Author Tracey Baptiste writes children's book celebrating history of Black mermaids

NEW YORK -- Tracey Baptiste was born in Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. Fast forward to today, as an author, Baptiste writes children's stories reflecting on her childhood spent by the water listening to tales.  

Her previous books, such as "Rise of the Jumbies," include sea characters, like mermaids from all backgrounds. Therefore, when criticism came out following the decision to cast Black singer and actress Halle Bailey as Ariel in the 2023 live-action version of "The Little Mermaid," Baptiste was tapped into the reaction. 

"We had this great oral tradition in Trinidad when I was growing up where people would tell stories about creatures called jumbies all the time, and I decided very early on that I wanted to be a writer and I wanted to tell stories," Baptiste said. 

"People had tagged me in posts talking about, you know, 'Why are people so upset about a Black mermaid? There have been Black mermaids, here are all of these writers who are writing Black mermaids,' and had tagged my book," she continued. 

The Bailey criticism inspired her to write her latest novel, "Mermaid and Pirate," to provide yet another example of a mermaid quite different than the well-known Ariel version. 

"'Mermaid and Pirate,' they're very Caribbean, so it expands a little bit on what we think of when we think of a mermaid and what we think of a pirate can be," Baptiste said. 

Baptiste said she hopes to continue writing works that achieve two goals -- sharing valuable lessons with children and exposing them to different cultures. So when it comes to decisions like casting a different ethnicity in a movie remake, there's no reason to be surprised. 

"The next step is exploring what the other mermaid stories are from all over the world, and letting kids from really absolutely everywhere know that they have mermaids from their own culture that look like them that do these really incredible things," Baptiste said.