Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Richie's Picks: THE OLD AFRICAN, October 1, 2005
This review is from: The Old African (Hardcover)
The title page of THE OLD AFRICAN is preceded by the pictorial story of the hunt and capture of the runaway called "Paul."
"The boy's wrists were tied so that his arms hugged the trunk of the large oak tree. His face was pressed against it as if it were the bosom of the mother he had never known. His back glistened with blood.
"Whack!"
"The whip cut into his flesh again, but he did not scream or even whimper.
"Master Riley had ordered his twenty slaves to watch what happened to someone who dared run away, and like a black crescent moon, they stood in a semicircle near the tree. At the center was the Old African. His face was as expressionless as tree bark.
"The slaves did not see the blood on the boy's back nor hear the flies droning around the red gaping wounds. They were staring at a picture in their minds, a picture of water as soft and cool as a lullaby. They did not know how the Old African was able to make them see water as blue as freedom, but he had done it to them often."
"Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child
A long way
From my home, yeah
Yeah
Sing
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom"
--Richie Havens' rewrite of "Motherless Child"
I got to attend a Richie Havens performance thirty-five years ago, in 1970. For many of today's young adults, 1970 is ancient history. For me, 1970 was high school and girls and protesting Vietnam, Workingman's Dead, and the first Earth Day. I learned to drive in 1970. The thirty-five years that have passed since then is the same interval of time that separated women getting the right to vote and me getting born. The Nineteenth Amendment once felt like ancient textbook history to me. Not anymore.
"It happened so quickly. One minute he had been asleep, one arm across Ola's back. The next there were screams and yells and shouts, and then men bursting into his home and grabbing him and Ola, tying their hands behind their backs and pushing them outside.
"Quickly he was separated from Ola. A rope was tied around his waist and then tied to the bound wrists of a man in front of him as his own bound wrists were tied to a rope around the waist of the man behind him."
Textbooks and run-of-the-mill history lessons can so easily make the kidnapping, torture, and enslavement of Africans seem like something two-dimensional that happened in history just this side of Columbus discovering the world was round. In contrast, the raw emotion of Julius Lester's text and of Jerry Pinkney's visual artistry in THE OLD AFRICAN give the slave's journey an immediacy that no textbook could ever match.
In a work of imagination based upon a true story, THE OLD AFRICAN tells the tale of the slave once known as Jaja, God's gift, who is silent but who has The Power. Jaja, now known as the Old African, recalls his capture, his being traded to the "Mwene Puto, the Lord of the Dead, who was the color of bones," and his subsequent journey across the Water-That-Stretched-Forever, to America.
"The bottom of the ship was three tiers of wide wooden bunks, three feet between each one. The captives were made to lie on their right sides, their bodies curled against each other like spoons resting in a drawer. Jaja could feel the head of the man behind lying on his back, the man's knees resting in the crooks of Jaja's knees just as Jaja's head lay on the back of the man in front of him, his knees and thighs tucked in the crook of the other man's legs.
"Jaja lay in the middle tier, which he found out quickly was the worst place to be. Even though there were round windows that brought in air from the water, and open hatches in the ceiling let in more air, it was not enough for the almost 250 men, women, and children who lay as tightly against each other as feathers on a bird's wings.
"Almost immediately Jaja was covered with sweat, as was the man who lay against him, as was the man he lay against, as were the bodies of every man, woman, and child lying there. The smell of perspiration was too thick for the wisps of air coming in from the water to move against. Someone gagged at the odor and vomited. Then another. And another. And another."
Now I have a clear vision of what it was to be captive aboard a slave ship.
"Sitting here in Limbo
Waiting for the tide to flow
Yeah, now, sitting here in Limbo
And I know in my heart that it's time for me to go
Well they're putting up resistance
But I know that my faith will lead me on"
--Jimmy Cliff
While tending to that runaway, captured, and whipped slave known as "Paul," the Old African learns that Paul has seen the ocean and determines that he, the Old African, will deliver his people back to their homeland in Africa.
"Oh the water,
Let it run all over me."
--Van Morrison (1970) "And it Stoned Me"
In-depth notes from the author and illustrator at the conclusion of the book include discussion of Ybo Landing "where, it was believed, a group of Ybo slaves had walked into the water, saying they were going to walk back to Africa."
The thirty-two paintings that Jerry Pinkney created for this book ooze with emotion. The scenes aboard the slave ship have a hellish quality to them, the white people appearing ghostlike and the captives appearing as masses of lost souls. The scenes of the deliverance back to Africa have an overwhelming sense of joy and rebirth.
Like some veteran musical duo who can anticipate exactly where the other is headed, Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney work together here to create sheer magic. THE OLD AFRICAN is one hell of a performance.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Old African: Humanity's Story, By Jacque Roberts, November 9, 2007
This review is from: The Old African (Hardcover)
Though literally about slavery, suffering, and fantastical escape, The Old African tells a story familiar to us all--the human story, the story of growing up and being ripped apart by the world and each other before remembering our roots and summoning up our inner divinity to return to who we always were. Author Julius Lester and illustrator Jerry Pinkney use a telling structure and bold and vivid imagery, held together by a pearly bubble of magical realism, to quite effectively and beautifully tell the tale of the old African in us all. Thus this books intended audience is all mankind.
The story is structured around a flashback; the present sandwiches itself about the past, thus illustrating the importance of remembering our roots and returning to them. It begins with a group of slaves, "a black crescent," watching their master whip a boy--with the old African among them. This first glint of the present establishes a few very important facts: one, that no one has heard the Old African speak; two, that the Old African frightens the slave master; and three, that the Old African uses mystical powers to protect and comfort his people, and in fact still lingers with them in order to do so.
Catalyzed by a single thought, a flashback ripples into bright, raw reality and reveals the Old African's past. Jaja was his name and he had had a wife--a soulmate really--and a home and a teacher before another tribe came and captured his entire village for white men, or the "Lords of the Dead." This flashback reveals Jaja's suffering, his travel across great waters, his obligation to be a leader, and his hardening of heart.
Awakened from the past, The Old African remembers that the slave holder had said that he had found the beaten boy by the ocean. The ocean! He calls forth the power within himself and finds the ocean from a bird's eye's view. He gathers his people, brings them to the ocean--protected from slave owners by a great lightening storm--and then he assures them life and leads them down into the water on a walk back to Africa. Sea creatures guide them home and they immerge on African soil together with those that had once been lost at sea and soon celebrate their return to freedom, to home.
The first two parts of the book--the present and the flashback--are about remembering while the last is about returning. This structure characterizes the human story. It's everywhere. Characters forget who they are and so they go on a journey (whether in thought or in actuality) to remember, and then having remembered, they return home. It is a pattern in every theology, in every beloved, classic story. This story is effective in part because we recognize its structural truth in our own lives.
The stunning imagery--both illustrated and written--also brings the message of return to life. At times Pinkney uses bright oranges and blues and yellows--colors reminiscent of Africa--to reveal the roots of the people. The colors serve as images of home and thus beckon the characters there. The last pages bring the colors full circle by putting the people and the land back together, creating a sense of the satisfying.
The human emotion that pulsates from every page is powerful, evocative and deeply stirring. Indeed the illustrations serve as heart strings that connect the reader to the words. Pinkney depicts Pain, gapping sorrow, joy and everything else human so that the story emanates not just a people's pain or a people's joy but more basically and vastly, a human's pain, and a human's joy.
When greedy men arrive in the night and tear Jaja and his wife Ola apart forever, we do not just see their pain but we feel it and are compelled to imagine the same scene in our own lives. Both the illustrations and the words identify with the broad audience of all of humanity. We feel the injustice of it all and then invest ourselves into the characters, becoming them in a very real sense. We imagine our own soul mate being ripped out of our arms and at once feel for these people and at once hope for their restoration as we would and indeed do hope for our own. The written and illustrated imagery identifies with hearts and brings readers and characters together because it typifies all lives, howbeit in a hyperbolic way.
Illustrious fantastical realism characterizes the work as figuratively representative of the grand human story. For example, the walk back to Africa is a fantastical way of describing our human walk back to our roots. All most everyone faces the questions "who am I?" and "where am I going?" and "What is my purpose?" Throughout life we work at juggling these questions; we try to understand them and to hear and heed their answers. In this metaphorical walk through the sea, back to Africa, the people are led in the right direction by Sharks and sea creatures which figuratively relate to a person's following of conscious, of religious light, of intuition.
Arriving in Africa relates to people's perceptions of an afterlife, a heaven where the pulchritude of the truth is restored and peace reigns and love makes all things new. Returning means finding self again and truth again and God again.
Jaja identifies his purpose throughout his journey by listening to his teacher Obasi and by using his own power to protect and comfort the people he loves. He discovers his power to come back home.
Imagery and structure, united by a the magic of deeply figurative meaning make The Old African not merely just a story but the story, the story of our lives.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Can't go over it. Can't go under it. Must go through it., January 6, 2006
This review is from: The Old African (Hardcover)
Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney may as well just declare themselves the kings of African-American children's literature, cause I can tell you right now that no one is going to contest the title. Virginia Hamilton? She's not making any additional literature at the moment. Leo and Diane Duane? They're far happier illustrating books than doing too much writing. Nope, it all comes down to the dynamite team of Lester & Pinkney. These fellows have it all worked out. They've single-handedly liberated Brer Rabbit from his antiquated vernacular (as in "The Tales of Uncle Remus"), reinvented Little Black Sambo into a far more presentable fellow (as in "Sam and the Tigers"), and even gave "John Henry" his full undeniable due. So where do you go from there? When you've covered everything from black cowboys to old racist standbys, what is there that's left to say? Well, there's always African-American history. In 2004 Virginia Hamilton's, "The People Could Fly" was republished from its short story collection as a picture book with illustrations by the aforementioned Duanes. Now, and in the same vein, Lester and Pinkney bring us their own tale of slavery, the supernatural, and the power of creating new myths from old pains.
Our first image in this book is of a boy being mercilessly whipped. A black slave, tied to a tree, has just been recaptured by his master and is paying the price. Fortunately the boy feels no blows and the watching crowd feel no distress. That's because the Old African is amongst them, siphoning off their pain and letting it go. In a flash we see the history of this now mute slave. We see him in Africa captured by a rival tribe. Separated from his wife, Jaja (the Old African's real name) is bought with many others by the crews of several slave ships and must endure unbearable horrors before reaching America. Back in the present, the Old African learns from the whipped boy that the ocean over which the slave ships came is not too far away. Summoning his strength and the people about him, everyone makes a break for freedom by going back to Africa. This time though, they're walking.
I've always been a Julius Lester fan but my relationship to Jerry Pinkney has never been an easy one. Quite frankly, he has a tendency to disappoint me. In this book, however, his sometimes sketchy style has been reined in and tightly controlled. In the cover image, Pinkney outdoes himself. He's just as capable of conjuring up a scene of unconscionable horror in the hold of a slave ship as he is able to bring to life the picture of a house in flames with a single yellow skull hanging over the proceedings. His illustrations almost work perfectly in this book up until you get near the end of the tale. Then he starts to do his own thing and loses the audience in the process. For most of the book the Old African in America is seen wearing a brown top hat with a hawk's feather in the brim, a red vest, and a blue sash around his waist. Then everyone gets to the ocean, he leads them into the sea to walk upon the floor, and unless you're paying strict attention you might not notice that his hat has turned into a red beret with a colorful yellow, red, and green throw about his shoulders. I suspect that the hawk feather that stays in his cap is supposed to tip you off, but since there's no mention of this quick change in the book (nor the fact that everyone else who has walked across the sea has gotten new clothing) you might be forgiven for wondering why we never see the Old African again after he plunges into the depths. But in the face of the lovely pictures and stunning text, this objection comes out as merely a quibble.
One of the things I loved about this book, and it's something that I think few people will point out, is that the slave master really and truly does believe that he's a reasonable man. At the beginning of the book he says to the gathered slaves, "I don't get upset if one of y'all wants to sneak off to see your wife or husband or one of your children what live on a nearby plantation". This image of a slaveholder who feels that he's one of the good guys conjured up scenes from Toni Morrison's, "Beloved". No matter how "good" the master thinks he is, no situation involving slavery is ever going to be acceptable. "The Old African" makes this quite clear. Lester's writing is at its peak here. I recently wrote a review for "Show Way" by Jacqueline Woodson that said that her book was the "Roots" of the picture book world. I maintain that statement, but "The Old African" definitely gives Woodson's title a run for its money.
I mentioned earlier that this book was written in the vein of Hamilton's, "The People Could Fly". The similarities are a touch telling. Both books tell the story of an "old" African slave who hasn't forgotten the African ways and is stationed in a slaveholding community to help those around him with a kind of magic. In both books large groups of slaves go back to Africa and get free of their bonds via a supernatural method (be it flying or walking on the bottom of the ocean). And both have some difficulty discerning who their audience is. The problem with "The People Could Fly" is the same problem "The Old African" has. Mainly, what age group is this book intended for? Due to the mature nature of the story (violence, the obvious threat of rape, gropings, etc.) this might be better for older children, perhaps even teenagers. Teens shy away from beautifully illustrated books, though (unless that illustration is in the form of a graphic novel, perhaps). So the audience of this book is going to be the tweens of the world who may find in it an abundance of beauty and pain. And how do you sell "The Old African" to them? Well it seems to me that what we have here is a superhero tale in its purest form. You have a man with extraordinary powers who's mentor dies in the midst of a terrible ordeal. At first he keeps his powers quiet but then he realizes that he is the natural leader of his people and en masse brings them BACK to their native land. There are walking skeletons, talking sharks, and all kinds of interesting details to lure the kids' interests. Sell this title to them as a superhero book of a different kind and you may just hook one or two who've been looking for something new.
Magic, history, and jaw-dropping pics. That's something everyone can get behind. It may not be earmarked for one age group or another, but "The Old African" certainly deserves to become a little better known for its gutsy take on a whole new myth. Methinks a movie is in order here, non?
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
