Marilyn Nelson

The author reflects on her childhood in the 1950s and her development as an artist and young woman through fifty poems that consider such influences as the Civil Rights Movement, the "Red Scare" era, and the feminist movement.

Something says find out why rain falls, what makes corn proud and squash so humble, the questions call like a train whistle ... George Washington Carver was determined to help the people he loved. Born enslaved in Missouri, he left home in search of an education, eventually earning his master's degree. When Booker T. Washington invited Carver to start the agricultural department at the all-Black-staffed Tuskegee Institute, Carver found his calling....

"Young Lubaya is happiest when she's drawing, often behind the sofa while her family watches TV. There, she creates pictures on the backs of her parents' old protest posters. But when upsetting news shouts into their living room, her parents need the posters again. The next day her family takes part in a march, and there, on one side of the posters being held high, are Lubaya's drawings of kids holding hands and of the sun shining over the globe--rousing...

"A powerful biography in poems about Augusta Savage, the trailblazing artist and pillar of the Harlem Renaissance-with an afterword by the curator of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture"-- Augusta Savage was arguable the most influential American artist of the 1930s. A gifted sculptor, she flourished during the Harlem Renaissance and became a teacher to an entire generation of African American artists. Nelson's poems are paired with...

Photographs and a poem bring readers on center stage with the ballerinas from the Dance Theatre of Harlem.