“Langston’s poetry was an early mirror for me. As a child, I didn’t read many novels where the characters looked like me, talked like me, were concerned with the same issues I was worried about. Poetry was where I found my people. In the lines and stanzas of Langston’s poems, my grandmother called out to me, my dark skin and crinkly hair was beautiful, and the stories of my ancestors were honored. There was strength, anger, grace, and ambition all there for the taking. I needed that as a child, and I believe our young people need that now. “
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Over at Kirkus today, I talk to children’s book and YA author Renée Watson, pictured above, about I, Too, Arts Collective, her initiative to turn the brownstone in Harlem where legendary poet Langston Hughes once lived into “a space for poets, a space to honor his legacy.”
That is here this morning.
Until tomorrow …
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Photo of Renée taken by NAACP and used by her permission.