Start with Your Why: How a Promise to My Nephews Sparked a Movement
Turning Passion into Purpose to Uplift and Empower the Next Generation
Unvalued = Black Boys
Unrepresented = Black Boys
Unappreciated = Black Boys
Unloved = Black Boys
Aren’t Black Boys just boys? Don’t they want what all boys want? To play, be free and happy? They also want representation. Positive representation. They want to see themselves in the world doing good. More than any other group, Black Boys need to see themselves reflected positively. They need to know they are good and deserve good.
These are a few questions and thoughts I had when I decided to create children’s books for little Black boys.
It all started with a mantra…
Black Boy, Black Boy, what do you see?
I would ask my nephews this not to hear their answers but to get them thinking about what they saw in themselves now and in the future. I wanted to ensure the answers I was getting back were positive; if they weren’t, I wanted to start the conversation to get them positive.
Black Boy, Black Boy is a conversation.
A conversation that caused one of my nephews to have a breakdown in the middle of a Barnes and Noble. Whenever my nephews spent a weekend with me, we would usually hit up a library or Barnes and Noble so they could add a book to their bookshelf at my house. It was routine; they were used to it by then. He knew what was expected of him, but he was being a little snot that day. He sat on one of the chairs in the kid’s section and refused to move. He literally looked me (a black TeTe) dead in my eyes and told me he wasn’t doing anything I said ever again.
This refusal led to us arguing in the middle of Barnes and Noble. At first, it was a bunch of I don’t want to be here and I hate books. After some probing and a few “you’re not leaving without a book” from me, the real reason why he refused a book came out in a flood of tears. Screaming at the top of his lungs for everyone in the store to hear, my nephew told me he didn’t want a book because none of the books had a little boy who looked like him.
At the time, he was eight! I didn’t even realize he cared, but why wouldn’t he care? I cared at eight years old. Hell, I cared at 6 years old, and I remembered how it felt not to feel represented.
And in that moment, I knew I had failed him. I had failed them all. I was encouraging them to read, but read what? I wasn’t doing my diligence to ensure they had books representing them. I wasn’t giving them the books I wanted as a kid.
So after what felt like thirty minutes of crying while my other nephew impatient waited for us, I promised all (13) of my nephews I would make a book with characters that looked just like them.
Shortly after our crying session, I started working on Black Boy, Black Boy. It was reasonably straightforward. I wrote the story years ago when my first nephew came into my life; now, I needed to put pen to paper.
Then came the hard part (or so I thought): publishing it. I did not know how to make that happen, but I was determined.
I hoped on Querytracker, wrote a proposal letter, and met with a few publishing companies and a couple of agents – none of which were worth my time. I learned earlier in my career that I didn’t need anyone who didn’t see the vision, and none of them saw it. At the time, I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I had to get my book out into the world. I had made a promise I wasn’t willing to break.
Luckily, the universe wanted to see my book happen as much as I did. I met a guy while promoting my comic series, and he got me in touch with a local hybrid publishing company that changed my life.
They saw the vision. They understood the purpose and helped me bring my dream to reality.
I quickly learned the easy part was getting funding and publishing the book. The hard part actually came when it was time to sell the book. I was no marketer or salesperson. I’ve never owned a product that needed to be sold, but by May 2020, I had 1500 books costing me money every week that I needed to offload.
The first question I asked myself was, “Where do I start?” It didn’t help that we were in the middle of a pandemic and civil unrest. I asked the questions but honestly didn’t know where to start, and at the time, I didn’t want to learn where to start. I just wanted to be out there making a difference.
So, I started with my why! It wasn’t a conscious choice; it was all I had at the time.
Instead of coming up with a catchy tagline or lengthy speech to get people to buy my book, I told them why I wrote the book. Why I thought it was needed in the world. And it turned out a lot of people agreed! I managed to sell 1300 books from May 2020 to August 2020, all because my why was more important than a sales pitch.
So, I told you this longwinded story to say that sometimes your why is all you need. And to all the authors out there who don’t want to market or don’t know where to start, start with your why because only you know why your book is necessary.
