Carole Boston Weatherford

Biography

The music of poetry has fascinated Weatherford and motivated her literary career. In an interview with The Brown Bookshelf she said, "The Creator called me to be a poet. I hear words strung together in my head just as a composer hears notes and chords. Scenes unfold in my mind just as they do on a filmmaker’s storyboard. Like poetry, quality children’s literature compresses language, distills feeling, evokes scenes, and can be experienced on multiple levels. The best poetry makes music with words."

Weatherford began writing in first grade by dictating poems to her mom. Her father taught printing at a local high school and published his daughter's early works. As a child, she enjoyed reading Dr. Seuss and Langston Hughes. Continuing to pursue creative writing as a hobby through high school and college, she later earned her M.F.A from the University of South Carolina and an M.A. in publication design from the University of Baltimore. Although a Baltimore native, she currently resides in North Carolina and teaches composition and children's literature at Fayetteville State University. Initially, Weatherford was invited to FSU as a writer-in-residence, but in 2007, she received the position of associate professor.

As an author, she acknowledges her calling "to mine the past for family stories, fading traditions and forgotten struggles." The books she writes, in poetry and prose, explore African-American history from a children's perspective and relate the past to new generations. Her works are often inspired by true events, many of which took place in the areas where Weatherford has lived. In her Author's Notes for each book, she includes a portion of her historical research, from which her fiction or poetry emerged. In describing her purpose for writing to the School Library Journal, she says, "I want the books that I write that are set during the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights era to nudge today's kids toward justice. We've gone a long way, but we still have a long way to go."

In 1995, Lee & Low Books published her first picture book, Juneteenth Jamboree, about a summer celebration in memory of the Texas Emancipation. She then wrote a series of board books for preschoolers. In 1998, she co-authored Somebody's Knocking at Your Door: AIDS and the African American Church, and then published a collection of poetry, The Tar Baby on the Soapbox. After establishing herself as a versatile writer for both children and adults, she published two nonfiction chapter books before penning her first award-winning children's book, The Sound That Jazz Makes, a poem that traces the history of African-American music.

Since then, she has continued to write poetry, historical fiction, and nonfiction biographical works for children. She said in an interview with The Brown Bookshelf that one of the most important poems she has written was Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom: "Those inspired words came together with Kadir Nelson’s soulful paintings and Ellice Lee’s brilliant art direction in a perfect publishing storm. Moses propelled my career to another level." Moses has won a Caldecott Award for Illustration as well as an NAACP Image Award as an Outstanding Literary Work for Children and became a New York Times bestseller.

In 2008, Weatherford published her first poetic novel for young adults, Becoming Billie Holiday, about the development of the artist who she refers to as her muse.

Allegations of racism in East Asian popular culture

Weatherford has written multiple articles attacking what she identifies as stereotyped caricatures of black people in East Asian popular culture, with two of the more prominent ones being geared toward children's cartoons, and another aimed at the name of a toothpaste brand.

Pokémon

In January 2000, Weatherford wrote an op-ed piece that ran in newspapers across Alabama. "Politically Incorrect Pokémon" explained how she believed that Pokémon #124, Jynx, was a negative stereotype of African Americans:

The character Jynx, Pokémon #124, has decidedly human features [in contrast to most other characters]: jet-black skin, huge pink lips, gaping eyes, a straight blonde mane and a full figure, complete with cleavage and wiggly hips. Put another way, Jynx resembles an overweight drag queen incarnation of Little Black Sambo, a racist stereotype from a children's book long ago purged from libraries.

In response to the controversy, Jynx's in-game sprites were given a purple skin color in the American versions of Pokémon Gold and Silver, released in late 2000. By 2002, Nintendo officially redesigned Jynx, changing her skin color from black to purple; this change was not reflected in the animated series until Shogakukan (the company that produces the Pokémon anime) changed the color of Jynx's face to purple in 2005.

Dragon Ball

In an article published in the Christian Science Monitor in May 2000, Weatherford reiterated and expanded on her argument. Jynx had looked like "an obese drag queen", and she also offered Mr. Popo, a character from the Dragon Ball franchise, up for critique:

Mr. Popo is a rotund, turban-clad genie with pointy ears, jet-black skin, shiny white eyes, and, yes, big red lips.

The Dragon Ball manga later released by Viz in 2003 had reduced the size of Mr. Popo's lips.

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