Song. Song. Voices of children. Definitions of siddity -- Song. What is best -- Permission to be excused -- Jingle bells, damnit -- Song. Deep country -- Creatures in the garden -- Happy birthday -- Pecan trees and various miscellanea -- An altered story -- Song. Brother-man magic -- We sing your praises high -- Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, goddamnit -- In this spot -- Feminism, womanism, or whatever -- This bitter earth -- You made me love you -- Don't let me lose this dream -- A change is gonna come -- Do right woman, do right man -- Debate -- Founder's Day -- Dirty thirty -- Reunion -- I'm hungry -- All extraordinary human beings -- Nguzo Saba -- Song. For you to love -- Night I fell in love -- Till my baby comes home -- My sensitivity gets in the way -- A house is not a home -- Other side of the world -- Keeping the tune -- Whatever gets you over -- I need my own car -- Shower and pray -- You can be proud -- Song. Which negroes do you know? -- Mammies, or, How they show out in Harlem -- Umoja, youngblood -- Song. Peculiar institution -- Plural first person -- Thrilla in Manila -- Witness my hand -- My Black female time -- Song. Who remembers this? -- Any more white folks -- Mama's bible -- Like Agatha Christie -- Not hasty -- Every strength -- Voices of children.
Summary:
"The great scholar, W.E.B. Du Bois, once wrote about what he called "Double Consciousness," a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois's words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans--the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers--Ailey carries Du Bois's Problem on her shoulders. Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother's family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in Bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that's made all the more difficult by hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women--her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries--that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family's past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors--INdigenous, Black, and white--in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story--and the song--of America itself"--Jacket.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.