GREEN BOOK HELPED BLACK TRAVELERS NAVIGATE RACIST TERRAIN
The guidebook was first published in 1936 by Victor Hugo Green, a postal carrier in the Harlem section of New York. Green’s wife, Alma Duke, was from Richmond. Green was inspired to write the book in part by the discrimination he and his wife faced on trips to her racially segregated hometown.
“With Green’s wife being from Virginia, he decided to make trips less humiliating and reached out to fellow mailmen all over the country,” Calvin Alexander Ramsey, an author and playwright who has done extensive research on the subject, told The New York Times in 2015.
READ MORE…
‘GREEN BOOK’ MOVIE LIFTS UP SALES FOR BACKLIST PICTURE BOOK
While the Green Book film focuses upon the unlikely friendship formed when an African-American musician from New York City goes on tour in the South in 1962 with his racist Italian-American chauffeur, Ruth and the Green Book tells the story of an African-American girl who encounters discrimination when she and her family take a car trip from Chicago to Alabama in the early 1950s….
Ruth and the Green Book “just came to me: everything fell into place,” he said. “It was a labor of love.” Ramsey already knew of Cooper’s work, and so he contacted him. Ramsey recalled that once Cooper heard of Ramsey’s story idea, he put aside other projects to illustrate the book, “He liked the story so much. Floyd said, ‘The story is the important thing.’ I was surprised to hear an illustrator say that.”
READ MORE…
POEMS TELL STORY OF THE FIRST BLACK STUDENTS AT TENNESSEE SCHOOL IN ‘PROMISE OF CHANGE’
“Poetry has an emotional impact,” which seems in keeping with this powerful story, Levy said.
The poetic form helps capture what Levy called the ‘musical quality’ of young Jo Ann’s voice. And the authors could easily insert details that help bring Jo Ann alive on the page, such as her love of family and passion for music and learning.
The book also includes historic photos, a timeline, newspaper headlines and short quotes from interviews with Jo Ann, her parents, the school principal and other students.
READ MORE…
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON AWARD NOMINEES DEBORAH ELLIS AND ISABELLE ARSENAULT ON GENRE, PROCESS, AND CURIOSITY
Ellis says that the recognition presents a bit of a paradox for her: “Having been given awards for my work in the past makes it easier to approach people for future projects, especially around projects that have severe gatekeepers, such as the book about military families or the one about kids in trouble with the law. But when I meet with people whose lives have been turned upside down, they don’t care about awards. They want to be heard, and they hope they can trust me with their stories. That is a trust I have to earn new each time.”
READ MORE…
THE ARMORY SHOW: A MINI-SURVEY OF FAITH RINGGOLD’S LEGENDARY PRACTICE IS ON DISPLAY AT ACA GALLERIES
STORYTELLING IS A THE CENTER of Ringgold’s practice. For more than 50 years, she’s been making art that documents the American narrative. She’s explored segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, considered black pride and the politics of skin color, and reflected on her personal experiences—sharing how it felt to be a black woman in the 1960s and the decades hence.
READ MORE…
‘BE SURROUNDED BY POEMS’: NAOMI SHIHAB NYE ON TUESDAY’S ACCESS UTAH
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye says “I grew up in Ferguson, Mo. No one ever heard of it, unless you lived elsewhere in St. Louis County. Then my family moved to Palestine – my father’s first home. A friend says, ‘Your parents really picked the garden spots.’ In Ferguson, an invisible line separated white and black communities. In Jerusalem, a no-man’s land separated people, designated by barbed wire.
READ MORE…
‘BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA’ AUTHOR KATHERINE PATERSON WINS EB WHITE AWARD FOR LITERATURE
Children’s-book author and Montpelier resident Katherine Paterson was announced Monday as the winner of the E.B. White Award, given once every two years by the American Academy of Art and Letters “in recognition of an exceptional lifetime body of work.”
READ MORE…
AUTHOR KATHERINE PATERSON WINS AWARD FOR LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT IN CHILDREN’S LIT
“Any award that has the name E.B. White attached to it brings with it a great thrill of joy, since he’s one of my real heroes,” Paterson told Vermont Edition. “He probably was one of the best writers in America, and yet he respected children so much that he wrote some of his best work for them. And that makes me incredibly happy.”
LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW…
HOW TO TAKE A LITERACY PILGRIMAGE IN THE REAL WORLD
A few years ago, as home prices climbed in Harlem, some residents worried that Langston Hughes’s former brownstone on 127th Street would be lost—subsumed by condos and coffee shops. Hughes’s poems had inspired author Renée Watson to pursue her literary career, so when she moved to New York, she made a beeline for Harlem, eager to visit where he lived and the places he described……In 2016, Watson launched a campaign to raise money to lease the home and use it as a hub for arts and activism. Now, the I, Too Arts Collective—which takes its name from a Hughes poem—hosts dance classes, creative drop-ins and workshops, book release parties, and salon-style readings, and collects supplies for local shelters.
READ MORE…
‘DREAM MAKERS’: LATINX CHILDREN’S AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS AT BANK STREET
Tonatiuh’s illustrations demonstrate the influence of Mixtec art, while also integrating modern elements. The effect is an aesthetic blend of ancient and new, Mexican culture and American life…. He believes wholly in the power for books to transform and support readers by reflecting diversity of culture, ethnicity, and life experience.
Velasquez, who illustrated Carole Boston Weatherford’s Schomburg: The Man Who Built the Library (Candlewick), discovered Arturo Alfonso Schomburg when he was a boy. A teacher pointed out to him that he and Schomberg had a lot in common: Velasquez and his family were also from Puerto Rico, she said. For Velasquez, as a Latinx individual who “championed literature… Schomburg was a hero, a giant of a man,” he said.
