Description

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A poetic picture book biography about blind Black poet Myra Viola Wilds, written by the author of Brown: The Many Shades of Love

What dreams do you carry? Myra Viola Wilds dreamed of opportunity. She left her home in rural Kentucky for the city, learned to read and to write, and became a dressmaker. She hand-stitched gorgeous gowns. She worked so hard she lost her eyesight, and her world went dark. But those well-loved stitches turned into words, and one night Myra woke in the middle of the night and wrote a poem she called “Sunshine.” She kept writing. She wrote the lush green, sweet-corn yellow, cerulean blue, sunshine-y world from memory, collecting her poems into a book called Thoughts of Idle Hours, published in 1915.

Written in Wilds’s style, this lyrical, gorgeously illustrated picture book biography celebrates this little-known poet and includes a biography that provides context to her life—the Great Migration, Jim Crow segregation—as well a photograph and a small selection of her poems.

About the Author

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Nancy Johnson James is a writer and educator based in Oakland, California. She has an MFA in creative writing from St. Mary’s College of California. Her poetry has appeared in several print and online publications. Her desire is to create children’s literature that is inspiring and liberating. Her other books include Blue: The Many Ways I Feel, and Black: The Many Wonders of My World.

Diana Ejaita works as an illustrator and textile designer in Berlin. What sets her illustrations apart is a combination of dramatically contrasting areas of black and white with soft patterns and textures that create images that betray the strength of femininity. Born in Cremona, with Nigerian origins, her aesthetic pays homage to her lineage.