, Scholastic, www.scholastic.com/bookfairs/readerleader/
windows-and-mirrors-why-we-need-diverse-books. Accessed 13 Nov. 2017.

Harris, Violet J. "In Praise of a Scholarly Force: Rudine Sims Bishop."
Language Arts, vol. 85, no. 2, Nov. 2007, pp. 153-59. NCTE, www.ncte.org/
library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/LA/0852-nov07/LA0852Profiles.pdf.
Accessed 13 Nov. 2017.