Coretta Scott King Award winner and National Book Award finalist Carole Boston Weatherford (Unspeakable) teams up once again with illustrator son Jeffery Boston Weatherford (You Can Fly) to explore their shared past and honor their enslaved ancestors through dignified poems and stunning artwork in Kin: Rooted in Hope.
Mother and son begin their narrative in 2016 at the Door of No Return, a trading post on Gorée, an island off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, where "captive Africans/ were held for weeks, months,/ until their numbers could fill/ a ship's belly." Next, they travel to the Wye House Plantation in Easton, Md., where their ancestors were enslaved by the Lloyd family. Carole Boston Weatherford's narrative follows both chronological history and the mother/son's trip to uncover the painful past.
Weatherford's rhythmic and artistic narrative, inspired by Alex Haley's Roots, brings to life her ancestors, the places they lived, and their oppression. Jeffery Boston Weatherford accompanies his mother's poems with expressive black-and-white scratchwork illustrations that add further weight, humanity, and grandeur to the history. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer