Loretta Little Looks Back
Three Voices Go Tell It
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- € 6,99
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- € 6,99
Publisher Description
From a bestselling and award-winning husband and wife team comes an innovative, beautifully illustrated novel that delivers a front-row seat to the groundbreaking moments in history that led to African Americans earning the right to vote.
"Right here, I'm sharing the honest-to-goodness." -- Loretta
"I'm gon' reach back, and tell how it all went. I'm gon' speak on it. My way." -- Roly
"I got more nerve than a bad tooth. But there's nothing bad about being bold." -- Aggie B.
Loretta, Roly, and Aggie B., members of the Little family, each present the vivid story of their young lives, spanning three generations. Their separate stories -- beginning in a cotton field in 1927 and ending at the presidential election of 1968 -- come together to create one unforgettable journey.
Through an evocative mix of fictional first-person narratives, spoken-word poems, folk myths, gospel rhythms and blues influences, Loretta Little Looks Back weaves an immersive tapestry that illuminates the dignity of sharecroppers in the rural South. Inspired by storytelling's oral tradition, stirring vignettes are presented in a series of theatrical monologues that paint a gripping, multidimensional portrait of America's struggle for civil rights as seen through the eyes of the children who lived it. The novel's unique format invites us to walk in their shoes. Each encounters an unexpected mystical gift, passed down from one family member to the next, that ignites their experience what it means to reach for freedom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Inspired by the collective voices of many," the married cocreators incisively invoke oral tradition in fictionalized accounts of a Black family enduring political and economic oppression under Jim Crow. In Mississippi, three dynamically rendered family members tell the stories of a changing society on the brink of change. Through a narrative running from 1927 to 1930, Loretta, the youngest daughter of sharecroppers, relates the casually dehumanizing effect of an intentionally mispronounced name in stories about her hardworking father. In the 1940s, Loretta's brother Roly, a foundling infant taken in by the Littles, grows up to be a sharecropper and landowner facing limitations similar to those that ruled his father's life. And in the 1960s, Aggie B., Roly's stubbornly independent daughter, takes up the cause of Black suffrage at the height of the civil rights era, detailing the dampening effect of hand-to-mouth poverty on political involvement. Selective incorporation of real-life historical figures (Emmett Till, Fannie Lou Hamer) and events (voter registration drives, Democratic National Conventions) lends authenticity to each narrator's story, an ideal accompaniment to the lyricism woven throughout. Art adds elegant portraits of land and family to these vivid tales, and end notes offer historical context and further reading recommendations. Ages 8 12.
