By Aaron Foley | Word In Black
(WIB) – It took 10 years for poet and children’s book author Ruth Forman to publish her latest children’s book, which arrives on shelves in January. Her muse, then 4, is now a teenager — but it doesn’t change the message.
“I wanted her to feel loved, and feel confident in loving herself,” Forman says over the phone from her Washington, D.C.-area home about her newest work, “Do I Love You, Yes I Do.” The “her” refers to Forman’s daughter, who has been a constant inspiration — one that has resulted in several books affirming and validating the existence of Black children.
Forman began her creative journey in poetry, studying under the legendary June Jordan at the University of California-Berkeley and publishing her first poetry collection in 1993. Over the last three decades, Forman has established a formidable stature in the poetry world, held professorships, and presented in numerous forums.
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She published her first children’s book in 2007, but her deeper dive into children’s literature began when her daughter attended a school with limited diversity.
“I don’t know what was going on at that school,” Forman says. “But she just started doubting herself. I noticed a lot of other children her age, at other schools, too, questioning their hair, questioning their skin, feeling “less than.” And I saw it up close in my home.”
Forman says her daughter was preschool age at the time. “I didn’t realize it would be so soon,” Forman says of her daughter’s feelings about her skin tone and hair texture. “It’s so painful to me, because they’re so beautiful.”
But there was enough time to help their daughter heal from harm done by the seeds of doubt and insecurity that typically are sown by being a child of African American descent in the United States. She and her husband devised a plan, turning to the written word for the course correction.
On birthdays, holidays, and special occasions, the couple asked friends and family to gift their daughter books instead of toys and playthings. Forman also remembered some wisdom from Jordan.
“With the legacy of Black literature, there’s always that thread of giving people a reason to get up and keep going, make them want to see another day,” Forman says. “But these little, little ones need this too, just as much if not more.”
The love that I am trying to instill in my daughter is the love that my mother was instilling in me. – Ruth Forman
With books affirming her daughter’s identity, “within two months we started seeing a change, and whatever that more negative language she had around self, self-love, and self-worth, started to totally disappear,” Forman says. “So I understood on a deeper level as a mother what literature could do.”
Poetry — Forman’s art form — uses minimal words for maximum impact. Forman thought poetry could have the same effect on youngsters learning to read.
Inspired, Forman in quick succession pushed out a number of children’s poetry-inspired titles of her own — including “Curls,” about Black girls’ hair; “Glow” as an ode to Black boyhood; “Bloom” for Black girls in our human garden, “Light” about seeing the world through a Black boy’s shining eyes; and more.
Forman says she had a rich childhood. But like many creatives, there is a small part of creating the art that they wanted to see at an early age.
“When I feel the words, when I create the words, I can feel the joy in the story, and I didn’t feel that literature when I was younger, so yes, there was a part of me that responds to that,” she says.
Forman made it a point to work with illustrators who truly understood Black hair and features, such as Geneva Bowers, Talia Skyles, Katura Gaines, and Raissa Figueroa, who returns for the newest book in January.
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“I looked at this one picture, and there’s a mother and her daughter by the water, and I realized that’s just like me with my mother, so all of a sudden I saw myself, too, as that little girl,” Forman says. “And, it was like, ‘Oh, of course — the love that I am trying to instill in my daughter is the love that my mother was instilling in me.’”
Forman now has a teenager in the house, but her writing is still geared toward the toddler who had just begun to understand herself.
“The idea I want to convey is the same message, which is around love, and being able to celebrate the love that surrounds us,” she says.
That message has resonated widely. Parents tell her they see not only their children reflected in the books, but also their younger selves, too.
“I take on this task of giving words that they can learn and enjoy and sing, but then also having these really beautiful messages that have to do with self-love, or just the beauty that surrounds that,” Forman says. “They can access that — or they can see themselves reflected, that beautiful part of them that they can carry with them through their days, and the difficult moments too.”