Branding: Do You Have A Logo?

My first logo

This is the second post in my series on Marketing.

1. Marketing 101: Part 1 - Questions.
2. Branding: Do you Have a Logo?
3. Is Your Business Card Working?
4. The Brochure
5. The Press Kit
6. Cohesion: Why Does It Matter?
7. Conclusion








I learned to write cursive in the third grade. I loved it. I watched as the elegant letters I'd always seen my mother make, come flowing out of my pen.

Words and how we use them have always fascinated me. Writing words and letters in interesting ways has been a passion of mine since I was little.

I am an unabashed logophile.

I started playing with different ways to express my initials somewhere around fourth grade, and within weeks of graduating from college, I put together the logo you see at the top of the post.

I put that logo on everything. I included a little graphic of it under my name when I applied for showcases or grants. For many years it was on everything I sent to anyone.

Now, some of you who have known me for a long time are staring at that thing and saying, "If you used this everywhere, how come I've never seen it?"

This brings up a good question. Do itinerate performers actually need a logo?

This short article by a company that generates logos doesn't think so.

"...ask yourself, do I really need a logo for my business?

Here’s how to tell…

Think about what a logo’s primary job is: to help customers distinguish between products on a shelf, or to tell one service apart from a competitors. For example, take a look at this glass of cola. Can you tell what kind it is?"

The image is a glass of brown liquid with ice. There is no way to tell what it is unless it had a logo.


So, I thought I'd go that way. A few images.

Who made this cap?

Who made this cap?

 What is in these bowls?



Is one of these pairs of shoes a knockoff? Maybe.











Obviously, branding matters when you have a shelf full of similar or possibly the exact same something, and you are trying to distinguish what is what.

Advertisers also use logos in order to subtly influence our brains for preferential treatment. They spend years telling us that their brand is different from other brands because they use 'better', 'stronger', more 'durable', 'tastier', 'organic', blah-de-blah-de-blah than their competitors.

We, as performers are not shoes, hats, or generic bowls of goo. Does having a logo make any difference in the world?

I would argue that while nobody is going to mistake me for Sherry Norfolk...

this is not me.

there is still a place for logos in our business.

The logo can be used to give your marketing materials a more professional look. Though nobody is going to look at a graphic and say, 'hey, that means that this is storyteller is more durable than that other one!' having a logo can make your marketing look fancier.

So, where could you find my logo?

I put it on my stationary. This is the same paper I used for my contracts, invoices, communication, and handwritten notes.

The little bit of writing you see on the left side of the page is something I said offhand once when someone was asking me a question about the veracity of my tales. It got a laugh, so I decided to keep it.

"Every story I tell is true...except for the parts I make up."

That little phrase has been used for so many introductions and bios that it is way more associated with me than the logo.

What is nice about the logo, however, is that it can be put on anything that is part of my work product. It gives my marketing cohesion.

One of the things I will talk about over the next few posts is having your marketing materials support each other.



Eight or nine years ago, The David and I decided to redo the marketing material. I had designed my business card and logo, but we chucked the works and rebranded the whole thing. We sent our old stuff to one of them slick marketing groups, told them what we were looking for, and they designed a brand new logo for me.

Simpler. Cleaner. I hated it at first.

This new logo arrived with mock-ups of all sorts of interesting things and a new look for the company. We redid the business cards, the stationary, and got new marketing toys. We even got a color scheme.

So, here are some of the things that changed after we put our marketing materials in the hands of people who actually know how to create stuff for marketing....

Stationary with contact info on the bottom

My new stationary doesn't have that little phrase on the side, but at the bottom, in that gorgeous purplish-red color is all of the contact information for the business.

We use this for contracts, invoices, letters, and anything else you would need for correspondence from the company.

There is a new addition to the stationary...that little frog. Don't forget him, he's everywhere.











The business card is less wordy, laid out in an easy to read manner, and my manager's name is  listed as the contact, not mine! Not only that...if you flip that sucker over....











My tagline is on the back, and there I am in technicolor so that it would be impossible for you to confuse me with Sherry Norfolk.

So, here is the thing about the logo. 

1. It isn't likely anyone is going to associate you with a particular logo since so much of our business is word of mouth, watching people on Youtube, or listening to CDs, mp3s, or finding us on the radio.

2. At some point, if you are working this as a business, it will be necessary for you to produce materials for marketing, legally binding agreements, or correspondence, so having a logo gives you something to put on all of that stuff.

3. If you don't want to create a logo, you don't need to do so. You are a unique performer, and there is no chance someone is going to distinguish you from someone else because you have a puppet theater emblazoned on your jacket. 

So, do you need a logo? Nope. Not a bit of it. Lots of people don't have them. You can have lovely marketing materials without using them. 

In our business, your name is far more important than your logo. Your name is your brand. All of this other stuff, well, that's just frosting on your cake.

Logophiles Unite!

Happy Marketing.

Marketing Materials 101: Part 1 - Questions

August and September are some of our biggest booking months. Showcases happen. PTA parents have returned to school and are choosing which artists will visit them in the 2016 - 17 school year. They call to check on everything from availability to pricing.

The David spends weeks on the phone and in email correspondence trying to hammer down dates all over the country for the entire year, making sure my touring schedule doesn't kill me, sending out marketing emails, explaining our block booking program, helping people fill out grants, and trying to convince me to teach residencies.


Watching him jump about gave me an idea for a quick blog post.

My plan this morning was to discuss marketing materials!

It seemed like a really good idea. Then, I started photographing my marketing materials so I could make this one of those really colorful posts.

After I did that, I uploaded the pictures.

I have a lot of marketing stuff.

Then it occurred to me I could do one of those 'then and now' type of posts.

To that end, I rooted around until I found my first business card and stationary. I photographed those too. Much less material...technically, since I don't actually have my first ever attempt at a brochure, and I was pretty sure I didn't have any of my old marketing sheets. Then, it occurred to me that I might have them...digitally.

What was meant to take me a few minutes because I could just post my own pictures and say a few things about marketing has turned into a quandary; what's the best way to talk about all of this stuff?

So, I guess that means I'm doing a multi-part blog series on marketing.

I know! Who doesn't want to do that, right?

Me. I don't really want to!

I realize that I talk about marketing every now and then. Most of the time I say things like 'it is very important', or 'you need to work hard at it', and random things like that, but I've never gotten down in the weeds and done a review of the different types of materials we use, and how they are deployed.
So, that is what I will attempt.

I offer this up with the usual caveat that this is what I do, you may have no need for most of this stuff, and you may have more effective marketing for your business. I hope, that if you have interesting things in your marketing process that you will be willing to share with me in the comments section of these posts. I am always looking to learn new things!

As always, I will explain my thought process behind each piece, explain what we do with it, and give some idea about its efficacy.

Since I'm not doing it all in one post, I will even do a piece about the things we don't do anymore, and why.

To that end, I put together a list of questions about marketing materials that this multi-part series will attempt to address.

In no particular order:

What materials do you use in your marketing?

Have you got a brochure? Do you need one?

Have you got a business card? You need one.

Do you have a press packet? What is that, anyway? Do you need one?

Do you have a logo? Do you need one?

Do your marketing pieces work together?

What are you trying to accomplish with your marketing?

Do you send out postcards? Why? Why not?

What message are you sending with your marketing?

How professional is your marketing? Does it matter?

What is your marketing budget?

I am going to attempt to do this in six or seven posts. I listed the subjects below.
I'll combine a few if I can. I don't know if I could write a whole post for some of these.

-Logo
-Business Card
-Stationary                                  
-Brochure
-Press Packet
-Ghosts of Marketing Past
-The Whole Picture

If you have questions of your own about any of this or suggestions for things I could cover about marketing in the next month and a half, let me know.

So, that's what I have planned for this space.

I can't wait!

Happy Marketing!

1. Marketing 101: Questions

2. Branding: Do You Have A Logo?

3. Your Business Card: Is It Working Hard, Or Hardly Working?

4. The Brochure

5. The Press Kit

6. Cohesion: Why Does It Matter?

7. In Conclusion

The Language Of Poverty: Reframing That Story

I remember one of my first teaching experiences when I was a young teaching artist in Chicago. I was in a school in an impoverished neighborhood. In one of my classes, a kid lost a dollar bill. I made an announcement that if anyone found it, it belonged to this child.

Not five minutes later, a child found the dollar bill and announced he'd found it, and was going to keep it. I pointed out that we knew who it belonged to and he should give it back. He refused.

I asked, "If you'd lost a dollar, and someone found it, wouldn't you want them to give it back to you?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Then return the dollar to her." 

"No."

I don't remember how that ended. I believe the teacher got involved and it was a mess. 

I taught in several impoverished schools that year. I realized something.

I was not an appropriate teaching artist for this population. I didn't understand these children. I didn't know how to reach them. I didn't know what I should be trying to achieve. My lack of understanding inhibited my efficacy in their learning environment.

I understood that a different approach was needed, but I had no idea what that should have been, or how to make that happen. My concern was that I could be doing damage. I certainly felt that I was, and there was a teacher who let me know in no uncertain terms that she thought I was.

That was twenty-eight years ago.

I perform in schools in impoverished areas all the time. I do workshops with kids in those schools, but I haven't taught any residencies in them.

I am a huge believer in literacy strategies and language acquisition tools in the classroom and at home. I am a huge believer that almost any child can be reached, it just requires the right keys, and I don't often know what those are.

This morning, as I went through my daily news input before getting down to work everything stood still.

I read this article in Newsweek and watched the short clip about educational outcomes. 

My brain, as it often does, went a bit nuts after ingesting this information.

Disclosure: The article is long but worth the read.

The Findings? People who are exposed to long-term violence, privation, malnutrition, toxic pollution, danger, and or abuse from childhood have less developed brains. They have poorer problem-solving skills,  less empathy, more impulse control issues, and a whole host of other cognitive processes that make functioning in our society difficult. 

The story that unfolds is more about how this one girl manages to overcome the neighborhood and the violence and fear that surrounded her to head off to college.

The key seems to have been her parents working hard to make sure that despite everything around them, they kept their girls as safe as they could, and away from the world on the other side of their walls, and a single teacher who encouraged and supported her.

In her discussions about her life, the words 'safe' and 'warm' came up over and over again. She had places where she was okay, and she could still the fear. Those islands gave her a chance for a better life.

One of the points the article makes is that it isn't enough to work with the children of poverty, we must also work with their parents.

One of the takeaways was a fear that certain demographics in our country would be demonized because of this study, and a new Eugenics push could be spawned.

The biggest point the article makes is that we need to fundamentally rethink how we educate, interact with, and help people who live in poverty.

The private infrastructure we have now is not so much about helping people in poverty as it is about taking advantage of some of the problems, and pointing in confusion at others all while saying 'We Need To Do Something!' without having a clear idea of what we should do.

For Profit Prisons
Debtors Prison
Prisons and Poverty
Day to Day Expenses
Education

The public funded elements of helping people in poverty are sometimes fueled by misinformation, ideological disagreements, and outright harmful decisions. Our government often tries to balance its budget on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised.

Drug Testing Welfare Recipients
Cutting School Lunch Programs
Government and the Poor

Our country and the world at large are fraught with situations of our own creation that ensure a segment of our population is going to struggle to find a productive place in our civilization.

Environmental injustice

Violence Against Women

Child Abuse

Homelessness - Link to a post I did about telling in an affluent school and then one that serves homeless children in the same week telling the same stories.

So, I looked at the article. I considered all of the things I've read in the past, and the work I've done with so many children and it leaves me still.

I am fighting the despair.
I am fighting the anger.
I am fighting the frustration.

I am trying to be empty of these things so I can think. I am waiting for there to be clarity so I know how to go forward productively and without bitterness for what we do to each other every day, and what I must continue to try to do on whatever small scale I can.

I can't solve this problem by myself.
Nobody can solve this problem alone.
This work we must do together.

The realities are daunting.

The answers will be financially painful for some, and they will fight tooth and nail with very deep pockets to keep this system in place.

The answers will be uncomfortable for some, and they will deny them for everything they are worth loudly and with giant megaphones.

The answers will require a profound rethinking of how we educate our children, and that will require a revamping of everything from grad school to how we train our educators, and there will be those who claim it won't matter.

We have so much work to do.

Do we as a creature have the will to do it?

I don't know, but there are things of which I am sure.

This is why politics matters.

This is why how we fund schools matters.

This is why what we teach our children matters.

This is why we must show our children positive images.

This is why we must continue to tell stories...even the hard ones.

This is why I am trying to be still this morning. This is why I am trying to be empty.

Happy Taking It One Story At A Time.

Everyone Has Special Needs: Laying the Groundwork for a Successful Encounter

When I do public shows, I tell the audience what my plan is before I perform. 

I do this for several reasons. 

1) Many of the people in the room may have never encountered a storyteller, and this gives them some idea of what is about to happen.

2) There are always children who are hungry, antsy, upset (for whatever reason) or just plain bored before it begins. This gives everyone a chance to know how long they have to sit, and what will be required of them.

3) Sometimes I ask what kind of stories they want. Do they want me to sneak in a kind of scary story? Should we do something really silly? I adjust on the fly as I get feedback.

4) This creates a very important bond with the audience. I'm asking their permission to let me conduct a tour through the imagination, engage in conversation with talking animals, suspend their belief as I turn into various objects, emit wild noises, and generally remake the space they are in with nothing more than my voice, face and body. There is a certain amount of trust I need!  

5) Last, and most important, it gets the very diverse group of people in front of me used to seeing a woman with dreadlocks, dressed in what is often a voluminous non-mainstreamed looking outfit, moving and speaking in a stylized way, all while using grammar, inflection, diction, and language that may or may not be familiar to them.


I never do reveals. I like people to get a chance to encounter me before they have to engage in telling with me. I discovered early in my career that if I do reveals, the audience might need time to get used to me before they can listen to me, and I can lose up to fifteen minutes while they try to decide who or what I am.

I've found over the years, that every single audience has special needs. I have to meet them wherever they are.


Figuring out how to do that is the trick.

The needs are varied. They include people who need sign language interpreters, participants who cannot see, adults and older teens who present as children, or children with a wide variety of  behaviors, abilities, and responses that might be distracting...and toddlers...yes, for me toddlers and children younger than two years are the most special audience members.

Sometimes I am successful at reaching these audience members, and sometimes I am not.

Before I ever begin, I've learned that it is important for me to ask organizers if they know if there are going to be members in the audience who have needs that will be unique to them.

You might ask, 'Why are you singling them out? Why does it matter?'

It matters because the adjustments I can make will not diminish the experience for anyone else, but they might very well help these participants enjoy the stories.

Some of the adaptations I make are as follows.

1 - Be aware of jump moments and loud sounds. (I love loud sounds in stories, but not everyone does. Jumps are fun, but only if you have good recovery.)

2 - Pacing is very important. Make sure that you are allowing the participants to experience the tale at its fullest based on their needs for processing time. Tell the interpreter what you are planning to do. 

3 - Depending on your audience, adjust the amount of detail, movement, sound, or asides you offer. 


You never know who is going to be in your audience, or how they are going to react to you.


In March of 2014 I was in Fredericton, Canada. I had a show at a playhouse. Afterwards, I sold books and CDs, answered questions, and took pictures with kids...and grown ups!

There was one adorable little girl wearing something my daughter would have left the house in when she was little. She took a picture with me, and she and her mom left. Afterwards, I got a link to a blog post her mom wrote about what had gone on the morning of the show.

At the Fredericton Play House

I was humbled. It made me think of all the reasons why I do this work. It makes me consider how much work there is left to do. It made me consider my abject failures and those small triumphs someone shares with me.

I go into this new performance year...it starts in September...promising to do my best to be there for anybody who needs stories. I promise to be as patient as I can. I promise to challenge myself, and the audiences I encounter, to go as deep as we will, and share as openly as we must.

I promise to do my best to learn whatever it is people are trying to teach me.

I believe that sharing stories is the first step on the path to understanding each other...even when those stories are hard.

To all of my fellow artists - Good Luck in the 2016 - 2017 touring season!

To all of my fellow travelers on the raising children roller coaster - Good Luck and don't kill and eat them. That's illegal.

Son is in his 2nd year at RIT my daughter is at NCSSM

To all of my fellow educators, let's get with the knowledge enabling!

To all of my fellow humans who are going to be making the circuit around the sun for the next 365 days, let's see to it that as many of us arrive safely on the other side of this year as possible!







Let The New Performance Year Begin!

(Bangs the Gong)

Happy Learning!

The Power of Words: Reaching the Reluctant Reader

Photo Credit Jonathan Van Ark

I am not a reluctant reader. I have never been a reluctant reader. My insatiable desire to be wrapped in the printed word started when I was about four years old, and it has never abated.

For my bibliophilic brethren and sisteren, this sentiment is neither odd nor novel. Of course books are our life's blood! Of course we can think of few things better than curling up with a stack of beloved tomes, or a new series, and shutting out the mundane for a few days as we page our way through entire worlds of knowledge or entertainment.

As a young person, I did not understand anyone who did not share this love. How could anybody not love books? How could anyone not love reading?





Well, many years, and lots of life later, I understand that lots of people do not love reading. There are many reasons why they might not like it...or might think they do not like it, but that is neither here nor there. The question for educators and parents is about improving a student's motivation to read.

The approach that makes the most sense to me is outlined in a book called I Read, But I Don't Get It by Cris Tovani.  Simply put, people who read well and effectively read strategically. This process comes naturally to some, but not others. For reluctant or struggling readers, they must learn how to read strategically one step at a time. Unfortunately, we don't teach this process in school. If you don't intuit it, you are out of luck. (Since writing this piece, I have been told that there are places in the country where teachers are tackling the process of reading. I hope this becomes a movement!)

So. What does a 'good' reader do?

- Relate the text back to their own experiences
- Look for clues or subtext in the words and images
- Consider the outcomes of the events as they unfold
- Consider what they think might happen
- Come up with what they might have done if they had written the story.
- Restate ideas and concepts in their own words or thoughts
- Approach text with specific goals in mind
- Consider the way the author uses words and context to develop ideas or evoke images
- Follow characters as they develop
- Connect with the text on multiple levels

Question 1: How on earth do you teach all of that?
Question 2: How do you get someone who doesn't want to read in the first place to do any of that?


A friend of mine, Mark Spring, works with an organization here in Durham, NC called Student U. They just had their culminating reading project in the summer middle school program. This is what they did.

The sixth grade students were assigned the book The Outsiders.
There were four classes of sixth graders.
Each class was only assigned one fourth of the book.

Only having to read 1/4 of the book made many of these kids cheer. They wouldn't have to read the whole 'boring' thing.

Each class got a roll of butcher paper.





Every single page of their quarter of the book was printed and glued down to the top half of their roll. This left lots of blank space.

The students made notes around the pages about vocabulary they didn't know, defining the words in bright markers.

They looked at events on each page, and made comments about how those events related back to things they had heard about or experienced.

They shared ideas and hopes and wishes in that empty space. Ideas about their own lives as well as the story unfolding before them.

They made predictions about what they thought would happen. They recounted times when they had the same kinds of feelings as the characters. They gave advice to the characters.

They drew pictures that represented ideas or feelings.

They made predictions about what would happen if the characters made certain choices.

The space around the pages filled with the work of the readers.

At the end of the summer session, all four classes gathered. They taped their sheets together and each class got to see what the other classes had done.

I was invited to the Scroll Event where the sixth grade unfurled their scroll. I walked the entire book, page by page, and saw how the kids had chosen to tackle their quarters.

Sixth graders are funny. They were complaining about how hot it was, how much their arms hurt from holding up this long sheet of paper, and any other thing kids complain about, but any time I asked about the section they were holding, they would snap right out of complaining mode, and start telling me about what they'd contributed.

These kids were extremely proud of the work they'd done. I heard about their budding political beliefs, their particular thoughts about the Duke Health Systems, the words they'd defined, and how they felt about the characters.

When the scrolls were finally together, what lay before us was a page by page graphic of the amount of work your brain does when you are deeply reading a piece of fiction. It was fascinating.  Then came the kicker.

Mark asked, "How many of you read the whole book?"

Almost all of the kids raised their hands.

Despite only being responsible for 1/4 of the book, and not having time in class to read, most of them read the whole book on their own at some point this last summer.


They couldn't resist the lure. They got seduced into reading by reading. It was a beautiful thing.

There is joy in reading. I am glad these kids got to feel it. Now, if you'll excuse me...Mary Stewart is calling.










Happy Reading.

Hiatus

Zathura

Brain on overload!

Too much going on!

Too much input!

May Day! May Day!

All systems going haywire!

Shutting down for two weeks!

(Recalculating)

(Recalculating)

White For A Black Girl: A Short Observation About Skin Color

My son is nineteen. He does not drive.

....The first time my blackness was challenged was by black children in Beaumont, Tx. I went to school with lots of military children. They were every hue, and from every corner of the world. We didn't know the world we were part of was not usual. The black children in my grandmother's neighborhood told me that I 'talked proper' like a white person. I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about in those days. All I understood was that I was 'outside' and somehow different, but I didn't know how.

My son is nineteen. He does not drive.


....I spent my elementary school years in South Korea. In middle school we moved back to the USA. The white kids told me I wasn't like 'most black people' when I was at Eisenhower Middle school in Oklahoma. The black kids ignored, stayed away, or teased me, so I guess the black kids felt the same way. What do you do if everyone tells you that you are not who you are?



My son is nineteen. He does not drive.


....At Northwestern University I had people tell me they didn't 'think of me as a black person', or that when they saw me they didn't 'see color'. This was supposed to be a compliment. You see, they didn't hold my color against me. I wanted to shout, "Why do you have to pretend I am not black in order to accept me?" If I had ever said that out loud I am sure I would have offended the very well meaning people who make these statements, but perhaps I would have made them stop and think. By the time I got to college, I just wrote people off who said things like this. If you can't accept me as I am, then you aren't worth my time.

My son is nineteen. He does not drive.

...I did some wordless picture books with African American stories. The company who did the recordings had their staff come in and listen to the stories. One of the women was very upset. She raised her hand and asked, "Why didn't you get a black woman to record these stories?"

My son is nineteen. He does not drive.

So, what is the story here? What does it mean that I am not black? Well apparently it means that...

Black people do not speak clearly
Black people do not use proper grammar
Black people have a very specific voice
Black people do not write clearly
Black people are not polite
Black people do not take honors or AP classes
Black people do not read well
Black people do not write well
Black people do not have friends who are not black
Black people are not kind
Black people are not smart
Black people are not capable
Black people don't go to the top universities in the country
Black people are not lots of perfectly reasonable civilized things.

Apparently, if black people rise to some higher level, they graduate from blackness, and become honorary white people, or their color doesn't matter. It is a way of saying, "I met a black person who doesn't meet the stereotypes that I carry around in my head about black people, so he/she doesn't count."

My son is nineteen. He does not drive.

...My daughter is sixteen. She is at Governor's School West for theatre in North Carolina. On Wednesday, the mister and I went up to Winston Salem to see this show the drama group wrote. It was 30 plays in sixty minutes. The students wrote the plays. My daughter was in one called, White for a Black Girl. There were three black girls and each did a short monologue about what it is like to be a smart, accomplished black girl, and to be told that you were, in fact, white. The term now is, "You are the whitest black girl I have ever seen." or "You are a white black girl." Each piece ended with, "Is this what you want to see?" A white girl would step up behind them with white paint on her hands and put white hand prints on their faces before moving on to the next girl. The audience was quiet, uncomfortable, a little freaked out in their seats. I wondered, as I sat there, how many of the very white folks sitting around me had ever said that to a black person thinking they were paying them a compliment.




My son is nineteen. He does not drive.

I could start listing the names of the young black men who have been murdered by police in the last four years. I could call out their names and howl into the wind. I could tell about the morning George Zimmerman strutted out of his trial after having murdered a young black man, and how I lay in my bed that next morning sick with worry about the young black man who sleeps across the hall from my room. I could scream to the heavens about the executions of the two black men this week. I could demand justice. I could shout into the teeth of a screaming wind, "Black Lives Matter!" and I know that I will be met with anger from those who yell, "All Lives Matter" or "Blue Lives Matter!"
The problem isn't that all lives matter. The problem is that we have a story about those lives. The stories we tell are very different.

-Trayvon Martin is killed. The media shows him looking like what the media has decided a 'thug' looks like.










- Brock Turner rapes a woman. The media shows images of him in a suit looking clean cut and like the 'kid next door'.





So, What's the story here? What does it mean to be a black man in our society?

-Black men are inherently dangerous
-Black men are criminals
-Black men are violent
-Black men are unpredictable
-Black men need to be restrained
-Black men are scary
-Black men deserve to be treated like unstable animals



My son is a good student at Rochester Institute of Technology
My son is a sculptor
My son is a writer
My son is so kind
My son is a conscientious objector
My son is gentle
My son plays piano
My son likes to play Dungeons and Dragons
My son plans a career in 3D modeling
My son is really, really smart
My son loves Cosplay
My son is creative
My son is imaginative
My son would do anything for his friends
My son is a magic bean buyer.
My son is black.


If my son gets pulled over in a car for whatever reason, what will the police officer who pulls him over see?

My son is nineteen. He does not drive.

I've never really pushed him to learn. Truth is, I'm terrified.

I live for a day when people don't have to pretend accomplished black people aren't black in order to understand or accept them.


Tell Your Story