Carole Boston Weatherford (born 1956) is an American author and critic. She has published over 50 children's books, primarily non-fiction and poetry. The music of poetry has fascinated Weatherford and motivated her literary career. She has won multiple awards for her books, including the 2022 Coretta Scott King Award for Author for her book Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre. As a critic, she is best known for her controversial criticism of Pokémon character Jynx and Dragon Ball character Mr. Popo.

Early life and education

Carole Boston was born February 13, 1956, in Baltimore to Joseph Alexander and Carolyn Virginia Boston. She began writing in first grade by dictating poems to her mother. Her father taught printing at a local high school and published his daughter's early works. As a child, she enjoyed reading Dr. Seuss and Langston Hughes. She continued to pursue creative writing as a hobby through high school and college. Weatherford earned a Bachelor of Arts from American University in 1977, a Master of Arts publication design from the University of Baltimore in 1982, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Career

Boston Weatherford has held many positions before beginning her writing career, including as an English teacher (1978); a field representative for the American Red Cross (1978–79); creator, producer, and host of the Black Arts Review radio show (1979); Art Litho Co. account executive (1981); National Bar Association communications director (1981–85); B & C Associates, Inc. vice president and creative director (1985–88). Weatherford published her first picture book, Juneteenth Jamboree, with Lee & Low Books in 1995; the book discusses a summer celebration in memory of the Texas Emancipation. She then wrote a series of board books for preschoolers. In 1998, she co-authored Somebody's Knocking at Your Door: AIDS and the African American Church, and then published a collection of poetry, The Tar Baby on the Soapbox. After establishing herself as a versatile writer for both children and adults, she published two nonfiction chapter books before penning her first award-winning children's book, The Sound That Jazz Makes (2001), a poem that traces the history of African-American music. The book won the 2001 Carter G. Woodson Book Award and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Children. Since then, she has continued to write poetry, historical fiction, and nonfiction biographical works for children. She said in a 2008 interview that one of the most important poems she has written was Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom: "Those inspired words came together with Kadir Nelson's soulful paintings and Ellice Lee's brilliant art direction in a perfect publishing storm. Moses propelled my career to another level." Moses has won a Caldecott Award for illustration, as well as an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Children, and became a New York Times bestseller. In 2008, Weatherford published her first poetic novel for young adults, Becoming Billie Holiday, about the development of the artist who she refers to as her muse. Her book Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, illustrated by Floyd Cooper and published by Carolrhoda Books, won both the Coretta Scott King Illustrator & Author awards in 2022. The novel was also a finalist for the Caldecott Medal as well as the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award. As an author, Weatherford acknowledges her calling "to mine the past for family stories, fading traditions and forgotten struggles." The books she writes, in poetry and prose, explore African-American history from a children's perspective and relate the past to new generations. Her works are often inspired by true events, many of which took place in the areas where she has lived. In her Author's Notes for each book, she includes a portion of the historical research from which her fiction or poetry emerged. In describing her purpose for writing to School Library Journal, in a 2008 interview: "I want the books that I write that are set during the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights era to nudge today's kids toward justice. We've gone a long way, but we still have a long way to go." Weatherford eventually became a writer-in-residence at Fayetteville State University (FSU). In 2007, she received the position of associate professor teaching composition and children's literature.

Critical articles

Weatherford has written multiple articles attacking what she identifies as stereotyped caricatures of black people in East Asian popular culture, with two of the more prominent ones being geared toward anime, and another aimed at the name of a toothpaste brand.

Pokémon

In January 2000, Weatherford wrote an op-ed piece that ran in newspapers across Alabama. "Politically Incorrect Pokémon" explained how she believed that Pokémon #124, Jynx, was a negative stereotype of African Americans: "The character Jynx, Pokémon #124, has decidedly human features [in contrast to most other characters]: jet-black skin, huge pink lips, gaping eyes, a straight blonde mane and a full figure, complete with cleavage and wiggly hips. Put another way, Jynx resembles an overweight drag queen incarnation of Little Black Sambo, a stereotype from a children's book long ago purged from libraries." In response to the controversy, Jynx's in-game sprites were given a purple skin color in the American versions of Pokémon Gold and Silver, released in late 2000. By 2002, Nintendo officially redesigned Jynx, changing its skin color from black to purple; this change was not reflected in the animated series until Jynx's purple skin appearance debuted in the episode "Mean With Envy!" (混戦、混乱！ポケモンコンテスト・キナギ大会！ （前編）), which originally aired in 2005, with the Amazon Prime release of "Holiday Hi-Jynx" recoloring Jynx accordingly, although it is still black on the thumbnail.

Dragon Ball

In an article published in The Christian Science Monitor in May 2000, Weatherford reiterated and expanded on her argument. Jynx had looked like "an obese drag queen" and she also offered Mr. Popo, a character from the Dragon Ball franchise, up for critique: "Mr. Popo is a rotund, turban-clad genie with pointy ears, jet-black skin, shiny white eyes and, yes, big red lips." The Dragon Ball manga later released by Viz in 2003 had reduced the size of Mr. Popo's lips. Furthermore, media related to the series' sequel Dragon Ball Super showed an increase of black characters that strayed away from racist stereotypes, such as that of Goten and Trunks' classmates Rulah and Chok, and fewer references made to Mr. Popo (with the latest release Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero only indicating the character being off-screen).

Selected awards and honors

Sixteen of Weatherford's books are Junior Library Guild selections: Before John Was a Jazz Giant (2008), Freedom in Congo Square (2016), Voice of Freedom (2016), In Your Hands (2017), Schomburg (2017), How Sweet the Sound (2018), The Roots of Rap (2019), Beauty Mark (2020), Box (2020), By and By (2020), Unspeakable (2021), Call Me Miss Hamilton (2022), How Do You Spell Unfair? (2023), Kin (2023), Bros (2024), and Outspoken (2024).

Awards

Selected best "of" lists

Personal life

On February 2, 1985, Boston married writer Ronald Jeffrey Weatherford. She has two children.

Publications

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s