Difference between revisions of "Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans"

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==References==
 
==References==
 
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[[Category:Black Racism in Fiction Novels]]
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[[Category:Black-Targeted Racism in Fiction Novels]]

Latest revision as of 09:15, 15 March 2021

Heart and Soul Book Cover

Heart and Soul is a historic fictional book written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. Kadir Nelson is the winner of various awards, including the Coretta Scott King Author Award and Illustrator Honor, and also received five starred reviews. This book demonstrates that in striving for freedom and equal rights, African Americans help America on the journey toward its guarantee of freedom and equity—the genuine heart and soul of the nation. [1]

Plot

This book is about the aged woman who becomes a storyteller and tells the story of her own grandfather, who was caught in Africa at age six and illegally sold into slavery in 1850. From Pap’s story, this book gives a sense of what it was like to be a slave, a Union soldier, a sharecropper during Reconstruction, and a Buffalo soldier in Oklahoma; in the long run he travels north to Chicago as a component of the Great Migration. From that point, the storyteller takes over with her first-person account that incorporates the women’s right to vote movement, the Depression, World War II, and the civil rights movement, and ends with the pride she felt for the voting for President Obama. [2]

Controversy

This book shares a story of discrimination and racism through significant occasions in American history through the viewpoint of, first, enslaved people, then those legally free but restrained by discrimination and, finally, citizens able to fully taking part in American life following the Civil Rights Movement. [3] The author begins his American history with the Declaration of Independence and the contribution that African-Americans involved in that independence. One of the book's first images shows George Washington sitting on a horse with the sun shining in his face. Close to 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 York 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

  1. Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans. Amazon. Retrieved February 2 2021.
  2. 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.
  3. Heart and Soul. Kirkus. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  4. Heart And Soul': An African-American History. NPR. 26 September 2011. Retrieved February 2 2021.
  5. Myers, Walter Dean. Sweet Land of Liberty. New York Times. 10 Nov 2011. Retrieved February 2 2021.