Goodreads asked Susan DuFresne:

How do you get inspired to write?

Susan DuFresne As a teacher, I am first inspired by the impacts of institutional racism on the children and families in my classroom and across our nation - by the haunting impacts on children I have not known personally through history - and by their continuous struggle to resist.

In the summer of 2017, I spend 6 weeks researching the history of institutional racism in our public schools and viewing hundreds of images from primary sources. Reading and viewing these resources definitely inspired me to paint and write!

My book is a call for the re-Imagining of public schools as places of racial justice that welcome every child – in a society that recognizes the nation has an ethical responsibility to honor the civil rights of every child and to ensure that each child has the very finest education U.S. public schools can provide.

As an artist and illustrator, I am inspired to create visual images in the hope they will have an impact on viewers. My hope is that my images will incite viewers to not only empathize with the people I have painted, but then to utilize that empathy to engage and act upon it in ways that lead to the re-imagining our public schools - and ultimately on our society.

flag