S1.E19 | Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich: Exploring Identity and Emotion in Children’s Books

The Power of Storytelling: Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich on Writing, Identity & Empowering Young Readers

“Story was just the foundation of my life.”

In this episode of KeyBARD, host Thembi Duncan speaks with award-winning author and educator Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, whose work explores themes of family, migration, and the rich storytelling traditions of the African diaspora. A Jamaican Nigerian New Yorker, Olugbemisola weaves her cultural identity into her writing, creating compelling children's literature that resonates with young readers.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ How storytelling fosters empathy and empowerment
✅ Olugbemisola’s process for crafting authentic, emotionally rich characters
✅ The importance of cultural identity in children's literature
✅ How she taps into the emotional landscape of adolescence
✅ Why diverse storytelling matters in shaping young minds

About Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich:

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich is a renowned author and educator whose books include Operation Sisterhood, Two Naomis, 8th Grade Superzero, Someday Is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-ins, Makeda Makes a Birthday Treat, You're Breaking My Heart, The Sun Does Shine, It Doesn't Take A Genius, Makeda Makes a Mountain, and many more! She is passionate about amplifying underrepresented voices and helping young readers connect with stories that reflect their experiences.

Want to be a guest on KeyBARD? Send Thembi a message on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1740803399472257afce75768

KeyBARD is produced, written, and hosted by Thembi Duncan.
Theme music by Sycho Sid.

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Transcript

Thembi (00:00:11): Hello, hello, and welcome to KeyBARD. I am Thembi, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with author and educator Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich is the author of several children's books, including You're Breaking My Heart, Makeda Makes a Birthday Treat,  Operation Sisterhood (an Indie Next Pick), It Doesn't Take a Genius (a Kirkus Best Book of the Year), 8th Grade Superzero (an Amazon Best Book of the Month, a Notable Book for a Global Society by the International Reading Association, and a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People by the National Council for the Social Studies and CBC), also Two Naomis, co-authored with Audrey Vernick, (which was nominated for an NAACP image award). 

Also Saving Earth: Climate Change and the Fight for our Future (A Junior Library Guild Selection and YALSA nominee for Excellence in Nonfiction), as well as the picture book Someday is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-Ins. That book was a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People by the National Council for the Social Studies and CBC. And she also wrote Mae Makes a Way: the True Story of Mae Reeves, Hat and History Maker. This book was a RISE Feminist Book Project winner. 

Her release, The Sun Does Shine: An Innocent Man, A Wrongful Conviction, and the Long Path to Justice (the Young Reader's Edition) was also a YALSA nominee for Excellence in Nonfiction, a School Library Journal and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, with Anthony Ray Hinton and Laura Love Hardin. 

Now, she is the editor of the We Need Diverse Books anthology The Hero Next Door, and has also contributed to several collections including We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices. That was edited by Cheryl and Wade Hudson of Just Us Books. Also, The Journey is Everything: Teaching Essays That Students Want to Write for People Who Want to Read Them -- that was edited by Catherine Bomer -- and Imagine it Better: Visions of What School Might Be, edited by Luke Reynolds.

She's written for various outlets including PBS Parents, Read Brightly, American Baby, Healthy Kids, and some of her childhood favorite hip-Hop fanzines like the iconic Right On! Magazine, baby! That's only for certain people to understand, okay? 

Olugbemisola has worked extensively in youth development and education, and was twice awarded a public service fellowship by the Echoing Green Foundation for her work on a creative arts and literacy project with adolescent girls. Olugbemisola lives with her family in New York City where she writes, makes things and needs to get more sleep. Olugbemisola is a former member of The Brown Bookshelf, a website dedicated to amplifying Black and brown voices in children's literature, and she's a former We Need Diverse Books Board member. Welcome, Olugbemisola!

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:03:24): Thank you so much for the warm welcome.

Thembi: Yes!

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich: I'm so happy to be here.

Thembi: Oh, happy to have you. I'm just thrilled, thrilled, thrilled that you're joining me today. So I'm just going to jump in. So you are a self-described Jamaican, Nigerian, New Yorker, who lived in the Bronx and attended a different school every year until eighth grade. So how did your layered identities and early educational experiences influence your path to becoming a writer?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:03:55): I think that first of all, just that experience of being the new kid so many times helped me to be a great listener. And I think as a writer you have to be a listener and I was a very shy, very, very shy kid. And I would come into these new spaces and pay attention to the culture of whatever the school space was and what the drama was at school, what the different groups were and the different cliques and who might it be good to be friends with, who might I need to stay, keep my distance from. And paying attention to all those things and to all the little stories that were happening around me was always an important part of my school life from a very young age. And then in my family life, sort of all the different cultures and ethnicities that merged had story traditions.

(00:04:51): And so storytelling was a big part of my growing up. And just the personal stories of migration and the stories that my sister and I would ask, especially my mom to tell us about back home or my grandmother to tell us about back home and ask the aunties to tell us stories. And then I was fortunate so that even though children's literature at the time I was growing up didn't have the variety of Black stories that are available now, I was fortunate that I had access to stories from West Africa and stories from the Caribbean and literature in the home that helped me understand from a very young age that we have a rich storytelling tradition and a rich writing tradition across the diaspora. That was so important to me growing up as a shy kid. My books were, especially as a kid who was not allowed to watch very much TV at all, but had freedom to read whatever was around and freedom at the library to take out as many books as I wanted. And using those books to kind of help me work out the challenges of being the new kid in all these different places. Story was just at the foundation of my life.

Thembi (00:06:08): I love so much that literally the diaspora is in you. It's just so, it's like you are the manifestation of the diaspora. So it's only right that you became an author. I'm grateful that you made that choice. You know what I mean? You could have done something and we didn't get to have all these beautiful stories, but you did this, so thank you. Okay. You talk about being the new kid a lot and observing and making decisions about how you wanted to move through. Did you kind of see yourself as the narrator of the stories that you were seeing? That's what I hear when you describe that. Did you imagine yourself as the narrator of these other kids' stories or were you the narrator of your stories and they were characters in it? Did you see it that way at all?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:06:51): I think so. I think a little bit of both. And I used to literally listen to the stories that my friends would tell, especially about the shows that they watch. I wasn't allowed to watch them. And I would go home and I would make little books and write and illustrate little stories based on what I heard and I would pretend to just be like, oh yeah, I saw that too. Oh yeah. And I would just listen and then go home and make little books for my little sister or just for myself about what I heard and I did. It's funny, I haven't really thought about it. But yeah, I did sort of also write little, usually more like little plays. I initially was very much thinking I was going to be a playwright when I grew up and I would write little plays kind of making myself and the people at school especially kind of characters in these stories and sort of figure out, rehearse a lot of times what I might do the next day at school or how I might see the scene going.

Thembi (00:07:56): That's really brilliant. I love that. It just creates that beautiful line. And I'm sure it was squiggly, I'm sure it wasn't straight, but just found your way--

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:08:05): It was very squiggly.

Thembi (00:08:05): --to how you ended up doing this. So your first book was eighth grade Super Zero released in 2010. Yeah. So can you tell us about Reggie "Pukey" McKnight and how he became your first main character?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich: Oh, Reggie.

Thembi: Old "Pukey," Yeah...

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:08:26): Yeah, poor "Pukey." Yeah, I love Reggie and Ruthie and Josie. So that story started, one of the authors who was one of my favorites when I was around middle school age was Paula Danziger. And there was a workshop that I read that she was having not too far from me, and I found out about the day before, so I had to write three pages to get into the workshop or to apply to the workshop. She wrote a quick three pages about a kid who at that point I tend to sort of see the story or see my characters first. And so I had this image of this boy who was terrified that his sister had secretly unleashed a giant bug in his room and he was afraid of the bug getting into his mouth while he slept so he couldn't sleep. And he was just sitting there with his mouth glued shut all night.

(00:09:23): So I wrote this three pages about this character, and in the workshop Paula said, you should really continue this. You should really. And I kept saying, yeah, yeah, I will. I will, I will. And I mean, I said that for years and I would go to a lot of writing conferences. I did some workshops and I would just keep rewriting those same three pages and not getting any further. And my daughter was born and I just was still kind of doing that. And I was freelance writing and I would write anything. I would write curricula, I would write grants, I wrote articles for those magazines. I would write PR materials, so I would just write stuff because my mom was very sick and my sister also was sick. And so I was working in a way that I could be home a lot. So I was really hustling as a freelance writer, but I still had this kind of idea that I was going to write the kind of books that helped me when I was a kid. And one day somebody said to me, an adult or someone who I thought of as the parent of one of my friends, I was already an adult, but I thought of them as a real adult and they were like, oh, how's your little writing business going in this way of how's your little writing business? That's never going to happen.

(00:10:47): So I was like, okay, I don't want to be a person who just keeps saying they're going to do something and never does it. So I did the thing that you're really not supposed to do in publishing. And I wrote a query letter to an editor who I knew accepted query letters and who I had researched, and I was like, I think she'll kind of get this character, even though I don't really have the book, but I wrote this query letter as though I had finished the manuscript, even though I really still have those pages. And my understanding was what always happens is that they takes editors, it would -- six months to a year to get back to you. So I was like, this will motivate me to get the manuscript written. I will have sent this letter. So I sent the letter and she got back to me very quickly about a week and a half and said, oh, I'd love to see the rest of the manuscript.

(00:11:40): So I panicked, but I also was like, I cannot let this opportunity go by. So I had spent about 10 days really just writing through, it was about 180 something pages, just writing through the manuscript and basically sending the editor a first draft, which she did not know until many years later. I told her what happened, but she liked it enough that we revised it together. And it eventually became a book about the kids that I had been working with through all the years, the kids. And they would say it and they would say to me, there's never a book about us. They didn't say it in so many words, but they were basically saying, we want a book about nerdy kids who are asking questions about big things at the same time that were just living regular kid everyday lives in New York City. And so I had those kids in my head as I was writing them, and I really wanted them to have a story about them.

Thembi (00:12:46): That's fantastic. I love that. It seems like on a subtle level, and correct me if I'm wrong, you sent this query letter, you knew you weren't done, but you were like, okay, God, if she answers it, this is going to be the thing that's going to make me, you know what I mean? I'm going to throw the piece of paper into the waste basket. If I make it, I'm going to do it. Was it that kind of thing where you were just like, this is going to be my message. If she gets back to me, then I can write it. Because you said you took 10 days and you just wrote, how many, a hundred and--

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:13:23): Yeah, I mean, I made myself sick. Yeah. I mean, I definitely don't recommend it, but yeah, I mean, I think I had always been from middle school even. I joke about it with my friends about being a hustler because there are different types of hustlers, but in the sense of I have this maybe non-traditional idea of what I want to do, so I'm going to figure out a way that other people are going to be like, Hey, yeah, you should do that and I'm going to support you in doing that.

Thembi (00:13:58): Exactly. I love that. I think it's brilliant. You made it happen. So that put you out there. Okay, so Reggie, does he or will he show up in any future books?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:14:12): Oh, I hope so. I have an idea. I had an idea for sort of a sequel, more of a companion book, but it features Reggie's friend Ruthie, who I love a lot in that book. She's the main character of the story. And so Reggie is in the story, but he is not the main character. But yeah, I would love to write about them again.

Thembi (00:14:35): That's fantastic. I would really love to do that. I have the book, of course nobody can see this, but I went and grabbed it, so I haven't read it yet, but I'm going to read this.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:14:47): Oh, thank you.

Thembi (00:14:47): Oh my gosh, are you kidding? Okay. And I'm going to read, you're Breaking My Heart. I'm read the two Naomi's, I have the another in the ebook, and I was like, well, I don't have time to read them all before the interview, but I did read the shorter ones, so I was like...

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:15:03): Oh, wow!

Thembi (00:15:03): I wanted to understand what, I wanted to understand you as a writer as much as I could. So it was great. I just wanted to,

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:15:17): I'm all over the place.

Thembi (00:15:18): Listen, I'm right there with you because you are a really smart person with a lot of ideas, and why wouldn't you explore them? That's what I love. It really resonated with me, so it's fantastic. So Naomi two Naomi's is what I was looking at, but there's two books that go with that you co-wrote with Audrey Vernick to Naomi's and Naomi's too. What was your co-writing process like? And was it the same for both books?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:15:49): Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Well, I guess now I can imagine doing it more, but I think it's something that, because we had a lot of trust and respect for each other, both as writers and as people, that's what made it work in some ways we're very similar as writers. Neither of us were big. Some people really outline a story before they start and sort of plan it out. Neither one of us was like that. And so with two Naomi's, it actually started out as a joke between the two of us about the fact that we would joke about some things that we were so similar, some ways that we were really, really similar like sisters and then other ways that we were just really different, including the fact that I'm Black and she's white, and how that shaped our perspectives on different things.

(00:16:44): And we would laugh about certain things. And I think one day we were just, I don't know how we got onto, what if we wrote a story about two girls who were sisters and had the same name, but one's Black, one's white. And I think we started out talking about holidays and them celebrating holidays together. But it was a little running joke that we had. And at that time, we both had the same agent, and I don't even remember us mentioning it to our agent, but we did. And so at one point when our agent was talking to an editor about, oh, what kinds of things you were looking for, and she told the editor that we had, she said it more like we had been working on this story together about this.

Thembi (00:17:27): Sounds familiar.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:17:28): Yeah, exactly. So the editor was like, oh, well I'd love to see that. So when she told us, Audrey and I were like, well, I, we want to get paid, so we'll figure it out. So, so we really just started writing. And for that, it was just like I would write a chapter. I think I wrote the first chapter and sent it to her, and then we kind of had that "Yes, and..." mentality with writing. So we would talk maybe in a very general way about, I think this is going to happen. I think this is going to be this. But we would just send it. And then the other writer would just write, would just build on whatever and then send it back. So there would be a couple times where I might be like, well, Naomi's not going to do that, or I remember she was really not happy that I made her Naomi's middle name Edith. She was like, why would you pick the name? But she went with it and she figured out a way to build on it, and it went much faster. I tend to be very slow with first drafts in a bad way. And because I had to get the chapter to her and she had to get it back to me, it went so much quicker than my manuscripts usually go. So I really appreciated that.

Thembi (00:18:46): That's really interesting thinking about how to collaborate, because I love the way you two chose to do it, the sort of back and forth because it does force you to keep the process moving forward.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:18:56): You have to keep going. Yeah.

Thembi (00:18:58): Yeah, yeah but also that maybe there was something that one of you read and was like, what? But you said okay, alright, here we go. We said "Yes, and," so...and I love that, that you had that trust and respect for each other that you were able to just accept even if something wasn't quite what you would've done and move forward. So that's a really interesting approach.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:19:17): Sometimes there were things that were more like, okay, I can't, "Yes, and" this, I think we both had a couple things. One that I remember was, and I think it seemed like a little thing, but there was just this -- my -- Naomi Marie's mom was a librarian, and she had a little sister, Brianna, who was exuberant and inquisitive and fun. And I think in one of Audrey's chapters, Brianna came into the library and she was kind of loud or just a little, and I was like, their mom would just, she just wouldn't have come in that way. Their mom would just not have had that. And it wouldn't even have to be a thing for her mom to be like, "Brianna, settle down." Like Brianna would've just come in, settled down. That was their dynamic. And culturally that was their point of view. So that was one I remember that took a while for us to reconcile.

Thembi (00:20:19): Okay. So there were a couple. Well, that's cool that you all were able to find that middle ground and make that work. Okay. So you mentioned earlier you talked about storytelling particularly from, you talked about from your mom's Jamaican,

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich: Yeah.

Thembi (00:20:34): ...father's Nigerian. And you just talk about that storytelling of back home as a big part of your heritage. And so in Makeda makes a birthday treat. I love the inclusion of the Jamaican coconut drops. For listeners, everybody's talking about bringing cupcakes for their birthday to school, and Makeda has this sort of questioning of, okay, I want to bring coconut drops, but are people going to like it? It's different than what they're used to. And I just wanted to know, is this an example of how your cultural backgrounds find their way into your writing, or is it more intentional?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:21:12): I mean, I think especially in that one, I wanted to connect it to not just the food, but the fact that for her it's about the stories. And so in the making of the food with her grandmother and her mother, it's about the stories that get told that connect her even more to herself and connect her to her family and to her ancestors and to back home. And that it was a way for the other kids, even the ones who were initially a little disappointed or skeptical, that this was a way for them to connect also in the same way to their stories and celebrate their stories. So yeah, I feel like I had a writing teacher once say, no matter what, who you are is going to show up in your work. And so I feel like there are times when it is very intentional, and then there are times when it just is, that's my point of view.

(00:22:14): And so it's going to show up. And sometimes it's not until an editor or someone, another reader might point out something and it may be something like, oh, they're not familiar with or they have a question about. And generally my thinking is that it's not something to be explained, that you usually get context from the larger story and sometimes maybe you don't get it, and that's okay. I read many books when I was a kid that I didn't really understand everything. I used to read a lot of Victorian literature, so I didn't get everything, but it was okay and I was okay. So I think that's okay.

Thembi (00:22:57): I like that. It's okay. You don't have to get every single thing. Yeah. So you talked about how it just comes through your background, your culture comes through in the writing. I'm trying to figure out why there was no recipe attached to the book. Did I miss it? Are you gatekeeping? What's happening here?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:23:19): Yeah, it's funny. A lot of -- and it's -- my editor even asked me, do you want to put in a recipe and then--

Thembi (00:23:25): I mean, come on! What are we doing?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:23:27): Sometimes I get messages from teachers like, this would've been great if it had a recipe in the back, but because in those I Can Read books you have, so-- you have a certain number of lines, and a certain number of characters. I was like, oh, if I put a recipe, I'm going to lose a lot of story.

Thembi (00:23:44): That's fair.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:23:46): But I should have just put a recipe on my website it's coconut drops.

Thembi (00:23:50): Are, I want a coconut drop. I'm like, of course I went and looked up a bunch of recipes, but I'm like, yeah, but I want to know what her recipe is, what led to that? You know what I mean? Because there's got to be something specific that y'all put in y'all's coconut drops that I'm not going to find on these online recipes. I'm just saying. So yes, you can add me to your list of people who want to know the recipe.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:24:14): I will put up a recipe.

Thembi (00:24:17): You are to kind. So okay, Makeda in bringing the coconut drops to school instead of cupcakes, like you said, some of the kids were skeptical, but they were won over and then started to think about their own backstory. And to me, that puts her right in line with some of the other folks that you write about real or imagined who primarily women who made strides toward a broader, more inclusive world, who were trailblazers in terms of getting others to think of the world differently and showing leadership. So I thought that was really lovely. And how just even as a little girl thinking about a simple thing -- it could be perceived as simple, right? And I love that about your writing, is that it can be perceived as very simple because it's for children, but you really are great at attacking difficult and hard content.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:25:09): Well, thank you. Thank you.

Thembi (00:25:11): Absolutely.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:25:11): Because real kids are thinking about difficult and hard things and talking about difficult and hard things. And I think story is just such a wonderful way to help you think, and think about what you think, and work through how you want to be in the world, and how you want to try -- work out trying new ways to be and work out conversations. I feel like when you read a book or even hear a story, you're developing a relationship with the story and you're making your own meaning. And then sometimes in community you sort of find out all the different meanings that people are making of the same story, and that kind of creates a new story that is beautiful to me.

Thembi (00:25:57): So you talked at one point about shopping a manuscript about Ella Baker, but instead you ended up being steered toward writing about author, activist and educator, Clara Luper with the book that you wrote called Someday is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-ins. So is Ella Baker still on your wishlist, and are there other figures that you'd like to explore?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:26:21): Yes.

Thembi (00:26:22): Okay.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:26:24): Yes and yes. Yes, I have. It's funny, I have a friend that I joke with because I have this long list, especially of Black women musicians who integrated their art with social justice, and then a long list of Black women scientists and engineers who I would love to write about. I still would love to write about Ella Baker. I have these two Ella manuscripts, one about Ella Baker and one about Ella Jenkins who just turned a hundred the other day that, yeah, I would still love to share those stories, but Clara Luper's story, that was one that I hadn't known before. I was asked to write that manuscript, and I thought that I knew a lot about the Civil Rights Movement and figures of the Civil Rights movement, and I was really, I mean, I shouldn't have been shocked, but I was that I didn't know the story before I started researching the book because it's -- she was incredible.

Thembi (00:27:21): Yeah. When I saw her name, I thought, okay, maybe when I read about her, it'll jog my memory to who she is because the name didn't stand out to me at all, and I had a similar response of I know about these things, so that name would not have gotten past me. So who is this person? But then when I read this story, I'm just like, oh my gosh, I never heard of this woman ever. I saw the images in the back and everything. And so when you wrote this book, you described the four main steps of nonviolence resistance. That was nonviolent resistance that was used during the American Civil Rights Movement, investigation, negotiation, education, and demonstration. So for many people today, as we know, the demonstration stage is their point of entry to activism. So while you were researching Clara Luper, what did you discover about the significance of those three earlier steps and how do you think they might be able to inform today's movements?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:28:16): I mean, the part that I always stress in school visits that hit me so hard was that those kids spent a year and a half almost before they actually demonstrated, spent a year and a half planning and studying and trying to negotiate before they, well, I always say, you think you're going to pick up your sign, you get angry or you want to say something about an issue and you just make your sign and go outside. But the planning that they did and the patience that they had to have just is remarkable to me. And I stress that point when I'm talking to all audiences of all ages about that, because I think now, especially culturally, because everything is so much faster and more instant, and there can be an expectation for people to react very quickly, and I think young people can feel a pressure to react very quickly and to decide that they have to take a stand and make a public statement about something without being thoughtful about it and without thinking about nuance, without thinking about community, without thinking and what Clara Luper did, I thought a lot about the trust that the community must have had in her to take these kids, some of them so young, to carry out this demonstration and to do this work.

(00:29:51): She really had to have the trust of the community and the love of the community, and how sustaining that clearly was because they went on for a number of years to desegregate other places, and she went on to do so many other incredible things. And the sustenance of community, I think is another part of that, and what can fuel that patience and that ability to keep, to prepare for so long before you demonstrate that I think is less emphasized now, just generally in US culture at least.

Thembi (00:30:26): Yeah, I love that you have also, and I guess what would be the appendix of the book, images of her as well as the background and everything. And I know that as an author, you don't often engage or interact with illustrators of books. What was your role in that back section, making sure that that information was there? Was that all you and just maybe the layout was a designer or somebody?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:30:53): Yeah, the designer -- so mine was just the text for that part. I had an incredible editor for that book, Kevin Lewis, and so that was my first picture book, even though it's a picture book biography, so it's nonfiction. But that was my first one. And I mean, working with Kevin was like having my own masterclass. I'm just so fortunate and just he really helped me understand sort of the importance of the page turn and thinking about who's going to be reading. Some picture books are bedtime stories. Some picture books are meant to be read in the classroom. Some picture books are read silently and for research and all these questions that go into how you just make decisions about the text. And the back matter was really not just to give a biography, but to be helpful to educators to maybe inspire other activities or to inspire action based on what they read in the story of that first protest, and then see about her life and the principles that she lived by.

Thembi (00:32:03): It was very well done. You did a really great job with it because you--

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:32:06): Oh, thank you.

Thembi (00:32:07): Oh, yeah. When you say that it makes it clear that you anticipated that the book would be read in the classroom because it looks like it's for educators, especially even after every page or so as you move through her story with the children and their progress towards getting these lunch counters desegregated. There would be a statement -- separate but unequal -- and it'd be in bold. And so it looks like call and response, it looks like a chant, right? But they haven't made it to that point yet, which is our point of reference is always, like you said, picking up the sign and going outside and saying chants and things like that. And people feel like, okay, this is the extent of my work. I just show up, hold the sign and say some stuff and that's going to make change. And so you were including the roots of that in the earlier part of the process that I really loved. I think it was really masterful the way y'all did that.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:33:02): Oh, thank you.

Thembi (00:33:03): You're welcome. You're welcome. You partnered with the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture On May Makes a Way: The True story of May Reeves, Hat and History Maker, and I'm from the DMV, so we affectionately call it the Blacksonian. I don't know if y'all in New York know that that's what we call it, but we're like, you going to the Blacksonian, so that's its other name. What was that partnership like? Did they approach you? Did you approach them? How did that come about?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:33:37): They approached my publisher and my editor, and at that time with this editor, I was working or had just started talking about the book that became Operation Sisterhood. And she saw Someday is Now at some point while we were talking, and she was like, oh, wait, I didn't realize that you also did picture book biographies. And I was like, well, now I do.

Thembi (00:34:03): I do whatever you need. what are you looking for?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:34:09): Exactly. And in talking about Operation Sisterhood and sort of talking about my childhood and making things, and my mom and my grandmother, and especially my grandmother, how she would make, she was such an, they were all expert sewists, so she would make these very formal sort of designer patterns and she would have her gloves and hats or wigs that were kind of hats. And it was such a big part of how I thought about her, and she was like, we have this May Reeves project with the Smithsonian. And so I went to see the exhibit and it just made me think so much about my mom and my grandmother and what those things meant, like the artistry and then also what it meant to them to create beautiful things for themselves or for each other to kind of assert their own beauty and their dignity in the world. And to kind of say, this cannot be taken away from me. I'm going to shine in a world that really does not want me to.

Thembi (00:35:23): That's powerful. It brought me to a connection with Crowns the musical, and I saw even some of the language in there, it's like you're not fully dressed without a hat. And some of the imagery and the connection to mothers and grandmothers, and even talking about how as time moved on Mae's Designs didn't necessarily have the same appeal because fashion changed and people didn't have, everybody wasn't always wearing a hat, but the church community and the spiritual community continued with that, and it was very important. So I loved that connection because that was definitely reflected in that musical Crowns, and I thought, and even you call 'em the Crowns in the book and everything, and I thought, wow, the way that you write is so open that easily to connect.

(00:36:15): I actually directed Crowns recently, which was so great. Oh yeah, it was so fresh in my head. But if I had known about your book at the time, that would've been a perfect connection to young people to help them enter the piece. And it just got me excited about how you're writing. Not only is it stands up in and of itself, but it also connects so beautifully to all these other ways. Okay. You're connected to this exhibit with that as well, right? This permanent exhibit at the museum and just ways for people of different ages to really enter the conversation and find an appreciation for what it is that you're writing about.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:36:54): And for that book I was able to work with -- to talk to Donna Limerick, May Reeve's daughter. And so that just made it really, really special because she just had such wonderful stories, and we were -- actually earlier this summer able to present together for the first time, and it really was just Donna, it was like the Donna show because she had replicas of the hats, and she could tell stories about just the way her mother, it wasn't just millenery, it was like a community gathering spot. The way that her mother was very political and revolutionary in ways that might not initially be thought of as being revolutionary or as being political, but in just who she was and who she expected everyone to be in her shop. It was revolutionary and created change.

Thembi (00:37:53): That to me, echoes the same thing as women sowing seeds into their cornrows and quilts, sowing instructions into quilts and singing instructions and songs. The covert actions of Black women who are under siege and under oppression to move forward without detection is unmatched. It's unmatched in so many ways right there. So yeah, I love that you captured that so beautifully.

(00:38:28): So, You're Breaking My Heart Centers Harriet Ado. Right. A 13-year-old whose 16-year-old brother Tunde dies on the same day that they have a fight. And so the last thing she says to him is, I wish you were dead. And then that ends up happening. So she's got to deal with grief and guilt and trying to cope with the loss of her brother, meets a really interesting person, goes on this really interesting adventure. What led you to write this story?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:39:00): Yeah, I think this story started out differently than most of my stories. I really didn't start with the character. I was just walking along Central Park and there was this building that I was really just obsessed with for a long time. Now, it's still beautiful, but now it's very fancy condos. I used to imagine I was going to live in this building one day and renovate it, and it's pretty clear that I will not have that opportunity now.

(00:39:34): And I don't know what made me think of what if, I don't know if I overheard because a lot of times I'm overhearing dialogue or something, and I just like, what if you said to somebody, I wish you were dead, and then they died? What would happen? So I kind of was just thinking about that, but just sort of in the back of my mind. But then my mom was very sick for a period and after she died, just grief and just thinking about how other people have expectations of how you grieve, and how long grief is supposed to last, and when it's appropriate or not appropriate supposedly to express and all of these things. I started also thinking about those two. And what it became was I wanted to write a character who, Harriet, who was going through the ways that grief is not linear, the ways that it can make you mess with your memory.

(00:40:46): It can make you lie to yourself sometimes, and sometimes you need it to let you lie to yourself. I really wanted to write, to give space to a Black girl, to sort of go through emotions that are not pretty and to allow her to be angry and allow her to be frustrated and sad. And there were times that book took me a very long time. It was not a book I thought I was going to actually finish writing. I had really given up on it. And some of the earlier -- I would write a few chapters and when my agent at the time would look at it and a couple of readers, they were like, oh, she's not really likable. I was like, this is not a likable time in her life. And I think there's just so much pressure on Black women to perform a certain way in this country and to suppress a lot of things.

(00:41:43): And I really wanted to hold onto that for her to allow her to be unlikeable sometimes to be challenging and to have challenging emotions and then understand that she's still worthy of being loved even while she's going through all those things, and that she's still capable of giving love while she's going through all those things. So those were the most important sort of ideas that I had in my head that for her, she's so consumed by this shame and guilt about the ways that she thinks she kind of caused her -- she spoke her brother's death into existence, that she thinks that's all she is, and that she sort of gets stuck in that. And I wanted to help her see that that happened and now what are you going to do? Who are you now? That is a part of you, and maybe that will always be a part of you in some way, and you might hold onto that grief in a lot of different ways, and that's okay, but there's also more and there's more available to you, and there's just love available to you, just as you are.

(00:42:54): But that was a very, like I said, I did not think I was going to finish. It was only because I had an incredible editor that got me through that story because I didn't even want to finish it really. It was too sad to write in a lot of ways when I was really in the thick of, I had a contract and I had to write. It was also during the height of the pandemic and here in New York, it was just so, so sad. And there was just a lot of grief, and I was trying to write that and Operation Sisterhood at the same time. Operation Sisterhood was meant to be a very joyful book, and neither one of them, they were both hard to do during that period. It was just a really awful time in the city. And I had to think about what do I want to give readers? Because right now I can't even think about what do I want the story to be or what do I want to happen to the characters, but I just really have to think about what do I want to give readers to get me through to finishing the manuscripts.

Thembi (00:44:01): So sorry for the loss of your mother.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:44:04): Thank you.

Thembi (00:44:05): Yeah, you're welcome. That's tough to be grieving yourself and to find it in yourself, to think about other people. The fact that you were thinking about your readers even through grief is really, it says a lot about who you are as a person. So that's really, really beautiful. And you were working on these two different ideas, it's almost like polarized emotional weights that you were balancing yourself between. But I can tell based on what you've told me so far, that you have this beautiful way of manifesting your writing through others. It's like you sort of reach out to the universe and have it, like you were saying, come back to you and it forces you inside a box. Like, okay, I have to finish this. I have this contract, I have this deadline, I have to do this. And New York was really, really tough during the pandemic.

(00:45:04): So to also be grappling with the uncertainty of it, a lot of us look back on it, and I don't believe that we've truly healed as a nation from it. We never really had any sort of reconciliation. We never had any real acknowledgement of how many people we lost, number one, before you even speak to those of us who are still here and what we went through, how many people we just lost and couldn't even properly say goodbye to. Right. And then us all just kind of stammering around and stumbling around trying to just, okay, I guess we got to keep going, I guess. So that's hard. So to keep writing and then to give us this beautiful gift of a book about grief is really, really, really thoughtful of us. And so that brings me around to self-care. If you're thinking about us as the readers and you want to give us something and you're writing all these different books and it might have completely different styles, age appropriateness, subjects, how do you prioritize self-care? See how I asked the question?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:46:18): I try to prioritize it. I don't know that I do prioritize. I try to prioritize it and in some very basic ways, being outside, working out, walking and walking. I walk and walk and walk a lot. It's funny, right before the pandemic, I was in this accident, so I could not walk for about six months. And when I was first able to walk again was about three days before we had quarantined. So I was like finally. And to go back inside, that was really, really hard. Not being able to walk, because walking as part of my writing process, it's just part of my healing process, my self-care, and especially walking by the water. So I like walking by the river. I like being near water in some way, and also community, which is not as any of my good friends know community is not my go-to thing. I'm always the one who's like, well, I don't really know her, so I'm not going...

Thembi (00:47:34): Who all is gon' be there?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:47:36): That is me all day, every day. And yeah, they call me Mariah sometimes. I really like, I don't know her.

Thembi (00:47:45): I don't know her.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:47:47): But I think I have just time and time again, I've really been saved by my community and my found family. Literally saved. And that is probably between my friends and prayer and understanding. I have a friend who said to me once because I said, oh, my prayer life is really not good anymore or whatever. And she said, writing is your form of prayer. And that helped, one, kind of ease that guilt, that sort of sabotages any way of trying to take care of myself and was just such a good reminder that, oh, I need my community and I need to be in community. I need to be part of a community. I need to receive, and give, and not get stressed out about either one. The same way I want to write to celebrate kids and people to just love themselves as they are, and to say that you are enough as you are, you don't have to be magic, you don't have to be excellent, just you, as you are. I need to remind myself of the same things -- which I'm working on.

Thembi (00:49:05): Yeah. One day at a time, right? We're all work in progress. It's beautiful though. Yeah. So in your opinion, what role does children's literature play in the current educational and political context, given the attempted erasure of Black history, which is also American history, which is also world history, so on and so forth, just the anti-intellectualism that's just trying to seep its way through our society. How do you see children's literature being, how does it fit in there in your opinion?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:49:46): I mean, I think it's essential. I think it's so important that, and I think it's so important that all of us who know how essential it is, what it's done in our own lives and what we've seen it do, that we speak about that, that we share, that we continue to share books that we continue...I think about how so much of my own education about books and stories was not at school, and there was a lot outside of school, there was a lot, my mom had us be in these things that we used to complain about where we would have to perform at the Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast or recite poems at Thanksgiving before you could eat your dinner, stuff like that. But it helped me to have an appreciation for all the stories that came before that make up mine, and all the history that is not just history, that it's part of the present.

(00:50:54): And I think it's so important for us to keep sharing that, maybe using new ways to share that and using new ways to understand that, but to not be quiet about that, just the value of story and story for transformation in our individual conversations, in our conversations outside of community. And then I think it is so important for us as community members to support our teachers and our librarians and not just kind of give up like, okay, these laws are being made or school boards are making decisions. But I think, and this might feel kind of separate, but participating in local politics, very local politics, participating even in the smallest of ways in your local school life, even if maybe your child or you don't have a child, not in that school, but just understanding that you're part of this community and all of these parts of the community are valuable and essential and precious.

(00:51:58): And it really takes all of us to do whatever capacity we have, whatever we can do to be involved, to know what's going on--the very, very least to know. Because a lot of times we don't know until there's something in the news that's been in the works for years that we might've known a little bit about if we had gone to that one meeting or read the minutes of that one meeting. So again, it really comes back to community and how story and community can connect us. And at this current time especially, I don't want us to give up on that. And at the same time, I know how hard it is not to give up on that. It feels like maybe they're more important things that feel bigger or feel more important, but children's literature especially, and the lives of our children are too precious to make secondary or put on the back burner.

Thembi (00:53:02): Beautifully said. You highlight something so important that it is about community, and community is local. And it does seem like a lot of times people will focus on things that are so far beyond their scope that they really can't even do anything about. And it goes back to something you said earlier in our conversation about the wanting to quickly get some sort of result that feels right by going out and getting the sign and all of that where just like you said, if you had been paying attention to the school board meetings, you would know what they're doing and you would've been able to speak on it before it happened and say, Hey, here's why this probably isn't a good idea. Or, Hey, here's why this is great and you have our support and how can we help expedite it? And those things are available. A lot of times these kinds of things are -- educators and community members are craving for involvement at the local level. And people sometimes can't be bothered with that, and they're not realizing that that's where you can make the most impact.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:54:04): It's the stories that either people actively don't want you to know about or the ones that are being suppressed. I'm always asking kids whose story isn't being told, whose voice isn't being heard, and those are the stories that you want to go look for. Those are the stories that you want to add a little extra ear to.

Thembi (00:54:29): When it comes to engaging your readers, what are some of the things that your readers have said that surprised you? I saw in one instance you said that you had a young reader write to you and say, I don't know what book they were talking about, but they were saying, oh, thanks for writing a book with more pictures and not as many words.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:54:50): They were talking about Someday is Now, Clara Luper. Like, "Finally you wrote a short book."

Thembi (00:54:57): That just tickled me. I love that. So did you have other kinds of surprising responses from readers?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:55:05): It was funny. When 8th Grade Superzero came out, I got a lot of letters addressed to me as "Mr." Because there were kids who assumed that I was a man, because I wrote a boy so convincingly. And it was funny because I was a little bit nervous about it when I started, and a couple times my editor and some other people were like, oh, just change him to a girl. But I was like, but he's not. I know he is not. So I just need to figure out how to do it. So yeah, those were funny. It's always interesting to me what readers connect to. So there'll be a lot of little things and stories. I tend to write a lot of characters, very large casts of characters. And there've been a couple times when readers will ask me about a character that I don't even remember or something that I'm just like, I have no idea what you're talking about, but there's something in their life that made them really connect with this character or this moment or this scene that I either don't remember or for me was just like a, who knows what...

Thembi (00:56:15): Supporting character, random...

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:56:19): Right, or just like a way, like to have fun. So yeah, there have been a couple times, there was once where a girl asked me during a presentation about a character and she named the character and I just could, I was like, I don't know who she's talking about. And I was trying to play it off. So she was like, she said, why did you put that character in the book? And I was like, well, why do you think I put that character in the book?

(00:56:44): So we went back and forth and it really wasn't until I got home and I took out the book and I read it and I was like, wow, this character, she only had two scenes, but for whatever reason, she just meant so much to this girl. And I don't know, just reminds me of one, how readers, we just really make our own relationships with books and stories and to just not be careless about story. Even there are, there'll be times when I'm writing something that I'm really just writing because I need to make some money. I need to have a contract. I need to just write this. I can't just do that. There's always a point where I am like, oh, but this means something and it has to mean something. And it meant so much to me growing up, and I have to honor that little me and I have to also honor the readers.

Thembi (00:57:44): It speaks to your character that you consider, that you reflect on the power that you have as an author and that visibility, that platform and that you question that. And then you think about, okay, seeing that this has such a serious impact on people, let me think about these characters I'm writing. That really says a lot about your character, pun intended. So can you paint us a picture of how you envision your legacy as a writer? I know, I know.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:58:19): I mean, yeah, I...

Thembi (00:58:23): I know.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:58:25): Yeah. I don't, I just hope that I write things that inspire readers to read and write more and to figure out how they want to both hold and share their own stories. So when I'm teaching writing workshops or talking to kids, I'm like, you don't have to write novels or write books. Maybe you want to write songs. Maybe you want to make films. Maybe you want to make videos, maybe you want to do theater. There's just always some way you can figure out to both honor your story and then to share it in some way. So yeah, I think I just hope that I write and teach in a way that encourages people to do the same thing and however they figure out works best for them.

Thembi (00:59:22): I wanted to ask you about every single solitary book you've written, but I want to have some respect for your time, so I just tried to zero in on a few. But before we go, I want to make sure that I give you an opportunity, if there's anything that you wanted to speak on that we didn't cover that you wanted to include.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:59:45): You have been extraordinarily thorough.

Thembi (00:59:48): Thank you.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (00:59:51): Just a joy of a conversation. I appreciate it. So I really can't think of anything.

Thembi (00:59:59): You are very kind.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:00:00): Thank you.

Thembi (01:00:00): Thank you. Thank you for your time. I absolutely loved this conversation. Loved getting to know you. And as you saw, y'all can't see this, but I was holding up the books. I was showing her the books that I grabbed. Yeah, because I'm not playing around here. I'm going to read those books. I was like, oh, okay. The longer ones, as your young friend said, the long ones I didn't have time to read before we talked, but believe me, I will read them because they are amazing. And I was a voracious reader as a young person. And just as an aside, I saw where you talked about being given a white doll when you were little by somebody, you were gifted a white doll. And that happened to me. That really resonated with me because I always had Black dolls growing up, but someone who didn't understand, didn't know...

(01:00:50): They loved me. They weren't trying to do anything wrong. They gave me a white doll. And I had that sort of similar, you were like, oh my gosh, in trouble. I was like, she doesn't know. She doesn't know this. How's this white doll going to come across a threshold of my house? And just thinking about how those stories really open up a portal into an understanding of a person and how they were raised. When you talk about what you learned about yourself, what you learned about writing wasn't in school. And that's the reality of those of us who have that strong understanding of who we are specifically as Black women, as black people in this world. You don't learn that in school. But these books that you write, yes, are in school, but I just went and grabbed them. I have a library a block away, and I was able to go and grab a whole bunch of 'em.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:01:39): Oh, that makes me happy.

Thembi: Yes. And I thought I would tell you that too. It's just like -- all your books are at the library, so--

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:01:46): That makes me so happy!

Thembi (01:01:46): --that's good too, and there's a couple of ebook versions because they were checked out, but I was able to get the books and I just thought, this is how it's supposed to be. We're supposed to have access to these stories outside of school because I think for a lot of people, as important as it is, like you mentioned, to support our educators, it's also important to know that education is holistic for young people and that you don't just leave -- a part of supporting educators is not leaving the whole responsibility on them to educate our kids.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:02:17): Yes, yes. So true. Yeah. My mom was one of those moms who would always be going into the school, and even when I was in high school, my mom introduced me to Zora Neale Hurston, and so after I read their eyes were watching God, I wanted to write a research paper on her. So I went to the school library to ask for some more of her books, and at that time, it was a long time ago, so that librarian was like, there's no such person. And I was like--

Thembi (01:02:50): Oh no. Oh no. I thought you were going to say that they were like, oh, we don't have that.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:02:56): No, she said, there's no such person. Exactly those words. And oh my goodness. When I went home and told my mom what she said and she was like, do I need to come in there? I was like, no, Mom. This time I got -- like, by now I've learned I got this. And I also had, especially in high school, I was very fortunate to have some Black teachers and Black women and Black men, some Black teachers who just loved on us. Even when I think about it now, they put in a lot of extra time to be in community with Black students, to support Black students. Even to the point of one of my first big high school theater roles was playing Lena in A Raisin in the Sun because we had Black teachers who brought that work in and valued it in the school environment, even when it wasn't maybe necessarily part of the standard curriculum. And my mom developed relationships with those teachers and with those educators, and it was so important to have that sort of community. It's so important to have that community, that family school connection. I still go back to -- my Daughter's 20 now. I still go back to her elementary school, to the school library, and last year, and the year before I had a little Black girl book club, just--

Thembi (01:04:28): Oh wow.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:04:29): --stay connected to these essential parts of our community and to these people who are doing, I mean, the work that teachers have to do now beyond teaching, it's a heavy, heavy load.

Thembi (01:04:45): It is. And mostly thankless, and it's so important.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:04:49): And undervalued.

Thembi (01:04:53): Yeah. So what you do in creating these stories and putting them in a form that I can go get 'em, that educators can get them. So it's such an important part of that community. Thank you for that. Thank you for making that choice. You could have done anything you wanted. You could have been an engineer maybe if you wanted to.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:05:13): I could have been an engineer. My father sure wanted me to be, so yeah...

Thembi (01:05:18): Which would've been fine, but, I'm glad you chose literature.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:05:20): I would love to write about engineers, so yes. Write about some Black women, yeah.

Thembi (01:05:25): There we go. All right. Well, I'm going to, as they like to say, give you your time back. Thank you so much for this conversation.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:05:36): Thank you. I'm so honored. Thank you so much.

Thembi (01:05:38): This was great.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (01:05:39): Thank you so much for talking to me. I really appreciate it and I just appreciate the thoughtful questions and that you went to the library and got out the books, man. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thembi (01:05:49): I did. I couldn't talk to you about your books without having them on hand. I was like, I got to read as many as I can before we talk, so yeah. No, this was great. Alright, so that's it for today on KeyBARD. Until next time.