Ellington Was Not a Street by Ntozake Shange

This is truly a book for all ages, lovely to behold and designed to be revisited. Brief concluding biographical sketches tell readers more about these engaging personalities and may well lead to further reading. Kwame Nkrumah, former president of Ghana, among others this collective image drives home the point that these legendary figures were contemporaries who defined an era. The volume culminates in a group portrait of Duke Ellington, percussionist Ray Barretto, jazz great Dizzy Gillespie and Dr. In a reflective tribute to the African-American community of old, noted poet Ntozake Shange recalls her childhood home and the close-knit group of innovators that often gathered there. Nelson conveys the learned man's advancing years but, once seated on the couch, Du Bois exudes wisdom and dignity. Paul Robeson hangs his hat on a coat rack, emphasizing the man's larger-than-life presence and tall, athletic stature ('robeson no mere memory') while 'du bois walked up my father's stairs' with the aid of a cane. Presented without punctuation, apostrophes or capital letters, the affectingly wistful verse flows freely and lyrically: 'it hasnt always been this way/ ellington was not a street,' it begins. Featuring luminous art by Coretta Scott King Award-winning illustrator Kadir Nelson, this reflective picture book by poet Ntozake Shange looks back at the.

) ingeniously sets the events in the home of the narrator, depicted as a curious, winning girl in oil paintings that strongly evoke the period and mood as the renowned visitors start to gather in her convivial, well-appointed house. ), serves as the narrative for this elegiac tribute to a select group of African-American men who made important contributions to 20th-century culture. At once personal and universal, Shange's poem, 'Mood Indigo' (published in her 1983 poetry collection, A Daughter's Geography

Ellington Was Not a Street by Ntozake Shange