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.
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.
Reading age 10 and up
Grade level 4-7
REVEIWS
«School Library Journal, October 2021 issue
Gr 6 Up–The Hudsons have compiled a powerful collection of essays, poems, short stories, comics, and more around the central theme of “Black Lives Matter.” With selections from a stellar roster of 30 children’s books creators, including Nikki Grimes, Kwame Mbalia, and Sharon Draper, this volume is full to the brim with Black excellence. Excerpts, quotes, and speeches from historical figures, such as Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, and Mary McLeod Bethune, are also interspersed throughout. The stunning eight-page insert features illustrations and paintings by the late Floyd Cooper, Ekua Holmes, Eric Velasquez, and more. These artists present striking and breathtaking images in a range of media, including oil paintings and collage. Though the stirring entries address a diverse array of topics, such as gender, police violence, and Black joy, they all come back to the central theme. The poetry is especially strong. Mahogany L. Browne’s “Your Breath Is a Song,” honors the Black ancestors who made sacrifices for today’s community: “Wherever you are/ Someone fought for you to stay/ Whoever you are/ Someone fought for you to be.” Lesa-Cline Ransome’s “At Our Kitchen Table” is an exhortation to action: “At our kitchen table/ we gather to/ shed tears/ offer prayers/ send money/ write letters/ draw posters/ make plans/ until we too/ rise up/ as a family and/ step out/ to walk/ to shout/ in protest.” VERDICT Equal parts inspirational and gut-wrenching, this collection has a range of audiences and purposes. It can be used in class discussions, for pleasure reading, or as rallying cry for change.–Shelley M. Diaz, School Library Journal
« Publishers Weekly, September 27, 2021
The married cofounders of Just Us Books join forces to edit another stunning anthology, featuring 22 Black authors and eight artists exploring Black identity, the Black Lives Matter movement, the long history and legacy of standing up for Black lives, and more, in poems, short stories, essays, and comics. In “The Storms and Sunshine of My Life,” author Lamar Giles writes, “I know I’m lucky because not all of us get to go on, unscathed, to life’s joys.” Poems by Lesa Cline-Ransome, Nikki Grimes, Denene Millner, and others offer declarations and affirmations. Interwoven, full-page quotes and excerpts from Black forebearers such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Frederick Douglass provide historical context and emphasize the timelessness of some issues, while eight full-color inserts feature lush, multilayered art by illustrators including Vanessa Brantley-Newton and Ekua Holmes. An empowering, powerful compendium that asserts how “Black lives matter./ Black lives have always mattered.” Front matter features a foreword by the editors; back matter includes artist notes, sources, biographies, and more about the BLM movement. Ages 10–up. (Oct.)
«Kirkus Reviews, June 29, 2021
A multifaceted, sometimes disheartening, yet consistently enriching primer on the unyielding necessity of those three words: Black Lives Matter.
Husband-wife duo Wade and Cheryl Willis Hudson curate and contribute to this collection of varied perspectives on the mattering of Black lives and how the fact of the infamous three-word call to action has been most put into question by America’s long, White supremacist history, traumatic present, and potential future. Award-winning poets such as Carole Boston Weatherford and Nikki Grimes, children’s-book authors including Kelly Starling Lyons and Ibi Zoboi, visual artists like Keith Knight and Don Tate, and historic Black American figures like Frederick Douglass and Daisy Bates provide potent responses to incidents of anti-Black violence, mis- or underrepresentation of Black identities, and personal challenges in parenting or just existing while Black. They also reflect on the movement for Black lives that activists have codified recently with #BLM but nonetheless has an extensive, hard-fought history. When, for example, kid journalist Adedayo Perkovich recounts her learning about Seneca Village, the community of mostly Black Americans that were displaced to make way for New York’s Central Park, the threads that link the 19th-century village, a coastal Ghanaian site of centuries of enslavement and commerce of Black bodies, and the contemporary reminders that Black Lives Matter are poignantly presented for readers of all ages.
Both brilliant and bristling in its purpose. (artists' notes, contributor biographies, editors' note) (Anthology. 10-18)
