A photographic essay which offers a striking and moving tribute to African-American farmers. This is the companion book to Gilbert's PBS documentary, HOMECOMING.
Homecoming traces the history of black farmers from Reconstruction to the present, as they struggle to survive today. Homecoming pays tribute not only to the devastating losses they have suffered throughout the century, but also to the legacy of hope that endures in the story of African-Americans working the land.
"Revisiting the unbearable hardships encountered by my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents as they sought to survive the inhuman sharecropping system of the post-Civil War South—a system in many ways more brutal than slavery—my heart breaks again. But reading Homecoming's account of our ancestors' determined humility, obdurate courage, and fierce pride in and love of the land, my heart is healed. I see why there is such a thing as ancestor worship. I could not love my sharecropping ancestors more if I had created them myself. That black Southerners still love nature and revere the earth is the legacy of a people whose innate elegance and dignity was always expressed in essentials." —Alice Walker
"An extraordinary gift. . . . A moving, lyrical, and important history: a tale of land, labor, love, and loss." —Farah Jasmine Griffin
"Moving, highly informative, and valuable." —Barbara Neely, author of Blanche Cleans Up
Homecoming traces the history of black farmers from Reconstruction to the present, as they struggle to survive today. Homecoming pays tribute not only to the devastating losses they have suffered throughout the century, but also to the legacy of hope that endures in the story of African-Americans working the land.
"Revisiting the unbearable hardships encountered by my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents as they sought to survive the inhuman sharecropping system of the post-Civil War South—a system in many ways more brutal than slavery—my heart breaks again. But reading Homecoming's account of our ancestors' determined humility, obdurate courage, and fierce pride in and love of the land, my heart is healed. I see why there is such a thing as ancestor worship. I could not love my sharecropping ancestors more if I had created them myself. That black Southerners still love nature and revere the earth is the legacy of a people whose innate elegance and dignity was always expressed in essentials." —Alice Walker
"An extraordinary gift. . . . A moving, lyrical, and important history: a tale of land, labor, love, and loss." —Farah Jasmine Griffin
"Moving, highly informative, and valuable." —Barbara Neely, author of Blanche Cleans Up
