Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans
Heart and Soul is a historic fictional book writtten and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. Kadir Nelson's is the winner of numerous awards, including the Coretta Scott King Author Award and Illustrator Honor, and the recipient of five starred reviews. This book demonstrates that in striving for freedom and equal rights, African Americans help our country on the journey toward its promise of liberty and justice—the true heart and soul of our nation. [1]
Plot
This book is about the aged woman who becomes a narrator and tells story of her own grandfather, who was captured in Africa at age six and illegally sold into slavery in 1850. From Pap’s story, we get a sense of what it was like to be a slave, a Union soldier, a sharecropper during Reconstruction, and a Buffalo soldier in Oklahoma; eventually he heads north to Chicago as part of the Great Migration. From there, the narrator takes over with her first-person account that includes the women’s suffrage movement, the Depression, World War II, and the civil rights movement, and ends with the pride she felt voting for President Obama. [2]
Controversy
This book shares a story of discrimination and racism through major events in American history through the perspective of, first, enslaved people, then those legally free but hindered by discrimination and, finally, citizens able to fully participate in American life following the Civil Rights Movement. [3] The author begins his American history with the Declaration of Independence and the role that African-Americans played in that independence. One of the book's first images shows George Washington sitting on a horse with the sun shining in his face. Beside him stands his slave. "The sun is rising, the sun is very bright on George Washington," Nelson says, "but when you look at the slave, it's barely hitting his face because he's looking into the sun and kind of wondering what the future holds not only for him but for the rest of his African-American brethren." [4] This book got a review from New Yor times, it says that this book is a grand and awe-inspiring survey of the black experience in America, delivered in 108 pages with lushly painted illustrations. Using the device of a fictional family narrative, Nelson relays this history in the voice of an elderly black woman, a voice both personal and friendly as it describes the treatment of the woman’s family and of other African-Americans over the years. [5]
References
- ↑ Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans. Amazon. Retrieved February 2 2021.
- ↑ Horning, Kathleen T. Review of Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans. The Horn Book. 12 Oct 2011. Retrieved February 2 2021.
- ↑ Heart and Soul. Kirkus. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
- ↑ Heart And Soul': An African-American History. NPR. 26 September 2011. Retrieved February 2 2021.
- ↑ Myers, Walter Dean. Sweet Land of Liberty. New York Times. 10 Nov 2011. Retrieved February 2 2021.
