2018 School Spending Survey Report
I See the Promised Land: A Life of Martin Luther King Jr.
I See the Promised Land: A Life of Martin Luther King Jr. illus. by Manu Chitrakar. 156p. notes. Groundwood/House of Anansi. 2012. Tr $18.95. ISBN 978-1-55498-328-5.
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Gr 7 Up—Who better to give Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life story the full mythopoeic treatment than the renowned African American novelist and performance poet. Flowers's hyper-vernacular language, swinging rhythms, and conspiratorial first-person tone lend his words a vivacity that is nearly audible. He weaves the entire history of the enslavement of black Americans into King's story, refers to unspecified gods taking an interest in affairs, and comments on King's speeches with impressive insight. Brilliant and engaging, Flowers's composition should be added to the MLK canon. The art is by a scroll painter from a small village in Bengal, India, who had never heard of Dr. King prior to this project. In some ways, this is a successful pairing. The vivid colors and bold forms of Patua are appropriately emphatic, and the naive style matches Flowers's references to "hoodoo" and his chosen narrative persona, Rickydoc Trickmaster. However, the images are repetitive, and it can be difficult to distinguish individuals. People often appear to be wearing inappropriately peaceful expressions; this, readers are informed in the back matter, is a characteristic of Patua style but might be puzzling for young people. Design also plays an important role. Images are cut into pieces for emphasis, text is artfully placed in blocks that not only enhance readability but also reinforce the counterpoint between narrative and commentary. A colorful and passionate addition to the Martin Luther King, Jr., bookshelf, perhaps best suited to classroom use.—Paula Willey, Baltimore County Public Library, Towson, MDAn innovative homage to Martin Luther King that mythologizes him even as it acknowledges his foibles, this book uses a cohesive design to blend African griot storytelling and folk art from India to create a bold graphic novel. There is a dual narrative here -- one more distinctly the voice of a storyteller ("Sit down why don't you. Rest a spell. I, my friend, have a story to tell"), the other providing commentary ("I suspect you've heard the Martin Luther King story as commonly told, but this is a telling replete with the Will of the Gods, with Fate and Destiny and The Human Condition"). The illustrations, drawn in the style of Patua scroll painters (a combination of sequential and performance art), take just as much liberty with the story, recasting it with a distinctively Indian flair. On a spread that compares King to a drum major, for example, the illustrations depict not an American marching band but Indian musicians, with nary a baton in sight. There is the danger of running off the rails because of the highly subjective illustrations and slightly dissonant narrative styles, but the strong design manages to synthesize panels of varying sizes with full-page spreads while differentiating each of the narratives. This creates a creative symbiosis between the seemingly disparate elements and reminds us that in a larger context the civil rights movement is but one chapter in the story of global human rights. We might also say that this book coupled with Vaunda Micheaux Nelson's No Crystal Stair (rev. 3/12) and Marilyn Nelson's A Wreath for Emmett Till (rev. 5/05) are among a second generation
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