The 13th Annual African Festival of Boston brightened the Boston Common on a cloudy mid-August weekend. While many know about the food, live music and fashionable clothing, this year’s festival featured the Cultural Book Heritage Village to shed light on the works of local African writers.
Authors Thato Mwosa, Djofa Tavares and Crystal Boateng all hail from different African nations. Personal experiences related to family and education motivated each of them to publish children’s books.
As a mother from Botswana, Mwosa wrote “14 African Women Who Made History,” so her 10-year-old daughter knows about the contributions of Black African women outside the U.S. The book highlights the accomplishments of women, such as Ghanaian poet Ama Ata Aidoo and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of Liberia.
She said, “It was really important to expand that representation because Blackness is not monolithic. It's not just American, and we are that diaspora here. We are from all kinds of backgrounds.”
The purpose behind Mwosa's book also includes all African children, not only girls.
“I think it's most important that young kids have a solid foundation about our history, our culture, (and) our heritage,” Mwosa said.
Djofa Tavares is a Cape Verdean American educator who authored “Tiagu and Vovo,” or “Tiagu y Vovo” in Cape Verdean Creole, or Kriolu. The story follows Tiagu, who leaves Cape Verde to live with his grandfather Vovo in the U.S. Because Tiagu is not fluent in English, Vovo labels items in the house with English and Kriolu words to help his grandson adjust to the new environment.
Tavares decided to write her book because she noticed children from Cape Verdean families quickly lost their ability to speak and understand Kriolu while attending school. The book has one side printed in English and the other in Kriolu to help kids understand both languages. Readers commended her for the book’s assistance with learning Kriolu.
Tavares also wanted to combat the idea that people should learn Portuguese, the official language of Cape Verde and the base language of Kriolu, instead of Kriolu itself. The sentiment comes from a widespread belief that creole languages spoken in Black communities are not as legitimate as the European languages that bore them.
She said, “If you're using a language that the people already speak, and you're teaching them how to read and write it, that's much more valuable than learning a whole new language.”
While she understands why people push for Portuguese-language education among Cape Verdeans, Tavares believes that Kriolu is a resourceful language because of its roots in Portuguese.
“Kriolu’s a mixed language,” she said. “We can understand French, Italian, Portuguese, (and) Spanish. It's so powerful.”
Crystal Boateng was born in Ghana and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, at 12 years old. However, moving back to Ghana sparked her career in writing and publishing.
“Back in 2020, my daughter, who was 4 at that time, was learning how to read, and she was pinned to princesses,” Boateng said. “But I couldn't find any princess books that represented us.”
The realization led to the birth of “Afia the Ashanti Princess: A Visit to the Motherland” and the “Ashanti Princess” series. The book series has impacted Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians alike. Parents of other African backgrounds often tell Boateng that her writing helps their children feel represented.
Mireille Tushiminina, a co-host of the African Festival of Boston, added the Cultural Book Heritage Village because of her childhood love for reading and listening to stories. She also believes that African immigrants in the Boston area and their children miss out on the richness of African storytelling.
She wanted to gather local African artists to “share with the community at large that (they) have a strong story, a strong heritage, and (they’re) here to stay because (they) made Boston home.”
Like Mwosa, Tushiminina wants children of African immigrants to know who they are or who they can be through the avenue of literature.
“It’s really important to tell the story right, and also for our children that were born and raised here to know the real narrative, not what is being taught at school,” Tushiminina said.
She is the driving force behind the Shalupe Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to empowering the African community in Massachusetts. The foundation's mission includes acquiring books from local writers such as Mwosa, Tavares and Boateng to donate them during the foundation's cultural book club events.
Once again, Tushiminina and her co-host Leonard Tshitenge achieved a big turnout of event-goers celebrating African and Afro-diasporic cultures with the help of the City of Boston Treasury. But the brand new Heritage Village drew attention to the storytelling prowess from different regions of the continent.
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