A Conversation About Once Upon a Kwanzaa

A podcast interview with Nyasha Williams and Sidney Rose McCall discussing Once Upon a Kwanzaa on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.

What if a holiday celebrated for just one week could teach us how to live every single day?

In this powerful conversation, author Nyasha Williams and historian Sidney Rose McCall—who call themselves “ancestral soul sisters” despite never meeting in person—reveal how the seven principles of Kwanzaa offer a desperately needed roadmap back to community, empathy, and collective care.

From Umoja (unity) to Imani (faith), Nyasha and Sidney walk us through each principle with warmth and wisdom, showing how their picture book Once Upon a Kwanzaa brings these concepts to life through ten diverse Black families. But this isn’t just a conversation about a holiday—it’s about why literature matters, how creativity becomes an act of recovery, and why centering Black joy and communal abundance is essential work in our isolated, individualistic world.

Whether you’re new to Kwanzaa or have celebrated it for years, this episode will inspire you to reimagine what’s possible when we remember that our fates are deeply intertwined—with each other and with the natural world around us.

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Listen to the Episode

Show Notes

Publisher’s Book Summary: A celebration of the beauty, power, and faith of the African-American community as reflected in the principles of Kwanzaa, by the author of I Affirm Me: The ABCs of Inspiration for Black Kids.

Kwanzaa is a holiday steeped in ancestral traditions collected over generations of people across the Black Diaspora. Once Upon a Kwanzaa introduces communities of all colors to the interwoven history and lived experiences connected to this time of year when families and loved ones gather to celebrate, share, and reimagine the past, present, and future. Sawyer Cloud’s stunning artwork showcases seven different BIPOC families and highlights how different peoples of the Diaspora can celebrate in their communities, from setting the table and lighting the Kinara to sharing meals and gathering at events. The book includes a glossary and pronunciation guide.

Buy the Book

About the Co-Authors

Nyasha Williams grew up living intermittently between the United States and South Africa. As a kindergarten teacher, she was inspired to continue work as an author, creator, and activist after reading her first book to her class when one of her Black students told her that mermaids could not be Black. Williams kickstarted her first picture book, What’s the Commotion in the Ocean, starring a Black mermaid who spreads a message of marine conservation. She is the author of four picture books with Running Press Kids, including the bestselling I Affirm Me, and is the author of RP Studio’s Black Tarot, as well as a board book series with Harpercollins.

For more information, check out nyashawilliams.online and nyashawilliams.substack.com

Sidney Rose McCall is an historian and community intellectual who combines her academic work with her activism. Though the pandemic saw her complete her Masters in Applied Social Science far from the classroom, she turned her eyes to the community, building a platform through Patreon where she continues to share decolonized history lessons and virtual discussions. She also joined the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, Inc. as a student-docent at the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts and now serves as a member of their Academic Committee for the ZORA! Festival of the Arts and Humanities. Ms. McCall hopes to work alongside community bridge builders to bring integrative stories into our creative spaces of resilience and resistance.

For more information, check out linktr.ee/Rosecolored_Scholar

About the Illustrator

Sawyer Cloud is a freelance artist from Madagascar. Her passion for kids’ literature pushed her to turn it into a living. Sawyer loves sunny days and music. She dreams of owning a small cottage and traveling the world. She still lives in her native country, Madagascar, with her family and her two pets, Arya the dog and Potter the cat.

For more information, check out sawyer.cloud

Credits:

• Host: Bianca Schulze
• Guests: Nyasha Williams and Sidney Rose McCall
• Producer: Bianca Schulze

Read the Transcript

I’ll edit the transcript for you. Here’s the formatted version:

Bianca Schulze: Well, hello, Nyasha Williams. Welcome back to the Growing Readers podcast.

Nyasha Williams: Thank you for having me again. Excited to be here with a co-author this time.

Bianca Schulze: I know. Do you want to introduce your co-author?

Nyasha Williams: Sure. So this is Sidney. We have actually never met in real life, but we are deeply ancestral soul sisters, and so much magic has unfolded in our connection. We actually met through the adult adoption community online. And while Sidney is not an adoptee, they are a deep troublemaker in that realm and very much a co-conspirator, because we need adoptive voices to be heard. So we love Sidney. We have so much magic cooking. So excited to be able to talk about one of the projects that has been born and birthed into this world.

Bianca Schulze: I love that. Well, welcome Sidney Troublemaker. We’re so glad to have you.

Nyasha Williams: Thank you.

Sidney Rose: Thank you so much for having me today. Excited to be holding space and to see Nyasha’s face again.

Nyasha Williams: Thank you.

Bianca Schulze: I know, it’s always so special when we see the faces. Well, Sidney, since it is your first time on the show, I kind of think I want to start with you with this question, because it is a question I’ve asked Nyasha before. What’s driving you and guiding you in creating children’s books right now in this moment?

Sidney Rose: Ooh, what a delicious question. So I know for myself, one of the reasons I am attracted to children’s books and drawn to children’s books is because so often people think that things like children’s books or cartoons even are only for very young people. But what we often find in some of the most amazing children’s stories, whether they’re digital, whether they’re visual, whether they’re illustrated, or whether it’s just a book with no pictures—which we know some older children’s books are like that—they are not just for children. They might be accessible to children, but some of the best stories that I grew up with and still go back to as an adult are in fact children’s books. And I think there is kind of beyond the myth of children’s books being very innocent—children’s books can handle challenging topics. They can handle powerful topics. And especially they can help us as young people and grown people as well deepen our empathy, deepen our understandings about each other, and also want to be better and manifest better things in our world. So that’s what fills me with joy when I think about children’s books and why I think it’s important, especially right now, to really be amplifying them in our world.

Bianca Schulze: Oh my gosh. Everything you just said—I love that response. Nyasha, what about you? Do you want to echo what Sidney’s saying? Do you want to add anything there?

Nyasha Williams: Yeah, I mean, Sidney covered the principles beautifully as always. I mean, we talk about this daily. We oftentimes send voicemails to each other back and forth about how we’re seeing the principles through relationships, through friendships, or where the principles need to be set, because sometimes people are not sitting in them and we’re like, we need to come back home to this space. But I think it always just comes to the heart of literature and media and how impactful it is, right? I always think of that Spider-Man thing—with great power comes great responsibility vibes, right? Because our literature and media is able to show us our past. It’s able to show us and capture where we are now, and it’s able to allow us to imagine our future. And so to me, literature and media has just such an immense power in shaping our future, in shaping what can be, in shaping us, in imagining what’s even possible. And so I feel like there’s literally no limitations on what literature and media can do, especially if we are trying to build new worlds. And that’s very much the realm Sidney and I live in and are always embodying. And so literature and media is very much my role here, I feel like, in helping that transition and helping people make those shifts in imagining what’s possible.

Bianca Schulze: Yes, and you do it well. Sidney, will you walk us through the beautiful book that we’re here to talk about today and just kind of briefly explain those seven principles of Kwanzaa for anyone that might be new to the holiday? And I’m not ashamed to say I grew up in Australia. I did not know anything about Kwanzaa until I was in my thirties. And I have to imagine that we’re going to have some listeners here that celebrate Kwanzaa, and then we have some listeners that Kwanzaa is new for them. And what’s so beautiful about your book, Once Upon a Kwanzaa, is that it’s delicious for all communities, whether you already celebrate it or you’re new to it. So just briefly walk us through it and share kind of briefly those seven principles.

Sidney Rose: Absolutely. And this might just be the friendly neighborhood historian in me talking, but I am so very excited to talk to people who have no idea what Kwanzaa is, or they’ve heard the word before. They might have seen the Arthur special that I think took place back in the 2000s, where one of the characters—they were going through all the different wintering holidays and they had a whole little song about Kwanzaa. But for a lot of people, they might not be familiar with Kwanzaa, which is not unusual, in part because Kwanzaa is a very young holiday. It’s a holiday that came of age in the 1960s. Some of us were not even a thought in the 1960s, but for some of us, that’s not that long ago. And so Kwanzaa is a cultural holiday that is rooted in the African American, Black American, Black diaspora. One of the first holiday gatherings was out in Los Angeles, California, in the ’60s. But the seven principles of Kwanzaa are actually taken from East African words, specifically Swahili words. Those of you that might be familiar with The Lion King and know terms like Simba and Nala—that’s the language that those names are derived from. And similarly, the seven principles of Kwanzaa come from that same family of languages in East Africa.

That first principle, Umoja—many Black Americans might be familiar with that term. We see it in many elements of our pop culture and some of our ancestral traditions, especially those around spirituality and faith, which is another one of the principles we’ll come to later. But Umoja translates to unity or one. And so when we think about the word community, you can’t spell it without the word unity, of course. And so everything that I am, that you are, that Nyasha is—we are collectively, right? Everything that we are is because of those who came before us. All the good, the bad, the in-between, all the things that have yet to be discovered—that is Umoja.

Now, the second principle is a bit of a mouthful. So I’ll say it slowly before I get flavorful with it. But that word is Kujichagulia. Now, when you see it in its English iteration, you are probably going to slow blink through it a few times. So definitely practice, practice, practice. But eventually you’ll be able to say it like Kujichagulia and just be able to roll with it.

Bianca Schulze: Wow. Sorry, you have to say that again because it sounds so beautiful when you say it. Say it again.

Sidney Rose: To any Swahili speakers out there, definitely shout out if you would like to add your own flavors to it. But here in the deep South where I live, we say Kujichagulia. And Kujichagulia is actually my favorite of the seven principles. And it translates to self-determination, which of course is a bit of a mouthful. But even our youngest folks can learn what that word means, because it’s about having safety and security and also community with ourselves, but also those around us. So I often tell parents, self-determination can be taught in very small steps or very great leaps, right? We can talk about what our bodies are and what it is to be in community in a classroom or out and about in our schools, in our social spaces. It also means that we can talk about how do we recognize our own uniqueness, right? We often hear terms, especially those of us who live in the United States or parts of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand—this idea around individuality and individualism, which might be a vibe, might be an entry point. But we like to reimagine self-determination as really centering personhood. And personhood is grounding yourself in community, but also recognizing your own uniqueness, your own role. As the late Jane Goodall would tell us, we each have a role to play. And self-determination allows for us to find those pathways from the youngest listeners to the eldest in our communities as well.

And the third principle is Ujima, which comes down to this idea of collective responsibility, which is, again, a pretty big concept. It might be a new one, even for some of our grown folks listening. But similar to self-determination and personhood, Ujima tells us that we have to not only cover ourselves, we have to cover those around us as well. Collective responsibility allows for us not just to look at our families, especially those of us that are familiar with nuclear family models. It allows for us to look beyond those spaces as well, whether that’s found family, whether those are people in our neighborhoods who we might not know too well. That might also be people that we don’t typically consider a part of our communities, whether that’s someone who is unhoused or someone who is in a shelter situation, someone that’s in a refugee situation. It allows for us to extend that empathy just beyond our immediate families and our best friends and our brunch friends as well. Ujima tells us to cover everybody.

And then the fourth principle, Ujamaa, which sounds similar to Ujima, but when you see the two words next to each other, it probably doesn’t help that they are right next door neighbors and twins, because collective responsibility in Ujima echoes in Ujamaa, which is about cooperative economics. And so again, we don’t usually think of saying the word economics to very young folks. But what that allows for us to do is to reimagine how young folks understand economics and not just the allowance you get every few weeks when you cut the grass or you’re helping out in the kitchen or with the dishes. It allows for us to push beyond that and say, how is it that we are sharing? I know one thing Nyasha and I always talk about is this principle of neighbors sharing a cup of sugar or a plate of food. And how in so many cultures around the world, beyond the Black diaspora, beyond African Americans, this idea of sharing is so deeply rooted. If you have more, you give more. If you have less, you give what you can. And sometimes that’s not even mutual aid in a money way. Sometimes that’s in a food way. Sometimes that’s in, I have time to watch your kids. I have time to watch your cats while you’re on vacation or while you’re at work, or I have time to just give you energy. Cooperative economics, again, is covering everyone, but also sharing our energy with people. And of course, having healthy and safe boundaries with that. But extending ourselves, which especially those of us that made it through the pandemic—for some of us, that can be a little tricky to relearn how to do. We are very good at that in kindergarten—oversharing. And then we have our fifth principle, which is Nia, which is all about purpose. And of course, purpose can mean a multitude of things. And similarly, as we talked about the late Jane Goodall earlier, how is it that we each find our role? What is each of our individual personal responsibilities? And sometimes our purpose changes. Your purpose as a kindergartner is probably not going to be your purpose as a seventh grader or junior high school student, which is probably not going to be the same purpose you find out in college or as a parent or entering a marriage or a partnership. So purpose allows us to kind of push beyond just thinking about the moment, but thinking about our lives as a multitude of moments and a multitude of purposes that we just collect along with our friends.

And then six, Kuumba, which is one of those words that once you say it once, you would just kind of want to say it again—Kuumba. It’s a word that means creativity. There is no Kwanzaa without creativity, of course. And what Kuumba allows for us to do is to reimagine our world in creative ways, in community ways, in national ways, international, global systems. It allows for us to look at things creatively, even in spaces where people are organizing or trying to redistribute resources or services. Creativity is so essential. When we think of those moments in history where people were pushing for change or trying to bring people together, creativity was essential for that process, for these movements and moments. And so creativity allows for us to take our drawings, to take our music making, our dancing, even just our daydreaming, to a whole new level. And of course, children’s books are a great entry point into Kuumba. Even if folks don’t know it, you are engaging with Kuumba when you are watching these children’s programs, when you are listening to music. That is creativity. It’s doing something for you.

And last but not least, number seven is Imani, which is faith. And again, many of us, especially those of us who might have grown up in religious spaces, we might think of faith in a very two-dimensional way, where we’re thinking about it in relation to church or a mosque or a synagogue or a meeting house. But faith in an ancestral term is about spirit. It is about your connective energies, not only with the peoples around you and the people well beyond you, but also with the natural world. Faith is about grounding us back in our environments, both our human environments and our very well-made natural ones. And so faith allows for us to reconnect not only with the people around us, but the people of the past as well, thinking about our families, thinking about people who we don’t even know their names. All of these people’s creatures go into us and our communities. And that might sound a little bit like being a tree hugger—you do not have to hug trees. It does feel really nice though. But one of the beautiful things about faith is that it also allows you to nurture hope as well. It allows you to nurture a joy of being here. You know, there are always going to be things that are manifesting in our world. We are always going to be living in unprecedented times, but faith allows for us to also dream of a future, a better future, a fuller future. And that’s one of the beautiful things about Kwanzaa, is that it gives you a seven-principled guideline to how to reimagine the world for the future, but also for the past as well.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I just—I could just listen to you talk about all of those principles all day long. I can just tell that you live and breathe it. And I can fully see why Nyasha was drawn to work with you on this particular project. That was so beautiful. And, you know, this is something that was brought to my attention by both of you. When I hear you talk about those principles, then I see that Kwanzaa is for every day. Like this is every day living. It isn’t just a way to celebrate a week in every year. So that was beautiful. But Nyasha, from that kind of media literature standpoint, do you want to just sort of describe how those principles are presented within Once Upon a Kwanzaa, just like the flow of the book? Why don’t you share that? And also, if you want to add or echo anything that Sidney shared, go ahead.

Nyasha Williams: Yeah, I mean, Sidney covered the principles beautifully, as always. I mean, we talk about this daily. We oftentimes send voicemails to each other back and forth about how we’re seeing the principles through relationships, through friendships, or where the principles need to be set, because sometimes people are not sitting in them and we’re like, we need to come back home to this space. But basically, Once Upon a Kwanzaa—we wanted people to walk through each of the principles. And as we know, illustrated text or picture books are for everybody. So we wanted the words to really describe the principle, but we also wanted the visuals to be showcased. We have our littler readers who sometimes are not able to access those words yet. So we wanted the visuals to be able to showcase—I think even for us as adults, I’m such a visual learner and I am such a visual creator. And so for me, being able to visually see what I’m trying to embody or what I’m trying to learn is so helpful in that integration. And so I think that that was really a huge part of us picking the visuals we did in the book and why each spread looks the way it does, because we really wanted to make sure that the principles were visually showcased on each page.

And so we’re really, really happy with how that turned out. The beginning of the book really walks through like, what is Kwanzaa and what are the principles? And it just talks through, how do you even set up a Kwanzaa table? What is needed on that table to even get things flowing and going, right? And so the book has ten different families, which—that was a big one. But we wanted to showcase there’s so many different families who are celebrating Kwanzaa, number one. And I think the other aspect of us doing that was because we wanted these families to engage, but also be from different areas and show what different practices in Kwanzaa can look like throughout these different weavings. And so some of these families engage with each other and interact or are connected, and some of them are independent. And so you kind of see all these different moving pieces through the families. We obviously had Black characters central to all the families, because that is very important to us and that’s in all of my work—making sure that Black bodies are seen in beautiful and caring and loving ways in my books. And so it’s just this really beautiful flow. We do have an adoptive family in there because, you know, in representation of my family and other families like that. But we made sure to showcase that family is meeting with the birth mom. So they are reconnecting with the birth mom and spending time with her for Kwanzaa. So we really tried to highlight things that we hadn’t really seen as much, but are in existence, right? These things are there, they’re happening, they’re in our world, and we wanted to showcase them on the page.

Bianca Schulze: And I think that just speaks to exactly why picture books are so amazing, especially when you describe that adoptive family and meeting the birth mom, because I think—well, in almost any piece of literature that you read, there are going to be books that you pick up and you believe this was written for me, right? And so what’s beautiful about Once Upon a Kwanzaa is that it may actually just be a specific spread, like a double-page spread, where you’re like, this double-page spread is just for me. And therefore that book becomes written for you. And so I think that’s so beautiful. And I think that’s something really special about what you put out into the world, Nyasha—making sure that people are seen. And I love that.

Well, Sidney, you emphasize that Kwanzaa’s principles are for everyone to learn from and celebrate. When we sort of did a little pre-interview ahead of this podcast—and Nyasha, I know that one of your hopes is that listeners and readers will come to understand how the wisdom of Kwanzaa returns us to communal ways of being. So why do you each—or let me rephrase that. Why do you each think that that reminder about communality and shared principles is so much needed for us to just exist in this world and especially in the world as it is now? I don’t know. I feel like I jumbled up my question there. So hopefully that made sense. Do you want to go first, Sidney?

Sidney Rose: No, I don’t think you jumbled at all. I think—sorry for the slight camera movements. My cat broke through the door. He’s trying to give his two cents on Kwanzaa. So if you see a tail flapping, that is what that is. But back to your question. As I was watching my cat, could you repeat the last part of your question?

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like I kind of was like—I wanted to, I wrote this question down and my questions are better when they just come from my head. When I read them off my—I try to say them in my own words and then it comes out wrong. So why do you each think we need the reminder about community and shared principles right now in this particular moment that we’re living through?

Sidney Rose: There’s so much to say with such a simple question, but I think the best questions are the simplest ones because you can go so many places with them. I think this call to community, this call to Kwanzaa, to our community Kinara, is one that is very for the moment, but also has been, I would argue, for most moments. I think that community is something that especially those of us who are the grown folks listening in remember what those pandemic years were like. For some of us, we were isolated. For some of us, we didn’t see our loved ones, our beloveds, for months. I’d have friends that didn’t see their parents for two years because they were worried about coming into contact with parents that were recovering or were immunocompromised or were more elderly. And even today, we still move a little differently. I think collectively, we don’t always think about what isolation, even if it’s isolation for health reasons, can do to us. And I know for myself, meeting Nyasha virtually was such a lightning-in-a-bottle moment because, again, we live on separate sides of the United States. I have been to Colorado once and it was back when I was in fourth grade going to the Grand Canyon. And even though she has beloveds who are on the East Coast, we’ve always missed each other when we are within an hour or so of each other. But one of the things that came out of that connection was recognizing that we don’t always have to be in the same space to have community with each other, that it is so important just to see other people and to reach out to other people as well.

I think that Kwanzaa, the seven principles, kind of show you what the remedy for loneliness is, what the remedy for feeling helpless is, what the remedy for feeling angry even is—it’s community. Because when you feel helpless watching the news, when you feel angry on social media as a machine that is garnering anger for profit, you in fact find that there’s somebody I can talk to about this. I don’t just have to shout into the void. I don’t have to just sit in this anger. I can speak to someone and also recognize that I’m not alone in this. I’m not alone in feeling anxious. I’m not alone in feeling lonely. I’m not alone in feeling like I’m the only one who is feeling everything that I’m feeling. And I think especially right now, when we talk about community, it’s not just the people who agree with you. I’ll say it again for the folks in the back. It is not just for the people who agree with you or the people that like every Facebook post or the people who go on Instagram and repost what you said and say, this is fire, this is amazing. Community is also to sit in disagreement, to sit in discomfort, to sit with discussion. And of course, there are safe boundaries to that as well. If you are speaking to someone who is spewing things that are hateful and harmful, that’s not community. But if you are talking with someone who simply doesn’t know something, that might have ignorance or might have misinformation or miseducation—we all have miseducation. Even me as a historian who’s in a PhD program, there is a lot of miseducation that on a daily basis I have to unlearn and uproot. And so community is not just about finding your safe people, but also finding people who you might not have initially considered your safe people or people who agree with you or look like you. And trying to find these commonalities that all of us are seeking comfort, all of us are seeking community, all of us are seeking care. And I think part of the reason right now—and Nyasha, I know you can probably speak to this as well—that there’s so many conflicts going on, especially in our social media and digital spheres, is because people don’t feel cared for. People are looking for people who care about the things they care about, but also people who seem to genuinely care about them. And unfortunately, social media is not always the best space for those types of conversations. But I think what Nyasha and I try to do with Kwanzaa is come at this always from a space of care. I may not understand you, but I can always care for you. I might not agree with you, but I do care for you. And my actions more so than my words will show that. The way I move in space, the way that I bring you plates of food, the way that I check on your children and try to cover you in my own actions and movements—that care is so essential to community. It’s not just for your friends and the folks you go to brunch with or your coworkers. It’s about caring for people who, in some ways, you might not always consider worthy of your care and consideration.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. I mean, just another argument for everyday Kwanzaa. I mean, Nyasha, how about you? Add to that or, you know, take us in a different direction. What do you want to say on that topic of Kwanzaa and community and needing it now?

Nyasha Williams: Yeah. So I obviously like to support people moving back into communal ways of being. And for me, that comes from the current systems we’re in amplifying the opposite of that, right? So our current systems reward individuality, reward individualism, reward—and this is white supremacy, patriarchy, colonization, capitalism—they reward you looking out for yourself and centering yourself and not caring about others. And so, you know, and that generally links to greed. It links to scarcity mindset. I think this is something I’ve been talking to many people about—that people think that scarcity mindset or survival mode are traits that are inherent to being low in finances, so like not having a lot of physical funds. And that is absolutely not true. If you look at our world, if you look at how people move, there’s so many people who are moving in scarcity and survival mode who have all the wealth—like the millionaires moving in that, right? And so, you know, the communal ways of being is this reminder that our systems right now—we don’t have to live this way. We don’t have to be moving in these systems. There’s enough for everybody. It’s the reminder of abundance—that there is enough food for everybody to be comfortable. There is enough space. No one has to be unhoused. All these things that we know are true that are not the ways that we’re currently moving in.

So to me, when I say communal ways of being, I also like to do the extension of what Sidney talked about—how the reminder that we are not separate from others around us, people, but we are also not separate from nature. Our fates are intertwined in a really meta way if you really want to think about it, but even just in a very scientific way. It’s like the water system and cycle has been a part of us and we’ve been a part of the water cycle. We are literally a part of that. So if you think about it in that context, we are so intertwined with nature and we’ve forgotten this. How much time do people really go and touch grass and spend time outside and go talk to the trees? These things are important because, yes—

Bianca Schulze: And hug them.

Nyasha Williams: I talk to my trees all the time. We have regular conversations. But it’s one of these things where if you do not have that connection, it’s much easier to make choices that are to our own detriment and, by extension, our communities, by extension, the neighborhoods, by extension, the countries, by extension, the world and the universe and our collectives—lack of betterment. And so it’s about us coming back home to ourselves, rerouting, regrounding, and coming into the understanding that actually we’re always intertwined. Our fates are completely interconnected. I think one of the simple examples I think of in the movie—I love The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And I think about that scene where the girl’s leg breaks, right? But there’s all these moments that happened for that to be possible. And they said if one thing would have shifted, she might not have had the broken leg. And so it’s just this reminder of how, even if you don’t see the direct—she probably doesn’t even know all the things that happened that led to her leg being broken, right? All those different things that happened. But it shows how every little thing we can do, even as the smallest thing, like the woman not having the package packaged, the man taking his break, the taxi guy having his coffee at that specific time—all these things lead to other things. And so we forget how intertwined we are in other people’s lives and we don’t see it. And so it’s just like, I think that slow down, that pause, and that understanding that actually everything you do does have a ripple effect and kind of moving in that consciousness and the understanding that we are actually all impacting each other and we’re all impacting our planet, our water, and everything here.

Bianca Schulze: Yes, like one thousand percent. Well, why don’t you take this moment to walk us through your collaboration process and what it meant to work together on this book. And Sidney, you already kind of touched on this, but what it meant to work together on this book. And as you were creating it, knowing that you intended it to be a beacon of hope and a pathway forward—did that vision shape how you approached the work, or did that vision just come as you were working together? But I know from talking to Nyasha separately to this podcast about the joy she has working with you, Sidney, and I hear it in your voice today as we’re meeting for the first time. So talk to me, talk to the listeners about your collaboration process. And Sidney, why don’t you go first?

Sidney Rose: Absolutely. So even though Nyasha and I have never met in person, she is somebody who I feel I have known for ten years. I remember once telling her that if and when I ever do get married or hitched up that we still might not have ever met in person up to that point, but that would be the first time we’d meet in person because she would need to be in my wedding, like immediately. And I think it just kind of speaks to what it is to find people that touch your soul in ways that demand that you be better, demand that you always reimagine the world, demand that you always ask questions. And so working and collaborating with Nyasha so often feels like a dance. And that might just be the theater kid in me. But when we are moving and trying to make stories together, she might move a little bit differently. And so I have to move my feet a little differently, or I might do something with my hands and then she’s like, okay, we’re going that way now. We’re going this direction. And so we are pulling and pushing on each other in ways that some listeners might say, wow, that sounds awful. That sounds ridiculous. I don’t want to dance. But I think that’s where the best collaborations come in, because we are always pushing on each other and challenging each other to think about these stories that might have a very simple message. But again, those simple messages have the deepest complexities in them. And I know from working with Nyasha, there’s always a layer underneath the layer. And I know as someone who has worked on several things with Nyasha that there’s always another way to look at the story. There’s always another angle that we can explore, that we can manifest. And so in this story, Once Upon a Kwanzaa, it feels like we’ve worked on Once Upon a Kwanzaa again for ten years and it hasn’t even been year one fully of our book.

But one of the things I know we were speaking to at the beginning was at this pandemic, kind of tail end of the pandemic, we were starting to see a lot of celebration around Black cultural elements, especially Black holidays like Juneteenth, which is the much, much commercialized Emancipation Day of Texas, which signaled the end—not the full end, but the partial end of slavery in the United States. Emancipation from slavery, but unfortunately not the full abolition of slavery that we are still working through today. But I remember Nyasha and I kind of going back and forth about, yay, we’re so excited people know about this. Yay, we’re excited that this is a labor holiday now for some people. People can request time off of work to rest, restore, be in community, do resistance work, do everything in between. But of course, we immediately saw companies starting to change their logos. We started seeing merchandise coming out. We started seeing cities give statements while still practicing structures and systems that were profoundly harmful to the people they were claiming to celebrate. And so we started kind of pushing on this idea of how do we talk about holidays? How do we uproot some of these problems we’re noticing in our holidays in meaningful ways? Nyasha and I probably at least once a month have conversations around the National Holiday of Thanksgiving. And while yes, it’s a labor holiday for many people in our communities, and yes, while it’s a time to gather and take time and fellowship, it’s also a period of mourning for many people in our community, both Indigenous people, Black Natives, people across diasporas and communities. This is not a time of just watching a parade and eating good food or resting on that day. And of course we know there’s so many people that still have to work on that day anyhow. And Kwanzaa seemed like such a natural solution—having a holiday that isn’t just about fellowshipping and disassociating from all the problems of the world, but bringing those problems into community spaces for us to solve and find solutions together. So similar to how Nyasha and I collaborated, I think Kwanzaa at its core demands collaboration. It demands that you not only talk about what’s going on with the kids and what’s going on in our home, our family, our house. It also is asking what is going on in the community, in the neighborhood, in the county, in our district, in our region, in our state, in our part of the world, in other parts of the world, and how they’re connected to what’s going on here. How do we teach, but also how do we learn? And I think that’s something that is core to all of Nyasha and I’s collaborations, where we literally are voice-memoing each other and dropping memes along with articles, along with Substack posts every day almost, where we’re just constantly sharing with each other to the point where sometimes I’ll message her and I know she’s done it before where she’s like, this is like a rest day. If I don’t respond, I will get back to you on this. And then we respond and we get back to it and we pick up where we left off. I think that’s the joy of dancing with Nyasha in collaboration.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. I’m hearing that, you know, the essence of Kwanzaa, that community, but also just a deep respect and understanding of each other. And I think that’s so beautiful. All right, Nyasha, it’s your turn. Collaboration, you and Sidney—go.

Nyasha Williams: Yeah, so I think the coolest thing about working with Sidney is that, you know, we’re both in ancestral connection and veneration, but I think in very different capacities. But I think that creates a very interesting synergy when we come together. I think I’m a little bit more in a very physical, practical, you know, trying to reclaim in terms of our actual ancestors with the altars and doing the very physical labor in that capacity. And Sidney, through being a historian, through being an Afrofuturist, through all the other moving ways Sidney is, just comes from different angles. And so we honestly are able to provide really beautiful but mirroring, but also unique, you know, lenses and gazes for each other when we’re looking at things. And so I think that that has been a really beautiful part of working with Sidney and being in community with them and any conversation. Yeah, because no matter what we’re talking about, we have this very common thread, but we still are just able to see it from a very different angle and enrich each other’s angles. And so I think that that is really beautiful and it shows up in our work and all of our collaborations and all that we’re trying to build. We have so many things. Sidney brought up holidays and stuff. We’re trying to do a Decolonized calendar, you know. We’re also working on an advent calendar for Kwanzaa. So there’s just so many different pieces that are always going through our body, and we also honor seasonal work. And so there can be times when we’re like, okay, this project needs to pause for the season and then we’ll come back to it when the ancestors allow it to arise. Sidney is really good at receiving my ancestral downloads. And I’m just leaving her voice notes like, Sidney, this is what I’m hearing. And Sidney’s like, yes, I hear it. I see it. Let’s go. And so, you know, we are very much in sync and in flow in these ways. And yes, we can definitely overcommit. And so we’re learning on that practice because we definitely have so many projects we’re trying to build. And so that can be something that we’ve had to kind of learn to navigate around and kind of re—sometimes you get your hopes up so big on what you wanted it to be and then kind of trying to reevaluate what it is and what is actually possible in the time we have and what capacity we do have at that moment. But yeah, I think it’s just always lovely to work with Sidney. It’s very much a back-and-forth flow and we’re very different writers, you know. I think Sidney had a learning curve with picture books here just because Sidney writes—is working on these long, huge novels. And so that was just a shift in terms of how we’re structuring and writing and language. But I don’t think anything from Sidney cannot be lyrical. Sidney is so rich in language and description that that just naturally flows so deeply from their body. And I feel like in working with them, I’m growing even stronger in those realms, which is helping me as I’m writing bigger and longer novels as well. So, you know, I’ve always been one of those people that—I know people will divide themselves or niche themselves down as a writer or creative. And I feel like I’ve always been one of those people that’s like, I don’t care what you’re working on. If we feel like it’s a collab, let’s collab, because I can learn from you. Even if you’re writing, you know, film, plays, and screenplays and I’m writing a graphic novel, I feel like there’s learning curves always that I can grow in. And so I’m always trying to allow that space because I think we can learn from so many different people in so many different capacities when it comes to—I don’t know, everyone has so many different ways that they approach creativity. And I think it opens our brains. It opens, just—it reminds us that the universe is multiple choice. I think that’s why I love creativity so much. It reminds us that the universe is multiple choice and it allows, when you do it in collaboration, to understand layers you might not have seen. It’s just this expansion of our lenses and gazes and our sight. And I just always think our sight needs to be expanded.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. I love—

Sidney Rose: I will say one thing that Nyasha said that just made me—even though I’ve been smiling the whole time, it just made my dimples dimple all the more—was just how you talked about both of our skills and how we play on each other’s strengths, but also how we challenge each other to keep growing. And working with Nyasha is, I think, the closest thing to recovery work that some people can get to in relation to creativity. Her creativity, her ethos, is an act of recovery. It is an act of restoration. It is an act of remembering because whether we’re talking about collaging, whether we’re talking about exploring painting and music, whether we’re talking about doing podcasts together or talking about the history of music and what that means when we are consuming music of pop stars and celebrities—everything is a creative process where we are not just talking about what’s going on in the present, but she’s looking at this in such a beautiful way of how we were recovering who we once were, how are we recovering these past ways of understanding ourselves, but also understanding community and also thinking about ourselves as an extension of the community as well. And I think that has been one of the greatest gifts working with Nyasha in not only our creative collaborations, but also my work as a scholar to the point where I’m not getting into shouting matches with anybody, but academia is not the friendliest place in the world. And even when people are trying to talk about these histories and stories that we’re seeing in real time are being erased and censored and silenced in many places, how is it that we do that recovery work? And of course, creativity is at the core of it. Creativity is how we survive. It is how we adapt. It is how we find each other and find our stories again. And so that’s what I appreciate so much about working with Nyasha—finding in me not only the art of becoming, but also the art of recovering and remembering as well.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. I thought I was going to say something else here, but I’m going to totally switch because when we talk about creativity, I find the words that come along with that are usually really positive, like hope and joy and beauty. And so when things feel wrong in the world, it can feel wrong to be putting something creative out in the world to some people. And so I love that there are people reminding us that, okay, there are horrible, horrendous things going on, as you say, Sidney, in people’s homes and out in the very far world, the reaches that we’ve never traveled to, right? And so I don’t know, I just—when you guys are talking, I’m feeling like this is a reminder to anybody that is creative, that’s listening—don’t be afraid to share the hopeful and the joy, but also art doesn’t have to be all joy and happiness. So I know that was a tangent and random, but that’s just what I was pulling from what you were saying. So do either of you want to add to that about creating art and whatnot? Nyasha, what about you?

Nyasha Williams: So one thing I was going to say, obviously, I have to give Toni Morrison her plug. She said, this is when artists get to work, right? In the heart of the crazy, in the heart of the genocide, in the heart of all of the struggle and the grief and all the moving pieces, in the anger, right? That righteous rage—this is when we get to work. And so I have to say that, you know, coming back to communal ways of being when we’re sitting in art—I think right now I know that for myself, I know that I am grieving. I know that a lot of people are, whether they’re allowing that room and that space or whether the systems allow that, because our systems don’t really give space for us to sit in things. That’s why I think COVID was so hard for people, because it brought up everything that they have been avoiding and that our systems and our holidays kind of just keep us going so that we don’t address the things and sit with the things that we need to sit with. And so the grief right now—there’s a lot of, I think, grieving on personal levels, but I think there’s a lot of collective grieving too, right? In just where we are as a world. And at the same time, I think there’s also still hope. So it’s like you see the magic of a lot of grief in our art right now, but a lot of hope as well. And it’s intersected—that Imani, that faith, is also intersected. It’s just all in here. But I also think when we sit with that grief, I think that there’s—whatever emotions we’re going through, I know right now for me, when I’m going through this, there’s literature and media that can make me feel very seen in my grief right now. And I think that that is the kind of things that literature and media does for us. It allows us to be able to see ourselves. It allows us to be able to see this mirroring for us, right? And Sidney and I could go on for days and days. I’m also going to speak to this—you know this, Bianca, from our NCTE, our conference that’s upcoming—I’m speaking about visibility versus true representation, right? We are very much in an interesting stage of that within our world. People are conflating the two and confusing them. And you know, visibility is not representation and there’s a spectrum in where it can land, right? And so I think there’s a big learning curve from everybody, it feels like, of understanding what representation can truly look like. And I don’t even think we’ve captured it really. I think we are on this journey towards that, but I don’t think that I’ve necessarily seen works that are fully in that embodiment of what all can be, right? And that’s the goal. That is creativity. We’re constantly trying to grow and evolve in these ways and being inspired by other works to continue to expand in those capacities. But I think when we sit with the work where it is now, I think visibility is this beautiful entry point. It’s what we needed to start. But it’s very much where I think a lot of us are going, especially with all that we’re feeling in our bodies, with what’s going on in our world right now, with what we’re processing, with what has happened to this point, which—the stories that have not been told that still need to be told. You know, there’s a lot of ancestral stories that are being ricocheted through people’s bodies to come forth because they haven’t been told or they’ve been hidden or they haven’t been told correctly, right? And so it is our time to bring these forth, to rise to the occasion and allow these—allow these stories, allow these narratives, allow these humans to have their voice heard again. And so, I don’t know, it’s a journey and we are on it right now, but I think that literature and media is a huge part of this reclaiming, part of us remembering, part of us coming home, part of us rerouting and regrounding. And so creativity and literature and media are central in all of that. And I think we’re going to need more and more that’s going to allow us to see ourselves in a true capacity, not just visibility, but true representation, because of all that we’re experiencing, you know, and having to make room for in our current state of being.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. And I mean, the word that has been coming up in my brain a lot has been the word spiraling. And I just think that there are so many people that can relate to the word spiraling. And I know when I’m spiraling in thoughts, you sometimes need somebody or a piece of art or a book or a song or music to do exactly what you just said, Nyasha, which is to bring you home, to help you feel rooted and rerooted and grounded. And so, you know, not to sound like I’m just trying to sing praises about your book, which I do want to sing praises about, but I think Once Upon a Kwanzaa does that. So it is these—you know, you’ve shared those principles so beautifully. And so to me, it’s a regrounding for some, or for others, it’s showing them what can be. And I think when you are at peace and practicing these seven principles, then you can address all of this other stuff as it comes up. And there’s always seasons in life where no matter how calm and zen you are or enlightened or whatever your practices or beliefs are, you’re going to have moments of spiraling and you always need something to bring you home. And I think Once Upon a Kwanzaa does that. And so on that note, talk to me about your favorite moments in the book. And it can be a piece of text that you created or one of Sawyer Cloud’s gorgeous little vibrant illustrations. And when you’re sharing what that favorite is, I want to know—what is it that grabs you, grabs your heart, grabs your mind, grabs your soul? Like what is it grabbing and why is it doing that? And I also think Nyasha and I are going to end up saying the same favorite page, but we’ll see. So Sidney, why don’t you go?

Sidney Rose: Let’s go. I think I have to lift up Sawyer Cloud every day, all the days. Literally, in the interior of the book, as soon as you open to that first page, before we get to the illustrations proper, you see this African print that takes you into this story. I cannot tell you how many aunts in the last few weeks have called me asking if there is a way for them to turn this into wallpaper, into packaging paper, into a quilt. One of my relatives who I’m in community with, one of my play cousins, literally said, I want to make this into a quilt. And there’s just something so joyful to be had. There’s just something that’s really joyful about even before we get to the pictures of the children and their everyday adventures and how Kwanzaa is manifesting with them, their parents, the community adults around them, that she saw that print and felt so immediately connected to it and so excited about what was on the next page. I think working with Sawyer was such a dream because there was so much that Nyasha and I put into crafting these ten families, having families that had children, having families that were childfree, having families where the grandparents were caretakers, having families that had adoptive parents, caretakers, guardians. And the fact that there are so many different ways to engage with this story, even if it’s a type of family or a type of community that you don’t see yourself on the page with—Sawyer found a way to put you on the page with feelings, with that joy, with that love. And I know as a kid who was a bookworm who found so much joy in not only escaping into books—so often I thought I was escaping into books and those books brought me right back to reality. They immersed me back into reality with the empathy, with the joy, with the love that they gave me. And even when I didn’t see myself on the page, I could imagine myself right next to these characters. And that’s the hope that I’m having with these illustrations, especially the beautiful illustration Sawyer crafted of the children with their candles and watermelon boats, putting them back out to sea, which speaks to so many Indigenous traditions, diaspora traditions, displaced identities that we still see across the world—how fruit and how light moves our communities. I think that what I hope these pictures do for our youngest readers, but also for our grown folks as well, because I know some of you grown folks, you’re going to want to go and get your own copy, get your kids a copy, but have your own copy in your room, is that you see yourself on these pages as well. Even when you see people who don’t look like you or are doing things that you’ve never done before. I had not done a watermelon candle boat until I was in my late twenties. And I said, we’re doing this again. You might not have ever done a libation before. You might not even know what the word libation means and you have to go on dictionary.com and look it up. You might not have ever heard the word Kwanzaa before, but you see yourself in Kwanzaa. You see yourself in Umoja. You see yourself in these definitions and say, I’ve been doing that. Oh my gosh, my grandma used to do this. Oh, my caretaker, my teacher, my mentor, my beloved, they do this. Oh, this is something we can do. I think Sawyer’s pictures allow for you to see yourself even if you don’t see yourself in the way that you might have imagined you would.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. All right, Nyasha, what’s your favorite?

Nyasha Williams: So hard. I have to obviously give a shout-out to Sawyer and I am going to take a moment just to ask everyone to, if you can, light a candle and send love to Sawyer because Madagascar is going through it right now. They are one of the countries that is fighting for their rights, fighting for their independence, fighting for their basic needs to be met. And so Sawyer is in the heart of that right now. Sawyer is trying to put out—if you’re not following Sawyer on social media, please do. Uplift their work right now, uplift all the messages they’re putting out because they are trying to get people to know about what’s happening in Madagascar. And, you know, we want to send them that care. Sawyer has the biggest heart and sent me like ten voice notes apologizing for not promoting the book when it was coming out. And I’m like, baby girl, you’re in the heart of it. You are doing the Kwanzaa work on your end. Stay focused, stay what you need to do. Tell us if you need anything. We are trying to send everything your way because you are doing the heart of the work. We want y’all to be okay. We want y’all to be safe. We want y’all to be abundant and secure and you are fighting for that. And that is part of the work. That is the work. So just trying to send her all that. And so if you can light a candle for her, that would be in love because, yeah, they are going through it on that end.

Bianca Schulze: I’m glad you shared that, Nyasha. Thank you.

Nyasha Williams: Yes. And so Sawyer—I am really lucky. This is my third book Sawyer’s done with me and they’ve always just complimented so deeply on the work that I give to them for them to illustrate. And so I’ve been so blessed for them to see me in that way. Being from Madagascar, Sawyer also didn’t know about Kwanzaa. They don’t know a lot about a lot of the texts and books. Even they did Saturday Magic, they didn’t know about hoodoo. So this is all new for them as well. So it’s a big learning curve. This book specifically, I have never sent so many art notes to someone. And I know some of our illustrators out there can get real upset at art notes and be very particular. This was a stack—Sidney and I packed it out. And part of that was because, number one, the quilts imagery that everyone is so in love with on Sidney’s end—first of all, we gave so much inspiration, but we also, if you know about our history, quilts were used for messaging. And our enslaved ancestors used that to communicate, to know what was going on, to know how to get to the Underground Railroad, to know when it was time to leave, to know when it was time to keep things low-key. All these things were messaging that were through those specific visuals in the quilts. And so we wanted to bring that history back and honor that for our ancestors and the magic and the ingenuity and the creativity, the Kuumba, that they were able to use in that protection of themselves and in that fight for our liberation and our freedom. And then, you know, we have all these families. We really wanted to make sure so many people were represented. We wanted different able bodies. We wanted so many moving pieces in that regard, right? We have queer families. We wanted to make sure that there were so many different families who were a part of this. And I think we wanted to make sure people who might not always be seen in visuals are there. I have friends who are Black and are dating people who are Asian, but that is a very rare visual to see. And so we wanted to make sure that this representation is here, people can see themselves in it.

So in terms of my favorites, I mean, of course I’m going to bring up the watermelon release because that feels so good in my heart. You know, I love a communal table, farm-to-table dinner. Dining is always peaceful in my life. I love the watermelon boats. For me, the ocean is one of the deities that I work with, Yemaya. So then that’s the offering you’re giving Yemaya with the watermelon. So that felt very honoring to her. In that, you’ve also got the moon. She’s also embodied with the moon. So there were so many beautiful things. I also love the libation statements. Sidney said some people don’t know what a libation is, or you’ve heard it just in the context of using it as a hipstery, bougie way to write drinks on a menu. But there’s so much more context to what a libation is. So understanding it from that deeper context and that deeper understanding, you know, I think that I sit and think of movies where people are pouring it on the ground outside or, you know, for the—say for the homies, right? And there’s more context to that. It’s this much deeper understanding. But the libation statement felt really important to put out there in terms of all the people and all of the relatives and kin. When I say that, those are relatives and kin that are not always human embodied, right? Those are animals. Those are our plant spirits. Those are our elements that are also a part of us that we’re also honoring in that, right? And then I would say, I love—you know, I love swimming. Water is my jam. So the kids learning to swim is always the vibe. And so the kids being able to swim and be in the water and be in that learning, I think is so important to me. I know that that’s important for our community because that is something that we need to relearn. We were barred from that. We have not always been able to have freedom in our leisure spaces in that way or in that learning. And so I believe that that is obviously—I’ll often write to things that I call in, that I want us to come back to, that I want us to reclaim, that I want us to re-embody. And swimming is a part of that. So that is very important to me. And I would say the last one is, again, when the kids are in the water with the ancestors in the clouds, looking over them, the Bella Gicci family. Yes. Yes.

Bianca Schulze: That’s the page I had.

Nyasha Williams: I love that page. The ancestors looking over them, the family there, you’ve got the blue bottle tree, if you clock it, if you know, you know—all those little details on that page that are just all part of the magic of the culture. And we really went into details about what they should be wearing and all the details about the clothing because that’s very important. And we wanted to honor the Indigenous roots of those cultures. And so it was a really beautiful book to put together and we’re really happy that Sawyer was able to visualize our sight.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Well, for me, I’ve said this a lot on the podcast, but I often will not be able to share, like a week or so after I’ve read a book, exactly what the book is about. But I can always share the feeling that I’m left from a book. And I would say if I was to pick a word that—a feeling word—I feel that word is it makes me feel at peace. So I want to ask you both—and Sidney, let’s start with you. What do you hope—and let’s talk particularly about young readers right now—but what do you hope young readers will feel when they encounter Once Upon a Kwanzaa for the first time?

Sidney Rose: I think there’s so much I’m hoping for them. And a part of me also holds space to the fact that our youngest readers, our youngest dreamers, make us think of things that we did not even imagine as well. So I’m particularly excited to learn from them what they see that I didn’t even see in this story that we had so many art notes on and so many written notes on how we wanted it to flow together. But one thing that I am hoping that our youngest listeners and readers and dreamers can take from Once Upon a Kwanzaa is it teaches them a new way to nurture empathy. I think we often think of our books, especially as young folks, as growing folks, that we’re trying to escape from something, which of course begs the question, what are we escaping from? And we know that there’s things that happen in our home spaces that aren’t always safe. There’s things that happen in our classrooms and our faith spaces that aren’t always safe. Things that happen in this country and many countries that are far from safe. And books allow for us to forget about some of those things that we’re seeing, those dark clouds that are so hard to push away sometimes or push beyond. I always used to think of reading as a kid as a way to stop storms from happening. Even if I knew the storm was coming, even if I knew that there were scary things happening outside, I didn’t have to remember that as a kindergartner, I had classmates who said they didn’t want to be with me because of the color of my skin, that they didn’t want to be my friend because they thought I was dirty, even though I took a nice bath that morning or the night before. I could look at these books, even if I didn’t see a character that looked like me. I saw a character that felt like me or a character that had an adventure or wanted to be friends with somebody the way I wanted to be a friend. But like I said earlier, when I was trying to escape, I found myself coming back out of the book because these books weren’t just immersing me in this escapist fantasy world, even though I do love a good dragon book. I will say that a good book on dragons, I’m there. But these stories also immersed me in empathy. It taught me how to be empathetic and how to love and care for people who look nothing like me. I think so often what we hear in some of our spaces today that are starting to trickle into our spaces for young folks who are hearing this from grown folks around them, from talking heads on the TV or on a podcast or two, that they hear that they’re trying to indoctrinate or they’re trying to force these things on our young people when, in reality, our young people, for one, are going to think what they want to think. Even if we tell them what to think, they have their own thoughts, they have their own dreams and fantastical kingdoms that are two hundred pages long that we’ll never know about. But they also are curious. Nurturing curiosity—if I had a question for my parents or the elders around me, even if they didn’t know the answer, they found the answer out. But also I went and searched for answers as well. And I think empathy allows for you to do that in a way that is nurturing care, it’s nurturing kindness, it’s nurturing consideration. It’s not always about understanding people. I think that’s a mistake and a miseducated mistake that many of us adults think. I need to understand the history. I need to understand every angle, or I need to understand the context. No, you don’t. Not always. Sometimes it’s helpful, but what is most important is if you move through it with empathy. And empathy isn’t a passive word. Empathy is a word that requires active participation. It is a relationship that you are building. Empathy is communal. It means that I might not understand why you do what you do, or I might understand why you said that, or why you think this way. But beyond that, I recognize that as a person, irregardless of all the labels and words that you attach to your body, that you are worthy because you are here with me, with us. And I think empathy takes us back down to that fundamental level that they are still trying to teach us on Sesame Street and trying to teach more adults off of Sesame Street—that you cannot move this world without empathy. You cannot force new ideas, old ideas, onto anybody if you don’t try to meet them where they are. I cannot raise you to where I am if I’m not also recognizing where you are. I can’t push you to do anything if I don’t let you in a little bit. And, you know, for adults, none of us like being told we’re wrong. None of us like being called anything outside of our name. Some of us don’t even like being called our names. But it’s so important that even those of us that are in this good work and good trouble that we start with our youngest people, teaching them empathy. And if we teach our young people empathy, they start to see the world differently. They start to see themselves differently and they start to recognize they don’t always have to see themselves to know that people who don’t look like them, people who don’t move in the same ways, manifest the same things as them, are just as worthy. We don’t have to exist in pyramids with each other or in lines or in competitions outside of the Olympics, right? We can all be worthy. And just because we are all worthy, that in and of itself is enough for me to fight for you, for me to fight for all of us.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Yeah, that’s beautiful. I think, you know, you touched on so much there, and I feel like we could have a whole other episode, and maybe we should someday. You know, to me, when—I mean, and right now, as we’re recording this, and it will be past this when it comes out, but it’s Banned Books Week, right? And there are people that are banning books for the most ridiculous reasons, and some of it is really hurtful and some of it is just stemming from straight hatefulness, right? And so I feel like our job as authors, as illustrators, as publishers, and, you know, I have the job of being a book reviewer and I consider myself a literacy advocate. And I think our job of all of those titles is that we open the door for readers and then we get out of the way and we give them this space to explore that. And some readers are going to walk right back out and it’s not for them. So these people that ban books that think we have as authors and publishers and literacy advocates and book pushers that we somehow have this power to determine who somebody is going to be and the choices they’re going to make, they’re wrong. We don’t. We open that door with the gift that we have and the knowledge that we have and we allow them to walk in, we get out of the way, and they choose to say this is for me or they choose to say it’s not for me. So to think that we all have this power and that we should ban books for all people, I mean, it just—it drives me crazy. So on that note, I’m going to say, I love—I feel like your feeling words there were, if you read Once Upon a Kwanzaa, that hopefully you’re left with understanding the importance of empathy, but also knowing that you are a worthy human. And so if I summarize that well enough and I feel like you’re nodding, let’s hear from Nyasha. What would your feeling word or words be after a reader encounters Once Upon a Kwanzaa for the first time?

Nyasha Williams: So I have to go back to Sidney because when we brought up indoctrination, I always have to sit with that because I was like, technically we’ve all been indoctrinated, right? And this is—I like what you said, Bianca, about allowing the doors to be opened and then kind of letting people do their thing. And at the same time, there is some control in the exposure, right? And I say that in the assertion of teachers. They say, keep politics out of the classroom. Teaching is the most political career you can have. And I say that because the reality is what texts you choose to have in your classroom, what texts are in your library, in your classroom library, what books you choose to talk about in your curriculum or you have your children sit with, even the visuals when you have visuals on your classroom, on your walls, all these things—that all plays a role in what you’re—it all speaks to the message that you’re trying to send kids or what you’re saying is important or what is of value. And so when we sit with all of that, I think there’s this aspect of—there’s a reason why the book bans are happening, right? We know this. There’s a reason why they’re trying to control the literature and media, is because we know it has that power and it has had that power for a long time. The amount that Sidney had voiced—the unlearning that we’ve had to do is because of all the indoctrination, right? I will say, I identify as queer, I’m bisexual, you know, but I didn’t really have any books that showed me that embodiment. So I came into that a lot later where I was like, that could have been different if I would have had exposure, you know, in literature and media, but that wasn’t there. And again, people seem to get very hung up in LGBTQIA media. But the irony is that Disney just pushes straight stuff all the time, right? You have all these kisses and all these undertones all the time that are not undertones, that are always there, right? So a lot of media is constantly—cartoons are constantly pushing straight relationships and that crush and that first kiss and those things in a straight context and a heterosexual context. But people start getting upset and having feelings when it’s not under a straight context. And so it’s like, these are the things we need to sit with. And you say it comes from hate. I think it’s hate, but even deeper than hate—fear. It’s people fear. It’s like, sometimes it’s like a way—I was like, I wasn’t allowed to do that. Why should anyone be allowed to do that? Right? It’s kind of like when people are asking for student loan forgiveness with everything going on in the world and people are like, how dare they? I paid my student loans. Why should anyone else have that? And it’s just like, well, it’s—you know, we have these interesting comparisons in our life of people feeling like you need to go through the same struggles. And it’s like, isn’t that the goal of our lives though? Isn’t that the goal to make things more easeful for the generation below us? Isn’t it our goal to make things more beautiful and more abundant and more easeful for the next generation and not just our direct lines, not just our direct bloodlines, not just our connections, our brunch friends, our people, but the extension of our world, right? Are we not trying to have the collective have ease? And I think that that’s what I sit with.

Nyasha Williams: So when kids are accessing Once Upon a Kwanzaa, I want them to sit with, first of all, hopefully stepping back into nature, because there’s a lot of time the kids are out in nature, spending time in nature. And I think that when you spend time with elements, I always tell people when they’re trying to connect with their ancestors or they’re trying to come back home to their roots or reconnect, go spend time in nature, right? So that is one thing I will call upon—hoping that kids are re-inspired to go sit in nature in different ways.

The other context I would hope that would come forth from the book is, you know, making things. We have such an overconsumption issue in our world, people promoting us buying things that we absolutely don’t need. And we just need to make so many shifts in this. Recycling is not real. We have to have everything compostable at this time. If you’ve actually done the research about recycling, if you have not, go look it up. There’s documentaries, there’s so much happening. And the point is it’s not a real thing. When you are going to recycle, most of your stuff is ending up in the landfill. So that is not a sustainable situation, meaning that any packaging, anything we’re doing, either needs to be reusable, completely reusable—and not plastic—it needs to be reusable, or it needs to be compostable. And so that means that we need to go back to—this is where some of the ways we moved in the past were more sustainable. What does that look like and regenerate it? That looks like your milk getting delivered to the door with the glass bottles. You rinse them out, you leave them out, they come back again. That is a regenerative system that works. These are the things that we need to shift back to. When it comes to compostable, when you make packaging for food, packaging for things, it needs to be able to be taken to the earth and it is in a way that is good for the earth, healthy for the earth. So I’m hoping that in Zawadi—the crafting of the gifts, you know, it inspires kids to start making and crafting and moving in that different capacity. I try to promote that in my own communities. I’m trying to build a barter market, you know, so people are bartering rather than spending money, because we need to get out of just money being the one way of exchange, right? I’m also trying to host my own Zawadi kind of anti-Black Friday, anti-capitalism event where everyone is crafting gifts to use to swap for the holidays, you know, rather than everyone buying things for the holidays. And so just trying to make these shifts and encourage them in my communities. And so hopefully kids will be inspired to think, through their classroom, through their families, through however they’re engaging with the story, to move in different ways and practices. And I think Sidney and I talked about—a lot of the Kwanzaa books were very—I don’t know, they were just very—I don’t think I really understood the principle embodied through the visuals. It was just like, this is what this principle means. And so we really hope that Once Upon a Kwanzaa really visualizes where it’s fun, it’s joyful. I know that Christmas definitely felt like a level up from Kwanzaa to me based off of how my parents were doing it when I was young, you know? And I think that’s not to them. I don’t think that they knew how to embody it in ways that could be joyful or fun or really in Kuumba, in the spirit of Kuumba. And so I’m hoping that the spirit of Kuumba is present in the book in a way that people are able to see the joy and the fun in Kwanzaa and just be able to get kids excited about the holiday and how they can extend it further than the holiday.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Well, just to sort of carry on that notion of excitement and joy, I would love to finish off, if it’s okay with you, with some kind of rapid-fire questions with one-word answers. I know that’s going to be hard, but let’s see if we can do it. Are you up for it? Okay. Okay. All right. So we’ll go Sidney and then Nyasha, Sidney and then Nyasha, okay?

What’s one word that captures the spirit of Kwanzaa for you?

Sidney Rose: One word.

Nyasha Williams: You.

Sidney Rose: Joy.

Bianca Schulze: Joy.

Nyasha Williams: Communal abundance.

Bianca Schulze: If you could choose one Kwanzaa principle to live by for the rest of your life, which one would it be?

Nyasha Williams: Kuumba. Well, I went first. Kuumba.

Sidney Rose: I think I’d pick—it’s such a cliché, but I pick Umoja because it encompasses everybody.

Nyasha Williams: Mmm.

Bianca Schulze: If Once Upon a Kwanzaa had a soundtrack, what’s the first song that plays?

Sidney Rose: You already have a song.

Bianca Schulze: Weird long pause.

Nyasha Williams: I do, right? “Right Back to Where We Started From” by Maxine Nightingale.

Sidney Rose: Ooh, man, that’s such a good one.

Bianca Schulze: Weird long pauses are fine because I can just chop them out.

Sidney Rose: I know. “If We Hold On Together” by Diana Ross, which also was a song in The Land Before Time, the OG one.

Bianca Schulze: I loved that movie. Okay, what’s one Kwanzaa tradition or ritual included in the book that you hope families will start practicing in their own homes if they don’t already?

Sidney Rose: I think libations. I know we spoke a little bit about libations earlier, but particularly those who might not be familiar with Afro-spirituality, libations are brilliant because just as we do grace, just as other cultures and communities might say a blessing before a meal, libations can also be utilized in that same way. I have many friends and kinfolks who use libations as a substitute for grace—libations.

Nyasha Williams: Yeah, and so mine’s in alignment with libations, but it’s a little different. So the Unity Cup or the Kikombe cha Umoja is this cup, the Unity Cup, and it’s filled and then it’s passed around the circle and everyone takes a sip. Now, you know, I hosted my own Kwanzaa last year on the first—the last day of Kwanzaa is the first and you host a big feast. And I obviously wanted to respect people with the passing, you know, like I—with my husband, but we let everyone have their own cups and we had our own cups, but we all spoke to, in the spirit of Kwanzaa, what we were calling in, you know? And so I think that that’s a really nice tradition to do with everybody—the feast. So the feast on the first is a huge thing for me as everyone coming in and, you know, my husband—we kind of go back and forth on food because he’s a soul fooder. I like soul food, but I love African food. So we go back and forth about which one we’re going to do. And so that’s a back-and-forth thing. But the Unity Cup gets everyone—drinks from the cup, and then we all speak to what we’re calling in for Kwanzaa at that time too.

Bianca Schulze: Mmm, that’s so beautiful. Well, Nyasha and Sidney, I love how you’ve both emphasized that the wisdom of Kwanzaa returns us to those communal ways of being. And that while Kwanzaa might be considered a cultural holiday, its principles are truly for everyone to learn from and celebrate. And those particular words, for everyone to learn from and celebrate, are exactly the essence of Once Upon a Kwanzaa. And I encourage everyone to pick up a copy and discover that beacon of hope and pathway forward for themselves. So thank you both so much for sharing your time with us today. I’ve loved every second.