Smart Girl Kaya Thomas Combines Technology, Books and Representation
A senior at Dartmouth is already changing the world with her innovative ideas towards championing diversity and her determination for inclusivity
Last year Dartmouth student Kaya Thomas was named one of Glamour Magazine’s College Women of the Year and she continues to set the world on fire in 2017. An app she created that originally launched in 2014 has increasingly grown in popularity and downloads, demonstrating how her innovation is filling a much-needed space for inclusivity and representation in literature for people of color.
The app is called “We Read Too” and is designed specifically to offer hundreds of options for books which feature main characters that are Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and other non-white ethnicities. The concept is also twofold in that the books listed are all written by people of color as well. The app is free, the directory has an easy to use search function and there’s also a place where users can suggest other titles and authors for Kaya to consider adding.
As Kaya told Bustle in an interview:
“I was inspired to create We Read Too because I’ve always loved reading but I felt a lack of representation in the characters that I was being exposed to. When I was a teen it made me feel like stories about girls like me didn’t matter or that no one cared to write them. I didn’t realize that there were books that existed with characters like myself [and] I just wasn’t exposed to them. I created We Read Too so other young people of color could be exposed to literature where they see themselves reflected, written by authors like them. Also, so that everyone can see that these stories exist and should be read [and] celebrated.”
Kaya has already interned for places like Apple, Intuit and Time Inc. and while in high school she co-founded a STEM camp for girls. Her accomplishments in coding, teaching and mentorship are incredibly inspirational for any Smart Girl to see, and we cannot wait to see what she comes up with next.
For more info about We Read Too, you can check out the recently launched Indiegogo campaign which aims to increase the offerings from the current 600+ titles to over a thousand as well as for Kaya to hire a developer to create an Android version of the app.
