"As William Faulkner once wrote, 'The past isn't dead and buried. In fact,
it isn't even past.' We do not need to recite here the history of racial
injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many
of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be
directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that
suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."
-- Barack Obama, speech, "A More Perfect Union," March 18, 2008
"But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken"
-- Jewel, "Hands"
Dave, 1826
"...I unbrick the door.
Little John hands me the jars
one by one,
warm and shining
in the rising sun.
Doctor Landrum says,
'See that green?
Have you seen a color
shimmer like that?'
He holds my jar,
the big one with the lip
and glaze dripping
down the sides.
'Now, that's a jar,'
he says,
forgetting it was me
who dug the clay,
and centered the mound,
and pushed my weight
against the wheel,
forgetting it was me
who rolled the clay
for the handles
thick and solid.
See the thumbprints
on the sides?
Those are from my hands."
Dave was a slave. He was purchased at age seventeen for business purposes
and was taught the trade of pottery -- everything from digging the clay to
throwing and glazing and firing the pots he created for his white owners.
Dave was an artist, an extraordinary potter. And Dave, who learned to read
and write, was also a poet who etched his short verses into the jars he
crafted -- an extraordinarily dangerous thing for a slave to be doing, for it
was against the law down there in South Carolina.
A number of books have now been written about Dave who, two hundred years
ago, would have been twelve or so.
"...And if some day
this jar cracks,
my word will stay,
etched in the shards."
ETCHED IN CLAY is the story in verse of Dave's life in slavery (and just
beyond). The book contains beautiful woodcut illustrations created by the
author, and deep reddish-brown (clay colored) endpapers. It is a book that
tells the very ugly story of what it was to be enslaved. Of having your wife
sold away from you as if you were both livestock. Of longing and missing
and one day marrying again. And then having that wife also sold away from
you. Of being creative and innovative and successful, but having another reap
the rewards of that creativity and innovation because somehow the white
Christian folk of the day could perfect such amazing contortions of their
minds and their hearts so as to see you as a depreciable business asset rather
than a human being and artist.
And, finally, of being an old man freed from bondage. Of having the luxury
– like a human, rather than the family dog – of possessing a surname:
David Drake, 1866
"Go on the road,
a one-legged old man,
like me?
No, my friend.
But I beg you,
please,
wherever you go,
look for my loved ones..."
ISBN: 978-1-60060-451-5 144p. Ages 10 and up
Recommended by: Richie Partington, MLIS, Librarian, California USA Richie's Picks _https://richiespicks.com_ (https://richiespicks.com/)