Leslé Honoré is a Blaxican poet, activist, and author. She’s also the CEO of Urban Gateways, which engages young people in arts experiences to inspire creativity and impact social change. Author-illustrator Cozbi A. Cabrera received a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Honor for her 2020 book Me & Mama. Their new picture book, Brown Girl, Brown Girl, is based on Honoré’s viral poem inspired by the historic election of Vice President Kamala Harris. We asked the duo to discuss their collaboration, and the importance of celebrating brown and Black girlhood.
Cozbi Cabrera: Hi, Leslé. Can you speak about what inspired you to write Brown Girl, Brown Girl? Was it written over time? Revised? Tell us about your process.
Leslé Honoré: I was inspired to write Brown Girl, Brown Girl after an unfortunate moment of colorism experienced by my daughter and her friends. It was a horrible reminder that we have so far to go to make a safer world, especially for our brown girls.
Three years later, the revision came in 2020 when Kamala Harris won the Vice Presidency—“I see a Vice President that looks like me.” It was just a small tweak, adding the specific reference to seeing a Black and brown woman VP, a small tweak with a huge impact.
On that note, where did you draw inspiration for your gorgeous illustrations for the book from?
Cabrera: I drew my inspiration for illustrating the original poem from all things “brown girlhood.” I wanted to elicit a sense of playfulness, camaraderie, and the resilience that comes from working through the wrinkles with your sisters and your friends. I loved that the poem went viral and was set to so many girls hand-clapping their way through it. It brought back memories of hand-clapping those various rhythms and rhymes with my friends and classmates in the school yard. I’m hoping the book captures that joy.
Do you feel the book represents the hopes of your girlhood, your mother’s girlhood, or that of your daughters in some way?
Honoré: This book represents the collective hopes and dreams of my mother, my children, and myself. My mother immigrated from Mexico at 15. She gave me this life and this opportunity to live in this country and honor her sacrifice by living and creating as fearlessly as I can. It’s the manifestation of my dreams and a testament to my resilience, surviving an abusive marriage, raising my children as a single mother, and holding on to the thing that has always saved me—poetry.
For my daughters, it is a tangible hope. They have seen me bend but not break. It is an example to them, both visual artists, that our gifts are meant to be shared, our gifts connect us to our humanity, and by honoring them, we honor ourselves and the women who came before us.
Cabrera: What was the biggest challenge in birthing Brown Girl, Brown Girl, from original poem to picture book?
Honoré: It wasn’t a quick road, but it was an intentional one, and I’m proud of every detail we took our time getting right.
Cabrera: For me, the most challenging part about adapting such a powerful and personal piece of text was drawing from the things that resonated with me and from my own personal experience. I tapped into all that was uniquely personal.
Having grown up with Honduran parents and a variety of brown girls with Southern and Latin American roots, and with my daughter’s bestie from India, I thought I’d pretty much considered everyone in my representation. But the feedback came back to rebalance the book—to adjust a number of the characters’ skin tones and hair textures. That was the difficult part. It meant I had to erase or remove some of what I’d done. My daughter found me weeping over my painting table late one night and she said, “These are more than characters; you’ve given them souls!” she said.
Honoré: You really did. I know there is a girl who will point to a page in this book and say, “This looks like me,” and that’s worth every setback and delay.
Do you have a favorite spread or image from the book?
Cabrera: The spread with the girls facing the cresting water was my favorite to work on. It’s always fun to indicate personality without the benefit or support of facial expressions. We can [only] see the girls’ backs, and it creates enough of a gap for the viewer to imagine their faces and expressions. After all, isn’t using our imaginations the very best part of reading?
Honoré: It is. I love that spread.
Cabrera: Final question: what have you been working on or through of late?
Honoré: I wear a lot of hats, which dance beautifully together. As a poet, activist, and arts administrator, I’m always thinking about how we can continue to center the arts as not decorative, but fundamental to our lives—in coalition-building, in expressing joy, in keeping our histories, and in challenging all of us to see each other as we see ourselves. To fight for each other, as we would fight for ourselves. And most important, to love each other as we love ourselves.
Brown Girl, Brown Girl by Leslé Honoré, illus. by Cozbi A. Cabrera. Little, Brown, $18.99 ISBN 978-0-316-31403-9
