Caldecott Medal Contender: The Undefeated

by Sam Juliano

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic die.”
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.     -Phyllis Wheately

Noted children’s literature historian Kathleen T. Horning once quipped at an online comment thread  that her great disappointment over the artist Kadir Nelson not winning the Caldecott Medal leads her to conclude that “he will just have to content himself with painting the Sistine Chapel.”  To be sure, Nelson’s work defies the most extravagant superlatives, and I have frankly run out of such phrases myself.  He actually has won two Caldecott Honors (for Moses and Henry’s Freedom Box), but his output includes many other beautiful works of distinction.  He has done the art for New Yorker covers and classic novels, as well as for galleries and exhibitions.  His astounding oil paintings are again being passionately discussed as a serious contender for the Caldecott Medal, which will be announced in Philadelphia on Monday, January 27th.  His resplendent jumbo tapestries in the service of concise and powerful prose from acclaimed author Kwayme Alexander in the electrifying picture book The Undefeated, an ode to black America that is alternately triumphant and mournful, minimalist and baroque, physical and spiritual.  In evoking the recently deceased Maya Angelou in a stirring afterward Alexander makes direct reference to his book’s title when he asserts “We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated.  It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat, so that we can know who we are.  So that we can see, oh, that happened, and I rose. I did get knock down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose.”  Alexander’s largely metaphorical language is predicated on the prefix “not” by manner of starting each defining work with un.  There is inherent pride and defiance in employing such a device and it serves as the rhetorical springboard that is best served by recitation, though larger fonts will also hit home privately with resonating force.

 

What The Undefeated confirms with well-earned bravado is that African-Americans have made contributions to American culture, making their unalterable marks on the military, athletics, music, literature, politics and religion.  Yet for the longest time America violated the tenets of Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words couched in the Declaration of Independence:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  Ironically, of course Jefferson himself sinned against this very words.  In the end Alexander holds a torch who those who made the ultimate sacrifice and others who played by the white man’s rules, producing icons of their own who have changed the course of history smashing records, establishing movements and styles, and giving new meaning to the limits of the imagination.  Those who reached the finish line did so via the proverbial “blood, sweat and tears.”

First up is picture-in-motion of the most famous American Olympic runner of all-time, Jesse Owens.  This is for the unforgettable.  The swift and sweet ones who hurled history and opened a world of possible.  Owens won four gold medals in Berlin at the time the Nazis assumed power.  He was at the time considered to be the fastest many alive and his exploits put to rest long held beliefs in white superiority.  Nelson depicts a family of slaves who somehow survive their captivity; asserts Nelson, by any means necessary, and then on a black white page he pays tribute by acknowledging other perished making ultimate sacrifices.  In response to Alexander’s tribute to the “undeniable” Nelson shows a father and son, enslaved but clinging to their faith and Bible-reading.  Jack Johnson, who defended his title seventeen times with a time overlap into the Jim Crow era is denoted as Unflappable.  The metaphors “box adversity” and “tackle vision” speak to a black fighter’s singular focus in setting aside issues of prejudice they will invariably encounter.  Those who “shine their light for the world to see and don’t stop ’til the break of dawn’ is the human equivalent of the “city that never sleeps” and among the famous writers and artists pictured in oil collage are the Harlem Renaissance titan Langston Hughes, the eighteenth century slave and poet Phillis Wheatley, who was favored by George Washington ; writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston and the painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, who was revered abroad for his Christian-themed work.

To Alexander the “unafraid” are the audacious who take up the red, white and blue for the Union case to preserve a union torn asunder by hatred and ideological differences.  In addition to the author’s back matter capsule relating the exploits of the first black regiment finding confederates in Virginia, adult readers will sure recall the 1989 Civil War movie Glory, directed by Edward Zwick  which focused on the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which was the Union army’s second African-American regiment to serve in the bloodiest war in the nation’s history.  Nelson evokes the righteous depicting John Lewis and other civil rights advocates in a row, with Alexander reminding readers the unwavering stance is that “black lives matter.”

Nelson’s most harrowing double page spread of all is a heartbreaking depiction of the transatlantic slave trade, the “unspeakable” practice of abduction Africans and boating them across the ocean top serve whites.  Showcasing their insides emphasizes that everyone shares the same organs and bones.  As Alexander reports in the afterward that roughly one-fifth died on the long voyages from sickness and disease some are pictured horizontally.  A more intimate testament to the senseless of innocents in cold blood are the photographs of the four young girls who were gunned down in a Birmingham church circa 1963.  The glass holding their photos on a frame is broken.  The “unspeakable” too are four innocent young people in the modern era who were killed by police for unconscionable reasons such as playing with a toy gun.  Trayvon Martin, who was only seventeen, was gunned down by a policeman who was acquitted speaking national outrage all the to the White House.  In Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing a tribute is paid to victims of police brutality: Michael Stewart, Edmund Perry, Michael Griffith, Yvonne Smallwood; the fiction Radio Raheem, killed by cops in a choke-hold is based on the death of Eric Garner, a 43 year-old Staten Island man similarly extinguished by the men in blue.   led Again Nelson accentuates the “unspeakable” horror with a flowers and candles in a makeshift memorial.

Martin Luther King Jr. show in giant close-up is framed as “unlimited” and “unstoppable” and one who turns his dreams into reality.  The metaphor of The Big Sea of our imagination will yield the majestic shores of the promised land.  Some of America’s greatest sports figures were and are African-Americans.  Muhammad Ali, Wilma Rudolf, The Jordans and the LeBrons; the Serenas and the Sheryls.  The “real cool ones”, the “unbending” and the “black as the night is beautiful ones” include Ella Fitzgerald, Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn and Miles Davis the prime founders and proponents of jazz.  Tribute is paid to the “underdogs” and the “uncertain” and though some remain “unspoken” they now are named or titled.  A final bow to Afican American today, rightfully proud of their heritage and how much progress has been made, even if we still have a ways to go.  The Caldecott committee will be deliberating over the weekend in Philadelphia and it seems a no brainer that this towering collaboration between two extraordinarily gifted men who were entrusted to speak for a race in an epic wedding of soaring verse and oil paint masterpieces.  The Undefeated may literally in a book award sense hold that title.

Author-poet-artist Kwayme Alexander

Artist Kadir Nelson

Note:  This is the twenty-first entry in the 2019 Caldecott Medal Contender series.  The annual venture does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running.  In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups at children’s book sites, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration.  It is anticipated the series will include in the neighborhood of around 25 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender.  Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end.  The awards will be announced in January, hence the reviews will continue until the early part of that month.