Like I... - -blackvalleygirls- Honey Gold - Blasians

That summer, the cicadas screamed like they were dying of love. Honey and her two best friends—Jade, whose father was Nigerian and mother was Korean, and Marisol, a Dominican girl who’d been adopted by a Black family so deep in the Valley her Spanish came out with a Tidewater drawl—formed a pact. They called themselves the BlackValleyGirls . Not a club. A declaration.

Then came the festival.

“We’re not halves,” Honey said one night, perched on the hood of her rusted Civic, the creek glinting like spilled oil behind her. “We’re wholes. Double the ancestors. Double the fire.” -BlackValleyGirls- Honey Gold - Blasians Like I...

Blasians like I. We don’t fit in boxes. We build our own houses.

Her voice was raw, honey-slow, then sharp as fish sauce. Jade and Marisol stepped up beside her, singing harmony. By the second verse, the aunties were swaying. By the bridge, a Vietnamese grandmother was crying, and a Black deacon was shouting, “That’s my girl!” That summer, the cicadas screamed like they were

She smiled, pulled out her phone, and typed a caption for the video Jade had posted:

“I’m not a spice,” she’d say, flipping them off with a smile. “I’m just Honey.” Not a club

The Black Valley wasn’t a place on any map. It was a feeling. A humidity-thick pocket of the Virginia Tidewater where the pines grew twisted and the creek ran the color of sweet tea. For the girls who carried its name— BlackValleyGirls —it was a birthright of tangled hair, Sunday sermons, and secrets whispered through window screens.

The boys in the Valley called her “exotic.” She hated that word. It felt like a cage made of compliments.