Barnaby, a blue budgie, lives with a White lady who feeds him sunflower seeds and pieces of sweet mango. For a different bird, this might be a gilded-cage existence (literally): His cage was gold and shaped like a gumdrop castle.

Enjeti, a journalist, critic, and novelist, loosely arranges this collection chronologically, beginning with her childhood in the South, where she was made to feel abnormal and abhorrent as one of the few non-White students in her school. I am half Indian, a quarter Puerto Rican, and a quarter . . .

A muted double-page spread in shades of gray introduces the story, the only touch of color coming from the violet bands holding the braids of a lonely girl on the school playground. From the narratoranother child in the schoolreaders learn her name is Violet and she is new.