Inspiring women on the silver screen: Dolores Huerta and Billie Jean King

Dolores1

Dolores Huerta leads the audience in chanting “Who’s got the power? We’ve got the power!” at a screening of the new documentary about her life, Dolores, in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 15. Photo by Kara Newhouse.

On any given day I’m much more likely to be found reading a book than watching a movie. But tell me about a film featuring rad women in history, and I’m in. I recently wrote about two such films.

In a piece for Excelle Sports, I interviewed female sports leaders such as Olympian Nancy Lieberman and Peachy Kellmeyer, the first full-time employee for the Women’s Tennis Association, about their memories of the Battle of the Sexes. That historic tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs is the subject of a new movie with Emma Stone and Steve Carell. The women I spoke with all shared powerful stories about how the real event affected their lives as women in sports.

For Images & Voices of Hope, I wrote about Dolores, a documentary about farmworker organizer Dolores Huerta, a critical leader in the grape boycott of the 1960s and 1970s. The story includes video clips of Dolores from the post-screening Q&A I attended in D.C.

On the kidlit front, if you’re interested in sharing the stories of these women with your children or classrooms, check out Dolores Huerta: A Hero to Migrant Workers by Sarah Warren. Surprisingly, I was unable to find any standalone picture book biographies about Billie Jean King, though she does appear in some sports anthologies for children.

 

Who was Pura Belpré?

Storyteller's Candle

I’ve come across mentions of the Pura Belpré awards a few times in recent months. There are lots of children’s writing awards, mostly named after literary figures, so I hadn’t taken time to find out who Pura Belpré was.

Then I read “The Storyteller’s Candle/La Velita de Los Cuentos,” written by Lucía González and illustrated by Lulu Delacre. This picture book is historical fiction that highlights Belpré’s impact on Latino children and families. It features text in both English and Spanish.

In 1929, two children, Hildamar and Santiago, are enduring the biting New York City winter — a harsh change from there native Puerto Rico. On their cold walks to school they gaze at the grand public library building, wondering what’s inside. Their aunt tells them it’s not a place for Spanish speakers.

Enter Pura Belpré, the city’s first Latina librarian.

She visits Hildamar and Santiago’s school to tell stories and perform a puppet show. She invites all the children to the library, saying, “La biblioteca es para todos.”

The library is for everyone.

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Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote

Pancho Rabbit and Coyote

It’s a good sign to me when I finish a picture book and immediately start writing down questions for the author, or Googling their name to find out their biography, their motivations for writing kidlit, and titles of their other works.

So it was with “Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote,” a 2013 book written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh. (I reviewed “Dear Primo,” also by Tonatiuh, last month.)

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