Beyond Stereotypes: Why This Conversation With Samina Mishra Matters
If you care about how the next generation learns to see the world, with curiosity, empathy, and nuance, this episode is for you. Too often, children’s content flattens complex identities into neat boxes and talks at kids instead of with them. In this conversation, documentary filmmaker, writer, and educator Samina Mishra reminds us that children aren’t empty vessels; they’re thinkers, feelers, and creators. She shows us how stories, libraries, and the arts can become tools for freedom, especially for girls navigating a world that still tries to tell them who they should be.
Meet Samina Mishra
Samina is a Delhi-based documentary filmmaker, children’s author, and educator whose work sits at the intersection of childhood, identity, and media. She has taught the IB Film Program, curated children’s cinema at MAMI, founded the Magic Key Centre for the Arts and Childhood, and co-created Soundphiles, an experimental listening project. Her children’s books, like Shabana and the Baby Goat and Nida Finds a Way, reflect everyday childhoods with care and complexity. Across mediums, Samina’s practice is guided by one belief: we carry the child within us, and nurturing that sense of wonder is essential to navigating a complicated world.
Key Highlights From the Episode
The spark of storytelling:
A book-loving childhood and a community of like-minded collaborators shaped Samina’s voice. Storytelling, for her, begins with experience, paying attention to how moments make us feel and what they teach us about the world.
Writing with children, not for them:
Samina avoids talking down to young readers by foregrounding curiosity and shared discovery. She asks rigorous questions of her characters and herself, Would this child really say this? Why this choice?, and lets the answers guide the work.
Also Read: Saheba Singh on Healing, Art, and the Road Less Travelled
Identity with nuance:
Rather than making identity the plot, Samina normalises complexity. In Shabana and the Baby Goat, the protagonist “just happens to be Muslim.” Even visual choices, like when a headscarf appears or not, reflect real, lived inconsistency and agency, not stereotypes.
The role of the arts in education:
Through the Magic Key Centre, Samina builds spaces where children and caregivers explore big ideas through hands-on art and play. Giving kids unstructured creative freedom, like simply filling a page with colour, can be radically liberating, especially in systems that prize “colour within the lines.”
Libraries as refuge and rocket fuel:
Libraries aren’t only shelves; they’re windows, doors, and flames, places to disappear for a while, mix across class or language, and discover new worlds. Community libraries, in particular, make access to beauty and knowledge collective, not owned.
Teaching and curation sharpen practice:
The classroom and festival circuit aren’t sidelines; they’re part of Samina’s craft. Teaching forces crisp articulation, why this cut, why this frame?, and curation asks: What understanding of the world are we guiding audiences toward?
Why sound matters:
With Soundphiles, Samina explored the power of communal listening. Without images, sound becomes limitless, inviting audiences to imagine beyond the frame and to feel with heightened attention.
Advice for young women in the arts:
Manage your money. Passion sustains the soul; financial literacy sustains the practice. Especially in freelance creative work, practicality isn’t a compromise, it’s a catalyst.
A Quote to Keep
“Adults should realize that we don’t know everything—and it’s okay to say that to children. We’re together discovering certain things.”
Why It Matters
This isn’t just a conversation about children’s books or filmmaking. It’s a blueprint for building agency, in kids and in ourselves. By listening deeply, embracing layered identities, and letting play lead the way, we can tell truer stories and raise freer humans. For parents, educators, and creators, Samina’s approach is both gentle and uncompromising: invite wonder, honour choice, and do the rigorous work behind the scenes.
Call to Action
If this episode resonated, share it with a parent, teacher, or creator in your circle. Then try a small experiment: give a child in your life five minutes of creative freedom—no lines, no rules, just colour or sound. Tell us how it felt.
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Thank you for listening—and for helping us amplify stories that expand what’s possible for women and girls.
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About the Author: Sangeeta Relan
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I’m Sangeeta Relan—an educator, writer, podcaster, researcher, and the founder of AboutHer. With over 30 years of experience teaching at the university level, I’ve also journeyed through life as a corporate wife, a mother, and now, a storyteller.
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