The Americans Who Tell The Truth portrait series by Robert Shetterly is a collection of 275 paintings of the most incredible people in our history. These are the ones who rose up for justice, who spoke out against wrongs, who revealed the truth and held firm for the vision of a nation that respected all people at home and around the world. 
 

Mother Jones. Sojourner Truth. Alice Paul. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I will be portrait #276. It is the greatest honor of my life. 

On May 4, at an in-person Portrait Unveiling in Blue Hill, ME, artist Robert Shetterly will pull a cloth off a 3×6′ painting of yours truly. Inscribed on it will be a quote from one of my novels. I will not have seen the portrait yet. My first reaction will undoubtedly be to burst into tears of deep emotion that make my nose turn red and turn my face into a quivering mess. 
 

Frederick Douglass. Grace Lee Boggs. Cesar Chavez. Daniel Ellsberg.

To be honored alongside these heroes means more to me than any other award or prize. For 43 years of my life, I’ve looked up to them and aspired to live up to the examples they embodied. They’ve been a strand of US history that we can take pride in and anchor our sense of collective self-respect. 
 

Bayard Rustin. Pete Seeger. Mark Twain. Howard Zinn. 

At a time when lies spill out in every sentence of our president, when climate denialism is state policy, when erasure of women, trans, people of color, science, fact, and truth is taking place throughout our nation; this series is especially important. To be added to this series in this exact moment is not just an honor for my work thus far … it’s a rallying cry for the times. We must all be Americans Who Tell The Truth. 
 

Edward Snowden. Medea Benjamin. Bree Newsome. Tim DeChristopher.

The portrait unveiling will take place in-person at the Bay School in Blue Hill, Maine. It is a school where my novels have been read by the young students and where several unveilings have taken place. Artist Robert Shetterly will explain why he was inspired to paint my portrait. If we’re lucky, schoolchildren will perform a skit from The Adventures of Alaren. My mother and family will attend. My friend and colleague Sherri Mitchell (who is also in the portrait series) will speak.

RSVP here for the zoom link.
Not in Maine? We will attempt to livestream.

I will also say a few words. You can expect them to be well-crafted. To be an American Who Tells The Truth in these times demands that we speak out against the violence, injustice, lies, and abuses that we see. It also requires that we speak with vision, hope, and passion. 
 

Fannie Lee Hamer. Ida B. Wells. Eugene V. Debs. Helen Keller.

These are the people who never gave up on the vision of a more just, respectful, compassionate, and peaceful nation. In the belly of the beast, in the dark nights of this country’s soul, in the bleak hours long before the dawn of change, these are the people who stood up and started marching toward the gleaming sunlight of justice. Like Dr. King, they took their times toward the mountaintop on the conviction and faith that we would get there. Many of them did not live to see these changes, but they lived in such a way that those who followed – all of us – would. It is our task now to honor their lives with our own. 
 

Samantha Smith. Jeannette Rankin. Paul K. Chappell. Julia Butterfly Hill.

Let us all live our lives as if our paintings already hang within this beautiful series. We stand in this lineage of people and the countless others who came before us. These are the laborers in the mills, the African-Americans at the lunch counters, all those who opposed war, the Silent Sentinels outside the White House, the artists and writers, the whistleblowers and truthtellers. Their eyes are watching us now … and Robert Shetterly has immortalized not only their courage, but their immeasurable compassion, too. They look at us with kindness and understanding in their eyes. Come, they seem to say, the journey has been long and the promised land is still far off. But we are marching with you … and we will get there, together.
 

In solidarity,
Rivera Sun

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