I used to check out American Girl books from the library, and my sister and I owned some of the Addy books. Like most millennials, I was really into American Girl dolls. What was your experience with the dolls growing up? The Cut spoke to Bennett about what it’s like to create an American Girl doll.Ĭlaudie’s journey started with your 2020 tweet, but your relationship with American Girl dolls goes back much farther.

“It’s a little bit of a responsibility for Black authors, because there are so few books about Black children.” “I’ve always wanted to write for young readers at some point in my career, but I didn’t know what form it would take,” she says. Claudie’s story is Bennett’s first foray into children’s fiction. “I wanted to take the Harlem Renaissance, which we view as this period of an outpouring of talent, but also think about the regular people who were around living their lives, who were maybe not the flashy artists,” Bennett says.īennett made her fiction debut in 2016 with The Mothers, which chronicles a young Black woman grieving her mother’s suicide who returns to her Southern California community following a family emergency. Her second novel, The Vanishing Half, about two Black sisters whose lives splinter when one abandons her old life to pass as a white woman, is currently being adapted by HBO, with Issa Rae joining Bennett as an executive producer. But unlike the many artists of the time period, Claudie has no idea what her talent is, or whether she has any at all. The daughter of a baker and a reporter, Claudie lives with her little brother and dog, Dizzy Dot, in a boardinghouse full of tenants who use their art to scrape together back rent after an eviction notice hits. Claudie, whose series debuted in August, is the franchise’s third Black historical doll, following Connie Porter’s Addie, who was set in the Civil War era, and Denise Lewis Patrick’s Melody, the ’60s doll released in 2016. Bennett had always been interested in the Harlem Renaissance, so she came up with Claudie-an 8-year-old Black girl growing up in 1922. It was too soon for a ’90s doll, but they wanted to collaborate. To Bennett’s surprise, the powers that be at American Girl reached out to her. When an ’80s doll joined the fray two years ago, Bennett persisted: “Give us a Black American Girl doll set in the ’90s,” she tweeted in 2020, adding, “and please let me write it.” “Gonna passive-aggressively tweet my way to this American Girl doll deal, just watch me,” the author wrote in a since-deleted tweet from 2016, after the franchise added a ’60s doll to its fold of historical characters. Photo-Illustration: by The Cut Photos: Miranda Barnes, American Girlīrit Bennett never thought she’d actually create an American Girl doll, but you could say it’s a reality she’s manifested for years.

Butterball by Brit Bennett