Image of the Week: Tumani's Nap
© Durga Yael Bernhard
Last week my congregation's rabbi sent out a letter with a photo of George Floyd as a toddler, sleeping on his mama's chest as she beams at the camera. A child's life begins so sweetly! Everything seems possible for that new little being. And a mother's hope for the life she has born is so pure.
As soon as I saw that photo, this illustration I painted in 1996 for A Ride on Mother's Back came to mind. The scene is a village somewhere near the border between Guinea and Mali, West Africa – and this little boy, Tumani, is one of twelve children in the book who are being carried through everyday activities that teach them about the world they live in. Each spread visits a different culture in which babies and toddlers are still, today, carried on the loving and active body of a family member – usually the mother, but often a father, sibling, or grandparent.
The point of this book is not only to show children the incredibly colorful diversity of our world, but to demonstrate the ways that no matter how different, all children are the same. Little Tumani has been lulled to sleep by his mother's steady gait, just as on another page, baby Mai is rocked by the motion of her grandmother threshing rice in Thailand. Just as newborn Rosha is jiggled in her mother's shawl as corn is ground in Guatemala. Just as young George sinks into his mother's body, like an angel at peace.
If the woman in this picture turned around, she could be George's mother. How might her son's life have turned out differently, had she lived in a different cultural context?
Like anti-Semitism, racism flourishes in the soil of ignorance. We must teach our children wisely. One of my favorite Jewish blessings begins with a verse that the soul of each person is pure. To be pure is to be of one substance – not mixed, not adulterated. We don't stay that way. We grow up and become adults. But a pure kernel remains. Beneath the layers of acquired conditioning, we all have an original self. Let's teach our children to know and value that little kernel in themselves and others, so that differences are something to appreciate and celebrate, not to fear or hate.
A Ride on Mother's Back is still in print after 23 years –
the longest of any children's book I've written or illustrated.
You can get a signed copy here, or find it on Amazon.
A good week to all –
D Yael Bernhard