Three Women Artists of Color in Children's Picture Books
Susan Swords Steffen
Three Women Artists of Color in Children's Picture Books
Susan Swords Steffen
At first glance, Zora Neale Hurston, Frida Kahlo, and Maria Tallchief have little in common - African American, Mexican, and Native American; born in 1891, 1907, and 1925; a writer, a painter, and a dancer. And yet, all three women have been chosen as the subjects of many biographies for children because they represent the achievements of both women and persons of color. All three artists are the subject of recent picture book biographies, more traditional juvenile biographies, and collected biographies representative of particular groups. In fact, there will even be a children's biography for each of these figures published in 2002. Although most of the works of these artists are neither intended for nor particularly interesting to children, the lives of these women, especially the stories of their childhood and teenage years, appeal to young readers. Each of these biographies tells the story of a girl who was moved to reach beyond the limitations of her circumstances to pursue her dreams and her art and to become a great artist.
Zora Neale HurstonZora Neale Hurston is best known as one of the most famous and most prolific African American women writers. Born in 1891, Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida, an all black town in the segregated south. When Hurston was just 13 years old, her mother died, and her world changed profoundly. Because she did not get along with her stepmother, she lived for a number of years with different relatives and then, took a job with a traveling theater company as a way to leave home. When the group arrived in the north, she enrolled in high school at Morgan Academy in Baltimore and subsequently attended Howard University. In 1925, she moved to New York City and became part of the African American writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance. She studied anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University working with the noted anthropologist Frank Boas, then went to Florida and Alabama to record the stories and traditions of the African American communities there, and later continued this work across the southeastern United States with the WPA Federal Writers Project.
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Hurston was a prolific writer of fiction, folklore and anthropology. She published her first short story in 1921 in Howard University's student literary magazine and continued writing and publishing until her death in 1960. Her work includes Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Mules and Men (1935), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Tell My Horse (1938), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), I Love Myself: When I Am Laughing . . . and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (1979, The Sanctified Church: The Folklore Writings of Zora Neale Hurston (1981), Spunk: The Selected Stories of Zora Neale Hurston (1985), Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, with Langston Hughes (1991), and Every Tongue Got To Confess (2001).
Interest in Hurston and her work has increased dramatically since the 1970's. Each year new critical and scholarly works about Hurston's writing are published. The Zora Neale Hurston Arts and Humanities Festival is held annually in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. When she died in 1960, she was buried in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery. In 1973, Alice Walker, the poet and novelist, traveled to Hurston's grave and paid homage to her by placing a stone marker which read "ZORA NEALE HURSTON 1901-1960 A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH NOVELIST, FOLKLORIST, ANTHROPOLOGIST". Since then literature scholars have studied her work, her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God has become a college classic, and her work is being edited and republished in definitive editions.
This renewed interest in Hurston as a writer and a major distinguished African American woman figure is also manifested in the publication of a significant number of biographies of Zora Neale Hurston for children. Because Hurston is considered one of the most prominent African American women of the twentieth century and because she is viewed as an excellent role model, her life is the subject of a number of individual and collective biographies that focus on African Americans. Most of the individual biographies are part of series that document the lives of African Americans. The only truly picture book biography of Hurston is Zora Neale Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree by William Miller. This picture storybook tells the story of Hurston's life as a young girl growing up in Eatonville, Florida up until the time her mother died. Although the author does not list any specific sources, the "Author's Note" at the end of the book provides a brief summary of Hurston's life and important works that is fundamentally accurate. Although the story is factually accurate, it places more emphasis on telling how Hurston's early experiences motivated her to dream of a life beyond her small southern segregated town, how she rubbed up against the limitations placed on girls, how she learned the stories of her culture, and how her mother inspired her to "jump at the morning sun" and reach for her dreams. The watercolor illustrations evoke a dreamlike quality while at the same time showing a realistic little African American girl from the early twentieth century south. Zora's strong relationship with her mother and the encouragement her mother gave her which stayed with her throughout her life are central to the story. On the other hand, Zora hungers to learn from the men in her world and to venture outside the more limited world of girls and women. This picture book is an excellent introduction to Zora Neale Hurston both for young children who will be interested in a young girl sharing with her mother and reaching for her dreams and for older readers who may beginning to read Hurston's fiction. Also, after reading this story, readers may be more motivated to tackle and interested in reading the other more factual biographies about Zora Neale Hurston and in exploring her writing.
Zora Neale Hurston Biographies for Children
Canarella, Deborah. Zora Neale Hurston : African American Writer. Child's World, 2002.
Lyons, Mary E. Sorrow's Kitchen: The Life and Folklore of Zora Neale Hurston. Scribner's, 1990.
McKissack, Patricia. Zora Neale Hurston : Writer and Storyteller . Enslow, 2002.
Miller, William. Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree. Lee & Low Books, 1994.
Porter, A.P. Jump at De Sun. Carolrhoda Books, 1992.
Yanuzzi, Della. Zora Neale Hurston : Southern Storyteller. Enslow, 1996.
"Zora Neale Hurston." In Herstory: Women Who Changed the World . Viking, 1995
"Zora Neale Hurston" In Lives of the Writers : Comedies, Tragedies (And What the Neighbors Thought). Harcourt, 1994.
Sources About Zora Neale Hurston
"Chronology" In Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories. Library of America, 1995.
Howard, Lillie P. Zora Neale Hurston In Twayne's United States Authors Series Online. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1999. Previously published in print in 1980 byTwayne Publishers. [Accessed April 12, 2002].
Howard, Lillie P. "Zora Neale Hurston" In Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. pp. 133-145. The Gale Group, 1987 . [Accessed April 12, 2002].
Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road. HarperCollins, 1991.
"Hurston, Zora Neale" Encyclopædia Britannica < http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=42541&query=hurston > [Accessed April 12, 2002].
Zora Neale Hurston LinksZora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston Teacher Resource File
Zora Neale Hurston from Voice of the Shuttle
Frida Kahlo is best known as an outstanding Mexican painter of intense and brilliantly colored self portraits and as the wife of Mexican mural painter Diego Rivera. Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico, the child of a German father and Mexican mother. At the age of five, she contracted polio which shortened her leg and kept her in bed convalescing for nine months. When she recovered, her doctor recommended vigorous exercise to restore her leg so her father saw that she played such sports as soccer, boxing, wrestling and swimming - very unusual past times for a girl at that time. Unfortunately her leg never completely recovered and the other children made fun of her, calling her "Peg Leg". This teasing by other children was one of Kahlo's first experiences with alienation and loneliness. As a teenager, she attended the elite National Preparatory School in Mexico City where as one of the few girls attending she became involved a group that called itself the Cachuchas and passionately advocated the ideals of the new Mexico espoused by the Mexican Revolution.
Frida Kahlo
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In 1925, the bus she was riding home from school suffered a terrible accident which left Kahlo seriously disabled and changed her life permanently. Although she made a partial recovery, she underwent 32 operations before her death in 1954, and she was never able to bear a child. While recovering in bed from this traumatic experience, Kahlo taught herself to paint. For Kahlo, painting became a way to deal with the pain and anguish she was experiencing. Her life work consisted of about 200 paintings, mostly self portraits, that deal directly with her battle to survive. In 1929, she married the painter Diego Rivera and together they continued to paint, travel, and influence the art world. They shared a belief in Communism and in the importance of indigenous and popular Mexican art and expressed these beliefs through their art. In her later years, she continued to paint although her marriage was unstable and her health deteriorated rapidly. In 1953, her right leg was amputated at the knee, she turned to drugs and alcohol for relief, and died, probably as a result of suicide in 1954.
Almost all of Kahlo's 200 paintings are self portraits. In these paintings, she shows herself surrounded by the things that are important to her, by Mexican colors and folk art, and by images of the unpleasant experiences of her life. Although Kahlo is considered an important painter today, her work was not well appreciated at the time of her death. Over the last thirty years, Kahlo's work has attracted increasingly serious attention; her international reputation dates from the 1970's. Her work has a particular following among Latin Americans living in the United States and among women artists who find inspiration in her paintings and in her life. Most recently there have been a documentary film (Frida Kahlo: Ribbon Around a Bomb) and a feature film (Frida) made of her life and several novels, including Frida by Barbara Mujica (2001) and Incantation of Frida K. by Kate Braverman (2002).
This renewed interest in the life and work of Frida Kahlo is also reflected in a significant number of biographies written for children. The story of Frida Kahlo's life fits into many categories and has become quite popular as the subject of children's biographies. She is considered a role model and figure worthy of note as a Hispanic woman, as a person with a number of disabilities, and as a woman artist. The only truly picture book biography of is the recently published Frida by
Jonah Winter. This picture storybook focuses on the early years of Kahlo's life and on her inspiration and motivation for painting. The sad facts of Kahlo's painful disabilities and poor health are handled gently and matter of factly. The text which is very simple and told in present tense as if the reader is right there observing Kahlo tells her story in a dreamlike way which is evocative of the primitive and surrealistic style of her paintings. The illustrations use a surrealistic style and also incorporate many of the images from Kahlo's paintings and from the Mexican folk art that inspired her. A close examination of the illustrations is an excellent introduction to many of Kahlo's paintings which is very effective for children who might find much of her work somewhat unusual. The author's note focuses primarily on the importance of her painting to the art world in general and to women artists in particular. The artist's note (which is unusual in a picture book biography) explains how she chose the particular images she used and guides the reader in examining the illustrations. This book provides an excellent introduction to Frida Kahlo's life and work for young readers. It introduces the facts of her life that are appropriate for children while at the same time providing and orientation and introduction to her art.
Frida Kahlo Biographies for Children
Cruz, Barbara. Frida Kahlo : Portrait of a Mexican Painter. Enslow, 1996.
Frazier, Nancy. Frida Kahlo: Mysterious Painter . Blackbirch Press, 1992
Garza, Hedda. Frida Kahlo. Chelsea House, 1994.
Jones, Jane Anderson. Frida Kahlo. Rourke, 1993
Kent, Deborah. "Frida Kahlo" In Extraordinary People With Disabilities. Children's Press, 1996.
Krull, Kathleen. "Frida Kahlo" In Lives of the Artists : Masterpieces, Messes (And What the Neighbors Thought). Harcourt, 1995.
Sills, Leslie. "Frida Kahlo" In Inspirations: Stories about Women Artists: Georgia O'Keefe, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold . A. Whitman, 1989.
Turner, Robyn. Frida Kahlo. Little, Brown, 1993.
Venezia, Mike. Frida Kahlo. Children's Press, 1999
Winter, Jonah. Frida. Scholastic, 2002.
Welden, Amelie. "Frida Kahlo" In Girls Who Rocked the World: Heroines From Sacagawea to Sheryl Swoopes. Scholastic, 1999.
Woronoff, Kristen. Frida Kahlo. Blackbirch Press, 2002
Sources on Frida Kahlo
Alcantra, Isabel. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Prestel, 1999.
Herra, Hayden "Frida Kahlo" In Grove Dictionary of Art. Online version. [Accessed April 12, 2002].
Kahlo, Frida" Encyclopædia Britannica < http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=45344&tocid=0&query=kahlo > [Accessed April 12, 2002].
Lozano, Martin-Luis. Frida Kahlo. Bulfinch, 2001
Zamora, Martha. Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish. Chronicle Books, 1990.
Frida Kahlo Links
Frida Kahlo and Contemporary Thoughts
Maria TallchiefBorn of an Osage Indian father and a Scotch Irish mother in Fairfax, Oklahoma, Maria Tallchief is best known as the preeminent American ballerina of the post war era. As a small child Maria and her sister Marjorie studied piano and ballet in Fairfax and also was exposed by her paternal grandmother to the Osage tribal customs and legends including dances on the reservation. When Maria was just eight years old, her mother decided that the family should move to Los Angeles so that her daughters cod have better music and dance teachers. Maria and her sister studied ballet with Ernest Belcher who provided them with a good introduction to ballet and with opportunities to perform in Los Angeles. During high school, she studied ballet seriously with Madame Nijinska and with David Lichine who had danced with Pavlova.
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In 1942, Tallchief began her professional career and joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She worked her way to prominence in the company, dancing in the corps de ballet and filling in for absent dancers. While at the Ballet Russe, rather than adopting a Russian name which was traditional for prima ballerinas, she established Tallchief as her professional name to honor her Native American heritage. In 1944, George Balanchine joined the Ballet Russe as director of the company. He took the company in new directions, and Maria created roles for him in Danses concertantes, Le Baiser de la fee and Night Shadow. In 1946, she married Balanchine and went with him when he left the Ballet Russe first for the Paris Opera Ballet and then for the New York City Ballet.
Tallchief continued to dance for the New York City Ballet for 18 years as the foremost exponent of Balanchine's choreography. She and Balanchine divorced in 1952, but continued to work together. Her most acclaimed performances were The Firebird, Orpheus, The Nutcracker, Sylvia Pas De Deux, Scotch Symphny, Pas de dix, and The G Symphony. She retired from the New York City Ballet in 1965 and moved to Chicago with her new husband, Herbert Paschen. She served as artistic director of the Lyric Opera Ballet in Chicago and then in 1980 founded the Chicago City Ballet. In 1997, she wrote and published her autobiography, Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina.
As one of the most famous Native Americans and one of the most prominent American ballerinas, Maria Tallchief has often been the subject of biographies for children. As one of the most prominent Native Americans in the second half of the twentieth century and one of the most acclaimed American ballerinas of her generation, Tallchief has attracted attention from writers interested in Native Americans of achievement. The only true picture book biography of Maria Tallchief is Tallchief: American's Prima Ballerina which was written by Tallchief herself with assistance from Rosemary Wells. In this story, Tallchief highlights the childhood experiences that inspired her to become a dancer including the Osage traditions and dances that she learned from her grandmother and the classical musical and dance training that her mother provided. The illustrations record the Native American influences that helped shape Tallchief as a person and as a dancer including images of her father looking like the Indian on the buffalo nickel, feather head dresses, Indian blankets, and sacred ceremonies with drumming and dancing. The pictures of Tallchief herself make her look Native American which is quite different that her ballet photographs which were designed to make her look "white". The style of the illustrations is more impressionistic than realistic which is very effective in helping Tallchief share her memories with the reader. Tallchief's story challenges many Native American stereotypes, and she reflects on these challenges in her story. For instance, the Osage Indians and her family in particular were very wealthy because of the oil that was discovered on their land; she led a privileged childhood with ample funds for music and dance lessons and her father did not have to work. If she encountered prejudice and discrimination, she does not discuss it in this telling of her story. This picture storybook is a good introduction to the story of Maria Tallchief that should interest younger children and should inspire older readers to find out more about Tallchief by reading her autobiography written for adults.
Maria Tallchief Biographies for Children
Allen, Paula. "Maria Tallchief" In As Long As the Rivers Flow: The Stories of Nine Native Americans. Scholastic, 2001
Brown, Vee. Maria Tallchief, Prima Ballerina. Modern Curriculum Press, 1995.
DeLeeuw, Adele. Maria Tallchief: American Ballerina . Garrard Publishing Company, 1971
Erdrich, Heidi. Maria Tallchief. Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1992.
Gourley, Catherine. Who Is Maria Tallchief? Grosset and Dunlap, 2002.
Gridley, Marion E. Maria Tallchief: The story of an American Indian. Dillon Press, 1973.
Guzzetti, Paula. Prima Ballerina, Maria Tallchief. Benchmark Book, 1998.
Lang, Paul. Maria Tallchief: Native American Ballerina. Enslow, 1997.
Sonneborn, Liz. "Maria Tallchief" In Performers. Facts On File, 1995.
Stux, Erica. "Maria Tallchief" In Eight Who Made a Difference: Pioneer women in the arts. Avisson Press, 1999.
Tallchief, Maria. Tallchief : America's Prima Ballerina. Rosemary Wells, Contributor. Gary Kelley, Illustrator. Viking, 1999.
Tobias, Tobi. Maria Tallchief. Crowell, 1970.
Sources About Maria Tallchief
Livingston, Lili Cockerille. American Indian Ballerinas. University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Tallchief, Maria. Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina. Henry Holt, 1997.
Tallchief, Maria" Encyclopædia Britannica
<
http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=72908&tocid=0&query=tallchief
> [Accessed April 13, 2002].
Maria Tallchief Links
This page was created by Susan Swords Steffen,
Elmhurst College.
April 15, 2002
