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And We Rise
A powerful, impactful, eye-opening journey that explores through the Civil Rights Movement in 1950s-1960s America in spare and evocative verse, with historical photos interspersed throughout.
In stunning verse and vivid use of white space, Erica Martin’s debut poetry collection walks readers through the Civil Rights Movement—from the well-documented events that shaped the nation’s treatment of Black people, beginning with the “Separate but Equal” ruling—and introduces lesser-known figures and moments that were just as crucial to the Movement and our nation's centuries-long fight for justice and equality.
A poignant, powerful, all-too-timely collection that is both a vital history lesson and much-needed conversation starter in our modern world. Complete with historical photographs, author’s note, chronology of events, research, and sources.
In stunning verse and vivid use of white space, Erica Martin’s debut poetry collection walks readers through the Civil Rights Movement—from the well-documented events that shaped the nation’s treatment of Black people, beginning with the “Separate but Equal” ruling—and introduces lesser-known figures and moments that were just as crucial to the Movement and our nation's centuries-long fight for justice and equality.
A poignant, powerful, all-too-timely collection that is both a vital history lesson and much-needed conversation starter in our modern world. Complete with historical photographs, author’s note, chronology of events, research, and sources.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2022
22 people are currently reading
5050 people want to read
About the author
Erica Martin
2 books53 followersErica Martin is a freelance editor and a poet. Her debut poetry collection, AND WE RISE, was released in February 2022 from Viking Books for Young Readers/Penguin Random House. It received two starred reviews and was an ABA Indies Introduce selection, as well as an ABA Indie Next pick. She was also one of three editors who oversaw the recently released poetry anthology POEMHOOD, from HarperTeen/HarperCollins, which highlights many award-winning and New York Times best-selling authors—including Kwame Alexander and Nikki Giovanni—and has received four starred reviews. Additionally, her poetry has been featured by Oprah Daily.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 239 reviews
January 23, 2022
4/5 stars, this was a powerful little collection of poems detailing the civil rights movement
Thank you to Penguin Teen for the arc through netgalley in exchange for an honest review!
"There's no difference / between you / and i / except that you get to live / and i get to die / trying" (85)
Poetry can be a great way to express lots of emotions and paint an important image, and this book is no exception. This collection was about the civil rights movement, but especially the things you don't really learn in school. Such as different people and actions we never learned about, but they are represented within this collection.
It was really gut-wrenching to think about what these people had to go through just to live, to live with their own conviction and happiness. I really enjoyed how poetry was utilized in this collection, and there were a few different ways. This was definitely more modern poetry as the way it was written was not like old poetry. I really enjoyed this as I can usually connect with modern poetry better than older style poetry. Some of it was a bit repetitive but it really drove home the point of what black people went through, which is so important to understand.
Overall, a really fast read and a great poetry collection. Everyone should give it a try to learn more about the civil rights movement, including people and history you might not know about. It was very interesting and heartbreaking but super important.
[TW: murder, racism, segregation, death of family, bullets, and guns, violent protests]
Thank you to Penguin Teen for the arc through netgalley in exchange for an honest review!
"There's no difference / between you / and i / except that you get to live / and i get to die / trying" (85)
Poetry can be a great way to express lots of emotions and paint an important image, and this book is no exception. This collection was about the civil rights movement, but especially the things you don't really learn in school. Such as different people and actions we never learned about, but they are represented within this collection.
It was really gut-wrenching to think about what these people had to go through just to live, to live with their own conviction and happiness. I really enjoyed how poetry was utilized in this collection, and there were a few different ways. This was definitely more modern poetry as the way it was written was not like old poetry. I really enjoyed this as I can usually connect with modern poetry better than older style poetry. Some of it was a bit repetitive but it really drove home the point of what black people went through, which is so important to understand.
Overall, a really fast read and a great poetry collection. Everyone should give it a try to learn more about the civil rights movement, including people and history you might not know about. It was very interesting and heartbreaking but super important.
[TW: murder, racism, segregation, death of family, bullets, and guns, violent protests]
March 28, 2022
📚 Hello Book Friends! AND WE RISE by Erica Martin is a powerful book of poetry about the Civil Rights Movement. Each poem is about a date and event and delivers punch after punch. The pictures scattered throughout the book are thought-provoking. I pondered after each poem and let its meaning sink in me before moving to the next. We cannot erase the past, but we can learn from it and make changes. Everyone should read this one.
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November 2, 2021
This one is tough. As someone who studies poetry at a graduate level, I don't think many poems in here make for particularly ... good or deep or interesting poems by themselves.
On the other hand I think young adults will find this a welcome introduction into the world of (hopefully better) poetry. A good primer for those interested in reading further.
On the other hand I think young adults will find this a welcome introduction into the world of (hopefully better) poetry. A good primer for those interested in reading further.
July 25, 2022
And We Rise is a powerful telling of the Civil Rights Movement in verse. Words matter and these poems go beyond just Dr. King and Rosa Parks; they tell of the marches, the murders, the mayhem, the injustices and more. Told in a linear fashion, the poems march right alongside the movement that they are discussing. The layout of the poems is meaningful and add extra layers to the intensity of what is being said. Peppered throughout the poetry are photos from the Civil Rights Movement. Extremely powerful.
March 13, 2022
Thank you to Penguin Teen and Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
This collection of non-fiction poems is a great start into digging into what happened during the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement. Filled with figures you'll recognize and some you might have never learned about. And We Rise is a short but powerful history that makes us reconcile the US's history we've been taught and what actually happened.
The collection of poems are beautiful rendered. I loved how they each flowed into each other, but we also can see how distinct events had impact. At the end, there's a historical timeline and that was extra helpful since there were some times I forgot the dates. Which is more about my brain trying to process everything and less about the writing here.
I loved the emotions these poems brought forth. Even though we are somewhat removed from the events since there's no primary character narrating to us, you still feel the despair, the hopelessness, the determination and perseverance of Black Americans in this.
This collection would be a great addition in classrooms or for people educating themselves. I read this along with The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, which is only enhancing the collective messages of these books. Highly recommend them all.
CWs: Racism, racial slurs, mentions of slavery/slaves, murder, lynching, police brutality, death, violence.
This collection of non-fiction poems is a great start into digging into what happened during the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement. Filled with figures you'll recognize and some you might have never learned about. And We Rise is a short but powerful history that makes us reconcile the US's history we've been taught and what actually happened.
The collection of poems are beautiful rendered. I loved how they each flowed into each other, but we also can see how distinct events had impact. At the end, there's a historical timeline and that was extra helpful since there were some times I forgot the dates. Which is more about my brain trying to process everything and less about the writing here.
I loved the emotions these poems brought forth. Even though we are somewhat removed from the events since there's no primary character narrating to us, you still feel the despair, the hopelessness, the determination and perseverance of Black Americans in this.
This collection would be a great addition in classrooms or for people educating themselves. I read this along with The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, which is only enhancing the collective messages of these books. Highly recommend them all.
CWs: Racism, racial slurs, mentions of slavery/slaves, murder, lynching, police brutality, death, violence.
February 25, 2024
And We Rise is an extraordinary history-in-verse of the Civil Rights Movement, written in haunting prose and unflinching honesty. This book belongs on every shelf and in every classroom.
June 7, 2022
More thoughts found in this reading vlog.
I'm not a poetry girlie, but I thought most of these were enjoyable. I did pick up a couple of new facts that I might have forgotten since my time in a history class. Overall I think it does a good job relaying information in a new format, and one that might stick with people better than a general lecture. It was a solid time, I do recommend it, but outside of that I don't have a lot of commentary to really give.
I'm not a poetry girlie, but I thought most of these were enjoyable. I did pick up a couple of new facts that I might have forgotten since my time in a history class. Overall I think it does a good job relaying information in a new format, and one that might stick with people better than a general lecture. It was a solid time, I do recommend it, but outside of that I don't have a lot of commentary to really give.
February 25, 2022
This was a powerful collection of poems that provides a historical timeline of the civil rights movement including pieces of history that is not often gone over in the classroom. It’s dark and surprising. Some parts are what we all know such as MLK’s assassination and then there’s parts such as the mass murder of teenage boys when a live in school was burned down in the south. It also includes MLK’s letter he wrote while incarcerated.
*thank you a NetGalley and Penguin for this eArc*
*thank you a NetGalley and Penguin for this eArc*
July 8, 2022
Good meaning. Way too repetitive, especially audiobook version. (Ex. march, march, march....)
December 31, 2021
I found this beautifully crafted collection both moving & educational. Martin brings renowned historical characters like MLK and Parks back to flesh and blood with minute details of their personal lives, while introducing us to lesser known heros of the Civil Rights Movement. The collection utilizes a mix of visual poetic crafts and photographs to chronological key events and people to give us a nuanced, fresh look at this important historical movement. This book belongs both in the classroom as well as home bookshelves.
February 24, 2023
4.5 ⭐️ This one was really good. Simple, quick format without losing the punch, which will appeal to many readers. The only thing I didn’t like was the occasional rhyme pattern that felt a bit forced in places. That detracted from the message just a bit for me.
February 4, 2022
Tiresome doggerel about a subject which deserves better.
It's hard to pinpoint the worst of the book. Early on, I thought it might be the author counting from 1 to 361. Later I decided it must be the author repeating "marched" so often that she lost her breath repeatedly. (When finally she stopped, I thought "you're not going to say 'marched' another 50 times?" at which point she did repeat that entire stanza again, then again in a slightly abbreviated form (with just one or two "marched" fewer), for a grand total of 130 or so "marched"s. The author liked that whole shtick so much she did it again later in the book, at which point I thought "oh, ffs, not a third time." But she did do it a third time, then a fourth, and a fifth.
Yes, fighting for social justice feels exhausting and annoying and interminable. I'm not convinced that reading about the fight should feel just as exhausting, annoying, and interminable.
It's hard to pinpoint the worst of the book. Early on, I thought it might be the author counting from 1 to 361. Later I decided it must be the author repeating "marched" so often that she lost her breath repeatedly. (When finally she stopped, I thought "you're not going to say 'marched' another 50 times?" at which point she did repeat that entire stanza again, then again in a slightly abbreviated form (with just one or two "marched" fewer), for a grand total of 130 or so "marched"s. The author liked that whole shtick so much she did it again later in the book, at which point I thought "oh, ffs, not a third time." But she did do it a third time, then a fourth, and a fifth.
Yes, fighting for social justice feels exhausting and annoying and interminable. I'm not convinced that reading about the fight should feel just as exhausting, annoying, and interminable.
September 30, 2021
Got to check out an ARC copy of this book and while poetry is not usually my go-to I'm so glad I picked this one up. There's something about the way that the author used the format of the poems that made the story so much more real. The repeated "chorus" of marching and the counting in another poem really drove home how long and exhausting the fight was. I cannot wait to start recommending this book once it's released.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 22, 2022
This should be read in every high school.
February 9, 2022
Full review in its optimum format can be found on my blog, Cierra’s Cynosure, here.
“Retrospect is a place where truth lives guilt-free.”
LIKES
In just 160 pages, Erica Martin opened my eyes to more horrors of the Civil Rights Era than I was previously able to recount. In compelling verse, Martin explores the names, faces, and cases of black people everywhere who fought for the right to exist. From forgotten instances such as Claudette Colvin, who was the first black girl who refused to give up her seat on the bus, to people whose death sparked year-long riots, such as Matthew Johnson.
I found myself Googling the events the book referenced that I had never heard of. The Negro Boys Industrial School Fire of 1959, where 21 black boys burned to death in a “mysterious” fire that no one was ever held accountable for starting. The 13 Freedom Riders and the then near-death of the beloved late John Lewis in 1961. The murder of four black girls—school-aged children—by the KKK in the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in 1963.
This book covered so many events that I didn’t know about. And if I dare to speak honestly, events that I probably wouldn’t have had the heart to discover otherwise. And this, I think, is the entire goal of the book: to will Americans of all backgrounds to acknowledge the injustices of the past.
“We forget to remember the true horrors of our past.”
The other major takeaway I think this book wants to convey is the de-emphasis and playing down of the past. Erica Martin urges us to remember just how egregious and ubiquitous racism once was in this country, despite the language we use to talk about racism is increasingly milder. The grating truth is that black people were once enslaved, beaten, bombed, berated, and murdered in various ways simply for existing.
“There is no difference between you and I except you get to live and I get to die trying.”
In all, And We Rise is a powerfully short recounting of America’s past grievances on black people. This is not to say that racism against blacks is an archaic event of the past, as it still thrives in subsets of the population today. This is also not to say that American racism was/is solely against blacks, and we must acknowledge the horrors and oppression of other minority races in this country of both past and present as well. And We Rise is a starting point but not an endpoint. I encourage you to continue engaging with and learning about uncomfortable truths so that history does not repeat itself.
Staying Engaged Resources
I have a folder deep in my bookmarks bar of Google called “Things I’ve Never Forgotten.” In this folder, I save the links to the most impactful videos/articles I’ve come across in my life so far. This video is one of them. This is a 3-minute slam poem performed by three students of the 2014 Brave New Voices Finals Round titled “Somewhere in America.” It is relevant to the topics covered in And We Rise, and will let it speak for itself. Warning: it is graphic, but well worth the listen.
“Retrospect is a place where truth lives guilt-free.”
LIKES
In just 160 pages, Erica Martin opened my eyes to more horrors of the Civil Rights Era than I was previously able to recount. In compelling verse, Martin explores the names, faces, and cases of black people everywhere who fought for the right to exist. From forgotten instances such as Claudette Colvin, who was the first black girl who refused to give up her seat on the bus, to people whose death sparked year-long riots, such as Matthew Johnson.
I found myself Googling the events the book referenced that I had never heard of. The Negro Boys Industrial School Fire of 1959, where 21 black boys burned to death in a “mysterious” fire that no one was ever held accountable for starting. The 13 Freedom Riders and the then near-death of the beloved late John Lewis in 1961. The murder of four black girls—school-aged children—by the KKK in the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in 1963.
This book covered so many events that I didn’t know about. And if I dare to speak honestly, events that I probably wouldn’t have had the heart to discover otherwise. And this, I think, is the entire goal of the book: to will Americans of all backgrounds to acknowledge the injustices of the past.
“We forget to remember the true horrors of our past.”
The other major takeaway I think this book wants to convey is the de-emphasis and playing down of the past. Erica Martin urges us to remember just how egregious and ubiquitous racism once was in this country, despite the language we use to talk about racism is increasingly milder. The grating truth is that black people were once enslaved, beaten, bombed, berated, and murdered in various ways simply for existing.
“There is no difference between you and I except you get to live and I get to die trying.”
In all, And We Rise is a powerfully short recounting of America’s past grievances on black people. This is not to say that racism against blacks is an archaic event of the past, as it still thrives in subsets of the population today. This is also not to say that American racism was/is solely against blacks, and we must acknowledge the horrors and oppression of other minority races in this country of both past and present as well. And We Rise is a starting point but not an endpoint. I encourage you to continue engaging with and learning about uncomfortable truths so that history does not repeat itself.
Staying Engaged Resources
I have a folder deep in my bookmarks bar of Google called “Things I’ve Never Forgotten.” In this folder, I save the links to the most impactful videos/articles I’ve come across in my life so far. This video is one of them. This is a 3-minute slam poem performed by three students of the 2014 Brave New Voices Finals Round titled “Somewhere in America.” It is relevant to the topics covered in And We Rise, and will let it speak for itself. Warning: it is graphic, but well worth the listen.
September 5, 2022
Trước giờ mình không thích đọc thơ cho lắm chứ đừng nói đọc thơ bằng tiếng Anh. Nhưng rồi một ngày mình lượn lờ trong thư viện thì thấy quyển này ở kệ new book. Thế là mình quyết định mượn luôn vì bìa sách bao đẹp mọi người ạ. Và đúng là nó không làm mình thất vọng. Nếu mọi người muốn tìm hiểu về Civil Rights Movement thì đây chắc chắn là một quyển sách nên đọc vì nó tóm tắt lại các sự kiện quan trọng từ năm 1877 đến 1968 theo dạng thơ. Mỗi sự kiện chỉ cỡ tầm khoảng từ 2-4 trang thôi nên đọc khá nhanh. Nhưng nó đủ dài để mình cảm nhận được sự khó khăn và bất công mà những người Mỹ da đen phải chịu đựng. Họ làm gì hay ở đâu đều luôn phải lo lắng, đề phòng bởi họ có thể bị giết bất cứ lúc nào. Xuyên suốt quá trình mình đọc, mình phải search google liên tục để tìm hiểu về các sự kiện. Và đó là điều mình thấy khá thích thú về quyển này. Đọc xong cảm giác kiến thức tăng cao hahaha.
February 18, 2022
This is such a powerful book. I've read quite a bit about the Civil Rights movement over the many years I've homeschooled my children, but I was today years old when I learned about Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person before Rosa Parks did. What this book does, in such a powerful and elegant way, is to strip away the whitewashing that often accompanies the Civil Rights Era when it is taught in schools. We rarely get even a glimpse of how utterly ugly that period actually was. It is gut-wrenching to read, but so important that we do. The poems are haunting and honest.
Read my full review here: http://historybookbybook.com/And_We_Rise
Read my full review here: http://historybookbybook.com/And_We_Rise
April 12, 2022
This is a MUST READ! I’m just gonna drop a few quotes and let it speak for itself:
history has become a beautiful American lie
Overseers rewrite it and always
deny people the right
to know the ugly truth
only tell part of it especially to the youth
you express a great deal of anxiety
over our willingness to break laws
you wouldn’t
if you’ve seen all the things I saw
for years now
I have heard the word
wait!
1. (v.) a deceptive command
2. (n.) a manufactured fate
his body detained
but never his spirit
This is life -
years of bloodshed
but they still don’t consider you
human
history has become a beautiful American lie
Overseers rewrite it and always
deny people the right
to know the ugly truth
only tell part of it especially to the youth
you express a great deal of anxiety
over our willingness to break laws
you wouldn’t
if you’ve seen all the things I saw
for years now
I have heard the word
wait!
1. (v.) a deceptive command
2. (n.) a manufactured fate
his body detained
but never his spirit
This is life -
years of bloodshed
but they still don’t consider you
human
July 28, 2022
This is one to read, not listen. In reading through the poor reviews so many are from those who listen who complain about repetitive sections which I could imagine would be tiresome on audio. But isn't that the point? Isn't it the point to show how much marching and waiting and work went into fighting for civil rights.
This poetry collection is a brief run through of several key points over the course of the Civil rights movement in free verse poems. I appreciated the brief explanations at the back of the book clarifying each event that was mentioned in the book. To this end I think the book would be a great tool for teachers to use.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
This poetry collection is a brief run through of several key points over the course of the Civil rights movement in free verse poems. I appreciated the brief explanations at the back of the book clarifying each event that was mentioned in the book. To this end I think the book would be a great tool for teachers to use.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
September 13, 2022
This collection of poetry speaks to the Civil Rights movement. It gives voice to times and incidents that few know about. The sparsity of the words makes it even more powerful. From the book, "We were given freedom, but we were never freed." This is a must-read.
October 24, 2022
Wow. Just wow. The whole Civil Rights Movement in poems, 1877-1967. Many, many of the poems just knocked my socks off. Most of the information wasn't new to me, but it is good to have it all in one spot and in a very concise, readable format.
If you are a teen librarian you MUST buy at least one copy for your library. NOW!
If you are a teen librarian you MUST buy at least one copy for your library. NOW!
February 10, 2022
I listened to the audiobook of AND WE RISE which was a smart choice. There is something about poetry that begs to be heard. I think I’m going to start listening to more poetry collections to & from work.
AND WE RISE tells the stories of the Civil Rights Movement in verse, from MLK to Rosa Parks to Claudette Colvin to the Little Rock Nine to Malcolm X.
I think this would be beneficial for young readers. I kept thinking of how I would teach the poems to my middle schoolers.
The writing itself was ok. The author relied a lot on repetition, which seemed brilliant at first but kind of lost its appeal the more it happened. It was interesting to *hear* it, though. If I had been reading, I would’ve skipped over the constant “And marched and marched and marched and marched” and the author counting from 1 to 361. I was listening, though. You know how the more you repeat a word, the less it sounds like a word? Yeah, that happened a lot. I also got *tired* of hearing the repeated word/phrase but that evokes the exhaustion felt during this movement; of doing the same thing & asking for the same rights & marching, marching, marching.
AND WE RISE tells the stories of the Civil Rights Movement in verse, from MLK to Rosa Parks to Claudette Colvin to the Little Rock Nine to Malcolm X.
I think this would be beneficial for young readers. I kept thinking of how I would teach the poems to my middle schoolers.
The writing itself was ok. The author relied a lot on repetition, which seemed brilliant at first but kind of lost its appeal the more it happened. It was interesting to *hear* it, though. If I had been reading, I would’ve skipped over the constant “And marched and marched and marched and marched” and the author counting from 1 to 361. I was listening, though. You know how the more you repeat a word, the less it sounds like a word? Yeah, that happened a lot. I also got *tired* of hearing the repeated word/phrase but that evokes the exhaustion felt during this movement; of doing the same thing & asking for the same rights & marching, marching, marching.
June 23, 2022
4.5 - Brief, bright and hard-hitting, this review of some of the deadliest years (outside of the slave trade, probably) for Black Americans in the form of poetry is smart and not light reading. Personally, I skipped the poem about Emmet Till, and might have skipped others had I known their content. Most of these are stories I knew, so my skipping the poems did not detract from the power of the book (but preserved my own mental health, not reliving those horrors again). I suspect that this will be an upsetting one for many young readers, particularly youth not brought up in households with members who lived this 'history' or in households that intentionally obscure it. Also appreciated the time line in the end notes. The book concludes with MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", which is likely longer than the entire collection of poems! Overall, a solid and important addition to the canon of thinking on Civil Rights, past and present.
March 3, 2024
Poetry is kinda hard to review. It's such a subjective field, mostly smoke and mirrors used to create some effect. This collection was more educational, though it still used imagery to convey the truth. But the words speak for themselves, I can say Martin plays a lot with structure and format (one of the more exciting things of poetry is just messing with how a poem can look) and often stretches shorter content poems into this long collage of words (there is many examples of this but my favourite is her use of the American flag on page 60) which is a clever use of the page space.
Erica Martin says, "I wrote this poetry collection to place readers in that tragic era [of the Civil Rights Movement]. To expose the truth--the full truth--and nothing less." Which stemmed from a silent censorship of history in textbooks and I want to read more; more truth, more banned books, anything that someone somewhere chose to silently omit.
Erica Martin says, "I wrote this poetry collection to place readers in that tragic era [of the Civil Rights Movement]. To expose the truth--the full truth--and nothing less." Which stemmed from a silent censorship of history in textbooks and I want to read more; more truth, more banned books, anything that someone somewhere chose to silently omit.
February 17, 2024
I don't know much about poetry so maybe take my review with a grain of salt. I really like the concept of this and the idea of poetry about historical figures, but I saw another review saying none of these poems stand out well just by itself, and I have to agree with that.
I also listened to the audiobook for this and the repetitive poems (the kind that are just the same word/words or numbers again and again and fill an entire page) REALLY don't work in audio - those are more visual poetry, I think? I cannot listen to the same word repeated for 4 minutes straight and not go crazy. And the audiobook is read by the author, which I really liked, but the way she'd gasp in a breath and then got really quickly with reading the repetitive poems also took away a lot of the impact of them.
I also listened to the audiobook for this and the repetitive poems (the kind that are just the same word/words or numbers again and again and fill an entire page) REALLY don't work in audio - those are more visual poetry, I think? I cannot listen to the same word repeated for 4 minutes straight and not go crazy. And the audiobook is read by the author, which I really liked, but the way she'd gasp in a breath and then got really quickly with reading the repetitive poems also took away a lot of the impact of them.
March 26, 2022
Who are "they" and why does history always have to be about all the horrible things that happened. Focus more on something amazing that came out of history. But again this is an author's poetry and I don't like to put a rating on such things but this one honed on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and repeat that 340 more times. You will get my point if you read or listen to the book! And this history is repeating itself, the focus of this book was mostly on the fifties and sixties. A lot that is happening today is a repeat. People are being terrible all across the world. It is horrible.
May 15, 2022
A simple but powerfully written novel in verse that takes the reader through the 50s and 60s Civil Rights Movement Era, showcasing some heroes of that era that were rarely, if ever heard about. The visual impact of the way the author writes the poems will stick with the reader. The repetitive use of words impresses upon the reader of the never give up attitude of blacks of then and even now. Rosa Parks’ quote stayed with me after finishing this book “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in”. This is a love note to those unknown and known heroes of the Civil Rights movement.
January 5, 2025
This was powerful, and also easily read so that people of a younger age can understand the message. The letter from Martin Luther King Jr. in the Birmingham jail brought tears to my eyes.
“I hope this letter finds you strong in faith. […] Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood […]
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King Jr.”
“I hope this letter finds you strong in faith. […] Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood […]
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King Jr.”
March 7, 2022
I’m a hard critic of poetry, and I enjoyed this book. I thought the writing was unique and diverse with each poem. I liked how there were pictures. I felt that really reminded me that these things happened in real life and are about real people. I also learned a lot from this collection about the Civil Rights Movement that I didn’t know before, and I know that was one of the main reasons Erica wrote this collection.
August 27, 2023
I would definitely recommend this book for the content alone, the poems were emotional and educational and highlighted Black history in America that is often ignored. That said, I sometimes struggle with poems that lean so heavily on content and not on language. It makes me wonder why the author chose poems as the format and not something else like short essays. Also, the repetition poems did not land well for me when listening to the audiobook.
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