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Her book empowers Black children, and hopefully won’t enrage adults

2023-08-01 00:00:00.0 华盛顿邮报-华盛顿特区原网页

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The email shouldn’t have made me nervous.

It was from a young Black woman raised in D.C., and it contained an advance copy of a children’s book she had written.

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The work had grown from an earlier project St. Clair Detrick-Jules launched after her younger sister, Khloe, was bullied by classmates for her Afro and didn’t want to return to school. Other students had called the 4-year-old’s hair ugly, and she had believed them. Hearing what happened to her sister reminded Detrick-Jules of how she was teased for her own hair when she attended a predominantly White elementary school in D.C. and how it took her until after high school to stop wishing her face was framed with straight, silky strands.

She didn’t want her sister to waste that much time disliking a part of herself. So, Detrick-Jules taught herself photography. She then photographed 101 Black women with different natural hairstyles and compiled those images in a book she titled “My Beautiful Black Hair.”

‘Dear Khloe’: A Black girl hated her natural hair, and then 101 women spoke about finding beauty in theirs

I told you about that book in a column two years ago.

If at the time Detrick-Jules had told me that she was also planning to publish a children’s book, I wouldn’t have felt nervous for her. Not even a little bit.

But the country has changed in the past few years. We are now witnessing a war on children’s books that is expanding in ways that would be laughable if they weren’t so concerning.

The push to pull books that address race, ethnicity and LGBTQ+ issues out of public spaces has lately been growing even uglier and more unpredictable.

People have gone from focusing mostly on school libraries to now making demands of public libraries. A recent Washington Post article detailed what that has looked like for a community in Virginia. In Front Royal, people have overwhelmed the library staff with hundreds of book “reconsideration” requests, persuaded lawmakers to withhold library funding until concerns are addressed, and accused the library of sexualizing and brainwashing children. “Bearing the brunt of the anger is the library’s staff and its 15-member, all-volunteer Board of Trustees, who include a retired Air Force general, a lawyer, an accountant, parents, grandparents, churchgoers and home-schoolers,” my colleague Gregory S. Schneider wrote in that article.

People across the county also are taking aim at picture books. That’s right; they are scrutinizing those brightly illustrated books created to capture the attention of babies, toddlers and young readers and filing complaints with school systems about them.

‘Racist,’ ‘grooming’: Why parents are trying to ban so many picture books

Some of the illustrated books that have received complaints, according to an article that my colleague Hannah Natanson recently wrote, are: “Julián Is a Mermaid,” a book that features a boy who dresses as a mermaid, “Peanut Goes for the Gold,” a book about a nonbinary guinea pig, and “Skippyjon Jones,” a book about a cat who believes he is a swordfighter.

The person who filed a complaint about that last book, according to the article, argued that it “promotes negative stereotypes towards Mexicans and the Spanish language” because the letter “O” is added to the end of the words throughout the book. The cat sings at one point, “My name is Skippito Friskito. / I fear not a single bandito. / My manners are mellow, / I’m sweet like the Jell-O, / I get the job done, yes indeed-o.”

Yes indeed-o — that is how ridiculous the fight over the children’s sections of libraries has become.

I remember reading “Skippyjon Jones” once to my sons when they were younger. I’m Mexican American, and I didn’t find it offensive. I found the rhythm catchy, and I was glad the story held the attention of two squirmy boys for a few minutes.

But that was just my impression of the book. I don’t expect everyone to share it. I can respect that some people will want to put down the books I want to pick up. What I can’t respect is their belief that they have the right to snatch from my hands, and the hands of other parents, books that we want to read to our children. That picture books are coming under attack shows that the objectors’ fight never was about supporting parental choice. It’s always been about eliminating choice.

The titles and themes of the books that these groups want to ban may differ, but they all share this: They empower the people those groups would rather see weakened.

“I’m deeply concerned about the current slew of book bans across the country,” Detrick-Jules told me. “I’m concerned for Black and Brown students, for LGBTQ+ students, for immigrant students, for students with disabilities. … Our kids — collectively, as in, the kids of America — deserve to feel seen, represented and valued.”

After Detrick-Jules published “My Beautiful Black Hair,” her book was mentioned by name in a column by the conservative author Ann Coulter. In it, Coulter wrote that “white schoolchildren are being browbeaten about their ‘white privilege’ and instructed to ‘unpack’ their ‘white privilege knapsack.’”

When people share their stories with me, I become invested in them, which is why I was nervous to read Detrick-Jules’s new book. I knew the story behind it — that it had grown out of White children teasing a Black child. I also knew that other children’s books that have dared to point out how racism has harmed, and continues to harm, Black people have become targets for book bans.

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But when I opened her book, which was illustrated by Tabitha Brown and will be available to buy in September, I realized she didn’t tell that part of the story. It was a picture book, after all. The book is titled “My Hair Is Like the Sun,” and the pages feature photos of Black children with different hairstyles next to images from nature.

Detrick-Jules said the idea for the book came to her when she was interviewing one of the women for her other book. The woman told her that her classmates used to call her “Tree Girl” because she wore an Afro. The nickname was meant as an insult, but it got Detrick-Jules thinking about how curls can resemble the waves of an ocean and how locs can flow downward like the rain.

“So much of what we admire in nature — its power, its strength, its freedom, its beauty, its joy — can be found in our own kinks and curls,” she told me. “For so many Black kids, and adults, our hair is seen as a chore, as something that needs to be done. I want ‘My Hair Is Like the Sun’ to be a reminder that our hair is actually a gift, and it’s a blessing that we get to experience it in so many forms.”

One page of the book reads: “My hair is like a waterfall, rushing toward the ground.”

Another page: “My hair is like a river, winding all around.”

When I finished flipping through the book, I felt sure of one thing and unsure of another. The book will no doubt empower some children. Less certain is whether it also will upset some adults.

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