San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Carver spotlights black children’s books
George A. Williams Jr. began his career teaching at an innercity elementary school in Florida, and he wanted to make sure his students saw themselves in the books in his classroom — something that he didn’t experience until he was in college.
So he began building a library of children’s books that featured black characters.
“I started collecting children’s books from every part of the world that I visited that displayed a diverse group of characters and stories that really helped support the positive representation of our people,” said Williams, 42, vice president for student affairs at Our Lady of the Lake University.
The collection now numbers around 80 books, including paperbacks and hardcovers, some signed by the authors. He reads one each night with his sons, 7-year-old Aaron and 6-year-old Jaxon, right before bedtime, sometimes using the stories as a springboard to chat about things that came up earlier in the day.
And he now is working to expand the audience for those stories well beyond his home.
“Storytime with Dr. Williams” is a new virtual story time, which is being produced by the Carver Community Cultural Center. The series will have a home on the Carver’s YouTube channel. The videos will include original music and graphics, courtesy of Carver summer interns Mai Voi, who is producing and composing for the series, and David Lonergan, who is editing the videos. Both are students at Trinity University.
The Carver also is working on a second story time series in which various San Antonians will read favorite books for youngsters.
The idea for “Storytime with Dr. Williams” started percolating at a retreat for the Carver’s board, on which Williams serves. He was asked to offer a reflection. He decided to read one of the books from his collection, “Hey, Black Child,” Useni Eugene Perkins’ much-loved poem encouraging youngsters to know who they are and to dream big.
The poem ends, “Hey Black Child/ Be what you can be/ Learn what you must learn/ Do what you can do/ And tomorrow your nation/ Will be what you want it to be.”
“It’s a book that really represents the people that we serve at the Carver,” Williams said. “It’s a book that I wanted to make sure I shared with others, about the purpose of why we are serving, to make sure we have opportunities for black children to be exposed to the arts and things like that.”
Cassandra Parker-Nowicki, the Carver’s executive director, talked to him afterward about the possibility of doing a storytime series featuring his collection: “He thought I was joking,” she said. She was not.
“This needs to be shared,” Parker-Nowicki said. “What a gift he’s giving his sons by collecting this library of work in which they can see themselves, and then to be able to extend that to a broader audience.
“It’s important for all of us to see a broader representation throughout all of our culture, on the stage, through the arts, because I think if we can start expanding the dominant narrative, that’s where we’ll start to see real change.”
They started laying the groundwork for the series early in the year. Then, when the Carver had to close its doors to the public following shutdown orders put in place to try to stop the spread of COVID-19, the project took on some speed.
“We started to wrap our heads around how we can continue to engage with people in a different way,” Parker-Nowicki said. “I circled back to this idea.”
They had finished a pilot for the series when George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was killed at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, sparking nationwide protests.
“When that happened, it became much more poignant,” Parker-Nowicki said.
Much like the bedtime chats that grow from story time with his sons, Williams is hoping that the video series will spark discussion.
“This is my way of providing a space for me to reflect on what’s happening within our black community,” he said. “I’m not one to go out and protest and write letters. I’m one to make sure that, as a community, black, white, Hispanic or whatever, everyone has a space to have a positive dialogue about what’s happening.
“This is my way of facilitating that, of really, truly providing a space for people to think about what’s happening. But also offering a charge, a message, a positive message, about our community, about things we should be grateful for, that we are blessed to have, but also to continue to stand up for what’s right.”
Williams grew up in Miami, where his mother raised him and his siblings on her own. He didn’t see himself reflected in the pages of the books he read or in the racial makeup of the faculty at the predominantly black high school he attended. The first time he discovered a book that reflected his own experience, he was pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Bethune-Cookman University, and read “Invisible Life” by E. Lynn Harris, in which black characters grapple with race and sexual identity.
It was a powerful experience. He ended up reading the book in a day, returning to it every minute he wasn’t in class or working on homework.
“I connected with it,” he said. “It was a story of sadness and uncertainty about yourself, but then it was a story about being courageous and allowing yourself to grow within your own identity and using your identity to say, ‘This is who I am and this is something I can’t change.’
“I’m black, for one thing, and I can’t change that. It provided really a great landscape for me to start thinking about not being afraid of who I am. The book helped me continue to expand and extend the conversation with myself about my identity.
“Oftentimes, many of us look in the mirror, and because of what’s happening today, think, ‘Why am I a threat, by exercising on the street in my own neighborhood or visiting a grocery store or going to a fast food restaurant?”
Not seeing his life experiences reflected in popular culture left him with a deficit when he was younger, he said.
“It’s almost like I’m trying to find words to identify what I’m experiencing, and for a long time, I had difficulty with that,” he said. “I struggled a lot with really trying to find the right words to channel and navigate things that I was experiencing from racial discrimination as a young kid, being called the nword several times.”
That’s why it’s important to him to make sure his children see themselves in the books they read and have the space to talk about their experiences. And that’s why they have story time. It started right after he and his partner, Jay Tillman, adopted their sons.
“They came to us in a very traumatic first several months of their lives, from drug abuse and all of that, so I knew that one way I could make a difference with them is providing them with stories,” Williams said. “So every night still to this day, we read a book and we talk a little bit about it. And they are able now to read to me. It’s been a great experience to see that happening as well.”
If there’s something specific that Williams wants to discuss with his children, he’ll pick a book that provides an opening for that topic.
Sometimes the boys choose the book. They’re partial to “The Crayon Box That Talked,” Shane DeRolf ’s tale about squabbling colors who learn to appreciate their differences; “Dad, Who Will I Be?,” G. Todd Taylor’s book about real-life heroes such as Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr. and W.E.B. Du Bois; and “Chocolate Me!,” actor Taye Diggs’ book about a child bullied because of his dark skin and how his mother helps him see his beauty.
“It really is a great space for us to sit on the floor in their bedroom with a lamp and have some really genuine connection with the boys,” Williams said. “It’s not only fun, it really is an opportunity for us to strengthen our relationship as Papa and sons, and strengthen our connection with our own identity.”