M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A

M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A PDF Author: A. Van Jordan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393059076
Category : African American teenage girls
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
MacNolia Cox won the Akron District Spelling Bee, and at the age of 13 she became the first African American to reach the final round of the national competition. The Southern judges, it is thought, kept her from winning by presenting a word not on the official list. The word that tripped MacNolia, ironically, was "nemesis." When she died 40 years later, the girl who "was almost/ The national spelling champ" had become a cleaning woman, a grandmother, and "the best damn maid in town." Cox's ambition and her later frustration find incisive shape in this remarkably varied meditation on ambition, racism, discouragement and ennui, where successive pages can bring to mind a handbook of poetic forms (a double sestina, Japanese-inspired syllabics, a blues ghazal and prose poems based on definitions of prepositions), Ann Carson's "TV Men" poems, Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah and the documentary film Spellbound. Jordan (Rise) begins in Cox's later life, giving voice to her husband, John Montiere, at "The Moment Before He Asks MacNolia Out on a Date," then to MacNolia herself when in 1970 her son dies just after his return from Vietnam. As counterpoints, Jordan intersperses poems about African-Americans who won more lasting public acclaim, among them Richard Pryor, Josephine Baker and the great labor organizer and orator A. Philip Randolph. Jordan's most quotable poems, however, return to the voice of the 13-year-old speller, who "learned the word chiaroscuro/ By rolling it on my tongue// Like cotton candy the color/ Of day and night." (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. Library Journal.

M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A

M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A PDF Author: A. Van Jordan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393059076
Category : African American teenage girls
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
MacNolia Cox won the Akron District Spelling Bee, and at the age of 13 she became the first African American to reach the final round of the national competition. The Southern judges, it is thought, kept her from winning by presenting a word not on the official list. The word that tripped MacNolia, ironically, was "nemesis." When she died 40 years later, the girl who "was almost/ The national spelling champ" had become a cleaning woman, a grandmother, and "the best damn maid in town." Cox's ambition and her later frustration find incisive shape in this remarkably varied meditation on ambition, racism, discouragement and ennui, where successive pages can bring to mind a handbook of poetic forms (a double sestina, Japanese-inspired syllabics, a blues ghazal and prose poems based on definitions of prepositions), Ann Carson's "TV Men" poems, Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah and the documentary film Spellbound. Jordan (Rise) begins in Cox's later life, giving voice to her husband, John Montiere, at "The Moment Before He Asks MacNolia Out on a Date," then to MacNolia herself when in 1970 her son dies just after his return from Vietnam. As counterpoints, Jordan intersperses poems about African-Americans who won more lasting public acclaim, among them Richard Pryor, Josephine Baker and the great labor organizer and orator A. Philip Randolph. Jordan's most quotable poems, however, return to the voice of the 13-year-old speller, who "learned the word chiaroscuro/ By rolling it on my tongue// Like cotton candy the color/ Of day and night." (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. Library Journal.

How Do You Spell Unfair?: MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee

How Do You Spell Unfair?: MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee PDF Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 1536232033
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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Book Description
A Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book "This moving picture book portrays a girl who met injustice with dignity and excelled."—Booklist (starred review) From a multi-award-winning pair comes a deeply affecting portrait of determination against discrimination: the story of young spelling champion MacNolia Cox. MacNolia Cox was no ordinary kid. Her idea of fun was reading the dictionary. In 1936, eighth grader MacNolia Cox became the first African American to win the Akron, Ohio, spelling bee. And with that win, she was asked to compete at the prestigious National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, where she and a girl from New Jersey were the first African Americans invited since its founding. She left her home state a celebrity—right up there with Ohio’s own Joe Louis and Jesse Owens—with a military band and a crowd of thousands to see her off at the station. But celebration turned to chill when the train crossed the state line into Maryland, where segregation was the law of the land. Prejudice and discrimination ruled—on the train, in the hotel, and, sadly, at the spelling bee itself. With a brief epilogue recounting MacNolia’s further history, How Do You Spell Unfair? is the story of her groundbreaking achievement magnificently told by award-winning creators and frequent picture-book collaborators Carole Boston Weatherford and Frank Morrison.

The Necessary Past

The Necessary Past PDF Author: Annette Debo
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810146894
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Uncovering how poetry refigures Black history to imagine a more just present and future “Poets are lyric historians,” proclaimed Langston Hughes. Today, historical poetry offers a lyric history necessary to our current moment—poetry with the power to correct the past, realign the present, and create a more hopeful, or even hoped-for, future. The Necessary Past: Revising History in Contemporary African American Poetry focuses on six of today’s most celebrated poets: Elizabeth Alexander, Natasha Trethewey, A. Van Jordan, Kevin Young, Frank X Walker, and Camille T. Dungy. Their works reimagine the interiority of Black historical figures like the so-called Venus Hottentot Sara Baartman and the would-be spelling champion MacNolia Cox, the African American Native Guard who fought in the Civil War and the unknown victims of domestic violence, Jack Johnson and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Medgar Evers and those freed and enslaved in the early nineteenth century. These poets shift the power dynamic in revising our shared history, reconfiguring who speaks and whose stories are told, and writing a past that frees readers to change the present and envision a more just future.

New Formalisms and Literary Theory

New Formalisms and Literary Theory PDF Author: V. Theile
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137010495
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Bringing together scholars who have critically followed New Formalism's journey through time, space, and learning environment, this collection of essays both solidifies and consolidates New Formalism as a burgeoning field of literary criticism and explicates its potential as a varied but viable methodology of contemporary critical theory.

The Cineaste

The Cineaste PDF Author: A. Van Jordan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393239152
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Each poem is inspired by the poet's reaction to a film, whose director and date appear before the poem. The poems range widely: from The great train robbery (1903), Birth of a nation, Chien Andalou, to Blazing Saddles, or the 2010 remake of Metropolis.

Poet's Choice

Poet's Choice PDF Author: Edward Hirsch
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780151013562
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
A collection of revised and expanded writings culled from the author's popular Washington Post Book World "Poet's Choice" column demonstrates how poetry responds to world challenges and introduces the work of more than 130 writers.

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library PDF Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 1536220639
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
“A must-read for a deeper understanding of a well-connected genius who enriched the cultural road map for African Americans and books about them.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Amid the scholars, poets, authors, and artists of the Harlem Renaissance stood an Afro–Puerto Rican named Arturo Schomburg. This law clerk’s passion was to collect books, letters, music, and art from Africa and the African diaspora and bring to light the achievements of people of African descent through the ages. A century later, his groundbreaking collection, known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has become a beacon to scholars all over the world. In luminous paintings and arresting poems, two of children’s literature’s top African-American scholars track Arturo Schomburg’s quest to correct history.

Reading for Our Lives

Reading for Our Lives PDF Author: Maya Payne Smart
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593332180
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
An award-winning journalist and literacy advocate provides a clear, step-by-step guide to helping your child thrive as a reader and a learner. When her child went off to school, Maya Smart was shocked to discover that a good education in America is a long shot, in ways that few parents fully appreciate. Our current approach to literacy offers too little, too late, and attempting to play catch-up when our kids get to kindergarten can no longer be our default strategy. We have to start at the top. The brain architecture for reading develops rapidly during infancy, and early language experiences are critical to building it. That means parents’ work as children’s first teachers begins from day one too—and we need deeper knowledge to play our positions. Reading for Our Lives challenges the bath-book-bed mantra and the idea that reading aloud to our kids is enough to ensure school readiness. Instead, it gives parents easy, immediate, and accessible ways to nurture language and literacy development from the start. Through personal stories, historical accounts, scholarly research, and practical tips, this book presents the life-and-death urgency of literacy, investigates inequity in reading achievement, and illuminates a path to a true, transformative education for all.

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer PDF Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1536203254
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A 2016 Caldecott Honor Book A 2016 Robert F. Sibert Honor Book A 2016 John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award Winner Stirring poems and stunning collage illustrations combine to celebrate the life of Fannie Lou Hamer, a champion of equal voting rights. “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Despite fierce prejudice and abuse, even being beaten to within an inch of her life, Fannie Lou Hamer was a champion of civil rights from the 1950s until her death in 1977. Integral to the Freedom Summer of 1964, Ms. Hamer gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention that, despite President Johnson’s interference, aired on national TV news and spurred the nation to support the Freedom Democrats. Featuring vibrant mixed-media art full of intricate detail, Voice of Freedom celebrates Fannie Lou Hamer’s life and legacy with a message of hope, determination, and strength.

Unspeakable

Unspeakable PDF Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Publisher: Carolrhoda Books ®
ISBN: 172842464X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Winner of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards for Author and Illustrator A Caldecott Honor Book A Sibert Honor Book Longlisted for the National Book Award A Kirkus Prize Finalist A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book "A must-have"—Booklist (starred review) Celebrated author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator Floyd Cooper provide a powerful look at the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in our nation's history. The book traces the history of African Americans in Tulsa's Greenwood district and chronicles the devastation that occurred in 1921 when a white mob attacked the Black community. News of what happened was largely suppressed, and no official investigation occurred for seventy-five years. This picture book sensitively introduces young readers to this tragedy and concludes with a call for a better future. Download the free educator guide here: https://lernerbooks.com/download/unspeakableteachingguide