What About Solutions: "Let it Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters"

This week's What About Solutions post highlights the work of Andrea Davis Pinkney. Its Black history Month we're highlighting a Black woman that's not waiting on someone else to produce the images she want's to see. She wrote a book about 10 Black women who contributed to the fight for Civil Rights.
Andrea wrote Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters

Exploring these individuals' childhoods as well as their accomplishments as adults, the author smoothly distills biographical information so as to hold the attention of young readers. Her selection of subjects includes the prominent (Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Shirley Chisholm) as well as such lesser-knowns as Fannie Lou Hamer, an indefatigable campaigner for African-Americans' right to vote. Pinkney's writing is spiced with colloquialisms ("She didn't shy back for nobody," she says of Sojourner Truth) and useful imagery (describing this same crusader's delivery of her renowned "Ain't I a woman?" speech, the author notes, "She was the only black woman in the place, and when she stepped to the pulpit, some folks looked at her like she was a stain on their purest linens"). Featuring creatively skewed perspective and proportion, Alcorn's (I, Too, Sing America) oil paintings offer allegorical interpretations of his subjects' lives. Ages 8-up. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Comments

[blackgirlgrown]

I have always been a fan of your site, and I look forward to featuring some of your posts on my mine. Stay blessed, and stay strong. Every voice is important and needed for the collective good.

[Chris Chambers]

This is yet another reason why stimulus $$$ needs to go to overhaul our crumbling arts infrastructure, else we're stuck with "Madea" and Beyonce giving their (which is really mr. Charlie and marketing/hype moguls) take on harriet Tubman and Daisy Bates. Culture and History all implicate politics, and vice versa...

[Beverly]

Hey Gina,

Here is another group of Black women (actually two sisters) who are creating animated series with positive/humane images of black women.

http://adoptedbyaliens.blogspot.com/