Acclaimed writer Walter Dean Myers celebrates the people of Harlem with these powerful and soulful first-person poems in the voices of the residents who make up the legendary neighborhood: basketball players, teachers, mail carriers, jazz artists, maids, veterans, nannies, students, and more. Exhilarating and electric, these poems capture the energy and resilience of a neighborhood and a people.
Starred review from November 15, 2004
In nearly 60 poems, Myers (145th Street
) treats readers to a tour of Harlem's past and present, its hopes and fears, through the voices of narrators young and old. Together they create a pastiche of the community's fixtures, the church ("Wake up Lazurus! Wake up Paul!/ Wake the congregation and lift their hearts"), the barber shop for men, the hairdresser for women ("My mouth is sealed, you don't even see a crack,/ 'Cause I ain't the kind to talk behind nobody's back"), rent parties (where people gathered to eat, drink and to help the host pay the rent) and Sylvia's restaurant. "Clara Brown's Testimony," parts I-IV provides a continuity through the collected impressions, as she describes her love for Harlem, through heartbreak (when she and her sister do not make the Cotton Club chorus line, she's told it's because her skin is too dark: "That was the day I learned that being black wasn't no simple thing, even in Harlem") and more often joy. Myers offers differing perspectives on milestone events such as Jackie Robinson joining the Dodgers, as well as subjects closer to home, such as young love, or a pairing of poems by a father and his drug-addict daughter. Another especially moving cluster of poems rotates among three WWII vets from the 369th Infantry, known as the "Harlem Hellfighters," one of them blinded by a Southern sheriff after the war, on their way home. And Harlem is indeed home, to all of the people who give voice to its pains and pleasures. Readers will want to visit again and again. Ages 12-up.
Starred review from December 1, 2004
Gr 6 Up-Myers's skill with characterization and voice are apparent as he models Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology (Sagebrush, 1962) to bring Harlem to life for readers. A complexity of experiences comes through vividly in the varying poetic styles, from the Deacon Macon R. Allen: "Don't give me no whispering church/Don't be mumbling nothing to my Lord/You came in crying and you going out crying/So don't be holding back the word" to 14-year-old Didi Taylor: "I'd love to live on Sugar Hill/Be as rich as I could be/Then all the folks from down the way/Would have to envy me/I'd stick my hincty pinky out/Put my hincty nose in the air/Get a hincty chauffeur to drive my car/And a white girl to do my hair." Selected black-and-white photos from different time periods accompany some of the poems, but the connection to the subjects is often slight. While there are occasional references to historical events or people, this collection can be enjoyed without knowing them. The rich and exciting text will give readers a flavor of the multiplicity of times and peoples of Harlem, and the more than 50 voices will stay with them, resurfacing as their understanding of the context develops. Use this title to supplement classroom presentations, for individual or choral recitation, or simply suggest that teens find a good chair, get comfortable, and listen to what the people have to tell them.-Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA
Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from November 1, 2004
Gr. 7-10. In the introduction, Myers writes that he was inspired by Edgar Lee Masters' " Spoon River Anthology," in which the people who live in a fictional town tell their stories in verse, and by his love of the Harlem community where he grew up. In each poem here, a resident of Harlem speaks in a distinctive voice, offering a story, a thought, a reflection, or a memory. The poetic forms are varied and well chosen. While some are formally expressed free-verse poems, others use the rhythm and rhyme of early blues songs or the graceful, informal cadences of conversational speech. Expressive period photos from Myers' collection accompany the text of this handsome book. Rather than illustrating specific poems, they help to create the look and feel of the time and place. Six vivid prose statements, called "Clara Brown's Testimony," appear throughout the volume and reflect different stages of her life. The rest of the pieces are poems revealing the experiences and personalities of 53 people, from student to retiree, from hairdresser to hustler, from live-in maid to street vendor-guitar player. Some of the individual poems are exceptionally strong and memorable. Collectively, they offer a colorful and warmly personal portrayal of Harlem. Whether used as a performance piece or read from cover to cover, this unusual book will be long remembered.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)
January 1, 2005
In this collection of more than fifty first-person poems varied in form, meter, and mood, Myers constructs a portrait of his beloved Harlem through the voices of its various constituents. Old snapshots and studio portraits of ordinary black folks help place the voices in a past that is somewhat indeterminate but never sentimentalized.
(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
January 1, 2005
In an ambitious collection inspired, says the author in an introduction, by Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology, Myers constructs a portrait of his beloved Harlem through the voices of its various constituents -- children, adolescents, church ladies and jazz musicians, veterans, hustlers, a hairdresser, a boxer -- in a series of more than fifty first-person poems. Each poem is titled with the name, age, and occupation of its imagined speaker, and there's variety in form, meter, and mood. Mail carrier Henry Johnson hears the voices of leaders in those of Harlem's men: "Could be Marcus, I said / Could be Martin, came a voice from down the way / Sounds like Malcolm, rang from the shadows." Nanny Eleanor Hayden sardonically imagines what will happen when her little white charge starts singing the blues: "I'm going to say she got it from the television." Young basketball player Lawrence Hamm owns the court: "'Gone!' is my name, and 'Slam!' / In this sweet universe / Of Ball, I am! I am!" Old snapshots and studio portraits of ordinary black folks help place the voices in a past that is somewhat indeterminate but never sentimentalized.
(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)