The Homeplace
Marilyn Nelson's poetry collection expands personal history into African American history through family memory, especially her mother's stories and the history of the Tuskegee Airmen.
Work Information
A poetry collection that opens a family story into Black history.
Memories of slavery, family recollection, and the skies of World War II are linked in restrained lyricism. Though brief, it is a dense collection that moves between private and collective history.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Louisiana State Univ Pr
- Published
- 1990-12-01
- Pages
- 64 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.97 x 0.51 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780807116418
- ISBN-10
- 0807116416
- Price
- 3512 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/History & Criticism/Criticism & Theory
Finalist for the 1991 National Book Award In The Homeplace, the stories of a family become the history of a people as Marilyn Nelson Waniek sketches the lives descended from her great-great-grandmother Diverne. The poet’s mother, Johnnie Mitchell Nelson, inspired this volume when she bequeathed to Waniek from her deathbed the tales that had shaped her life. The first section of the book presents those stories transformed into graceful, humorous, and deeply touching poems. In the book’s second section Waniek honors her late father, Melvin Nelson, and tells the story of his “family”: the fabled group of black World War II aviators known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Using the language and perspective of her father and his comrades, Waniek explores through a few of their individual stories the hardships and achievements of the thousand black flyers trained at Tuskegee Institute. Throughout The Homeplace, the reader is involved in a series of sharply portrayed lives. By telling a continuous story in a mix of free verse and traditional forms, Waniek gives her work pace and intensity. She handles the villanelle, the sonnet, and the popular ballad with equal skill and gusto. “I just knew we were going to live some history,” Johnnie Nelson said at the end of her life. Her daughter has produced an eloquent homage to that history, celebrating the survival of Afro-American pride.
Marilyn Nelson Waniek is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and former Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut. She is the author of eight books of poetry, including For the Body, Mama’s Promises, and The Fields of Praise, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Poet’s Prize.
Reviews
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Excellent. So much history of the African American experience packed into these pages in the form of poems.
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It’s small, so I read it in an hour, then many hours and sent a copy to my sister.
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How do you tell the story of ancestors who left little behind, yet who are utterly a part of you? Poetry - the mind's careful apprehension and expansion of what can be known. This is a magnificent collection.
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great for my kid