Triangle-based artist Dare Coulter on Monday received a Coretta Scott King Award for her mixed-media illustrations in An American Story, a children’s book about the institution of slavery and the resilience of the African American spirit.
Coulter, 30, is one of the youngest people to ever win a Coretta Scott King Award, a recognition of excellence in books for children and young adults reflecting the African American experience that dates back to 1970. Her illustrations blend sculpture, paint, and charcoal in a way that makes the pages of An American Story appear almost three-dimensional. The images accompany text by Kwame Alexander, a New York Times bestselling author.
On the afternoon of Coulter’s win, INDY spoke with her to learn more about the significance of the award, her creative process, and the importance of teaching books like An American Story in schools.
What does this win signify to you?
My primary objective is to reach Black people with my work. Getting this recognition—the top award in my field—signifies that I’ve created a work of cultural importance and significance to Black people. That makes me feel honored beyond measure.
What went into designing the illustrations for An American Story?
You’re dealing with these overarching themes of horrific abuse, but you’re also trying to speak to the human-ness of the people who were enslaved. I’m very intentional about not censoring Black joy in the work that I create. As far as Blackness goes, people will fight you on the need for representation that’s positive and uplifting. Meanwhile, you can find endless examples of Blackness portrayed with negativity. So it was important these illustrations weren’t what they call ‘pain porn.’ That they weren’t images of people being beaten and whipped. The visual takeaway is that these were people, and they mattered.
Can you talk about the importance of teaching books like An American Story in schools?
It annoys me to no end when the conversation about teaching children about slavery centers around it being that white kids are made to feel bad. People want to create an issue where there’s not one. I remember learning about slavery in school and there was never a time when people were like “It’s your fault!” to the white kids.
If we try to erase slavery, or if we try to act like it wasn’t that bad, we delegitimize valid critiques of society. We make it so that when Black people share grievances about the way that racism is intertwined in day-to-day things—when we say, “we experience systemic racism because of the skeleton of this institution that was built for our oppression”—it can be dismissed. And if we rob people of education, of knowledge, of history, it creates an opportunity for these same things to happen again.
What was illustrating An American Story like for you psychologically, given the subject matter?
I was in a weird space. Going to work and being immersed in research about how Black people were brutalized—it was rough. It was very rough. But it’s okay. The bottom line of the Black experience is that there’s this duality, a simultaneous experience of joy and pain. Not that other people don’t also experience joy and pain. But we’re in a country that was built on the backs of Black people, and that ricochets in Black Americans’ lives in a different way than it does for people who weren’t systematically oppressed for hundreds of years.
What are you working on now?
I’ve got three major public art projects coming up: one at Wheels Fun Park in Durham and two projects in Raleigh. I’m also illustrating a book by Jessica Care Moore about Ketanji Brown Jackson. And I’m going to do another project with Kwame this year. I’m curious to see what all comes up in relation to this award.
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