An Interview with Marilyn Nelson and Philemona Williamson
Marilyn Nelson is a critically acclaimed poet, author, and translator of more than 20 books. Philemona Williamson is a nationally renowned painter based in Montclair, New Jersey. This interview by Nadine Pinede was edited for length and clarity.
NP: How did you both get started in children’s books? Philemona, let’s begin with you, since Lubaya’s Quiet Roar is your debut.
PW: Marilyn is how I got my start in children’s books! We met working on “Poetry in Motion,” an MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) project. They used one of Marilyn’s poems, which I loved, and my artwork was used on the subway. Then we did a couple of talks together for the MTA. We got to know each other. Marilyn mentioned she’d written this book and asked if I’d be interested in illustrating it. When I read it, it really resonated with me. Lubaya just spoke to me.
NP: Marilyn, you’ve had a long and distinguished career in children’s books. How did it start?
MN: I have two answers to that question. The first one is that in the 1970s, I’d returned from spending a year in Denmark, where I was teaching. At that time, the most popular poet in Denmark was Halfdan Rasmussen, who wrote nonsense poems for adults and for children, and I started translating some of his poems. I worked on these translations with the woman who has become my best friend, and then we wrote a little collection of our own poems that were imitations of his. Both of those collections were published in about 1980 by a small, local press. We were in Minnesota.
I set this aside for a long time and probably 15 years later, one of my books was a finalist for the National Book Award. At the gala I ran into Stephen Roxburgh, a man I’d met years earlier. When I first met him, he was the acquisitions editor for children’s books at a large New York publishing house. When we met at the National Book Awards, he’d become an independent publisher. We had a little chat, and as we were parting, he said, “Let’s do a book together. Send me whatever you’ve got.” So I went through my files and sent him everything I thought I’d written for children, and he didn’t like any of it. I finally said, “Sorry, the only other thing I have is what I’m working on now, but it’s not for children. It’s a biography of George Washington Carver.” And he said, “Let me see it.” It was about half-finished then. I showed it to him, and he said, “This is the one.”
NP: That was Carver: A Life in Poems, a Newbery and Coretta Scott King Author honor book.
MN: Yes, but I said, “Oh, no, I can’t publish that for children. It’ll be lost over there in the children’s book world. Nobody’ll read it.” Stephen convinced me to go in this direction. In a couple of children’s literature textbooks, it’s described as a watershed book, making a difference in children’s literature. So that was my real start. Stephen and I did several books together, and what a great partnership we had.
NP: Philemona, what was your favorite book when you were a child? And why was that your favorite?
PW: I didn’t have a favorite book. What I loved to read as a child—around elementary school through junior high school—were myths and fairy tales. I still like reading them. My favorites are the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and Greek myths. Some of my paintings have a quality of being a folktale, narratives that tell the story about how it could be or how something might have happened. I think all of that is wrapped up in what I do.
NP: It’s interesting to see all the sources of inspiration. What inspires your creativity?
PW: Lots of things do. One is poetry. That’s why Marilyn’s book resonated so much with me, and I could find images for her story. I’m also influenced by what’s going on in the world around me. My figures, which are usually adolescents of varying races and genders, they interpret what’s going on in the world around them. They take it in, and then they put it back out on my canvases, how they see it or how they’re reacting to it. So that’s where the inspiration comes from. It’s not one specific source; it’s just living in the world and reacting to it.
NP: Marilyn, what was your favorite book growing up?
MN: We had a set of books published for children, it was called Childcraft – The How and Why Library. It was a graded encyclopedia, starting with a volume of nursery rhymes and simple poems for young children. Volume two had longer poems and narrative poems. Then there was fiction, fairy tales, and then they got longer, bigger. There was a wonderful volume about science and one about art history. We moved a lot— my dad was in the service—and this set of books came with us always. It was always there as a reliable source of riches.
I’ve met several poets about my age, in their 60s and 70s, who grew up with Childcraft and got their start in poetry by reading it. The Childcraft poems selected for children are real poems. They’re written by Wordsworth, Langston Hughes and Whitman—great poems, and illustrated. So it was very easy to fall in love with poetry just by reading that set. When I was pregnant with my first child, one of the first things I did was order a used set.
NP: It’s wonderful that you could share something so important to you as a child with your own children. What inspires your creativity?
MN: It’s very hard to narrow it down because it depends. Sometimes I have to be creative because I’ve agreed to write something, and I’m against a deadline. Sometimes I hear something or read something that makes me think it’s worth pursuing. I suppose it’s an inspiration from inside, not necessarily from outside. Inspiration is a willingness to accept a suggestion and give yourself over to the to the suggestion, I think.
NP: You’re both represented by Regina. How did you meet her? And what part did she play in Lubaya’s Quiet Roar?
PW: I met Regina through Marilyn, and because this was my first children’s book, I needed representation. I saw that Regina also represented illustrators. So I talked to her and she said yes. That’s how I met her—a very simple, easy kind of connection that worked out very well. She came to my studio and we talked.
MN: I think I met Regina at the same National Book Award gala I was describing where I met Stephen Roxburgh. Regina introduced herself and said she was a literary agent. She asked whether she could represent me, and I said, “I’m a poet! Poet’s don’t have agents.” That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
NP: What was your process working together on this book? Sometimes illustrators are kept away from the author. Sometimes they work more closely together. What was it like for the two of you?
PW: For me, I was given the manuscript, and I’d spoken to Marilyn a few times about the story. This very quiet child who would go behind the couch and draw, who retreated to her own world, was very similar to my own experience as a child. I was alone a lot of the time and I didn’t draw—one, because I didn’t have a lot of materials. I did draw one thing. I drew a cat over and over again. The family that we lived with said, “Oh, that’s a wonderful cat.”
And so I just drew it all the time. But I was not making or drawing. But I was a quiet child, staying to myself. So that whole spirit of the main character was something that I could really relate to. My daughter was also very quiet. So it just was like, “Oh, I know this child so well.” Marilyn and I spoke a few times about it, I did some sketches, and I think we went back and forth with a couple of my paintings when I was working on them just to see if I was on the right page and I was representing it visually the way Marilyn saw it.
And then for most of it, I just went ahead and did the paintings. Do you think that’s correct, Marilyn, that in the early stages I sent you a few things and we talked about it? I really wanted to have open communication with her which, again, the editor said usually that’s not the way it works. You just do them. But I really felt it a kinship to her. I wanted connection. I wanted her feedback. It was her baby and, you know, I thought we could raise it together. We’re co-parenting it. Marilyn, did you think I was too much in your face?
MN: Not at all. I worried sometimes the editor and I were interfering possibly too much with your process. I remember it was the two of us and then Lauri, our editor, and then there was an art director involved in some of the decision-making. I remember having discussions about things like the pattern rug that you made that had an African feel in the design, and they didn’t get it. I said I really loved it. The green stool—I said, you know, it looks to me like a king’s stool in Nigeria. I loved that little detail. People who know that will recognize it. It says something about the family. But there are some people who won’t see that. So it was a really interesting process of realizing that you and I were pretty much on the same page. I was very happy.
PW: I really wanted to fully develop, visually, the characters in this story. I wanted them to have African art around. I wanted them to have wonderful food around. I wanted them to be loving and touching each other in a very compassionate, sensitive way that people of color do embrace that way, that all people embrace that way. I didn’t want it to be any kind of a stereotypical display, and that was why I put in all of the little detail things. I’m so glad you saw them.
MN: So many! The evening when they’re sitting on the couch watching television and the mother has books next to her, it looks like she might be grading papers. You know, it doesn’t say anything verbally, but it shows you a family that values certain things. There’s a lot in the illustrations for a family to discuss.
PW: When I’m doing a painting, the characters in the painting, for me they have a whole life and they represent so many things. If I’m going to paint a person, it’s an imaginary person, but it has to have a life. That person is complex and has interests and so, putting in all of those details, I’m glad that you saw them. That makes me very happy.
NP: All the details create layers that give this book a depth and resonance. What would you like people to take away after reading it?
PW: Well, it’s interesting because during this time, you know, I think it has even more relevance to what’s going on and people will take it in—they’ll think about it. I’d like them to think, basically. To really think about the times that we’re living in, to think about what each person can do to make a difference, and just to be aware of things that are going on in our world and how they can make a difference. That would be my take.
MN: Well, just to add some layers to what Philemona said, I think one thing they can take away is that children see the world too. Children have opinions listening to the news. Even if Lubaya can’t understand it, she’s writing down little bits of it in her drawings. That’s one thing—that children see it and that children’s voices can be heard, can be made visible.
The implication is that these things keep happening. George Floyd was not an isolated incident. There were earlier ones. I had a poem published recently that I wrote more than a year ago. And it has a line about a cop with his knee on a Black man’s neck. It was just published, and everybody thinks I wrote it during the pandemic shutdown. But it was a reference to something else, because these things keep happening. And that’s why the mother says, “Oh, no, not again.”
PW: That’s the part of it that I was thinking about in terms of what was on the posters, what was she drawing? It’s not one specific thing. It’s everything. It’s all those things that are happening over and over and over again. I didn’t want any illustration to be, “Oh, that was that incident.” No. It’s the way it is. It can be anything. That was the one thing, I guess—I didn’t want the visual to be a specific thing on the television set or anything written, because it’s an ongoing state of our country, unfortunately.
MN: Another thing about the details of the paintings is that when we’re shown Lubaya’s drawings, we see two penguins being pulled apart because the iceberg is melting. We see the Statue of Liberty weeping. We see the children in the sky holding hands. There are a lot of strong messages in the paintings. The paintings could stand alone as a wordless picture book.
PW: And also I have the children that are standing, climbing a wall. No, we will not be separated by the wall. We’re climbing over the wall. You know, all these things are going on and children are seeing it all. Children are affected by it.
NP: Looking at Lubaya’s pictures, I noticed that there’s one with cats. Is that going back to your childhood drawings of cats?
PW: Yes, but I don’t really like cats. I drew that because the adults around me said, “Oh that’s a wonderful cat.” I put that cat in because that’s what children do. If someone praises something that you do, then you tend to do it again and again. It’s not that you actually like doing it but you like to get praise.
But Lubaya has a different mindset. She does what she wants to do. She is reinterpreting everything. I also wanted the drawings to be sophisticated, in a way, and still child-like. Innocent but still knowing and informed by what she was hearing. So that’s why penguins being pulled apart. She’s hearing bits and pieces and sorts out how she’s interpreting it and putting it together.
NP: I also like the way that the posters are very child-like—which isn’t to say “childish.” Others have only words on them: “Clean Water,” “Freedom Now.” Was that something you did intentionally, or was that just how you saw Lubaya as a character?
PW: Because she’s drawing on the back of posters that they’ve used for many marches, you know, those were the words probably, partial words that could have been on any of the posters.
One thing Marilyn and I were talking about—are they called the “end pages,” the pages left blank? Where I have the posters that are blank, I had planned to do something else with them. And I think Marilyn and Lauri both said, “What about leaving them?” And I thought, “That’s perfect.” They liked the way they were—very simple. And that’s really important in terms of how children could write their own slogans, what they wanted, on that. That is really what it’s about. They become invested in what the future will be. What would you like to change? What would you go to the street and say “This has to be”? So I like that, and that was really a collaborative piece that we all felt was good.
NP: Marilyn, did you want to say anything about that as well? The way it opens up and becomes an invitation for children to reflect on the ways that they can imagine possible worlds?
MN: I hadn’t thought about that before. I think it’s brilliant. What a good idea. And it’s true, it’s right there. I had only seen it as sort of open to possibilities of imagining what future issues would require signs. But to have children imagine making their own posters is really good.
NP: Some cultures value introversion and sensitivity more than others. How do you think introversion is viewed in American culture? I’m thinking of how Lubaya is viewed as quiet, apart, absorbing, transforming within.
PW: I guess I see her as a thoughtful person—that she’s quiet because she’s so busy listening and thinking about everything that’s around her. And I think it’s just in contrast to her brother, who I feel is moving and reacting to things immediately. She’s more thinking about it. “I’m not going to react; I’m thinking about it. Hmmm.” That’s her. So introverted or just a quiet, thoughtful person.
Sometimes I think “introvert” means—people see that as “closed down.” And she’s definitely not that. It’s almost as if she’s feeling so much of what’s going on and taking it all in and processing it in her way, much more than someone who’s out there acting—you know, “Oh, what’s this? What’s going on here?” She focuses on the drawings: “This is where my attention is going.” That’s sort of how I see her.
NP: Do you think her qualities are valued in American culture?
MN: At the moment, I really feel that they’re definitely not valued, and especially a small brown girl is not valued here—or anywhere. So I think that’s another reason why I think Lubaya is so important to me. I really feel that if 100, 300, 500 brown girls can be taken, disappeared, and no one goes looking for them, the value of who they are is really questionable in our society. I like the power of Lubaya and the strength of her.
May I say something about this question? This goes back, for me, to the question about what inspires your creativity. Mona doesn’t know the origin of this book, but it was kind of a commission. Our editor, Lauri Hornick [President of Dial Books for Young Readers], who identifies herself as an introvert, had read two books by Susan Cain on introversion.
NP: I’ve read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.
MN: Yes. Quiet is the adult version, then there’s a shorter, simplified version that came out as a young adult book. Lauri wanted a book that demonstrated and honored introversion, but a book aimed for young children. I was on vacation with my friend, and we went to the library to research introversion and made a list of characteristics, mostly from Susan Cain. Almost all of the book is a portrait of the characteristics of introverted people. I just decided it was going to be an African-American family, but the original idea was only that it should be about a child who is introverted.
PW: I didn’t know that, Marilyn. That’s interesting.
NP: Maybe it’s good you didn’t know.
PW: Yes, because I really found myself having conversations with Lubaya as a little girl and getting to know her family.
MN: One of the passages was taken out in the course of writing and revising. This was a discussion between the parents in which the father says he’s a little bit worried about Lubaya. And her mother says, “Don’t worry about her. She’s an introvert. She’s going to bloom.” And then we decided there was no reason to put that in, but it was originally making clear that’s what the focus was.
NP: I like that she wasn’t labeled.
MN: My mother used to introduce me to her friends and put her arm around my shoulder and say, “Don’t worry about Marilyn. She’s very quiet and very sensitive. She’s our poet.” That’s years before I thought about writing poems.
NP: Philomena, what was your approach to illustrating Marilyn’s poetic images of Lubaya’s drawings?
PW: Basically, in the text she had described certain things, certain images, and I really wanted to go beyond just the text and go in between each word. So when I was drawing something—when Lubaya was drawing something I tried to go into her head and have images that were not ordinary parings of things. Such a funny image, a snowman on the beach, and it really fits with my whole thinking in terms of artwork and what I’m painting. I don’t always put things that would go together, together. So that image was like, “Oh, that’s perfect. This would not happen.” And that’s the whole idea—a lot of the things would not happen and, you know, when children are drawing, they don’t see that. The fantasy and then the reality. I love the ballerina. What did she want?
NP: To be an African American artist, ballerina, and astronaut.
PW: A collage of all of those, that all of this is possible. That was the other part of this that I really loved—the idea that she had these aspirations that were absolutely incredible. It’s like, really? All of that—science, art, dance, everything, and I can be it. So a lot of the paintings that I did, I wanted to go in between the words. The words were so beautiful, so I didn’t need to illustrate those words. I needed to just sort of make the space in between.
NP: From those first pages where Lubaya is watching the theater of her thoughts, she’s already an original, as you’ve both said. Marilyn, what inspired those images?
MN: Probably just imagining all of the things a little girl might want to be when she grew up. Everybody, for a while, imagines being a ballerina. But man, if you could talk to whales, wouldn’t that be great? So I put those two things together. Or, wouldn’t it be great to be an astronaut and wouldn’t it be great to be an artist, and just put those together. So that’s just putting together what I think are normal childhood aspirations.
One other thing I wanted to say to the question Philemona was just responding to is that my descriptions of the some of the images from her drawings are stolen. I googled “paintings by nine-year-olds” or “eight-year-olds” or “second-grade drawings,” and got screens of prize-winning children’s drawings and I just described some of them. That snowman on a towel at the beach was one of the was one of the drawings that some child had made.
NP: So in a sense, this is a collective art project.
MN: In some ways it is. The things that I named in the text are drawings by children, and the names of the children are all taken from a list of the most popular names given to children in the last, let’s say, 15 years. So Jaden, I don’t remember the names—
NP: Jaden, Elijah, Madison, Skylar…
MN: They came from a list of popular names because I thought it would be great for kids to recognize themselves.
PW: Lubaya?
MN: Lubaya and Jelani are taken from a list of Swahili names.
PW: So those weren’t the most popular.
MN: No. Their names come from a different world, a different tradition.
NP: Can you say a little bit about these two names?
MN: I think Lubaya is a beautiful name. If I was having a daughter, I might have used it. It’s a powerful name, too, and I wanted to say that these parents named their children names that they hoped the children would grow up to fit. You name your daughter “lioness” and you’re expecting her to do something. And Jelani means “mighty”—and again, one of the lines that was taken out of the story in the conversation between the parents, the mother says, “Lubaya is an introvert, but don’t worry. She’s going to learn to roar.” And the father says Jelani is growing into his name already. “That boy is going to be mighty.” And again, we took those things out.
NP: I wondered about that because, of course, within African cultures naming is such a powerful act. When you describe growing into a name, do you think taking that out took something away? Or do you think it actually gives people more space to imagine why you gave the names to the two children?
MN: I do. I love the fact that Philemona added paintings of the meanings of both of those names at the end of the story. So we tell people at the beginning, but at the end we see the images.
NP: He’s on the throne and then the lion is right there.
PW: With Lubaya’s hair, at the very beginning she has the two braids and slowly, as the book progresses, you’ll see her hair come out and it becomes like a giant lion’s mane around her.
MN: There should be a discussion guide for this.
NP: Absolutely! What’s your favorite image from the book?
PW: That’s hard. It’s like, who’s your favorite child?
NP: What are some of your favorite images?
PW: The one where she’s drawing the posters and she’s leaning on the ground and the stool is behind her. I really love that one. I love when she’s drawing, basically. The cover, I like. A giant figure is always my favorite, like when she’s sitting and she’s thinking about the astronaut next to her. I think those are my favorites—when she’s the center of attention. But I really enjoyed doing all of them and it was a very different process for me. The way I work, I usually work on two large paintings, 48 by 60, at a time. These were smaller, but I had to do them a certain scale because I needed room to get all of the information in. So they were 40 by 30, I think. I had six of them up at the same time, and I would go back and forth between them.
I also edit a lot as I’m working. So having a deadline was very different, but I enjoyed it. The process was the same. I’d usually put a ground color on my canvas or on my paper that I was working on. Then I had to think about which page followed which page. And you’re not thinking about that when you’re doing a single painting.
NP: How did you choose the ground colors?
PW: I was thinking, when you open a book, what color do you want to see first? I wanted the colors to flow. There’s a scene where she’s outdoors playing soccer, so that had to be green. I wanted the house to have lots of objects, so I didn’t want a very strong color because I wanted the objects to become the color. There’s an African print on the couch; I wanted pattern to be part of it. So for that to be part of it, I could not have a super strong color involved in it. I knew I wanted a green couch. I also wanted Lubaya to always be wearing yellow. All of her outfits are different kinds of yellow and patterned on that.
NP: I noticed on the last page, the illustration of the lion and her brother is in bright yellow. How did you decide that yellow was Lubaya’s color?
PW: I guess when you think of “quiet,” you know, yellow is not quiet. But yet it’s strong and powerful and I was thinking mostly of lion and power and strength and sunshine and all of those things.
NP: Marilyn, how did the colors work for you?
MN: I love them! I remember that first time we came to your studio. I think that was the first time I had seen any of them and I was just blown away because the colors are so strong. They’re just wonderful. I hope it won’t bring bad luck to say this, but I really think this book should win an illustration prize.
PW: That’s nice. My prize is working with you. That’s my prize.
NP: Philemona, when did you create your first piece of art?
PW: I started in junior high school. One of my teachers there was a professional artist, and it was presented as work. That’s when I really discovered the process of making art—the decisions that you have to make, the control that you have over this one square, rectangle, circle, whatever—this piece of paper, canvas that you have in front of you, and that you’re in control of that.
NP: Do you remember receiving any encouragement?
PW: I was encouraged because this was a public school in Manhattan, and there were special classes in art, music, and science, and I chose the science and art. We were taught by artists. The emphasis was not on the finished product, but on the process of making. Of course, you want to finish it and you want it to be the best that you can, but that just happens at the end of that whole process. People have asked me, “Have you ever had painter’s block?” I haven’t, because I’m really not thinking about the finished product, and I’m enjoying the process. It’s always exciting for me to go into the studio and see what’s going to happen. It’s always new. Every time I pick up the paint brush, I truly am excited about what will come out.
NP: That excitement comes through in your artwork. Marilyn, what would you say you enjoy the most in the writing process?
MN: Writing! Making words that make music together. I’m focused on the sounds that words make when they clink together. I like rhyme, for example. And in this text, I started trying to control the rhyme and make it organized. And then I decided to loosen that a little bit, so the style kind of changes halfway through. I don’t think most people would notice it.
PW: You were saying you like the sound of words—the idea that there’s another sense that you’re involved with—and I guess I’m thinking, with my painting, I like the idea that maybe you could smell it. That it involves another sense besides just the visual. And also the hearing, that you hear the sound of the people breathing. I have a couple of paintings that have food in them, and you might be able to smell that food. I like the mixed senses. It’s interesting that Marilyn just said that with words. That’s what I find when I’m reading. I love it when I can smell them, like in Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Magical realism does that for me.
NP: This book has that feel of magical realism. You’ve created several pieces of public art. How is that process different than creating your fine art? And from the process of creating your illustrations?
PW: I’ve done a couple of public art pieces. One was at a school in Queens, a large glass mosaic of folktales from around the world. I had to go through a committee of people in the community after I had my designs. I wanted to represent all of the folktales from cultures around the world: Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Native American, South American. New York is a true melting pot.
NP: Can you tell us more about your work with Doing Art Together?
PW: Doing Art Together is an organization that was started—in the early 80s, I think. It was started by Muriel Silberstein-Storfer and Electra Friedman. They were at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Education Department. I worked with them and then I started a program at the Harlem School of the Arts—a parent-child class. I taught with Muriel and Electra Friedman for many, many years. Doing Art Together is a program that goes into the schools and underserved communities. Their whole philosophy is really about doing the work—not about the finished product, but how to do it. Once you learn how to do, then you know what art is.
That experience, that decision-making, brings a lot to your life just as an individual and in all aspects of your life. Their philosophy really resonated with me. I worked with them for many years, and now I’m on the board of directors there. It helped because I got to do some teaching in alternative education settings. We worked with children who were incarcerated, in halfway houses, in prison, and children who were just in schools in areas where art was not in the curriculum at all.
It’s funny because now I teach at Hunter College and at Pratt Institute. The philosophy of “Doing Art Together” is not one that is limited to children, it’s really the way I teach, which is a humanistic way of teaching art and processing the kind of decisions that you make. Education has always been an important part of my life. I started making art because I was in a public school, and my teacher was so influential. So it was always something that I wanted to give back.
NP: In my work with artists who have disabilities, I learned how empowering it can be to create art and foster that sense of making choices, of autonomy. Do you think that eliminating arts from public schools can do lasting damage to our society?
PW: Definitely! Definitely, I mean, I think our current government is full of a bunch of people who have no understanding of art at all, in any sense. I think that that lack of understanding and creativity is definitely evidenced in the behavior towards people and towards humanity. It’s not necessarily that everyone has to become an artist, but when you understand that creative process of making something, it does open up a giant world for you and an understanding that is so beneficial.
Doing something really makes you understand it so much more. I started playing tennis about fifteen years ago. When you play it and then you watch it, you really understand what it takes to become wonderful, in a different way than just sitting and observing. I loved learning to play an instrument. I was absolutely horrible, but I loved trying to play it. So I have a real appreciation of people who can play an instrument and who can sing. I think with the arts, that’s part of it. It’s wonderful in every single way to experience it. I’ve taught children with disabilities, I’ve taught autistic children, adults who have all sorts of learning disabilities, and you’re exactly right. It’s a way of giving everyone a little bit more control over one tiny area in their life. And that just feels good. It empowers you, and who doesn’t like to feel empowered?
NP: What do you feel is the relationship between art, activism, and social justice?
PW: It’s all connected. How people decide to act on it is really an individual’s decision. As a Black woman painting, I find it just becomes political because I am who I am, and I’m painting, and I’m making people of color, and so it is in that sense political—a political act. Any Black artist making art has something to say about our society. I don’t necessarily think that every Black artist has to be making social comments with their art, but I think it comes out just in the fact that they’re making it. We’re defying the stereotype by being involved in art. That is what we’ve been involved with all of our lives.
I usually listen to blues on the jazz station when I’m working, and you know, listening to this incredible music and how we created it, and out of hardship, out of whatever, there was always this creative spirit in Black people. Whatever happened, we’re going to make art out of it. Folk artists who had scraps of paper would glue it together and make art. They were driven to make something. That creative spirit endures. Beauty and art are a part of our soul.
Learn more about Marilyn’s work at www.marilyn-nelson.com and Philemona’s at www.philemonawilliamson.com