Possibly the concision and flavor will increase the book's attractiveness to those who need it most, and the list of sources...
From the man who is usually "On the Other Side of the Tracks," a judicious selection of quotations from runaways and emancipated men revealing the texture of the slave experience.
This is not, like Meltzer's In Their Own Words, a history, but the book's structure does approximate chronological impressions: African capture and ocean voyage, the auction block, plantation life with its codes of behavior, responses to emancipation and—briefly—the letdown thereafter. Most of the quotations come from the (edited) records of 19th century abolitionist societies or the Federal Writers' Project interviews of the 1930's so there are few statements from the ones who got away (e.g. Douglass); Lester does excerpt from Josiah Henson and others who wrote autobiographies but concentrates on equally eloquent unknowns, often in their own dialects (depending on the interviewer). The passages are short, some no more than a sentence ("Now that slavery is over, I don't want to be in nary 'nother slavery, and if nary 'nother come up, I wouldn't stay here"), supplementing the editor's pointed commentary. Several themes emerge: the fading of African memories, antagonism between house and field, a subculture of two-faced intelligence, attempts at organized rebellion, emotional release in music.
Possibly the concision and flavor will increase the book's attractiveness to those who need it most, and the list of sources is valuable for further study.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1968
ISBN: 978-0-14-131001-5
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1968
PERSPECTIVES
It's hard to imagine an artist better qualified to explore the maze of pipes, piles, and tunnels that lies Underground beneath a big city, and if this recreation lacks the utopian clarity of Macaulay's imaginary Cathedral (1973) and City (1974), there are compensating flashes of humor and playful solutions to the problem of illustrating what can't be seen. Explanations of the four major kinds of foundations for large buildings, the layout of sewer systems and underground cables, and the building of a subway tunnel require a more substantial and more challenging text than previous volumes, but the visual experience can stand by itself. In addition to the predictable surface views, diagrams and cutaway cross sections, Macaulay strips away pavement and soil to show us how the superstructure of a city street would look if we could stand on bedrock, below. The perspective is mind boggling, and though we've seen parts of the picture elsewhere—in Kelly and Park's Tunnel Builders (p. 328, J-108), for example—Macaulay gives us a breathtaking and entirely original insight.
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1976
ISBN: 0395340659
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1976
Though somewhat heavyhanded, these poems are sure to instill much-needed empathy and awareness to gay issues in today’s...
Nearly 14 years after the unspeakable tragedy that put Laramie, Wyo., on the hate crimes map, lesbian literary icon Newman offers a 68-poem tribute to Matthew Shepard.
Readers who were infants on October 6, 1998, may learn here for the first time how the 21-year-old Shepard was lured from a bar by two men who drove him to the outskirts of town, beat him mercilessly, tied him to a fence and left him to die. Ironically, months before Shepard’s murder, Newman had been invited to Laramie to speak at the University of Wyoming’s Gay Awareness Week and actually delivered her keynote address on the day he died. This cycle of poems, meant to be read sequentially as a whole, incorporates Newman’s reflections on Shepard’s killing and its aftermath, using a number of common poetic forms and literary devices to portray the events of that fateful night and the trial that followed. While the collection as a whole treats a difficult subject with sensitivity and directness, these poems are in no way nuanced or subtle. For example, Newman repeatedly employs personification to make inanimate objects, such as the fence, road, clothesline and truck, unwitting accessories to the crime, and she imitates William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just to Say” false-apology format no fewer than four times with mixed results.
Though somewhat heavyhanded, these poems are sure to instill much-needed empathy and awareness to gay issues in today’s teens. (Poetry. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5807-6
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
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