PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — When Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow gave birth to her sons, it sparked a fire inside of her to start building the world that she wanted to see for them as a Black Muslim mother.
“I started in, I would say about 2014 … I was wanting to write more children's books that had families like their own, you know, that kind of represented their community more,” Thompkins-Bigelow said. “And I also just, you know, wanted a creative outlet at the time.”
Since then, Thompkins-Bigelow took to different forms of writing and published several children's books that helped turn the former Philadelphia teacher into a bestselling author.
Her books are appreciated in shops like Uncle Bobbie’s in Germantown and have also made it into homes, classrooms and even school curriculums across the country.
“It's really powerful to me how teachers, librarians and educators have really taken this book on and decided that, you know what, this is a Read Across America book,” she said.
“Your Name is a Song,” which celebrates the musicality of different names that often get mispronounced, is one of her publications that made it into school curriculums across the board.
“For it to just to have taken off the way that it did, you know, and the way that it continues to, it's really powerful to me.”
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While Thompkins-Bigelow has experienced a lot of success and notoriety with her work, she has also faced a lot of pushback.
“I've had my books, a few of my books, on banned list for certain school districts throughout the country. And there are just like, you know, all these different laws,” she explained.
“Florida – they're banning books, they're banning curriculum … some teachers cannot even curate their own classrooms. And it's rising to the level, I think, where it's a serious social justice issue where people actually have to rise up and do something about it, because it's really kind of scary.”
Part of what keeps her motivated, she says, is that for every disgruntled, vocal parent speaking out against her children's books, there are countless families positively impacted by the representation they bring.
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“Because I represent black Muslims and we are not very, you know, widely in the books … it's very special to have someone who is, you know, African American, who's Muslim to see that representation in a book,” she said.
“I have seen people show me how special that is to them, how meaningful that is to them in ways that really, like, make me cry.”
She said some of the positive feedback was given from a family that wrote her a letter saying they put one of her books, “Mommy's Kimora,” on their mantel when it first came out.
The story made the family feel well-represented and seen.
“They felt like this was their family, you know, and they'd never seen their family quite like this.”