Customer Reviews

The Middle Passage: White Ships/ Black Cargo

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While teaching the 6 traits of writing to middle school students, I was given The Middle Passage to use as an example of a book with strong voice. The book completely awed me with its dark, powerful images. Page after page, the illustrations evoke incredibly strong emotional reactions in the reader despite the absence of words. While the story is certainly worth sharing and keeping alive, the black and white drawings are graphic enough that I decided to save the book for a time when I could provide students with more background information to prepare them for the harsh realities depicted. This is a book that I will keep in my collection because of its artistic power, historical accuracy, and vivid impact.

Inaccessible and obscure to many because of its controversial categorization under children's books, Tom Feelings' The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo relays a story that simply cannot go untold. People of all ages will experience a strong reaction to the vivid, black and white illustrations chronicling the brutal history of America, of race, and of humanity that can never really be fully remembered. I would advise against simply handing the book to a child without being prepared to undergo the painful process of explaining the meaning of the narrative relayed by Feelings. The artist graphically captures many of the different atrocities that occurred: violence, rape, and dehumanizing conditions. The book sparks productive discussion between all people on the slave trade and on the different methods of representing that history.

The Middle Passage is a phenominal series of paintings depicting the transportation of black slaves across the Atlantic. I use this large format book as a visual aid in my N.Y.C. art classes. It has inspired the type of dialogue we all want to have in our classrooms.

This book evokes many feelings although there are no written words in the story. The feelings portrayed in the book vividly are anger, shame, sympathy, and compassion to name a few. I believe students would have feelings arosed in them. I highly suggest people from young adult through adults read this book.

Excellent pencil drawings depict the harvesting and the transport of human beings as commodities to be sold in the slave trade. A powerful resource.

This book has been classified as an Art book. Share it with every Art Teacher you know !!! Horrific, terrifying illustrations should motivate us to ensure that something like this NEVER happens again !!!

This book... I didn't know it was a childs book. I bought it for me. I saw the beautiful black and white pictures... and the story they were telling and knew I needed this book. A very strong story told with few words. Get the book.

Although labeled a book for young readers, readers of all ages should get a copy of this beautiful rendering of Black people's journey from the Motherland to America, told entirely in pictures. A brilliant recording and keepsake

Given this is "Black" history month, Mr. Feelings' book should be mandatory for all who reside in this country, race, creed, ethnicity not withstanding. How a people can be so totally brutilized in abounding silencce and suffer for hunderdes of years; both as the victim and perpertrator needs some serious investigation. Book:"Lets We Forget" by Velma Maia Thomas, brings 3D and text to Tom Feelings work. You can feel the pain, hear the cries, smell the stench! I say, BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO! To Mr. Feelings it is a pity that his work will only reach a small percent of the American public. The truth continues in avodiance! A passage from an infamous speech delivered in 1712 on the banks of the St. James river, reverbirates the above mentioned works; "I will teach you a simple method to control your slaves. Your wives and children can learn this method and I grauntee it works. The slaves themselves will perpetuate this method for hundreds or maybe thousands of years to come!" GOD, will we ever get out of the bottom of that boat?? From the Heart of a Serious Sistah YAA ASANTEWAA NZINGA

As an African-American, when I think of my people being held in a ship's hold for months at a time, or expectant mothers being tossed overboard because morning sickness is having its way with them, tears fill my eyes and this book drives that point home more and more. At the same time, it serves as a reminder that I am here because someone survived The Passage. Someone was strong enough to endure. Mr. Feelings had to have been there in some capacity. Whether the ancestors are merely whispering in his ear to tell him how it was, or if some muse is sweeping him there through his vision or dreams, he was there. There is no other explanation for such vivid sensitivity in his artwork. This book is a reminder as well as an inspiration of an event none need ever try and forget

This book brings out soo many emotions. Words need not be said..... just look..... A story that is told so very vividly... the pictures soo strong... the pain soo clear. I didn't realize it was a children's book, I got it because of the power in the pictures.