Such was a statement I once overheard. It was a father trying to convince a boy the benefits of Math over History. Though I found this statement shocking and a terrible thing to say to any child, it is apparently more common a thought than I knew.
To me history is an echo of a song sung by those passed before us. Rows of headstones represent lives lived, not death mourned. Those who came before us formed our beginning, whether directly in the form of family, or slightly less directly (but with nearly as great an impact) through the founding of the countries of our birth and the establishment of our laws. The myriad of layers of paint being stripped off the trim of my century house tell me a bit of the families who lived there before me. After all, what kind of person would paint all their trim light pink, then baby blue, then mint green? And the girth of a giant tree makes me think of the hands that planted it so many years before.
My grandparents had a farm in cowboy country in Alberta. It was called the Lone Spruce. There were a number of deciduous trees and shrubs that acted as a hedgegrow around the farm to dull the winds and shelter the yard, but there was only one coniferous planting. A spruce put there by my great uncle. That spruce stood like a beacon, taller than everything around it. And do you know what? Around the time my great uncle died that spruce began to die as well. Am I saying they were connected? No. But perhaps a life can be measured by the things into which a person puts their efforts. History is a record of those efforts that pulses with life and only when it is forgotten does its blood cease to flow.
Where am I going with all this, and when does the book review kick in? History is alive. Though certain textbooks may have taken lives and herculean efforts and dulled them into dry numbers and facts that require memorization, other books have the effect of bringing them alive once again. Such is the effect of Heart and Soul : The Story of America and African Americans, written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. 450 years of history is told through 100 pages of narration and 46 brilliant oil paintings. It is told as a living, breathing story that makes the lives and efforts of a people, many of whom are long gone, real and current. It shows how the actions of our ancestors affect us today and takes the average person through the fight for equality of African Americans in the United States. Vivid illustrations link the faces of the past, and connect them to the reader. Confusion on the faces of slaves aboard a slave ship...
Resignation in the expression of a slave cleaning cotton...
Dogged determination on the faces of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman...
A glimmer of pride on a Union Soldier, then Buffalo Soldier, then WWII soldier...
Relief etched faces of a family migrating North...
A gleeful Duke Ellington surrounded by his jazz band...
Persistent pride from the boycotters of the Jim Crow laws, Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks...
It is possible to tell a story by faces alone, and Kadir Nelson does it well, though the narration connects the dots from past to present with a voice that is appropriately casual. This could almost be called a memoir, so personal it seems. This piece of history is no longer boring. Memorization is no longer required. Names are brought to life. I hope it does the same for you as it did for me.
Find it at your local library. Don't like to share? Get your own copy.
Cool! I've never been great at history because in the past it has been made a memorization activity for me (which I'm not good at). I could handle a history book that's like a memoir!
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