The 1619 Project: Born on the Water is both a joyful and painful ode to Black Americans whose history did not begin with the whips and chains of enslavement, but rather with a "proud origin story."
When a girl must trace her roots for an assignment at school, she tells her grandmother she is ashamed that she can track down only three generations of her family. Her grandmother gathers the family to explain. What follows is a tale of the people who, before they arrived here 400 years ago, "had a home, a place, a land"--who, before they were enslaved, were free.
Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson (Love Is a Revolution; Ways to Make Sunshine) employ a series of stirring free-verse poems that uplift as much as they devastate. Their moving words shape Hannah-Jones's 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning The 1619 Project into a picture book accessible to all ages. Artist Nikkolas Smith uses a range of Central West African details to craft illustrations full of movement and expansive emotion. Smith's paintings respond to the individual poems with, in his words, "a visual representation of the infectious joy, heartbreaking struggles, and triumphant legacy of my ancestors." The three creators have together produced an unflinching look at the people who were stolen from their lives, lost so much and, though repeatedly beaten back, survived in a new land. It's a story vital to the U.S.'s survival as a nation, because what the grandmother tells her family regarding their ancestors is true for everyone who lives in the U.S. today: "Their story is our story." And it needs to be heard. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author