Black History Month: Fortune's Bones
"There is a skeleton in the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut. It has been in the town for over 200 years. In 1996, community members decided to find out what they could about it. Historians discovered that the bones were those of a slave named Fortune, who was owned by a doctor. After Fortune's death, the doctor rendered the bones. Further research revealed that Fortune had married, had fathered four children, and had been baptized late in life. His bones suggest that after a life of ardurous labor, he died in 1798 at the age of 60."
I met author Marilyn Nelson at NCTE/ALAN in Nashville this November. Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem is one of the best books for young adults I've read in a long time. With spare poetry and prose, she reconstructs the haunting implications of our national -- not ethnic, not African American, but national--past.
A wonderful website that I'm using with my student teachers this evening in class: http://www.fortunestory.org/ -- all of them are white, upper middle class young adults teaching African American literature in diverse contexts. Contextualization is everything.
Marilyn Nelson, in the beginning:
Fortune's legacy was his inheritance: the hopeless hope of a people valued for their labor, not for their ability to watch and dream as vees of geese define fall evening skies. Was Fortune bitter? Was he good or bad? Did he sometimes throw back his head and laugh? His bones say only that he served and died, that he was useful, even into death, stripped of his name, his story, and his flesh.
And, at the end, Marilyn speaks for Fortune:
Well, I woke up this morning just so glad to be free,
glad to be free, glad to be free.
I woke up this morning in restful peace.
For I am not my body.
I am not my bones.
I am not my body,
glory hallelujah, not my bones.
I am not my bones.
So I'm thinking of Virginia Hamilton's story "The People Could Fly"... and of course, the old slave spiritual, "Know someday we'll all be free"... on down to Ethel Waters' sad lament, "Darkies never dream"... to Donny Hathaway's swan song, "Take it from me, someday we'll all be free..."
And I think to myself, I am so proud of my people. Crushed down, but not destroyed... so, so very proud.
Gotta go -- time to teach. All of you remain, as always very close to my heart, my hopes, and my thoughts.
I met author Marilyn Nelson at NCTE/ALAN in Nashville this November. Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem is one of the best books for young adults I've read in a long time. With spare poetry and prose, she reconstructs the haunting implications of our national -- not ethnic, not African American, but national--past.
A wonderful website that I'm using with my student teachers this evening in class: http://www.fortunestory.org/ -- all of them are white, upper middle class young adults teaching African American literature in diverse contexts. Contextualization is everything.
Marilyn Nelson, in the beginning:
Fortune's legacy was his inheritance: the hopeless hope of a people valued for their labor, not for their ability to watch and dream as vees of geese define fall evening skies. Was Fortune bitter? Was he good or bad? Did he sometimes throw back his head and laugh? His bones say only that he served and died, that he was useful, even into death, stripped of his name, his story, and his flesh.
And, at the end, Marilyn speaks for Fortune:
Well, I woke up this morning just so glad to be free,
glad to be free, glad to be free.
I woke up this morning in restful peace.
For I am not my body.
I am not my bones.
I am not my body,
glory hallelujah, not my bones.
I am not my bones.
So I'm thinking of Virginia Hamilton's story "The People Could Fly"... and of course, the old slave spiritual, "Know someday we'll all be free"... on down to Ethel Waters' sad lament, "Darkies never dream"... to Donny Hathaway's swan song, "Take it from me, someday we'll all be free..."
And I think to myself, I am so proud of my people. Crushed down, but not destroyed... so, so very proud.
Gotta go -- time to teach. All of you remain, as always very close to my heart, my hopes, and my thoughts.