CANR
WORK TITLE: Stand in My Window
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://latonyayvette.com/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Children: River (daughter), Oak (son).
EDUCATION:Attended college.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Stylist, storyteller, activist, and writer. Author of lifestyle blog LaTonya Yvette (LY) and substack With Love, L; involved in storytelling, creative direction, copywriting, curating, and community building, thirteen-plus years; The Mae House (BIPOC Rest as Residency space), Hudson Valley, NY, owner and steward.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
[open new]LaTonya Yvette is a New York–based influencer and activist who has progressed from lifestyle advice and inspiration to empowerment and authorship. She was born in Brooklyn and raised alongside three brothers and a sister. Her family boasted a strong matriarchal tradition, with the women respected and revered by each other as well as the men. Yvette studied writing and literature in college until leaving to focus on becoming a mother and engaging with her community and the world directly. She gained recognition and influence starting in 2012 as the author of a blog, LY, offering insights and observations from her life as a mother in Brooklyn. In a New York Family profile, Alexa Wilding recounted the evolution of Yvette’s web presence: “As her platform grew, LaTonya continued to raise the bar, pushing the limits of what a lifestyle blog could be. Yes, her home design tips were ingenious in their scrappy elegance, and her Black beauty how-to series took on cult status. But she also gave voice to personal, at-the-time rarely discussed heartbreaks, such as miscarriage and divorce. In short, LaTonya went deep online before it was cool to do so.” Yvette incorporated discussions of social and worldly phenomena like the Women’s March, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the climate crisis into her posts, foregrounding activism and community building.
Telling the story of Yvette’s nonfiction debut, Wilding related: “Part memoir, part lifestyle guide, her first book was the natural next step from her blog, which she was quickly outgrowing. Much like her blog defied genres, Woman of Color wasn’t just another influencer book. LaTonya wove even deeper personal stories—love, loss, racism, navigating vitiligo and lupus, among other struggles—into a wider web, alongside the empowering stories of other strong Black women, too.”
In the realm of nonfiction Yvette next wrote Stand in My Window: Meditations on Home and How We Make It. The volume collects eleven essays that center acts of homemaking as means of creative expression, spiritual recuperation, and existential persistence in people’s everyday lives, past and present. Drying clothes by hand leads Yvette to reflect on the import of the Atlanta washerwomen’s strike of 1881.
Similarly pondered are the acts of cooking, cleaning, waxing floors, and growing plants, with Yvette threading a personal narrative that touches on housing instability during her youth, lockdown life as a single mother, and an experience of eviction. She also touches on social issues including police intrusion in people’s homes, sexual assault, disaster responses, unfair housing practices, land dispossession, and gentrification. The chapter “Lil Red” concerns the restoration of The Mae House, a property Yvette purchased in New York’s Hudson Valley in 2021 to turn into a rental and Rest as Residency space for BIPOC families. Yvette labeled the volume’s two sections “Exhale” and “Inhale” to evoke meditation as well as an invitation to absorb the perspective and energy being offered, with twenty-five of the author’s photographs included.
Rachel Cargle summarized the thrust of Stand in My Window in Atmos: “Drawing from her personal history and family traditions, LaTonya positions the daily rituals of home … as foundational practices that transcend the circumstances of the individuals. Central to her philosophy is the understanding that homemaking exists as both personal practice and collective offering; that how we build a home can shape our mind and our soul—and help heal our communities.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer affirmed that Yvette’s “insightful musings brim with quietly radical insight” and that “readers will be rapt.” A Kirkus Reviews writer appreciated finding Yvette’s text enlivened by the “richness of both personal reflection and the wisdom, creativity, and scholarship” of Black literary predecessors. Admiring Yvette’s “penetrating eye” and “lyrical empathy,” the reviewer praised Stand in My Window as a “poetically reverent inspection of safety, embodiment, and inheritance through the lens of inhabiting space.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2024, review of Stand in My Window: Meditations on Home and How We Make It.
Publishers Weekly, September 23, 2024, review of Stand in My Window, p. 46.
School Library Journal, March, 2022, Olivia Gorecke, review of The Hair Book, p. 91.
ONLINE
Atmos, https://atmos.earth/ (November 26, 2024), “LaTonya Yvette and Rachel Cargle on Reclaiming Rituals of Home,” author interview.
Geeks Out, https://www.geeksout.org/ (July 13, 2022), Michele Kirichanskaya, “Interview with Author & Stylist LaTonya Yvette.”
LaTonya Yvette website, https://www.latonyayvettecreative.com (January 30, 2025).
New York Family, https://www.newyorkfamily.com/ (October 2, 2024), Alexa Wilding, “Meet Our October Cover Mom LaTonya Yvette.”
Meet Our October Cover Mom LaTonya Yvette
By Alexa Wilding
Posted on October 2, 2024
LaTonya Yvette
Photo: Yumi Matsuo
Meet Our October Cover Mom LaTonya Yvette
There’s a sweet moment toward the end of LaTonya Yvette’s new collection of essays, Stand in My Window: Meditations on Home and How We Make It, where she sends her friend, Claude, a picture of her freshly painted living room in Fort Greene. “You’re always so good at making a house feel like a home,” Claude writes back. “Your homes have a scent. Your clothes. Upstate too. And they all have the same feeling.”
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When I read these words, I smiled. I could feel LaTonya’s hand in mine. I could smell her delicious perfume—notes of palo santo, vetiver—and I could hear her warm, unmistakable laugh. Like Claude, I have the privilege of calling LaTonya a close friend. I’ve spent many a night dancing with our kids in her colorful, expertly thrifted Brooklyn apartments over the years. And since my family moved upstate, I’ve been LaTonya’s ride from the Amtrak station to The Mae House, the 200-year-old home she fearlessly purchased on her own in 2021, lovingly restored, and opened up as a rest-as-residency space for BIPOC communities.
That feeling pervades all of the above spaces. It is a feeling of safety, of belonging, and of the search for joy no matter how bleak the season. It is felt in the pink bookshelf hauled from a street corner and given a second life, or in the frayed piece of her grandmother’s lace hung as a curtain. Quite simply, that feeling is LaTonya herself.
Psst… Meet New NYC Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos
And while you may have seen images of LaTonya’s homes over the years—whether on her gorgeous Instagram feed, in her debut book, Woman of Color (2019), or on the namesake blog where she first stole all of our hearts—in the essays collected in Stand in My Window, LaTonya weaves together the intimate stories behind these spaces, the strong Black women who came before her, and on whose shoulders she stands, and how she finally, painstakingly, found home.
LaTonya may be my friend, but I was (and continue to be) a fangirl first. Like so many in-the-know New York moms, I came upon her heartfelt writing, effortless style, and that signature smile when she first burst onto the predominantly white lifestyle blog scene in 2012. Yes, her blog covered the ups and downs of urban motherhood—with light-strewn windows into her plant-filled homes (not to mention, her enviable closet edits!)—but LaTonya was never just another Mommy Blogger.
She was, and is, a writer growing in Brooklyn —one who has generously shared a window into her life every step of the way.
As her platform grew, LaTonya continued to raise the bar, pushing the limits of what a lifestyle blog could be. Yes, her home design tips were ingenious in their scrappy elegance, and her Black beauty how-to series took on cult status. But she also gave voice to personal, at-the-time rarely discussed heartbreaks, such as miscarriage and divorce. In short, LaTonya went deep online before it was cool to do so. Plus, as social and political issues ramped up—The Women’s March, Black Lives Matter, the climate crisis—LaTonya centered her activism and community building, inspiring her readers to roll up their sleeves and become more engaged warriors in the world. All this, and the hard-won parenting wisdom gleaned from raising her daughter, River, and her son, Oak, through the lens of a Black, twentysomething (eventually single) working mom in her most beloved New York.
Photo: Yumi Matsuo
Who didn’t have a major Mom Crush on LaTonya Yvette?
Who didn’t want to stop her on the subway or at the Fort Greene Farmer’s Market. (PS. If you’ve ever walked down the street with LaTonya, you’ll understand she is quite simply a New York celebrity.)
Who didn’t want to feel that feeling?
It was no surprise then that LaTonya made the leap from blog to book with the publication of Woman of Color in 2019. Part memoir, part lifestyle guide, her first book was the natural next step from her blog, which she was quickly outgrowing. Much like her blog defied genres, Woman of Color wasn’t just another influencer book. LaTonya wove even deeper personal stories—love, loss, racism, navigating vitiligo and lupus, among other struggles—into a wider web, alongside the empowering stories of other strong Black women, too.
It was clear she was forging her own memoir style, asking the question: how do we share our own stories, and in doing so, amplify the struggles of others, particularly those who came before us, thus locating our lives in the greater scheme of things?
When LaTonya sent me the beginnings of Stand in My Window (as writer friends, we are often each other’s first readers), I was immediately struck by the even greater scope of her lens, and the sharpening of her style. She had just published her second book, her first for children, 2022’s playful and affirming The Hair Book (“Covered hair / Bun hair / Party hair…No matter your hair – YOU are welcome anywhere!”). She had also weathered the height of the pandemic, the end of a relationship, and the restoration of The Mae House, all against the backdrop of our increasingly tense world. All of the above find their way into the pages of Stand in My Window, a collection of essays that, according to LaTonya herself, took some time to find its way.
But it was worth the wait. The result is a must-read meditation on finding home both within ourselves and in our communities, and an exploration of how we grow, dream, change, and ultimately heal inside these freshly painted, lovingly stewarded spaces.
As she writes in the book’s Introduction, “My future is made by all the Black, Indigenous people of color who have carefully, thoughtfully made their homes – driven in their souls by their own aspirations and ambitions, their memories of the past and reflections towards the future.” Throughout Stand in My Window LaTonya highlights the influence of personal heroines such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Jamaica Kincaid, alongside perhaps lesser-known urban warriors, Black farmers, and activists, as well as beloved friends and family, valuing interdependence and honoring those who inspired her along her journey.
I also should mention that, like her blog and Woman of Color, Stand in My Window features intimate images from LaTonya’s camera roll—selfies with morning coffee at home, the burning of sage, laundry drying on the rack (a whole chapter of the book explores the laundry rack, and all it evokes). It has always delighted me, as a friend, to see LaTonya search for her manual camera mid-conversation or during dinner clean-up, eager to capture the moment. I know I’m not alone in looking forward to her images, which, in their intimate conversation with her words, compliment her highly personal storytelling. Her photography is perhaps a nod to another personal heroine, the photographer Carrie Mae Weems, whose “Kitchen Table” series, in which she depicts domestic scenes and images of Black womanhood, LaTonya has admired over the years in her writing.
While she has grown tremendously over the years before our eyes as a writer, mother, and community builder—and her toolbox continues to fill with practices to make her dreams come true —LaTonya remains curious, open, and more comfortable than ever with not knowing what comes next. With Stand in My Window, Toni Morrison’s words come to mind: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Lucky for us, she did just that.
As a friend, fan, and hype woman (!), I had the pleasure of sitting down with LaTonya to delve deeper into Stand in My Window, her growth as a writer, and where she finds herself now as the seasons change—both at home in Brooklyn, upstate, and in her heart. I was struck, as I always am, by her courage, deep vulnerability, and her embrace of what Buddhists call “beginner’s mind.” I was also overwhelmed by a sense of awe. LaTonya reminds us to dream. She inspires us to go after that feeling – and that feeling is home.
What led you to share more of your heart on the page, and how did you grow as a writer in the process?
Stand in My Window is quite a large departure from Woman of Color to me… Woman of Color did what it was supposed to do – it allowed me to break into this nearly impossible publishing industry. [I sold] Woman of Color in 2017 when I was known as a lifestyle blogger. [Stand in My Window] was sold in 2020 during a time in which I had already grown as a writer, but also knew I was leaving the blogging space quite indefinitely, although there had been this new-found focus on Black people in the arts and online. So having the blog helped, as did having Woman of Color, but I had, in some ways, already departed – the work that wasn’t quite done inside of me, too. Overall, though, Stand in My Window was sold without a formal shape. And I needed some more experience and growing over the years of writing it…I think that is the heart that is picked up, as is the lack of digital veil.
There is strong reverence for lineage in Stand in My Window. Not just for your actual family but for your literary and political heroes, too. What does community and belonging mean to you?
Yes, thank you! I grew up where respect for the matriarchal figures in my family was paramount. And to be honest, when I think of our family structure—generations down— by design and by flaws, there were mostly women. And the men that were around deeply respected and revered the women, too. That alone allows me to step back and see how intricately layered the history of these women are and were in our upbringing. And when I set out to be a writer and a community builder, the work of Jamaica Kincaid, Audre Lorde, Mariame Kaba, were voices that whispered to me in the night and in the morning as a mother does. As I do to my own children. Reading bell hooks throughout writing this book and before, reminded me that I could build community, but I had to choose it for myself. So, to make it, I had to accept it. I ALSO had to BE it. And quite literally, live by her ethos. Which strangely mirror some of my maternal family’s, even of what was never ever spoken. Maybe Stand in My Window will do that one day for someone else? I could only hope. But those people truly held me. I am only here because of them.
Photo: Yumi Matsuo
While Stand in My Window is about both the rediscovery of home and the meaning of home (in all forms), I was taken by the exploration of travel in the second half. Does travel change how you view home? And how do you find home when you travel?
The more of the world I see, the more I realize how much I don’t know. Writing the book allowed me to explore the various versions of my own home and what I understand them to be. Now I realize, in travel that I do not seek to understand, but to just witness the many ways folks experience and understand home. Being able to move my body between space by choice as an adult is such a layered experience—there’s travel writing as work, traveling with my children to get away, traveling to just let there be room to write– it’s a privilege I am now aware of. And in another area, I think I am so used to the movement, that movement is part of how I create.
Stand in My Window is a book in two parts, Inhale and Exhale, and you talk throughout about the role of meditation and mindfulness in your life. Can you share what your practice looks like these days? Any tips, especially for busy parents, on how to carve the time and space?
Waking early to write (Toni Morrison taught me this in writing and in motherhood). I also heard from a therapist a long time ago, which is pretty embodied in the book, anything can be a form of meditation: sweeping the floor, washing the dishes, waiting in an aisle. I understand now that life will rarely slow down, so making time is a practice. As is anything worthwhile or useful.
One of my favorite chapters is “Lil Red,” named after your trusty toolbox, as it dives deep into your own “restoration” alongside that of The Mae House. As the kitchen is finally painted, and the native, black-eyed-Susan flowers blossom, you write that you, too, were “coming into whatever new self stood on the other side of it all.” How have you grown since writing those words? What does the rest of 2024 and looking forward to 2025 look like for you?
To be honest, I wish I knew what 2024 looked like beyond the book. I am deep in getting comfortable with it being in YOUR hands. And maybe more as a sign of a present practice, that’s where I am. I can’t move further than [the release of Stand in My Window] on November 12th. Once that happens, maybe I’ll think to January and so on. I have more writing to do in the meantime, and I am sorting “my body in the shape of things.”
Lastly, for fun, beloved objects, or the memory of objects past, play a huge part in both your story and what makes a home: the clock, your mother’s shattered jaguar, or “the desk of your own” come to mind. Are there any new or salvaged objects in either your Brooklyn apartment or at The Mae House that mark this new chapter in your life?
You gave me a signed Carrie Mae Weems poster! It says, “Remember to dream.” I am hanging it up next week. That’s where I am…I am trying to remember to dream, and I am quite lucky to have people and things that remind me to do so.
Stand in My Window: Meditations on Home and How We Make It is out November 12th via Dial Press.
LaTonya Yvette is a multimedia storyteller well-known for her expansive 13-year-old career in the industry. Compassionate leadership, creative community-building, and culture remain central to her work. Her newest book, Stand In My Window will be published by Dial Press on November 12th, 2024. Yvette's first book, Woman of Color, was included in an installation of Jay-Z's personal bookshelf for Brooklyn Public Library's Book of HOV exhibit. She also co-authored the illustrated children's book The Hair Book with Amanda Jane Jones. Yvette is the owner and steward of The Mae House, an upstate New York rental property and the home of Rest as Residency, which offers BIPOC families a no-cost place for rest and focus. She consults and contracts with various organizations regarding storytelling, creative direction, copywriting, curating, building and maintaining digital and editorial communities with a focus on care and impact.
LaTonya Yvette and Rachel Cargle on Reclaiming Rituals of Home
11.26.2024
Words by Rachel Cargle
Photographs by LaTonya Yvette
In a world of overlapping crises, the Stand In My Window author speaks with Cargle about how homemaking can foster healing and collective care.
In a world where we are navigating polycrises—a situation where multiple crises happen at once or in close succession, and where the crises’ effects worsen each other—it can be hard to imagine where to begin taking action toward justice. Multimedia storyteller, mother, and friend LaTonya Yvette suggests starting at home. Throughout the archive of her writing and most prominently in her new book, Stand In My Window, LaTonya reframes homemaking as an expression of rather than a response to crisis, offering fresh insights into the intersection of domestic life and social justice.
Stand In My Window is made up of 11 personal essays and 25 photographs that serve as a reminder of how homemaking can be an act of resistance to oppressive systems. Drawing from her personal history and family traditions, LaTonya positions the daily rituals of home—from floor-waxing to laundry-folding—as foundational practices that transcend the circumstances of the individuals. Central to her philosophy is the understanding that homemaking exists as both personal practice and collective offering; that how we build a home can shape our mind and our soul—and help heal our communities.
This idea finds physical expression in The Mae House, LaTonya’s Hudson Valley property, which is also a namesake of her late grandmother. By honoring the long tradition of mutual support within communities of color, The Mae House is activism in practice as a space that embodies her belief in land stewardship and collective care, and by offering rest and refuge to those in need.
LaTonya’s work reminds us that homemaking is an ongoing creative act that nurtures both individual and collective well-being. Below, LaTonya sits down with Atmos to discuss the radical act of framing domestic space as a site of continuous creation and how the art of making home can foster justice and healing in contemporary society.
Rachel Cargle
You say that homemaking is not a response to anything. Instead, it is something inherent to how we show up to life. I was going to ask how homemaking is a response to the polycrisis that Black, Indigenous and people of color are facing. To respect what you’ve said, I’ll instead ask you this instead: How has homemaking been a medicine in these times of desperation?
LaTonya Yvette
There you go, it’s medicinal. I’m trying to move away from resiliency as a badge of honor. I think we’re so used to Black people being in response to what whiteness has done or how it has harmed us.
I can give imagery on how this shows up for me: Sonya Massey was killed in her apartment in July [by two Sangamon County sheriff’s deputies who responded to Massey’s 911 call about a possible prowler at her home]. Four days later, I still went on and had the birthday party I had planned before the news of her murder. People danced in my living room and danced in my backyard. I saw people in my house, all different kinds of people, and I was blasting music, and I was dancing. Having people in my living room is not only something that I know how to do, it’s something we [Black women] know how to do: create a safe space. It was medicinal for me and for everybody else. It wasn’t about getting tougher or pushing against anything, it actually was just about coming together to heal one another.
When I started writing this book I was thinking that all we do is “in response.” As I ended the book I realized this is what we’ve always done. I don’t want people to get used to being resilient against these crises, right? I think that’s the refrain from saying “homemaking is a response.” I don’t want to normalize Black people, Indigenous people having to be resilient against these things.
“Having people in my living room is not only something that I know how to do, it’s something we [Black women] know how to do: create a safe space.”
LaTonya Yvette
Author, Stand In My Window
Rachel
I’m intrigued by the way that you structured your book. The two parts are titled “Exhale” and “Inhale.” How did you come to decide that you wanted to tell the story of home through the framework of breath?
Yvette
In meditation, you inhale first and then you exhale. But in the book they’re reversed, you exhale and then you inhale. I think our breath is one of the most important things that we have. It’s the thing that we have control over to restart the day. As someone who’s suffered with anxiety throughout my life, it’s actually the most important component to reset; to feel safe. The book is a meditation in itself. The reverse of the exhale and the inhale is an invitation for the reader to dig in first—and then you can do the action.
In 2020 we were marching using the language “I can’t breathe,” right? Our breath speaks directly to health, to the environment, to climate, ultimately to justice.
Rachel
You saying that is making me think of home in the context of community care, offering each other our own justice.
Yvette
There you go.
Rachel
It’s interesting that homemaking is both deeply for ourselves and also for others who might come visit.
Yvette
Yes, we’re always holding space for other people. The birthday party that I mentioned earlier, that gathering, was part of the care. Not asking “are you okay enough to still make it,” but instead making the party itself the place where people can feel cared for.
Rachel
You know, you don’t make a home once. It’s daily practice. I think at some point we recognize that home is the headquarters for our shared love, our shared celebration. We must keep these things sacred.
Yvette
Yes, for sure. I also think by creating space for the ancestors in our home, we also are trying to move the spirit of these people, whether they’re here or not around us. That, too, is an act of community. That, too, is an act of care.
The book starts out with the story of my mom and her relationship with waxing the floors of whatever home we lived in. My dad was traditionally the person who waxed the floors, and my then mom became the one who would wax the floors after he left. We moved a lot, and she did it in every freaking apartment, even though she had a full time job. I didn’t understand. Mary Catherine Bateson has a quote where she suggests where we spend our money, where we spend our time—that’s all art-making. How do we make our homes? Like painting a canvas, you get to make something, and you get to change the shape of it, and you get to be like, “I like the way it feels when it’s like this, maybe tomorrow I’ll try something else.” Homemaking is part of that. We get to make art every day.
Rachel
We’ve been speaking in quite abstract and philosophical ways about home so far. I want to move into talking about the more tactical; about home being a curated expression of who we are. I’m interested to know what parts of your own home reveal about yourself these days? How can we remember ourselves through how we curate and care for our homes?
“Our home can stand as a reminder and a reflection of where we are in life.”
LaTonya Yvette
Author, Stand In My Window
Yvette
I’ve been doing this thing where I am lighting candles all day long when I usually only light candles when I’m writing. I have been using it as a way to encourage myself toward the work—even in these times when I don’t necessarily feel like it. But lighting those candles is a subtle way to invite myself back to the page.
I’m also rearranging my furniture. I wasn’t sleeping right and I rearranged things back to the place it was when we first moved here. It was a literal recalibration, but it also offered myself a recalibration, a rearranging, a reorienting that I could feel in myself as I embarked on new chapters of life. Much like putting this book out into the world. Our home can stand as a reminder and a reflection of where we are in life.
Rachel
And how is The Mae House? You purchased the Hudson Valley home to be a refuge for you and your children, and in essence of care and community you have offered it as a space of rest as well. You’re quoted saying, “I felt connected to the premise that we are here on earth to be caregivers; that land doesn’t belong to us and we’re just timekeepers of it. I was also thinking about how Black people and people of color have always taken care of each other and allowed each other space to rest.” I’m interested in hearing how The Mae House is both your art and your activism?
Yvette
I always say it’s my living art. I borrow that language from Linda Good Bryant who says that her gardens were her living art. [The Mae House] is definitely my living art project, but it’s also my charge. It’s my activism, right? It has given me a solid place to show up not only for my own friends and family, but also for the community of people who pour into the House and its services and of course those who benefit from it—most pointedly Black women and other people of color. For example, there’s someone coming who has lost their job and requested a discounted rate. It moves me to think that she’s trusting the house to take care of her—and I am trusting it, too.
Interview with Author & Stylist LaTonya Yvette
By: Michele Kirichanskaya
Jul 13, 2022
LaTonya Yvette was born in Brooklyn, New York with three brothers and one sister. It is the same place she now calls home with her daughter, River and her son Oak. She began her career as a stylist, where she often helped women and new mothers dress for their changing bodies and roles. LaTonya attended college for a BA in writing and literature, and later left to focus on motherhood and forge a path between her expanding worlds and roles.
I had the opportunity to interview LaTonya, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourselves?
I’m a writer, author, and mother of two amazing kiddos. I also have had a lifestyle blog, LY for over 10 years that I spent a lot of time writing about HAIR! The Hair Book is my first children’s book and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be on this journey with Amanda.
What can you tell us about your book, The Hair Book? Where did the inspiration for this story come from?
The Hair Book was born out of a lot of discussions on hair in my own family (I have an afro, my son Oak says he has poofy hair and River said she has curly hair). Hair, the story of it, the many layers of it, and the beauty and acceptance of it has been part of our growing process as a family. And just like our board book, looking in the mirror, touching it, feeling amazing about it, accepting it, and telling people, to not touch it, has been part of that too! As my children get older, these messages when they were young have been part of who they are, and I can see the benefits of instilling these messages at such a young age. And to that end, it was so important to teach young children (that are not our own) about acceptance, diversity, and ultimately, love.
How would you describe the creative process? What are some of your favorite things about writing/ illustrating?
I’m currently writing a bigger adult book (my second) and writing this children’s book was a complete joy and relief. It’s such a different process. Instead of trying to wrap a story with many words (an adult book) with the kids book you’re trying to simplify, engage, and inspire with as few as possible—which is a task in and of its own!
What are some of your favorite examples of picture books growing up and now?
My children and I have been reading a lot of my favorites as they’ve gotten older. But lately, we have been picking up Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold again because of her show at The New Museum. It’s still such a powerfully gorgeous book that with each detailed illustration pulls the reader in.
For those curious about the process behind a picture book, how would you describe the process?
I’ll leave that all to the master of it, Amanda. But I will say it’s more tedious than I assumed. Every little thing matters, needs to be reviewed, revised, and watched.
What goes into writing one and collaborating with an artist/writer to translate into The Hair Book?
I would say it takes a lot of care. You have to care about the artist, you have to care about the writer, you have to care about the reader and you have to care about the message!
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
What do you think kids and babies will say when they see the mirror in the back of the board book?
“OHHHH!”
What advice might you have to give for aspiring writers/illustrators, especially picture book writers?
Keep going
Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?
I’m currently editing my third book, Stand In My Window: Meditations on Home and How We Make It with Dial Press (2023) and renting The Mae House, a rental project and a BIPOC Rest as Residency project in upstate, New York
Finally, what are some books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
We love Ada Twist Scientist in this house, I also love Amanda’s other children’s book, Yummy Yummy Yuck, when we want a good cuddle cry, Ida Always, Amazing Grace.
YVETTE, Latonya. The Hair Book. illus. by Amanda Jane Jones. 36p. Sterling. Apr. 2022. Tr $14.99. ISBN 9781454944324.
PreS-Gr 2--Readers explore the world of hair in this inclusive book. Vibrant illustrations depict an individual donning a particular hairstyle, with accompanying text describing the look in two or three words: "long hair," "short hair," "cornrow hair," "afro hair," and so on. Yvette features a number of diverse hairstyles throughout this book, including a woman covering her hair with a hijab and a young boy wearing a kippah over his hair. The book's conclusion reminds readers that no matter their style of hair, they are welcome anywhere. Jones's striking spreads include bold and eye-catching colors that celebrate the diversity of beauty. This title, with all the comfort and generosity of Todd Parr's inclusive books, would be an excellent complement for either Sharee Miller's Princess Hair or Matthew A. Cherry's Hair Love. VERDICT Joyful and affirming, this is recommended for purchase for all collections. --Olivia Gorecke
Caption: The Hair Book (Yvette) [C]2022 by Amanda Jane Jones
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Gorecke, Olivia. "YVETTE, Latonya. The Hair Book." School Library Journal, vol. 68, no. 3, Mar. 2022, pp. 91+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A695376067/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c441331a. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.
Stand in My Window: Meditations on Home and How We Make It
LaTonya Yvette. Dial, $29 (224p) ISBN 978-0-593-24241-4
Yvette (Woman of Color) explores the meaning of home in this lyrical essay collection. With chapters devoted to cooking, cleaning, and growing plants, Yvette considers how homemaking tasks have played out across generations, both in history and in her own family. For example, she links the Atlanta washerwomen's strike of 1881 to the care she brings to hand-drying clothes, feeling grateful for "the women who came decades before I did" and allowed her to do so in "the comfort of my own home, during hours of my own making." By finding meaning in other mundane tasks (hanging curtains, organizing a junk drawer), Yvette locates the spiritual quality of homemaking: "This is life at home, we piece together broken bits and reshuffle the mess, even though nobody sees it but us." Elsewhere, she details her recent purchase of a 200-year-old house in the Catskills, which she plans to refashion into a residency for BIPOC artists and their families. Unfortunately, Yvette's unwaveringly sunny descriptions of domestic life lose some of their luster as the collection wears on, and she offers fewer of the glimpses into her personal life that distinguish the early entries. Still, more often than not, her insightful musings brim with quietly radical insight. Readers will be rapt. Photos. Agent: Andrianna deLone, CAA. (Nov.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"Stand in My Window: Meditations on Home and How We Make It." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 36, 23 Sept. 2024, p. 46. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A810712176/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=dff12111. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.
Yvette, LaTonya STAND IN MY WINDOW Dial Press (NonFiction None) $29.00 11, 12 ISBN: 9780593242414
A meditation on the messy intricacies and enduring comforts of home.
Yvette's relationship to the construction of "home" is colored by both her childhood and her motherhood, by her art, her race, and a series of influences she has absorbed in multiple spheres and spaces. This collection transmits the weights of these forces, turning a penetrating eye toward everything from clotheslines and desks to divorce and eviction proceedings. Yvette sketches her personal narrative, including a youth marked with housing uncertainty and instability, her experience as a single mother during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, and her being forced to vacate her home in 2021. She shades in these contours with the richness of both personal reflection and the wisdom, creativity, and scholarship of Black elders like James Baldwin, Lucille Clifton, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, framing chapters with photographs of her Brooklyn apartment and the Hudson Valley home--Mae House--that she purchased to provide an affordable retreat for Black families. The range and dimensions of the author's subjects and sources compile and overlap, building the vision of home as a place for looking both inward and outward, to the past and to the future. With a keen eye and lyrical empathy, the author attends to the possibilities and limitations of the physical outlines and objects of home, while recognizing the people who mourn, bond, collaborate, and celebrate within it. As she sifts through the violations of police shootings, sexual assault, flooding and fires, and the march of unfair housing practices, land theft, and gentrification, Yvette demonstrates that, for Black women in particular, home--its sheen, its allure, its security, or its remaking--cannot be separated from its entanglement with attacks upon and within it, the labor it extracts, or notions of ownership.
A poetically reverent inspection of safety, embodiment, and inheritance through the lens of inhabiting space.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Yvette, LaTonya: STAND IN MY WINDOW." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A811898475/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=31703b1c. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.