Mariyka Foster’s children’s book pokes at gender norms

“Leo sighed. Mom and Mama had told him to play quietly while they worked. All. Afternoon. He grabbed his favorite pink marker and started coloring …”

He begins with his coloring book and, enamored at the transformation of his pink marker on its pages, he feels inspired to reimagine the gray and drab world of the junkyard around him and does so, pinking one item at a time. The boy begins to paint the town pink, as it were, and feels a deep satisfaction with the way his pink marker can soften the landscape of this marooned afternoon in the junkyard.

Credit: Courtesy of Peachtree Publishing

Credit: Courtesy of Peachtree Publishing

Leo’s love of the color pink and his enthusiasm of his marker’s ability to change all that’s around him to a blush of sweetness speaks to the power of color and the sacredness of finding your favorite one. He gets so carried away with the power of pink in his palm, it’s only after he makes a blush majesty of his world does he consider whether he should have asked permission. The story offers a glorious plot twist to what the reader might expect when a child decides to make art in his mundane surroundings.

And yet, Leo’s favorite color isn’t just any color, but a color with fraught cultural definitions in our recent history. Pink is a color that, as pale as it can be, is not neutral in society and is meant to stay in its place, specifically at an arm’s length from masculinity. It is a color that is associated with the soft and feminine. Even before a child enters the planet, if they are to be assigned female at birth, pink is the color that is used to say, “It’s a girl!”

Credit: Courtesy of Peachtree Publishing

Credit: Courtesy of Peachtree Publishing

The color pink is typically read as highly gendered, and the roots of its association with femininity begin where a lot of phenomena begin: capitalism.

“Post World War II, this bright color became more gender-coded than ever,” writes trend consultant Sam Trotman, “largely due to the fact that corporations began marketing the color as a symbol of hyper-femininity, which would cement the ‘pink for girls, blue for boys’ stereotype.”

Reading “Leo and the Pink Marker” makes me think of another Black man who loves the color pink: Cam’ron. The Harlem rapper shook the hip-hop world by wearing a bubblegum pink fur jacket with a matching fur hat to Fashion Week in 2002. In a rap game that had largely begun to be associated with a variety of hyper-masculinity that was also “architectured” by the flattening greed of the record industry, Cam’ron adorned himself in furry pink softness unapologetically.

Some tastemakers were aghast that a rapper would wear the color pink, and not just once — and not just one piece — but from head to toe, as a brand. Soon, all over Harlem and worldwide, we saw cisgendered, heterosexual Black men rocking pink polos, button-ups, hoodies and fitted caps with no concern for being judged. Cam’ron’s pink boldness gave them permission. Cam’ron, like Leo, drew outside of the lines of what was expected of him as a young, Black man and asserted that he contained creative multitudes that could not be repressed but instead needed space to blossom in a vibrant, rosy blush hue.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mariyka Foster

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mariyka Foster

“Leo and the Pink Marker,” the first children’s book by SCAD graduate Maryika Foster, is a bold, sweet and thoughtful reflection of her creative style and storytelling, which has always included diverse and playful expressions with emotional depth. Her art and illustrations (she is an illustrator by profession, working at children’s apparel company Carter’s, where she illustrates graphics and repeat patterns for pajamas) have a vibrant and whimsical element to them that feel connected to the modern realm of kids’ illustrators such as Vashti Harrison. They also are in the legacy of children’s illustrators such as Leo Lionni, Maurice Sendak and, of course, Crockett Johnson, who wrote “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” another book about how a colorful art supply can lead to cathartic play for a child.

“Leo and the Pink Marker” is a debut that both affirms the importance of a child’s imagination and reflects the reality and simplicity of multicultural and LGBTQIA families. In the book, the color pink is associated with love, romance, calmness and nurturing, as Leo experiences when using the color in the most intimate ways: “Leo colored the front door of their trailer. And Mama’s tall boots. And their cat, Hambone.”

I resonated with this book, because I, too, have been a devotee of pink after years of rebelling against it as a color for femininity and fragility. Now I use it to bring me joy, calm and express sweetness.

For my wedding, I dyed my hair pink, three rooms in my house are painted pink and, in my old apartment, my bedroom was painted pink, too. Something about its softness, its tenderness and also quiet vibrancy shifts the energy and conveys its own power, which we see Leo galvanize with his pink marker, wielding it like a magic wand. Any child reading this will be inspired by the way that Leo moves to the beat of his own drum and colors to the desires of his own pink heart.

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Junauda Petrus is an abolitionist, writer, filmmaker and performance artist of Trinidadian and Crucian descent. Her first book, “The Stars and The Blackness Between Them,” received the Coretta Scott King Book Award. Her children’s book, “Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers?” is inspired by an abolitionist future.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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