Dads and Public Spaces

Posted on April 21, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

When I was a little girl I went everywhere my Daddy. I often had solo trips to a store, a library, and the park with my school teacher Mama too, but I was a Daddy’s Girl. I remember when it was just the two of us and I had to use the restroom, Daddy and I would often run into a woman who was a friend of our family and she would take me into the women’s restroom so I could do my business.

On many occasions when I was small and I had to use the restroom, Daddy would place his hands over my eyes, walk into the men’s restroom and yell, “Father coming in with his daughter; zip it up or hide it!” He would find a stall with a door, line the toilet seat with paper and then sit me on it.

I bring this up because public spaces like restrooms were not designed for fathers and daughters nor fathers with infants. A mother could take her little ones of any gender and age into the women’s restroom. Dads could certainly take sons into the men’s restroom. My Daddy, like so many other Black fathers I knew defied the limitations of public spaces. He never once said that he couldn’t take me with him somewhere because he wasn’t sure if I could use the restroom.

If you are one of my subscribers on Substack, you have probably seen a few videos on my feed of The Library Dads, which is a non-profit organization that has scheduled weekly library visits for Dads with their children at the public library. It was founded in Atlanta by a young father named Khari Arnold who took his 4-month-old daughter to the library to familiarize her with books. That was her first of many visits.

Arnold noticed a strikingly advanced development of his daughter’s cognitive skills over the course of a year because he read to her all the time. This program is designed to help fathers become involved in the educational and literacy development of their children; and to deepen their bonds with their children. That’s Khari Arnold on the far left in the top photo.

What struck me about The Library Dads was not just their active engagement with their offspring every Saturday at the public library, but also their pushback against the limits of certain public spaces that are less accommodating for fathers and their small children.

My Mama and Daddy took me to the library regularly as did many of the Black parents I knew growing up. I know they both would be impressed with The Library Dads for a variety of reasons. Yet, I must add one more reason that helps us all…

In addition to these young men taking responsibility for their children’s education and development, they also shift the narrative that tends to center on mothers as almost solely responsible for their children’s development. They are a most welcome pushback on the confining and inaccurate gender definitions that the Western world imposes on us all. Go Library Dads!

©️Leslye Joy Allen

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Walk With a Book

Posted on January 25, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I remember the first time I heard someone say, “If you want to hide something, hide it in a book.” The comment depressed me.

When you are a historian, you have books everywhere. You have to read all the time. I have not seen the top of my dining room table in nearly 15 years as it is covered with stacks of books. Books occupy every nook and cranny of my home.

With the United States ranking 36th in the world for literacy, with a 79% literacy rate, with only 25% of literate adults reading above the 6th grade level, we are already dumb. We can expect to see more decline in literacy with Felon 47 living on Pennsylvania Avenue.

So, I have a proposal. It might not change anything, but it is worth a try. Walk out of your door with a book in your hand or tucked under your arm everyday for at least a month.

Let kids and other adults see you walk with that book. And don’t say you can’t do this. You have carried books before when you were in grade school.

Make your book/s visible at your job, on a trip to a store. Hell, go for a walk with your book until someone asks you why you always have a book in your hand or under your arm. And then have the audacity to tell them why.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

Enough Is Enough

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I have more than a few favorite writers, journalists, and/or activists on Substack. One of them is Lorissa Rinehart. When she wrote that too many children are addicted to social media, I got the impression that she drew on scientific studies and her own observations.

She delivered a good hard punch to catch our attention. She wrote:

“If religion is the opium of the masses, then social media is the meth.” —©️Lorissa Rinehart

You should be aware that an addiction to substances like Crystal Meth are among the most difficult of all habits to kick. Rinehart waxed poetic about how the Zuckerbergs and the Musks of this world prey on the minds of our children in much the same way drug dealers pounce on entire communities.

Her statement reminded me that addiction to social media is one thing that aided and abetted our current political climate. She reminded me that our children are particularly vulnerable to social media propaganda pushed by the Far Right.

So, here are some family practices I suggest that I learned from a friend of mine over 15 years ago. My friend limited TV viewing to one night a week with the whole family watching together. Her kids were only allowed 3 days per week to surf the web at home for 1 hour each day with parental controls on.

The rest of the week she and her offspring discussed Art, Music, Current Events, School and Books at the dinner table. After dinner there was homework. After homework they would pick a topic to discuss or a book to read together over the coming week. I must say she now has some of the smartest young adults I have met in quite a while.

Now, before you say that all of this is too difficult to do; that your work schedule is too difficult to navigate around in order to do any of this; or that you are not sure if you can get your kids to participate in anything like this, answer a few questions for yourself.

When is the last time you read a book or visited a library? How often do you have face-to-face conversations with friends and family, with everyone’s cellphone silenced or turned off and put away out of sight?

If you have not done any of the above in quite some time or you have stopped doing most of it regularly, consider how social media has altered how you communicate with others. Come to think of it, social media has altered nearly everybody’s way of communicating.

Social media is not inherently evil nor inherently good. Social media’s information, however, is the easiest information to manipulate and the fastest to spread. Now think of how easy it can manipulate your children’s ideas about the world and themselves, often before you know anything about the ideas that have formed in their heads. Before I say anything else about Meth addiction, think about social drinking.

If you are a social drinker who is not an alcoholic, you tend to know your limit. You might feel a mild buzz, feel a bit relaxed, but not drunk. In your youth you probably learned the hard way when to say “I have had enough.” Long term Meth addicts don’t have any moments of “I have had enough.” They often suffer from everything from depression, psychotic episodes, an inability to sleep, and tooth decay.

Unlike addictions to controlled substances—legal and illegal—social media addiction has no noticeable physical symptoms. So, when it comes to social media, do you know when enough is enough for yourself? More importantly, do you know when enough is enough for your kids? Think about that for a while.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

(Stock drawing of kids on their cellphones)

For Henry G. Sanders

Posted on January 11, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I know a lot of great actors and Henry G. Sanders is one of them. I have watched him perform for over 50 years from “The Killer of Sheep” to “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman” to “Selma” and beyond. His most recent and notable role has been the character “Prosper Denton” on Ava DuVernay’s “QUEEN SUGAR.”

Yesterday I was relieved when Henry, who lives in Altadena, California, texted me to let me know that he and his family were okay, but “We lost the house.”

It hurt to think of this gracious man, at age 82, having to rebuild. And contrary to popular belief most actors are not rich. The stories about how Henry and his wife have taken in so many struggling young people are too numerous to mention in a single blog. His generosity with his time to me will never be forgotten.

One of his relatives has started a Go Fund Me campaign to help Henry and his family. Here’s the hyperlink: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-my-family-rebuild-after-eaton-canyon-fire.

I hope you will give generously.

Ava DuVernay asks for help for Henry G. Sanders and his family.

What Is In A Name?

Posted on January 2, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

My late mother struggled with infertility for 13 years before I was born. She told me that not only did doctors test my father’s sperm, but that she had her Fallopian tubes blown out with hot water. Many times she was in so much pain from the treatments that she couldn’t bend down to tie her shoes.

When I was born, my parents were 3 and 4 months away from turning ages 40 and 41, respectively. Mama and Daddy decided on the name “Leslye” because it was gender-neutral and also because my father did not particularly care for the practice of men naming sons after themselves.

“A boy either has a reputation to live up to or one to live down,” Daddy used to say. Anyhow, my name, had I been born a boy, would have been “Leslye Charles Allen” which would have included only my father’s middle name.

My late mother discovered the spelling of “Leslye” in a Reader’s Digest article where a young woman with that name and spelling was being sent on a tour of Europe as her graduation present from her parents.

When Mama brought the name and spelling of “Leslye” up to her good friend Esther Flournoy, my Aunt Esther said, “Cooter (their nickname for each other), what will be the middle name if your baby is a girl?”

Mama told me that she honestly did not know. At that moment, Aunt Esther said, “I like names like ‘Faith,’ ‘Hope,’ and ‘Joy.’”

Mama tried all combinations of these names until she arrived with “Leslye Joy.”

The hilarious and thought provoking book “Children’s Letters to God,” first published in 1966, was the very first book given to me by someone other than my parents.

It was given to me by the woman responsible for my middle name. Most of my classmates from Saint Paul of the Cross Elementary School and Saint Joseph High School never knew my first name was “Leslye” until long after we graduated.

Yet, I have had college professors, most notably Dr. Waqas Khwaja, and those wonderful women who cooked and fed me while I was a student at Agnes Scott College, just simply start calling me by my middle name “Joy” as if they all automatically knew that my middle name was the one that had the most love and history behind it. I was and remain warmed by that.

Leslye Joy Allen

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