CCBC-Recommended Book Search - Cooperative Children's Book Center

We Troubled the Waters

Stirring poems and paintings comprise an emotional volume focused on African American experience in the south in the mid-twentieth century. There are a few famous people here—Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X—but it is the lives and dreams, challenges and indignities faced by subjects without names or familiar faces that are most affecting. A “Cleaning Gal” can’t afford to rest or quit, so continues “scrubbin & scrubbin what aint mine.” Hungry “Garbage Boys” collect other people’s trash and “never understand / how folks throw way what’s still good to eat.” In “Crying Trees” poet Ntozake Shange asks, “how can our boys be some decorations in the forest / never to kiss good night again,” while artist Rod Brown’s accompanying painting shows young men hanging noosed and lifeless from trees. Shange and Brown confront a past that is disturbing but also inspiring in both the courage and strength of individuals known and nameless and in transcendent moments of the Civil Rights Movement. © Cooperative Children's Book Center

Illustrated by Rod Brown

CCBC Age Recommendation: Age 13 and older
Age Range: Grades 6-8 (Ages 11-13) Grades 9-12 (Age 14 and older)
Format: Poetry
Subjects: 20th Century Activism and Resistance African Americans Civil Rights Courage History (Nonfiction) Racism U.S. History
Diversity subject: Black/African

Publishers: Amistad, HarperCollins
Publish Year: 2009
Pages: 32
ISBN: 9780061337352

CCBC Location: Non-Fiction, 811 Shange

We Troubled the Waters