BORN ON THE WATER: The 1619 Project in Picture Book

 Take a close look at this breathtaking cover. 

KOKILA: Penguin Random House Imprint, 2021

BORN ON THE WATER; The 1619 Project is a visual work of art with text that's  a masterful work of heart. It's a new picture book that merits everyone's close attention, co-written by Nicole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson, with illustrations by Nikkolas Smith that are equally evocative and emotive. This youthful perspective on four centuries of history is a deeply personal and powerful account for readers of any age. 

Brilliantly, the co-authors launch with these words that will sound familiar to most parents of school age children:

"My teacher gives us an assignment, 'Who are you?' she asks. 'Trace your roots. Draw a flag that represents your ancestral land.' "

In this first of a series of free-verse poetry page-turns, the  first-person narrator/student feels ashamed. Her roots are unknown to her, her ancestral history feels confusing and unknown, shackled to an enslaved origin story..

When Grandma gathers her family close to share their beginnings, I felt as if I were sitting at her knee, invited to share in the story and the glory of a too-little-known past. Contradicting the common expression that African American ancestors were "born on the water", Grandma describes their true home, a place, a land. Before they were sold.

"A home, a place, a land, a beginning."

Spread after spread captures scenes of ancestral lives on a fertile high plateau in west Africa, portraying people with talent, trades, love, languages, craftsmen and music makers, all with a capacity to turn surrounding nature into an complex and collaborative civilization. Lives and faces engage joyfully and in ways that feel familiar to any family's life. The authors' and illustrator's notes in back pages reinforce the sense of individuality and beauty and connection of those ancestors. 

There are realistic accounts of being kidnapped, marched, loaded aboard the first slave ship to North America, heartbreaking details and emotional visuals included. In many ways the horror and heartbreak are conveyed as much by the losses experienced as by the imposed enslavement: a doll left behind, separations with no hugs goodbye, no whispered encouragements, no capacity to understand what their destiny would be. Somewhere along that journey, those who survived (barely half of the original prisoners) realized that they, the survivors, were now a People together, a new community. 

Facts unfold about that first slave ship, THE WHITE LION, about the first Black child born as the son of slaves on North American soil, William Tucker, the first Black American, about four hundred years of resistance in large ways and small. The refrain rings true: 

"OURS IS NO IMMIGRANT STORY."

Theirs is a story of survival. Of brilliance. Of memories, prayers, and hope. Theirs is story that keep eyes on the future, a future of brilliant innovators and contributors to the land they built. Theirs is a full and rightful claim to being AMERICAN from the start, centuries before "we" became a country. A country that defined itself as white.

And the young narrator begins her assignment with red, white, and blue crayons to draw the flag of her country, born on the water.

If you are confused by the phrase CRITICAL RACE THEORY, please be clear. Books as wonderful as this could be banned in schools even though they have nothing to do with that advanced academic discussion. This is a glorious but age-appropriate story of ancestral identity and pride. This story reveals to children of EVERY color and identity why BLACK LIVES MATTER. Please read it. Please share it. Please speak up when others suggest that this story should not be available to every child, in every school and library. And ask yourselves why THIS story is considered threatening to our culture when historic accounts of unjust treatment of white-immigrants-by-choice in our history (Irish, Polish, Italian) who suffered discrimination and hate are written into the narrative. Please don't turn away or look away, or allow young readers to be denied an opportunity to read and understand their shared past.