Years ago my daughter asked me why the characters in most of her fairytales were white. It was a pivotal moment in her childhood understanding of the world. She wasn't reflected in those stories, which lead her to see other places in the world her narrative wasn't celebrated. Popular media rarely reflects children -- or a childhood experience -- that mirrors her own, and she was becoming aware of it. I believe that Fairytales have longevity because they are replete with themes of strength, character, beauty and force. I wanted to show her that she could harness those qualities and to demonstrate that resistance to stereotype can be creative and beautiful. We made our own versions of several stories. I chose to keep the props simple so that she could place herself into the different characters. I had them printed in a simple book that we kept on her bookshelf.
This work was created for her, and was not intended for an outside audience. However,a few years after I made the work it accompanied a piece I wrote for The Horn Book on Race and Fairytales.
This year The Horn Book is having its 100th year anniversary. I was commissioned to update this series. I photographed my daughter, now 17, and her friends in fairytale-es places around the city. The young women collaborated with me by speaking on their experiences with visibility within the fairytale genre. Abby, an Eritrean American teenager, wrote the opening essay, and my own writing was in response to hers. Both the 2018, and the 2024 Horn Book essays are linked in the Interviews/Press tab on this website.
