Courtesy of Dara Beevas
Queen Amina of Zaria
From TV to books, representation in media matters. Dara Beevas, the co-founder of Wise Ink publishing, knows this, which is why she launched a Kickstarter campaign this week for a historical children’s book series that shows royalty comes in all “shapes, sizes, and shades.”
As a publisher and bookworm, Beevas was well aware about the lack of Black queens that donned book covers, and how that history is likely to go untaught in classrooms. In fact, she remembers being in college and coming across a nonfiction book about African queens and showing it to her grandmother, aunt, and mother–“and they were so in awe of this book that held these stories that we all never heard about.”
Fast forward to the birth of her daughter Genesis, and as Beevas was stocking up on all the books that had Black or Brown characters at a book fair, she noticed another pattern.
Courtesy of Dara Beevas
Dara Beevas
“For African-American children, a lot of our stories are rightfully about our oppression. You see lots of books featuring our civil rights heroes like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King,” Beevas said. “You also have a lot of stories that are created to help celebrate our beauty, and those are books that I've also really enjoyed–books like Nappy Hair was one that I bought for Genesis that’s all about taking pride in her hair texture–but there weren't a lot of books that expanded beyond those two topics, which are topics that we must have to celebrate our civil rights heroes, and people in history who have helped shape our culture, and we need to have books about our beautiful hair and skin complexion, and our beauty. But there are other stories, too. And a lot of those stories are stories that I feel like have been suppressed on purpose. Stories about Black queens don't quite fit the narrative about who we are as Black people.”
The Li’l Queens series is meant for kids between the ages of 4 and 9, and aims to fill in the gaps of representation on kid’s bookshelves. The first book in the series is about Amina of Zaria, a warrior queen from the sixteenth century who ruled in present-day Nigeria and was the basis for the Xena: Warrior Princess TV series. So far, Beevas has the scripts for four other books completed, including Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba who protected her kingdom from becoming enslaved by the Portugese for 30 years, and Queen Nanny of the Maroons who helped to free African slaves and created colonies in the mountains to keep them free. The $18,600 from the fundraiser will be used to print the first 1,000 copies of the Amina book, and cover the remaining illustration costs and book distribution.
Courtesy of Dara Beevas
Queen Amina of Zaria
“I found myself with these stories feeling like I could have fun with them, and because I really wanted to know these queens myself. I enjoyed the process of getting to know them,” Beevas said. “So there’s the real true story about what they experienced as queens, but what I want a young reader to know about them was that they were all very clear that they were divine, and that they were completely as capable as a male ruler, and that is what I found the most rewarding while reading about them.”
She also plans to use the money to donate at least 1,000 softcover copies of Amina of Zaria to Planting People Growing Justice, an organization built around helping young people affect social change through education, training, and community outreach, to get the book in the hands of kids globally.
“What would I have thought about seeing a Black queen on a book cover? How would that have shaped my own perception of beauty and fierceness and dreams and possibility?” Beevas says. “It just seemed like it was a no brainer for me, that I had to write these stories.”
