This glorious picture book by the father-son team that created Harlem immerses us deep inside the United States of America--its geography, its character, its ideas, its people. The close-up cover portrait of Lady Liberty suggests both untold strength and centuries of bearing witness to the "huddled masses" who have arrived on her shores. Author and artist ask us to reconsider icons such as the flag, the military uniform, and words and phrases we say from memory--the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance--and to ponder their deeper implications. What does it mean to be an American? What does America mean to you?
The images at the heart of the book reverberate as a result of the layering of Walter Dean Myers's stirring original poem; quotes he places alongside his stanzas from this country's Founding Fathers and leading thinkers; and Christopher Myers's majestic oil pastel compositions, as sweeping as the land from Atlantic to Pacific, as intimate as the faces of those who give this country its character. Walter Dean Myers's words call to mind Walt Whitman, expressing devotion to America and subtlely urging that we continue to consider its evolving greatness. With his expansive canvases (measuring 9' x 3'), Christopher Myers evokes the WPA murals of the 1930s in scope and theme, in celebration of a country built by rugged individualists.
Author and artist embrace the complexity of America's past and, in doing so, demonstrate the debt we owe to those who came before us for the freedoms we enjoy and also the responsibility we carry not to repeat the wrongs of history. The poem begins "Before there was America/ Before the ships came/ Their white sails ablaze against the clear blue sky." A progression of images moves from a Lakota scout on the left across a horizontal expanse that includes a ghost dance, a Mohawk skywalker atop the steel skeleton of a skyscraper and, on the far right, Will "I-never-met-a-man-I-didn't-like" Rogers, born to the Cherokee Nation. A quote from Tecumseh illuminates the idea that Native Americans did not believe that man could own territory ("This land belongs to the first who sits down on his blanket...."). Only in the endnotes does Walter Dean Myers mention broken treaties and the establishment of reservations. The cumulative effect of the poem, the painting and the quote allow us to grasp, in one spread, the appropriation of the land and the loss of culture; and what the blending of the European and Native American values has given Americans, both in the literal building of the country and in the widening of our shared heritage.
This undercurrent of hope carries readers through the entire poem. The next stanza introduces ships with "their white sails ablaze." Captain John Smith sails toward Jamestown on one side of the illustration ("Before I knew that/ there was America/ I had a freedom dream") and, on the other end of the composition, a refugee boat. The red-and-white stripes on the sleeves of a passenger recall the face-paint stripes of the Lakota scout on the previous spread. The lines of the poem were as true for the Puritans as they are for today's refugees: "The taut bow of anticipation/ The arrow of adventure/ Flying across the ocean." The "bow of anticipation" launches “the arrow of adventure”; it also doubles as the bow of the ship, leading the way into their dream of a better life.
The Puritans and refugees came for freedom, but there were also those who knew freedom and lost it here. "Like clumsy children/ we fell/ As we learned to run" begins the stanza that refers to slavery ("thousands of souls smothering beneath the hatches"). The book's creators do not shy away from the ugly events of the past. The poem references the battle at Wounded Knee, the capture of Chapultepec Castle during the Mexican-American War, and illustrations show the scarred back of an enslaved man, bodies on a reservation, and Japanese-American families behind an internment camp fence. Even so, Walter Dean Myers's closing lines of the stanza continue their undercurrent of hope: "Power was too strong a temptation/ And yet, and yet.../ We could hold up our sins for the world to see/ Condemning our wrongs even as we committed them."
Sometimes the quote amplifies the poem; sometimes it contradicts the text. At times, the art buoys the text; other times, it points out a paradox. "We were willing to die/ to forge our dream" begin the lines that pay homage to Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and others who "wrote the verses that made revolution irresistible." A quote on the page comes directly from the Constitution ("We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice...."). The artwork juxtaposes an image of nonviolent Civil Rights protests met with violence on the left and colonists throwing tea into Boston harbor on the right; the author and artist are suggesting that protest remains a constant of our citizenry.
Several spreads celebrate the country's vast and varied geography. In one painting, Hawaii's Duke Kahanamoku, a surfer and five-time Olympic medalist in swimming, and Amelia Earhart command the sea and sky. Duke's outstretched arms--in a Moses-like pose that seems to hold back the Pacific--echo the wingspread of Amelia Earhart's plane as it glides across the "endless land." A buffalo grazes along "the twisting route of the Chisholm Trail" in another painting, as cowboys herd cattle in a field of bluebonnets, and, on the right, Mark Twain stares out at the Mississippi River. The ones who built up this "endless land" were often the new arrivals. "We were machines/ belching smoke/ ... / We were Irish muscle and Polish pride/ Germans and Italians/ Africans and Chinese/ Mexican and English." The artwork introduces a parade led by an African-American brickmaker on the left, Chinese rail workers in the middle, and automakers (including a woman) in Detroit on the right.
A number of dedicated spreads depict individuals who've left a legacy. Several give tribute to soldiers' lives and limbs lost, the price paid for both ideals and land, from the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War through the World Wars and Vietnam to the Iraq War. Full-color and black-and-white montages celebrate people who came to America to freely express their ideas (Albert Einstein) or, faced with injustice, gathered with other likeminded folk to create change for a better society (Cesar Chavez, Gloria Steinem, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) and dreamt of a better life than the one they inherited (Dr. Mae Jemison, a physician and the first African-American to travel in space).
The only painting to focus on a single image is the portrait of eight children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, each face contributing to the diverse quilt of America. "We were the youth that could not fail/ Planting our high ideals in virgin lands and eager hearts/ Making vows forever brighter than the story we would live." Myers speaks of the "youth" in the sense of a young nation, and also the hope and promise of a child. Immediately we are thrust back into our classrooms, thinking about the words in that pledge. This will be the image most recognizable to young readers. They, too, will consider the meaning of the pledge. Is it words said by rote? What does it mean to pledge "an allegiance to liberty/ and justice"? The Myerses invite us into a conversation, between parent and child, teacher and student, peer to peer and within ourselves.
By sharing their own journeys into what America means to them, Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers have given us a road map for a rediscovering of America and our place within it. This powerful book is also a call to action, to examine where we have been as a nation, whether it is what we wish it to be, and what we can do to make it all that it could be.