Local author brings Black storytelling home with a reading at the Obama Presidential Center's Chicago Public Library branch

Dr. Ebony Joy Wilkins captivated families with a reading of her latest picture book, “Zora, the Story Keeper,” bringing Black storytelling to the heart of the South Side.

Ebony Wilkins, A Black woman with a dark skin tone and box braids, sits as she reads to a group of children with a range of light to dark skin tones at the Chicago Public Library Branch at the Obama Presidential Center. Her hands are spread out. She is smiling.

During the historic opening weekend of the new Chicago Public Library branch at the Obama Presidential Center, award-winning author Dr. Ebony Joy Wilkins captivated families with a reading of her latest book, “Zora, the Story Keeper,” bringing Black storytelling to the heart of the South Side community.

"Our stories connect us," Dr. Wilkins said. "And Zora, the Story Keeper" is one of my favorites that I've written. It's a very powerful story about family, about connection, about reconnecting, about storytelling, and it was very fitting just for this moment at the children's library, especially on the opening weekend."

"Zora, the Story Keeper" follows a young girl entrusted with preserving her family's most precious memories and narratives across generations.

A shot of Ebony Wilkins, A Black woman with a dark skin tone and box braids, reads her book to a group of children with a range of light to dark skin tones at the Chicago Public Library Branch at the Obama Presidential Center.

Shelly Quiles, a South Shore resident and trauma therapist who attended with her husband, Timothy, and their three children, has had a copy of “Zora” for some time but admitted she had never made it to the final pages.

"I always start crying and don't finish it," she said with a smile. "So this was actually the very first time I heard the end."

For Timothy Quiles, a carpenter foreman turned concrete superintendent who spent nearly three years helping construct the Obama Presidential Center, the reading hit differently.

"I feel like in this society now, a lot of stories are trying to be erased: of our culture, of our history," he said. "It's our job, our role, even now more than ever before, to continue to share these stories."

“Zora, the Story Keeper” is among 13 books by the Champaign, Illinois-born and Midwest-raised author, Dr. Ebony Wilkins, who has also written two books for adults, education research, and English language arts curriculum. Her work consistently centers Black voices, Black families, and the kind of representation she herself searched for as a child growing up in libraries.

"When I was younger, the books I was pulling from the library were characters who reflected my experience, who looked like me," she shared. "And that's part of the reason I wanted to start writing my own stories because I ran out of those."

“ I want Black children to be able to see themselves in the stories. I want them to know that their voices have value and that they can also be writers, they can be doctors, they can be lawyers, they can be scientists, and they can be story keepers like Zora.”
–Dr. Ebony Joy Wilkins

Dr. Alana Gunn, a professor of criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois Chicago and a close colleague and friend of Dr. Wilkins, attended the reading as well. For her, “Zora, the Story Keeper” represents something the publishing world has long needed.

"She really beautifully brings us into the story in a way that isn't jarring. That shows compassion and love, but also honesty, and that's something we haven't always done for children," Dr. Gunn shared.

Dr. Wilkins is founder of Curriculum Cafe and an associate professor and director of English and humanities at National Louis University, where she teaches first-generation college students. She says the work of representation is inseparable from the work of possibility.

"I want Black children to be able to see themselves in the stories," she said proudly. "I want them to know that their voices have value and that they can also be writers, they can be doctors, they can be lawyers, they can be scientists, and they can be story keepers like Zora."