I pull out my rainbow array of highlighters and my sacred pink pencil to begin. The imposing stack of books on my bedside table looms large as I grab the top one, careful not to topple the tower. My pencil weaves itself through the empty margins, creating an intricate mosaic between my words and the author’s. For me, there is little euphoria comparable to the joy of annotating a book. This tradition of mine started back in middle school. Each text I picked up quickly filled to the brim with my markings—I am Malala, Who was Rosa Parks, The Cupcake Diaries—and the list goes on. I took the role of a curator, denoting parts of each work I wanted to store in my memory. Whether it was satisfying prose or tidbits of information I’d find while scouring through AP News, my library of knowledge grew along with my interests. As I created footnotes within each book, I discovered pieces of myself, parts of the intricate puzzle that formed my identity. On Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, my long-held perceptions began to shift. I went from reading stories about people like me who were leading and succeeding to hearing voices spewing messages of animosity and hostility. Identities I was once proud of—being a first-generation, Asian-American, LGBTQ+ woman—became aspects of my life I refused to share. Such reluctance grew not only out of shame but out of fear that I would be seen as lesser than. I internalized the idea that my voice, and my person, no longer mattered. In my time of turmoil, I searched desperately for a voice that resembled mine—someone who held the same identities as I did and wanted to fight for the same causes. Stumbling aimlessly around Barnes and Noble, the portrait of a beautiful woman of color caught my eye. Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, the title read. Over the years, I’ve spent countless days reading and re-reading, annotating and re-annotating every crevice of the book. The pages are marked up beyond belief, the spine just slightly bent, a physical manifestation of my love for the piece. For in these pages, pages that are so overflowing with notes I can't turn to the next without graphite clinging to my hand, I found what I had been searching for. Lorde proclaimed herself to be a “black, woman, lesbian, warrior” during the 1960s, the peak of the Civil Rights Era. She took identifiers that carried such stigma—being a woman, being a person of color, being queer—and found her power in them. She was unapologetically bold within herself and sure in her resolve to use her voice as a civil advocate. Lorde made her unique position known, embracing the intersectionality of her identities to affirm the need for her voice in the conversation. In marking up every word of Lorde’s stories, in forming an interconnected web of words between hers and mine, I came to the realization: if she could do it, why couldn't I? Just as Lorde did, I learned to speak louder and bolder than I possibly could have imagined. I learned to love myself unconditionally and embrace identities I thought I needed to hide. Through this simple process, the seemingly meaningless act of scribbling all over my books with rainbow highlighters and a pink pencil, I found the power of myself. In annotating, I fulfilled my deepest intellectual desires and learned to contribute my own voice to the work. I expounded upon others’ ideas, furthering the vital conversations they began with my own thoughts and ideas. My voice, my unique voice, was worth hearing and sharing.