In search of a dark skinned princess

Jun 08, 2020 News

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– where are our story-books for Guyanese children?

By Michael Jordan

My seven-year-old grand-daughter is already displaying her love for books.
She also never forgets anything, and she had been constantly reminding me that I had promised to get her some ‘story books’ by Saturday.
So, last Saturday, I walked into a local bookstore to pick up some ‘storybooks.’
Going to the children’s section, I saw the usual fare…the Ugly Ducking…Snow White and the Seven Dwarves…The Pied Piper…The Princess and the Pea…
I eventually left with three ‘story books’, but also with a troubled mind. I could not shake the thought that when my grand-daughter opened her ‘story books’, none of the princesses would have her complexion or hair texture. None of the heroes or heroines would bear any resemblance to her parents, her uncle or aunts.
And why should they? All the stories were written and illustrated by Caucasian authors, and were populated with characters who were similar to the creators (with the exception, perhaps, being the evil queen in Snow White, who had a slightly darker hue.)
I wondered when my grand-daughter would begin to question why there were no brown-skinned princesses, the way I, as a child, had begun to wonder about the fair complexioned depictions of Jesus, surrounded by brown skinned people.
The other thing that bothered me was the fact that my grand-daughter would read about elves, goblins and witches, giants…trolls.
But where, in the books she read, would there be Brer Anansi? Where was Baccoo and Ol Higue and Jumbie, and massacurraman and bush dai dai with his magic basket?
Where were our children’s books with stories and poems about these creatures? And did their absence matter?
Was I making a fuss over a minor issue?
These questions nagged at me to the point where I contacted my good friend, writer and illustrator Harold Bascom, for his take on this issue.
He reminded me that, back in the seventies, there had been an effort to produce Guyanese books for Guyanese children.
“The Timehri Reader Series was a spin-off from the Materials Production Unit (M.P.U) of the Ministry of Education that was instrumental in putting out the very first supplementary readers for the children of Guyana in 1973. Then, its coordinator was Agnes Jones and the art director (the man who oversaw the art for the books, was African American book illustrator/instructor, Tom Feelings.
“The aim was to create books for Guyanese children from stories drawn from the Guyanese experience, and illustrated by Guyanese illustrators capable of filling those books with images that the Guyanese child would be able to relate to, having experiences the Guyanese children would be able to empathize with. President Burnham was conscious of the fact that a people educated through books written and illustrated by the white foreigner who feels their culture superior to the local culture, would continue to engender continued loss of self-worth in the local population.
“The aim was to create local books appropriate to the Guyanese sociological, economic, and historical experience.

“Since I’ve always been nationalistic and wary of books written by Europeans (who provided the brunt of our education through reading) I welcomed being part of what was a very important revolution in the education of the Guyanese child. As someone who learnt to illustrate books, it was an opportunity to draw children who looked like the children I saw about me in my everyday life. I knew how important this was for our local boys and girls—especially the ones who did not look like little white boys and girls in the books we imported from Longmans and other European educational-book publishers. I knew how important it was for a dark-skinned, hard-haired Guyanese boy/girl to open a book and see a drawing/painting of a laughing, dark-skinned, hard-haired boy/girl looking back from the pages.
“Of course, there was push-back even from education officers who felt that the images I drew were ‘ugly’ because they weren’t the creamy-skinned, mulatto representation they were expecting in our local books. The criticism didn’t daunt me. I enjoyed every bit of it until I left and the M.P.U. segued to being the unit that did the Timehri Readers.
“I don’t know what derailed the local books momentum we’d been on. Why should such a project like the Timehri Series be no more, is a mystery and a serious disappointment,” Bascom said. “ It’s as if, as a nation, we have given up on ourselves being the molders of our own intellectual destiny and are calling, once more, on the spirits of our colonial past, to possess us again … to our own detriment and intellectual demise.”
Graphic artist Barrington Braithwaite pointed out to me that there is a market for Guyanese books for children and young adults.
His beautifully illustrated graphic novels “The Adventures of Brer Anancy: Voyage to the New World,” and The Mighty Itaname,” were produced and printed locally. They have all been sold out.
As a self-published writer, the challenge he faces is accessing enough funds to produce and print his work.
The demand for my supernatural novel Kamarang, also reassures me that there would be a market for locally written children’s books, that are inhabited by creatures from our rich treasure trove of mythical creatures.
I’ve already introduced my grand-daughter to some of them, including some I made up.
Hopefully, I’ll put some of these creatures in a children’s book, and the heroine teaming up with Brer Anancy to battle the evil bush dai dai, would be a brown-skinned princess like my grand-daughter.

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