Marilyn Nelson is a highly decorated poet: thrice a finalist for the National Book Award, and winner of a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, multiple Coretta Scott King Honors, and the Robert Frost Medal.
Now she has looked back on her 1950s childhood and told the tale of her development as an artistand young woman through fifty moving, eye-opening poems. We observe the blossoming of her artistic inspiration and her gradual understanding of the times she lived in: the Civil Rights movement, the “Red Scare” era under the shadow of the Atom Bomb, and the first stirrings of the feminist movement.
This is a unique and powerful autobiography that also serves as a portrait of one of America’s most notable decades a book to study, discuss, and treasure.
