The first time Nate Sanders was called the N-word, he was in Grade 2. By high school he’d heard it so much, he became convinced that being Black was bad. But as that word, the embodiment of racism, set out to break him, something else stepped in to build him up: the power of books. PLUS, Dawson Ovenden-Beaudry has played ringette his whole life. But when he transitioned at the age of 16, embracing his identity as a young man meant losing access to the other core aspect of his identity: being the best ringette goalie in Quebec.