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<\/p>\nBALTIMORE \u2014 They call her \u2018Coloring Book Girl.\u2019<\/p>\n
Naomi Winston made her first coloring book at age 18, for her young cousins, then seven and four, who experienced colorism.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Watch as Naomi Winston describes her coloring book<\/p>\n
Empowering youth and adults through the power of coloring books<\/p>\n
\u201cI took them to the park and in no short words, they refused to get out the car because they didn\u2019t want to get too dark,\u201d says Winston,\u201cSo, I got a bunch of Black women at my university, at Xavier University which is the only Catholic HBCU in the country, and I designed this coloring book to help little Black girls learn how to love themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
From that one book, Winston has created an empire, The Creative Representation Empire. She\u2019s publishing multicultural, affirmation coloring books that include inspirational messages, poems and stories.<\/p>\n
You are enough. You are whole, beautiful and enough just as you are. Yes. Even while you are working being on a better or best version of yourself. Look into the mirror knowing that you are an amazing, beautiful, intellectual and irreplaceable human being.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her coloring books have now reached 25,000 youth in five countries, helping them navigate loneliness, self-confidence and life transitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the Black boys\u2019 book, one of the lines of the poems that I wrote is \u2018I may not understand how you feel as a Black man, but I love you just the same,\u2019 she says. \u201cI received a two-page email. It was this father, pouring his heart out about how much the book meant to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winston also collaborates with local cultural groups, like \u2018Thiyospaye,\u2019 for Native American LifeLines, \u2018Living Flowers,\u2019 an homage to Baltimore\u2019s Black creatives. And her newest, a bilingual Hispanic culture book, dropped this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause our coloring books use real images, they\u2019re really curated from communities across the globe, I like to say that we create physical manifestations of community through our coloring books that youth may not have growing up,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Some of the coloring books include her personal experiences. Like \u2018Find Your Village,\u2019 with a page of her and the friends she made when she first moved to Baltimore three years ago, and a page that reminds her of Louisiana home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my grandmother\u2019s house, this is actually the pattern from the sofa that she had in her living room,\u201d she says. \u201cYou know, all Black people have a living room you\u2019re not allowed to sit in. So, this is from that sofa. And this was the last Christmas that we all really spent at my grandmother\u2019s house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adults are enjoying Winston\u2019s coloring books, too, using them for art and therapy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got frustrated trying to do my taxes, and so I decided to color,\u201d she says. \u201cSo, this is your note that coloring is helpful for everyone, not just kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now 25, Winston is creating a more culturally representative world\u2026one page, one coloring book at a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BALTIMORE \u2014 They call her \u2018Coloring Book Girl.\u2019 Naomi Winston made her first coloring book at age 18,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":108619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,69244,69245,69246,171,69241,69242,69247,69248,69243,67,132,68,69249,69250],"class_list":{"0":"post-108618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-coloring-book","10":"tag-coloring-book-for-black-girls","11":"tag-colorism","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-lifelines","14":"tag-living-flowers","15":"tag-multicultural-coloring-books","16":"tag-naomi-winston","17":"tag-thiyospaye","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-wmar-2-news","22":"tag-wmar-2-news-baltimore"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114950127381714686","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}