How will Maya create a brighter world? By learning to honor her glowing feelings, just like Black women have done throughout history! Maya feels a warm glow when she picks strawberries in the community garden, hears music in her neighborhood, or spends time with the people she loves. She feels a different kind of glow when she gets pushed down on the playground, overhears her family worrying about bills, and sees her favorite cousin stopped by police. Sometimes that glowing seems like too much to carry. But Maya is learning that others feel the same glowing light. Black women throughout history, like Ida B. Wells, Nina Simone, June Jordan, and Maya's own ancestors, found ways to honor these glowing feelings. They were guided by their light to make a difference. The light Maya feels inside is an important part of her that she'll share as she works toward a brighter world.

It's Joy's first summer in her grandmother's South Carolina garden - a rite of passage. In the midst of okra, spinach, and strawberries, Grammy teaches Joy that plants are friends with many uses. Herbs, for example, can be turned into medicine. There in Grammy's abundant backyard, Joy learns to listen for the heartbeat of the earth and connect it to her own as she takes deep breaths and puts her intentions into the soil. By the story's end, she learns to grow seeds in her own garden, honouring all that her grandmother taught her.