“I think a lot about these studies that say that little black girls are seen as less innocent and more adult than other little girls in the same age range and it breaks my heart.” Art as a secret powerĭeep down, Vashti says that she considers art a secret power.

“I chose to make them children,” says Vashti. Vashti's drawings depict children dressed up as the adult women featured in the book. “But on a personal level, I think so much about the little girl who doesn’t know what she wants to do when she grows up - I want to let them know that it’s OK to want to do a million things it’s OK to not know what you want to do yet.” “On the surface level I really just wanted to highlight the contributions that African American women have made to American history - to focus on the stories that have been long neglected throughout history,” Vashti explains.

“I knew her name as an abolitionist and women’s rights activist, but there was a human element to her story I never really had known or considered.”Ī pleasantly powerful and confronting book titled Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History emerged, featuring the illustrated biographies of 40 trailblazing women determined to achieve their goals no matter how great the barriers to their success seemed. “I read Sojourner Truth’s biography, and I was just so overwhelmed with emotion,” says Vashti. Vashti was so swept away by the passionate personal reaction she had as she interacted with their stories through her drawing, that she became inspired to put them together in a book. So, back in February 2017, each day Vashti juxtaposed the story of an African American woman with an illustration she had drawn herself on Instagram, Facebook’s picture sharing service. So much so, that when author Vashti Harrison first read Sojourner Truth’s biography in conjunction with a social media campaign being running on Instagram for Black History Month, she was profoundly moved. The powerful words of her “ Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, urging equality, delivered in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, still resonate today.

She was born into slavery in the United States in 1797, but escaped and became a prominent women’s rights advocate and abolitionist winning a landmark legal case to free her son from slavery. In some serendipitous cases, a more difficult journey ultimately makes a bigger bang, transforming society for the better. Girls imagine themselves as little leaders Vashti Harrison's book celebrates the power of girlhood dreamsįor some people, sliding through the stages from childhood to a career in adulthood is a smooth transition, but for others it is a rocky road.

Little Leaders by Vashti Harrison