Meena Harris Has a Response to Everyone Who Called Her Aunt Kamala "Too Ambitious"
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Making change is basically in Meena Harris’s DNA.
Her mother, Maya Harris, is a well-known civil rights advocate who worked as an executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Northern California, and adviser to Hillary Clinton. Her aunt is Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. They were both primarily raised by their mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher who often said, “Don’t sit around and complain about things. Do something.”
So when her aunt Kamala was accused of being too ambitious on the campaign trail, it spurred Meena—in true Harris woman fashion—to follow her grandmother's advice and take matters into her own hands. “What really stopped me in my tracks was that it was amplified by the media…as if being too ambitious was a valid critique and was worth paying attention to,” the best-selling children's author, founder and CEO of Phenomenal, and mother of 4-year-old Amara and 2-year-old Leela tells OprahMag.com. “I felt so fed up—and especially as parent of two daughters, thinking, you’re not going to do this to my kids. Or, if you are, I’m going to be damn sure they have the tools, the language, and the ability to navigate it in a way that is productive for them and for society.”
The result: Ambitious Girl, the newest children’s book from Meena, in which a pint-size protagonist decides to reject the labels of too-this or too-that and embarks on a journey where she learns to not only reclaim words meant to knock her down, but also to take up space and own her power—a lesson that’s been passed down through generations of Harris women.
“I was raised to believe that ambition was a good thing. That it was something to be celebrated. It meant purpose, it meant power, it meant determination, it meant having a dream and going after it, even when other people tried to tell you it couldn't be done,” the 36-year-old says. “That’s all I knew, because my whole family was this little unit of me, my grandma, my mom, and my aunt, and it’s what I would see every day.”
As an adult, though, Meena realized that not everyone saw ambition in the same light as her family. “The first time I really came to understand that it was used in a negative way was in the working world, of course, but even more so in the political context, where it was suggested that a woman running for office or having political aspirations is calculating and opportunistic,” Meena says. “And we know there’s a double standard at play. We don’t talk about male ambition that way. In fact, we assume that if you’re an ambitious guy, you must be successful and a go-getter.” Which is why Meena believes it’s so important to teach girls to reclaim, reframe, and redefine words like ambitious—as well as bossy, competitive, persistent, assertive, and loud—starting at a young age.
“My grandmother taught us: don’t let anyone tell you who you are—you tell them who you are,” she says. “That’s about defining your ambitions and not letting anyone else do that for you. And I know, both because of how I was raised and experienced those criticisms myself, that there is so much power in naming that and doing it early.”
And while Ambitious Girl is indeed a children’s book, its lessons are perhaps equally valuable for grown-ups, too. “Frankly, that work needs to happen for adults as well,” says Meena. “Not to get too crazy here, but it’s unlearning and relearning the bullshit tools of oppressive patriarchal societies—things that are used against women to hold us back, diminish our accomplishments, and dim our light," she explains. “And as parents, we need to rethink the context in which we use the word ambitious, and start conversations about it with our children. She adds: “That’s why books like this are key—not just to have a story at bedtime, but as a tool that allows parents and families to engage with the topic in a meaningful way and ideally, build on it.”
In the meantime, though, when criticisms of being too-this or too-that do arise—as they unfortunately will—Meena points to another piece of advice, courtesy of Shyamala: “My grandmother had many sayings, and one of them was 'f*ck 'em,'” Meena says. “And I think the point was you don’t have time for that, because, ultimately it’s a distraction intended to hold you back. It’s like, do you feel that way? Is that how you define it? If not, then who cares—dismiss it as just nothing.”
“[My grandmother] was very clear about the fact that if you have ambition, you can do anything and be anything—but you will encounter people who tell you that it can’t be done, for whatever reason,” Meena continues. “And it’s something people in my family have been told their entire careers: You’re too young, you’re too this, you’re too that. But just keep your eye on the ball, put one foot in front of the other, and keep going. Don’t let anyone define what your opportunities are or what the future could be and how things should be.”
But Ambitious Girl isn’t just about making the lessons Meena learned from her grandmother, mother, and aunt accessible to the widest possible audience. It also continues to correct the harsh imbalance that, in part, inspired her first book, Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea. “I was reading the classics to my older daughter and wondering, Where are the characters that look like my own daughters?” says Meena. “I was tired of having to take a brown marker to my girls’ books to increase diversity or to change pronouns from he and she to they.”
In fact, according to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in 2019, there were more kids’ books with animals as main characters than there were books with Black, Latinx, Asian, or Indigenous protagonists combined. Equally troublesome: During the same year, only 16.8 percent of children’s books were written or illustrated by people of color.
“Becoming a children’s book author was never on my list of dreams or something I thought I’d do,” says Meena. “At a certain point, though, I was like, I’m just going to write this damn book myself. I’m going to write the book I want my daughters to read, where they can actually see themselves on pages.”
Meena was driven to change the narrative because she had experienced the impact of a diverse children’s bookshelf. "Even though there were far fewer when I was growing up, my family made a point of finding stories that emphasized communities of color and multiculturalism, like Tar Beach, Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, Whistle for Willie, and Shake It to the One That You Love the Best." But, she had also seen the impact of what happened when her own kids were exposed to books with Black people at the center. “For over a year now, my older daughter has been saying she wants to be a president and an astronaut when she grows up—and that’s because she had a family member who was running for president and she read a children's book about Mae Jemison,” Meena says. “It became apparent to me that books just had this extraordinary power for young kids, who are learning about the world for the first time.”
It’s well established that reading fiction can enhance empathy, respect, and acceptance—which could eventually pave the way for a more equal future. “It's not only important for my daughters to see that representation or diversity,” says Meena. “It's just as important for white men and boys to see women of color as leaders and to understand that when they have big ideas or are ambitious, we should support them,” she says.
In the seven months since she released Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea, Meena has not only seen firsthand the effects of meaningful representation (in addition to being a president and astronaut, Amara now wants to be an author, too), but also what happens when ambitious girls grow up to be ambitious women—something she’ll undoubtedly be thinking about when her aunt becomes the first female vice president and, as the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, also the first Black and first VP of South Asian descent.
“'Too ambitious' succeeded, didn’t it?” Meena says. “That represents, in all of it and in every form and all its glory, what ambition means, and what happens when you dare to do something even though people all along would say it’s not possible simply because it’s never happened before. That’s the part that gets me sometimes—like, holy shit, it’s Kamala. She’s actually the first in our nation’s whole history.”
For more stories like this, sign up for our newsletter.
You Might Also Like
