Center on Culture, Race & Equity

Fireside Chat

Reimagining Black Childhood: A Fireside Chat with Jacqueline Woodson

As a continuation of our Black Lives Matter at School Week Early Childhood Symposium, the Center on Culture, Race & Equity hosted a virtual fireside chat with award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson on June 11. Through a moderated discussion and Q&A, this event explored how race-conscious and culturally grounded children’s literature can provide mirrors and windows for children and adults that help us reimagine Black childhood.

During the event, artist Toya Beacham took the amazing graphic notes below of the conversation between Jacqueline Woodson and Takiema Bunche Smith, moderator and Executive Director of the Center on Culture, Race & Equity.

Visual Notes

About Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson is the recipient of the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and she was the 2018-19 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award, as well as the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. She also wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. Her dozens of books for young readers include New York Times bestseller Harbor Me, Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster, and the picture books Each Kindness and The Day You Begin, which both won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award.

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