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 remember it.) That way we’ll be ready to celebrate it the way we should when Baby is bigger.
So, for 2023 I decided to celebrate Kwanzaa through literature again. 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 6 is Kuumba. It means Creativity. The process is much of the same, light the previous candles, and then light the middle green candle. The person who lights it then makes a statement about Creativity. I read that this means to make your community more beautiful than you found it. For me that’s easy. I like to make changes but I also like to always be in the background. I also try really hard to make all those around me laugh. It’s my anxiety yes, but it always makes me feel better when I see someone with a smile because of me. This might also be why I use bookish humor on my Tiktok lol Then there’s the graphics that I make for work. There’s a lot of people that will say the library isn’t ordering diverse things, when really they just don’t know what is actually diverse. So the graphics I make is just my small way of showing them that we are doing what we’re supposed to. And if we’ve missed a few, we’ll order it. Don’t sleep on the library ok. (Also, if you are a patron and see that we don’t have something, please request it!)
The book I thought about first when thinking of Creativity was:
I immediately thought of this one because they’re all actors. And tho this is mostly telling the story of their grandparent and their lives while they’re not actually acting, I still thought it fit for creativity. Especially because their grandmother actually did try leaving that world better than she found it with her having to deal with all the gross behavior from all the other people in this book.
What about you? What books do you think of when you think of Kuumba or Creativity? Do you think of this one as well? Let me know in the comments!