One holiday tradition my mom always wanted to do with us but never did is celebrate Kwanzaa. She did educate me on what it is and what everything means, but we never got around to ever doing it. But now that I’m starting my own family, I wanted to do celebrate this year (even if Baby won’t be around to see it.) That way we’ll be ready to celebrate it the way we should when Baby is bigger.
So, for 2020 I decided to celebrate Kwanzaa through literature. I’ll be listing the principles for each day along with a book that matches the principles. If you can think of other titles that match the principles, tell me, I’d love to discuss.
Day 1 is Umoja. It means Unity. For this day you light the Black candle in the middle and the person who lights it makes a statement about Unity. My statement about Unity this year is a reflection on 2020 and how we all came together to support social justice after the tragedy of George Floyd. More people than I’ve ever seen unified and supported Black authors and Black books and ways to fight Racism. No it wasn’t magically fixed (not even a little bit, a lot of people got those books for show and posted them just to say they did but I digress……) but I was glad to see that they got the recognition they did.
The book I thought about first that reminded me of the unity we shared when coming together to finally talk about social justice and anti-racism was:
I remember listening to the audio of this book while I had my hardcover in front of me as well. Even as a Black person I learned so much reading this book. This is one non-fiction I actually enjoyed. I hope history teachers make this required reading!
What about you? What books do you think of when you think of Umoja or Unity? Do you think of this one as well? Let me know in the comments!