Recognize!: An Anthology Honoring and Amplifying Black Life - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593381599 ISBN 13: 9780593381595

Verlag: Crown Books for Young Readers, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

In the stunning follow-up to The Talk: Conversations About Race, Love & Truth, award-winning Black authors and artists come together to create a moving anthology collection celebrating Black love, Black creativity, Black resistance, and Black life.

"A multifaceted, sometimes disheartening, yet consistently enriching primer on the unyielding necessity of those three words: Black Lives Matter." -Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
 
BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED.
 
Prominent Black creators lend their voice, their insight, and their talent to an inspiring anthology that celebrates Black culture and Black life. Essays, poems, short stories, and historical excerpts blend with a full-color eight-page insert of spellbinding art to capture the pride, prestige, and jubilation that is being Black in America. In these pages, find the stories of the past, the journeys of the present, and the light guiding the future.
 
BLACK LIVES WILL ALWAYS MATTER.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson are the co-founders of Just Us Books, Inc. For over thirty years they have published, written, and collaborated on books that reflect the diversity of Black history, heritage, and experiences, including the treasury collections We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, which received four starred reviews and was a Jane Addams Peace Association Honor Book, and The Talk, which was a New York Times, NPR, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, and Center for Multicultural Literature Best Book of the Year. The husband-wife team live in East Orange, NJ.
@hudsonwade
@diversitymom_ch

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Coloring Outside the Lines 

Jerdine Nolen

The gift of the children’s Bible from a family friend was not new. But it had color pictures to go along with the stories. I could read. I was nine years old. I thumbed through the book. I stared at the pages. There was something about the pictures that didn’t seem right--sometimes, I think, it’s that way with hand-me-down things.

In our house, Daddy always reads the big family Bible aloud to us. He sits in his big Poppa-sized chair and we sit on the floor at his feet. His booming voice sounds like thunder--a sound just right for reading the Bible. And Daddy loves reading aloud. He is such an actor. 

I especially love hearing him read Genesis. He explains what “thou sayeth,” “doth,” and “beget” this and that means. This book didn’t have any of those kinds of words. My three older sisters weren’t interested, so the book became mine. 

I love all kinds of stories. Some I try to memorize, thanks to my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Harris, who is also a member of our church. She teaches Sunday School, usually with a map to show where things happened in the world. 

We learned about people who lived close to the belt around the earth’s waist, the equator. That’s where our ancestors came from and the reason for our skin color and our type of hair--the sun is so hot there. 

Whenever I get an old/new book, I sleep with it under my pillow. It makes for a bumpy night’s sleep, but that way I get to know the book. It’s a way to make the old/new book mine. 

I always have lots of questions about the things I’m learning. I didn’t think my questions were hard, but it seemed most of them were unanswerable. For example, on Sunday in church we talked about Adam and Eve. Mrs. Harris told us they were the first people. Then in class on Monday Mrs. Harris showed a filmstrip on the cave dwellers that said they were the first people. I was confused. I raised my hand to ask a question. “If the cave dwellers looked as they did and Adam and Eve looked as they did, who came first? Who were the first people?” 

My serious question was not meant to cause giggles. Immediately, I got Mrs. Harris’s look and pointing index finger. That meant to head for the coatroom in the back of the class. I was glad. It was quiet there. I could think. 

I needed answers, even if no one was around to give them to me. 

That’s when I realized what was wrong with this old/new book. The people all looked like Dick and Jane, the kids in my reading primer, or people on TV--and they were all white. Even Jesus had white skin and yellow hair. Not one of them fit what Mrs. Harris taught us about what the people living near the equator looked like. They had brown skin and dark hair. 

I didn’t like the feeling growing inside me. I was feeling like I didn’t want the book anymore and I wanted to give it back. Momma and Daddy wouldn’t want me to do that. Deep down I really didn’t want to. But the pictures were all wrong. I had to do something. 

If I was going to read this Bible, I had to make it readable. 

Last Saturday, I got a new box of crayons and a new coloring book. I love to color. I always stay in between the lines. 

There were only eight colors and the only one that came close enough to the skin color I was looking for was brown--black would hide features, so I used that for the hair. 

To keep away from tattle-telling mouths, I worked on my project in the privacy of my bedroom. But this day, I decided to stretch out on the dining room table just as Daddy was walking by. 

“What are you doing to that book?” He picked it up. “This book of all books! And it was a gift. . . .” 

I had no words. But Daddy had a lot of them. The worst thing about his punishments were the talks. 

“We’ll talk later.” 

I prayed to Jesus with the Yellow Hair for almost anything but that. I hoped he’d hear me. Daddy’s lectures went on forever and sometimes into the next day. The thing was to keep a low profile, stay out of sight. All went well for a while--things quieted down, but not inside of me. 

I was already in trouble. I put the book back under my pillow and waited for the house to be quiet. 

I grabbed my box of crayons and the Bible and headed for the bathroom. I locked the door behind me. I wouldn’t let myself turn back. Sitting on the floor, I opened to the story with Jesus and the little children. I colored them first. Now it was Jesus’s turn. After a while, I let out a long yawn and stretched. I packed up all my things. I opened the door and bumped into my father. He was headed for the kitchen for his usual snack. Daddy looked at my hands. I looked at my feet. 

What would happen to me now? Had Daddy run out of lectures for me? 

“Come near to me,” he said. I followed him into the kitchen. “Show me what you were doing with your crayons and that book.” I opened my mouth and started to cry. I blurted out everything. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair! Mrs. Harris says we matter in the world but nobody in this whole book looks like us and the stories take place near the equator where people have darker colored skin like us. See? Everybody in this book looks like the people on TV. Even Jesus has yellow hair.” 

“What were you doing just now?” 

“I couldn’t take it, Daddy. I just couldn’t take it anymore.” I opened the book to Jesus with the No Longer Yellow Hair. “See?” 

Daddy looked at the picture for a long time. 

“This is what you were doing?” 

I nodded. “I wanted this little girl to look like me, and Jesus . . .” I hesitated. “. . . to look like you.” 

The silence between us was waiting on his answer. Then, Daddy chuckled. “He does kind of favor me.” 

“And she kind of looks like me, too. Doesn’t she?” 

Daddy got quiet. 

“What are you thinking about?” I asked. 

“Hmm . . . thinking about what you did to the book. I see why you did it. I think you had a good reason to do what you did.” 

“I did.” 

“Well, I guess nothing left to do than share a slice of Momma’s chocolate cake?” Suddenly, we were eating cake, looking at the pages I colored, reading and talking about the stories, and laughing. 

Then, Daddy stopped reading. 

“Now what?” I asked. 

“I’m proud of you.” He smiled, hugging me. 

“Me too,” I answered. “It’s just as Mrs. Harris said. Things like this do matter in the world.”

 

James Baldwin’s Great Debate 

Wade Hudson 

James Baldwin looked out at the sea of faces in the auditorium in Cambridge, England. Often in demand to share his views about racial injustice and the treatment of Black people in America, Baldwin was an articulate, moving, and insightful writer and spokesman. That’s why he had been invited to speak. 

The Cambridge Union Society at Cambridge University had organized a debate on February 18, 1965, with the topic “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” To tackle this challenging subject, they had chosen Baldwin and William F. Buckley. 

Buckley was an established magazine editor, political thinker, and founder of the conservative magazine National Review. He had made...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Crown Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593381599
• ISBN 13: 9780593381595
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 208
• Herausgeber: Hudson Wade, Hudson Cheryl Willis
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland