TACOMA, Wash. — Bonita Lee of Tacoma knows EXACTLY who she is.
"I'm a 6-foot-2 Black woman with purple locks. I'm unapologetically great," Lee said.
But when she was a little girl learning to read, she never saw herself in any of the books at her local library.
“I would go and I'd pull out books and I would just look for a book that looked like it had a Black or Brown girl doing anything,” Lee said.
She found only one - the classic children's book Corduroy.
"Corduroy was my first book where I saw a Brown girl with a teddy bear and I remember seeing that book and going ohhh!," said Lee
Years later, The Black Lives Matter movement inspired Lee to write the children's book she wanted so badly growing up. She recruited her best friend Megan Barr to hand paint the illustrations, and created a classic of her own: "Go On Lil' Sista, Go On."
"Just like Frederick Douglass says it's easier to build strong boys than to repair broken men," Lee said. "I believe it's easier to build strong girls than to repair broken women. So I started with a children’s book because they need to know they're beautiful. They're fierce and they're unstoppable right now."
The book features dozens of Black girls doing things they love. Lee worked hard to represent many different girls doing many different things.
“And so there’s a girl in there whose shooting basketball in the wheelchair, a girl in there who has vitiligo, the skin condition. We want to put in 20 pages as much representation as we could, because I needed that as a girl,” Lee said.
Every girl in the book, whether she’s gardening, skateboarding, fixing a car, or singing using her hairbrush as a microphone gets the same repeated encouragement on her page: "Go On Lil' Sista Go On.” As spoken word artist and poet, Bonita Lee knows how important it is to hear important things more than once.
Parable, a Tacoma bookstore and community space dedicated to amplifying the voices of people of color and LGBTQ+ folks, is one of the places that carries the book. Lakecia Farmer is one of Parable’s owners, they started stocking it when Lee hand-carried some copies of her self-published book into the store.
"When Bonita came in with her book we were like, "Yeah, this is exactly what we're looking for,” Farmer said.
And Farmer's 10-month-old daughter is a fan of the book.
"Now when we read it to her she recognizes the faces, and makes the expressions of the faces in the illustrations, and it's just the most adorable thing," Farmer said. "So we have to thank Bonita for a book that reflects her."
Lee takes her book to classrooms all over Washington and says that kids of all races love the book, as they see themselves, or their friends in the pages. But "Go On Lil' Sista Go On" is especially connecting with Black and Brown girls who are happy to pick up a book - and see their own reflection.
You can find "Go On Lil' Sista Go On" at Black Arts Love in Seattle, Parable Tacoma, or you can order it online. And Bonita Lee will be talking about her book in an author panel with Katharine Threat Tuesday, Feb. 13th 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. at Parable Tacoma, 3502 McKinley Ave, Suite A, Tacoma.
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