Paris Weslyn

"Honeybun and the Greatest Friend" is my ode to the fairy tale. Growing up as a small black girl with a German grandmother, I was read endless fairy tales. These stories have inspired my studies academically and personally as they are the most socializing narratives. My grandmother shared these stories with me as rite of my 'ancestral' heritage. However, as I got older, I found that my experience as a mixed person, who was not visibly mixed, was and is far different than that of my grandmother. I found myself wishing that in those stories, there was a place for little brown girls, who looked like me and lived in fairy tales too. And so, The Adventures of Honeybun was born as a gift to my mother, to my grandmother, to myself, and to Black and Brown girls and women everywhere.

Honeybun and the Greatest Friend

Once upon a time there was a great forest that stretched for miles and miles along a tranquil river. The river was wide and long, and the azure water glimmered like crystals. If the river was followed deep enough into the wood, there could be found a small cottage tucked beneath the bosom of a mountain. The cottage was covered in countless flowers, and berries, and all sorts of vined things that grew out and up from a large garden. Inside the cottage there lived a little girl and her mother. This little girl was the sweetest, most docile child one could encounter. She had large eyes the color of umber and dark curly hair that shone reddish-brown in the springtime sun.
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