HEART AND SOUL: THE STORY OF AMERICA AND AFRICAN AMERICANS by Kadir Nelson


 Nelson, K. (2011). HEART AND SOUL: THE STORY OF AMERICA AND AFRICAN  

            AMERICANS. Balzer+Bray.

 

Nelson begins the story with an introduction that talks about the many triumphs and hardships African Americans have overcome in America. Nelson then writes individual mini-chapters about significant events such as slavery, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, emancipation,  Jim Crow Laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and the vote for women.  Each section discusses significant members of the African American community and their contributions.

 The author writes from the perspective of an unnamed narrator and reviews significant events in African American history.  They include the story of Pap “the only Africa-born slave in my family.”  Obviously, Pap is a decedent of the narrator. The book says Pap was captured from his village in 1850 as a child. It tells of his time on the slave ship, and when he becomes a slave. In 1861, Pap escaped and joined the Union Army. After the war, Pap eventually goes West, marries, and becomes a Buffalo Soldier.

 The book has wonderful illustrations and is written in a way that elementary school children can get a grasp of these parts of American History. Because this is non-fiction, the cultural markers show up a bit differently. The narrator uses words like “Chile” “honey” and “white folks” when telling the story. There is one part I noticed dealing with Southern culture we practice today. “This may sound funny to you, but my grandfather, Joseph didn’t allow any of his kin to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day even though it’s an old African American tradition-the beans bring good luck for the coming year, they say. But Pap, which is what we called him, wouldn’t hear of it. When he was a young boy, each New Year’s Day buckets of black-eyed peas were boiled and poured into a horse trough for all of the slaves on the plantation to eat like animals.”

The narrator talks about how specific types of music were brought to life by African Americans. The spirituals the slaves sang while working to pass the time and information along to others are well known. Later in the early 20th century, Jazz became a popular vernacular of music and still is today. In the 1960’s African American music evolved again “The music was even louder and more soulful. The sounds of angry electric guitars and powerful drums echoed through our neighborhoods as we sang along with James Brown, “Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud” and Sam Cooke, “A change is gonna come.”’

 

2012 Coretta Scott King Author Award book- author and illustrator

 

Horn Book: “Nelson effectively creates a voice that is at once singular and representative. Each page of text is accompanied by a magnificent oil painting, most of which are moving portraits — some of the famous figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, and Joe Louis; others of unnamed African Americans, such as a Revolutionary War soldier, a child cleaning cotton, and a factory worker. The illustrations (forty-seven in all, including six dramatic double-page spreads), combined with the narrative, give us a sense of intimacy as if we are hearing an elder tell stories as we look at an album of family photographs. A tour de force in the career of an author/artist who continues to outdo himself.”
From the November/December 2011 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

 

Publishers Weekly: “Nelson knits together the nation's proudest moments with its most shameful, taking on the whole of African-American history, from Revolutionary-era slavery up to the election of President Obama. He handles this vast subject with easy grace, aided by the voice of a grandmotherly figure who's an amalgam of voices from Nelson's own family. She does not gloss over the sadness and outrage of her family's history, but her patient, sometimes weary tone ("The law didn't do a thing to stop it," she says about the Ku Klux Klan. "Shoot, some of the men wearing the sheets were lawmen") makes listeners feel the quiet power that survival requires.”

 

 Other historical books by Kadir Nelson:

NELSON MANDELA   ISBN 978-0061783777

WE ARE THE SHIP    ISBN 9780786808328

 

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