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BEYOND THE PAGES

TYRAH MAJORS

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who had her own dreams of who she wanted to be when she grew up. Not a princess, as some others might dream. Not an astronaut, a veterinarian, nor a teacher. All of those are fine dreams, of course! But this little girl—let’s call her Tyrah—dreamed of being an author one day. She loved to make up stories, then write them down, and she read all the time.

The only problem with almost all the storybooks Tyrah read was that mostly all the characters were white or nonhuman. As an African American girl, she wished that the pictures showed children and adults who looked like her.

Tyrah—okay, you guessed it, that’s me—slowly let go of her dream of becoming an author. Why? For many of us, dreams evolve and change as we grow up, and we don’t always listen to that voice inside of us saying we can do and be whatever we put our energies toward. For me, life became more demanding, and other goals took precedence.

Then, shortly after my great-grandma passed away in late 2014, instead of dreaming about being an author, I actually sat down to write and illustrate a children’s book based on my personal experiences with her. Grammy and Me captures a day in the life of a loving relationship between a grandparent and a grandchild, while celebrating the magic and wisdom shared from one generation to the next and the importance of family.

We forget sometimes that our first and often most lasting influences come from the family members who teach us about the world, history, and self-awareness. My hope in telling this story is to remind readers of that magic. Too often, as I look around in public places, I see kids with their parents but without much interaction. The little ones often have some sort of electronic device in hand, and the parents are usually having their own conversations.

Technology is part of our lives, for sure, but there is no replacement for talking to and truly interacting with your children during their early years. Those interactions play a vital role in making sure kids gain the guidance to thrive and live their lives positively. My great-grandmother kept the two of us busy with shopping, dining, and cooking, all while sharing an education’s worth of life lessons with me.

Grammy and Me, the story of an African American little girl and her great-grandma, is also intended to promote diversity in children’s literature. A 2015 statistics states that 85.8 percent of children’s books are about white or nonhuman characters—clearly this is not an accurate depiction of the world. Remembering my wish as a child, I really believe we need more diverse books, so that kids of color can grow up seeing themselves represented in the stories they read.

The first time I heard a young reader say, “Oh, she has the same hair as me!” while pointing to my book was priceless.

More than anything, writing a book and fulfilling a dream that had fallen by the wayside was the kindest thing I could have done for myself—a big kick in the pants to remind me, and others who I’d love to inspire, that whenever self-doubt creeps in, change your mindset. Believe me, the self-doubt I had was brutal. Nobody hired me to write a kids’ book. What was I thinking? Who’s going to buy it? How can my illustrations compete with the pros? And so on.

Luckily, I pushed through and ignored the self-doubt. Before long, I was an author—my dream—with a published book I was selling and changing how children in my community get to see themselves represented on the page.

Whenever self-doubt surfaces, it might help to take a look at someone in your family (like my grammy) or someone you admire and remember all the odds they had to overcome. So can you!

Bottom line, I hoped my dream would come true and that my writing would help make a change; to portray things that most children’s books don’t, all pertaining to kindness, which flows throughout the pages. One fellow Channel Kindness reporter once said, “There’s kindness everywhere, you just have to know where to look!”

Kindness really can be found anywhere, even on the shelves of the library and in the pages of a story about a woman gone from our midst who wanted us all to dream of a kinder world beyond mine.

Thank you, Tyrah, for pushing through, overcoming your self-doubt, and writing a beautiful book about your relationship with your grandma. I am fortunate enough to have two grandmas alive today, and I am so grateful for my special relationship with each of them. Seeing ourselves represented in the pages of a book—written by us, told by characters that look like each of us, and with experiences that mirror ours—is vital for young minds. Thank you for not just searching for that story, but for creating it when you couldn’t find it. For young people of color who are reading this and want to write more, please check out Writers of Color, or for more resources and a community, check out People of Color in Publishing.