Black Pilgrimage

by Tom Feelings

A black artist describes his life, from his birthplace in Brooklyn to his adopted home, Ghana, and how various experiences helped him develop new aspects of his talent.

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1972

About the author

Tom was a skilled cartoonist, illustrator, teacher, and activist for the African-American experience. For a time, he served in the Graphic Arts division of the U.S. Air Force. He created the cartoon Tommy Traveler in the World of Black History in 1958, received a Caldecott Honor in 1972, and two Coretta Scott King Awards in 1979 and 1994.

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Reviews

[Marissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book about a Black artist's journey to depict the world that he was around him. This book talks about Tom Feelings' struggle as a Black artist who desired to draw art about the world that he saw - the Black children and adults of Bedford-Stuyvesant. He discusses how in art school a professor told him that African Art was "primitive art." How publishers often confronted him about his subject matter and asked him why he didn't draw white people. How in a classroom where he showed his art to Black children who were excited to see themselves on the page, one Black girl said, "Ain't nothin' Black pretty." But more than the struggle, the thing that struck me most was Tom Feelings' desire to show the beauty and wonder of Black people in the every day. Boys sitting on the steps on a hot summer day, children playing hop scotch, sketches of people going about their everyday. Even his sketches are gorgeous. The few plates with color are breathtaking. The book ultimately feels like the artist's journey to use his art to tell Black people they are beautiful and worthy of being depicted and celebrated.

[Jeff Lewonczyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written for young readers, this is part art book, part memoir of Feelings' education as an illustrator and an observer and contributor to Black culture. Born in Bed-Stuy, he had the (for his community at the time) rare experience of going to art school, drew a comic-strip on Black history for a Harlem newspaper, struggled as a commercial artist due to his determination to focus on Black subjects, decamped to Ghana for several years to become a state-employed illustrator, and then came back to illustrate children's books, about which he has very ambivalent feelings. He comes across as a man of complex thoughts and emotions, who creates very beautiful and human depictions of underrepresented people. Every page of the book is fascinating and alive.

[Cara Byrne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feelings begins by quoting Bill Strickland, who once said, "The first right of a people who want to be free is the right to define their own reality." He goes on to share his own philosophy on the black community, his art and African Americans' connection to Africa. His drawings, whether depicting a young, smiling African girl in front of her one room home or a girl in his hometown of Brooklyn, standing up against a wall covered in graffiti, capture the personalities and spirits of his subjects. While he illustrates mothers holding babies, groups of men sitting on a stoop and drinking, and African adults cutting fruit, he focuses particularly on children throughout this book. He argues: “I chose children as subjects because they had had less time to be exposed to the pain of being Black in a white country, and because they reflect the best in us before it is changed or corrupted […] I tried to show the children, through my work, the effect they had on me” (36). Overall, this is a great complement to his art/picture books.