Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books) [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Marilyn Nelson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004 | Series: Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books

There is a skeleton on display in the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut. It has been in the town for over 200 years. Over time, the bones became the subject of stories and speculation in Waterbury. In 1996 a group of community-based volunteers, working in collaboration with the museum staff, discovered that the bones were those of a slave named Fortune who had been owned by a local doctor. After Fortune's death, the doctor dissected the body, rendered the bones, and assembled the skeleton. A great deal is still not known about Fortune, but it is known that he was baptized, was married, and had four children. He died at about the age of 60, sometime after 1797. Marilyn Nelson was commissioned by the Mattatuck Museum and received a grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts to write a poem in commemoration of Fortune's life. The Manumission Requiem is that poem. Detailed notes and archival materials provide contextual information to enhance the reader's appreciation of the poem.

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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 6 Up–This requiem honors a slave who died in Connecticut in 1798. His owner, a doctor, dissected his body, boiling down his bones to preserve them for anatomy studies. The skeleton was lost and rediscovered, then hung in a local museum until 1970, when it was removed from display. The museum began a project in the 1990s that uncovered the skeleton's provenance, created a new exhibit, and led to the commissioning of these six poems. The selections, which incorporate elements of a traditional requiem as well a New Orleans jazz funeral, arc from grief to triumph. A preface lays out the facts of Fortune's life, followed by "Dinah's Lament," in which his wife mourns the husband whose bones she is ordered to dust. Other pieces are in the voices of Fortune's owner, his descendants, workers, and museum visitors. The penultimate "Not My Bones," sung by Fortune, states, "What's essential about you/is what can't be owned." Each page of verse faces a green page containing text and full-color archival graphics that lay out the facts of Fortune's story. This volume sets history and poetry side by side and, combined with the author's personal note on inspirations, creates a unique amalgam that can be confusing at first. Subsequently, however, the facts inform the verse and open up a full appreciation of its rich imagery and rhythmic, lyrical language. The book brings the past to life and could make for a terrific choral reading.–Nancy Palmer, The Little School, Bellevue, WA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gr. 7-12. Fortune was a slave in eighteenth-century Connecticut, and when he died, his owner, a physician, rendered the bones to teach anatomy. In 1933 the physician's family donated the skeleton to the local Mattatuck Museum. Recently, the museum researched Fortune's story, and Connecticut Poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson, author of the award-winning Carver: A Life in Poems (2001), has written a series of six stirring poems to honor Fortune's life. Part funeral mass, part freedom celebration, her spare words are clear about the harshness of his servitude and what his remains tell about his backbreaking labor. In the climactic poem, "Not My Bones," Fortune himself speaks: "You can own someone's body, / the soul runs free." Nelson's small poems are framed by a wealth of facts as well as archival photos and images from the museum exhibit. Should Fortune's skeleton be kept on display, or should it be buried in consecrated ground? Moved by the poetry and the history, readers will want to join the debate. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Hand Print; 1 edition (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932425128
• ASIN: B000W7GLDQ
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,241,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seeking one's Fortune, July 9, 2005

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books) (Hardcover)

There are as many ways of honoring the long forgotten as there are ways of mucking that honor up. I came to "Fortune's Bones" with just a bit of trepidation, I admit. Though I knew author Marilyn Nelson had created this book to honor a man long dead in the best way she knew how, I was still recovering from a similar, and foul, title called, "Journey To the Bottomless Pit" which also came out in 2004. In both books, a man who was a slave during his lifetime is honored with a children's book of fiction. In "Journey", the book was a simplistic version of a complicated man's life. I prayed that "Fortune's Bones" would not be the same. Those prayers were answered tenfold. Marilyn Nelson tells the story of Fortune in a manner respectful of his life, then accompanies this retelling with a requiem written in his honor. Though I would have enjoyed further factual information on the topic, this is a worthy addition to any poetry collection or non-fiction collection, for children, teens, or grown adults, anywhere.

There once was a man named Fortune. Born a slave in the 1700s, he and his wife and his children all belonged to a Dr. Preserved Porter. Later tests on Fortune's bones show that his life was not an easy one. His back was once broken and though he had a healthy skeleton, he died at the age of 60. When he did, Dr. Porter took Fortune's death as an opportunity to study human anatomy. He removed Fortune's skeleton, tapped the bones, and made himself a complete human skeleton. Every bone was carefully marked and studied by Porter and his ancestors. Years later, Fortune's name was lost and the skeleton was mislabeled "Larry" and given to the Matttatuck Museum. In the 1990s historians did research on it and found Fortune's true name once again. Now the only question that remains is what to do with Fortune's bones. Do we bury them and put him to rest at long last, or do we learn more from them about 1700s slaves and slavery? The question remains unanswered, but author Marilyn Nelson has done what she can. In this book she writes a requiem in Fortune's memory. Filled with free verse poetry, a Kyrie of the Bones, and a Sanctus at the end, "Fortune's Bones" is a text of respect.

One of the many things I loved about this book was the fact that as an author/poet, Nelson tells us why she wrote what she did. One poem is entitled, "Not My Bones", in which Fortune states clearly, "I am not my body", to anyone who cares to listen. This phrase comes from the Vietnamese Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hahn, a fact that could well have gone uncredited by a less careful author. Each poem in this book is accompanied by factual information pertaining to Fortune's story, along with photographs, papers, tapestries, maps, and other important documents of the period. As a whole these poems speak beautifully together, forming a single Requiem. I especially liked "Dinah's Lament" in which Fortune's wife speaks of the cruel injustice of being forced to dust the bones that once would, "hold me when I cried; to dust where his soft lips were, and his chest what curved its warm against my back at night". Nelson, the accomplished voice behind her other great book, "Carver: A Life In Poems", is at her best here.

Admittedly, there were aspects of this book left unspoken that I (and I'm sure others) would have liked to have heard more about. The book is a Requiem and doesn't dwell on the fascinating process scientists took to discover Fortune again. There's a small series of three pictures on one page that shows three stages of facial reconstruction of Fortune, taken from his bones. That's something that would have made for a fascinating story in and of itself. Or how did the researchers and historians eventually discover who Fortune really was? Who did they talk to? What did they read? Sadly, such information will have to wait for another book. It's not answered here.

"Fortune's Bones", will obviously be snatched up by any child and/or teen assigned to read a book of poems since it's a mere 32 pages altogether. This is a great good thing. In spite of its scant length, this is a title that will teach a lot of information to a lot of kids in a wonderfully stirring way. The poems are mindful of the past and give the greatest of respect to a man of whom we know so little. A wonderful publication

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fortune's remains the Mattatuck Museum, December 3, 2004

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R. Guest - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books) (Hardcover)

Fortune's skeleton is not on display. The exhibit about Fortune at the Mattatuck Museum includes a photographic illusion allowing visitors to see an image of Fortune's skeleton transform into a painting of Fortune as he may have looked in life. Fortune's actual bones have been carefully placed in archival museum storage, awaiting a community decision about whether to bury the remains or preserve them for future study.