When I first encountered Emily Dickinson in high school, I was told what most people are told about her: She was an agoraphobic hermit who would hate her posthumous fame and voluminous publications. I remember staring at her ethereal daguerreotype, diminutive and pale, her hair parted neatly down the center with precision. There was a pure intensity to her large, black pupils and fragile, fawnlike neck. I was a black 16-year-old girl who hadn’t figured out how to do my own hair. I looked at 16-year-old Emily and thought I had nothing in common with that picture.