Women’s Basketball Coloring Book Inspired by Today’s WNBA

Malena Amusa receives her “flowers” ​​for creating “Dribble and Dream,” a women’s basketball-inspired coloring book created to give young girls reading and writing skills, exercise, creativity and self-confidence.

The recognition is deserved, but her path to this moment is just one step in a unique career, with chapters as a journalist, a renowned African dancer and even an artist in one of the most important African circuses in the world.

She’s thrilled with the reception to the coloring book she created largely for her daughters, Mazi and Imah (ages 6 and 2). But her real joy, she says, is knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had the “boldness to honor” the person she was meant to be.

Amusa is the youngest child of Wale A. Amusa, a former staff member in the administration of Freeman Bosley, Jr., St. Louis’ first black mayor.

Malena Amusa, 40, said most of her African influence comes not from her father, who is from Nigeria, but from her mother, a former nurse at Homer G. Phillips Hospital.

“My father was concerned about democratic reformism,” Amusa recalls.

“He instilled leadership in me while my mother introduced me to Afrocentric culture through African dance classes. So I mostly learned about Africa through African Americans.”

Amusa, the youngest of five children, attended Metro High School. She described herself as a “studious child” who was the “lead debater” on the school’s debate team. She saw journalism as a way to express her opinion and “change the world.”

But in high school, Amusa was introduced to local “master teachers” such as DeBorah Ahmed, Moustapha Bangoura, Sandella Malloy and Diadie Bathily, who she says helped her explore and define her artistic talent and her “fiery Nigerian roots.”

After graduating from Metro, Amusa attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism, then went to Columbia University in New York for her master’s degree.

Amusa has interned in journalism with the Washington DC African American newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, and the South African Mail & Guardian. Not only has she taken dance classes and performed in every city where she interned, Amusa has also found time to tour the world with Cirque Zuma Zuma, the world’s largest African circus. Through dance and cultural activities, she has performed in 45 states, on 3 continents, and in front of hundreds of thousands of people. of people.

Although Amusa has said she “planned to live in New York forever,” her mother’s cancer diagnosis and a fractured personal relationship ultimately convinced her to return home in 2016, where she embarked on the process of recovery for both her mother and herself.

In St. Louis, Amusa continued to work as a freelance journalist. But in search of additional income, she branched out into corporate communications, while also starting her own dance company, Add Life! World.

After meeting and marrying in 2017, Amusa discovered that starting a family would lead her professional interests more toward education. She published her first book, “Colors of Africa,” designed, she says, “to teach children how to identify, read, and say colors based on all the colors that can be found in African culture.”

“They can find out why the Nile (river) has a blue sheen or how gold came from the Ashanti Empire. It gives them knowledge and history with an (Afrocentric) skill set,” Amusa added.

She then founded her own educational resources company, Jaifunde, and published ““Come on, 2, 3, 4!”, a math activity book for ages 3 and up, inspired, she says, by the “geometric formations of black hair.”

Amusa said she wants African-American children to know that math is not just in their heads, but on their heads. Math, she insists, is within the radius of a fade or in the context of a parabular (a U-shaped curve that often appears in mathematics). The Gateway Arch is an example of parabular math, Amusa says … a formula that a child with braids on his head can use to understand math.

Amusa, who has found success in the educational book field, said she never dreamed of writing a book about basketball. That was before the careers of basketball players Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark took off.

“When Angel won the championship at LSU (in 2023), I had never seen anything like it,” Amusa recalled. “I was blown away by the style she brought to the field.”

Her admiration for Reese led her to become hooked on women’s college basketball, “which led me to watch the WNBA,” Amusa said. “And then the whole rivalry between Reese and Caitlin (Clark) …”

She said her daughters began to notice their mother spending hours and hours playing basketball and wondered, “What’s going on?”

“Then they started watching the games with me and asking questions like ‘what does a point bracket mean?’ … they made it an educational experience,” Amusa said.

The real “spark” that led to the coloring book’s production, Amusa admitted, was the WNBA game in May, where Reese was choked to the ground by Connecticut Sun player Alyssa Thomas during the 86-82 win over Reese’s team, the Chicago Sky.

“Everyone was going to come away with their own stories. They were going to call these players ‘bully’ or ‘angry black women’ and all these derogatory things.

“For my girls, I wanted to define this moment for us,” Amusa continued. “So I decided that we were going to launch our love for basketball into a platform for our own self-confidence. We’re going to use it to elevate each other and to elevate ourselves.”

Amusa was further emboldened by her daughter’s reaction to the coloring book.

“I’ve created books like a math book for black farmers, where kids can count seeds and rows of crops, and my daughters were like, ‘OK, we’re done with that,’” Amusa laughed. “But when I gave them Dribble Dream … they asked for it every night … they’re so engrossed in it.”

Amusa said Mazi and Imah are particularly drawn to the book’s “design challenge” pages where children can design their own championship jerseys, shoes and trophies.

“When you ask children to not “They just color along the lines, but when you ask them to impose their own vision of design, it opens up a different register in their brain, to imagine a world that reflects what they like.”

To take it a step further, Amusa said, “There are coloring pages, vocabulary pages, a writing prompt where they write down their dreams, and design challenges. It moves the learning from reception to creativity and from design to independence.”

Updates are planned for the coloring book. Amusa wants to add Napheesa Collier, a graduate of Incarnate Word High School and WNBA star with the Minnesota Lynx.

“It’s very important for the girls to know her (Collier) story,” Amusa said with a big smile. “She was selected to the Olympic All-Star basketball team. She’s like the Lisa Leslie (former Los Angeles Sparks player) of Missouri…she represents us.”

In response to friends who she called Amusa and said, “wait a minute, I have boys…” she also plans to make a Dribble & Dream book for boys.

When asked if she was happy with her current life, Amusa’s response was a nuanced reflection of her gifts, life experiences and self-discovery.

“I am happy, but not because I am comfortable, at ease, rich or even free all the time. God has given me incredible vision, dreams, color-coded ideas and the confidence to make those dreams come true. I can be nothing but a creative, African dancing, storytelling, nurturing, inspiring and caring mom.

“The fact that I had the audacity to honor who I am and create a path for myself… well, that makes me happy.”

Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.

Buy, download or print “Dribble and Dream” on Jaifunde.com