Margru

What I remember of home is this:

green – green mangoes, green snakes, green bananas:
brown – my mother, my father, myself, the tree
trunks, the brown earth, the color of my language,
Mende,
the only language I had
to describe these things.

Often I think of
how I came to be here:

my father pawning me, waving goodbye,
his face crumpled, tightened, looking
away from me.

I felt my captor’s white, cold hand
tighten around my wrist as if
he were a solid ghost taking me away.

Now I wish to see again
the green rice fields,
my father’s brown face,
clouds in the sky —
the only white things,

to hear someone speaking my language,
someone saying

Margru.

*******

Now I hope you will be inspired to create your own poems. Take a look at the Amistad captive profiles here. Perhaps you want to do a persona poem about one of them?  Or a found poem (taking words from another place as she did with  “Other Cargo”) ? Or something else?

Write your poem as you wish. Revise. Proofread. Show a teacher.

Then create a collage with your poem in it. Here are some from an earlier to give you an idea where to go. (Of course, I hope yours are completely unique and different!)

Finally, you will scan in your poem, post it on your blog, and I will put all the collages on the bulletin board outside the classroom!

Now that you’ve read Margu you are ready to write a post about the story. Hopefully you will spend some time thinking about this and writing about it. We hope when your blogs are public to write something about this on Ms. Edinger’s blog as she’s done before so that people from all over the world come to see what you have to say. (Keep in mind that your readers will not have read Ms. Edinger’s story as it is not yet published and only on a blog for you.)

1. To start, come up with a direction for your post. Here are some ideas, but you may have another one:

• Respond to a particular part in the story.
• Respond to the literary devices (similes, metaphors, etc.).
• Respond to the various images used.
• What in Margru’s story surprised you? What did you learn?
• Comparison to your oral history? To Amistad Rising?
• Some consider this a Cinderella story — if you think this and want to write about it, why?
• Is there something more you want to know?

Today I read aloud Amistad Rising by Veronica Chambers with illustrations by Paul Lee and talked with you about this famous event. Now we are going to look at the Amistad story again through the eyes of one of its participants — Sarah Margru Kinson. The Amistad captives were mostly Mende, people who live in a part of Africa that is now in the country of Sierra Leone where I lived many years ago as a teacher for the Peace Corps.

Through Sarah Margru’s story, a story I’ve slightly fictionalized and told here (I will give you the username and password in class to access it), I hope you will have a deeper sense of forced immigration.  I also think you will learn something about the tricky experience of writing about a real event. Should I fictionalize it or should I make it true? The version you will read is one I did for one publisher, but now another one wants it, but in a dfferent form. And so I am currently revising the story  as nonfiction.  It is for Dianne Hess, the Scholastic editor who was here a few weeks ago. So not only will you be learning about Margru and the Amistad story, but something about what it is to write, rewrite, write, and rewrite again!

As you read Margru’s story, I want you to  write notes and responses in the chapbook I will give you. Consider the following for your notes:

Literary Stuff Here you can jot down any words or that seem descriptive, poetic, or otherwise give a literary sense.

Historical Stuff
Here you can jot down words, phrases, and titles of images that are clearly from history. (Be sure to include the images as most are primary sources and you may want to use them later in your blog posts and project.)

Response
Here you need to write how the part you read made you feel, questions you may have, or anything else you want.

When you are done reading with all this you will be writing a blog post and also doing a poetry project (using Elizabeth Alexander’s poems) related to Margru’s story and the Amistad.

Today I told you about Olaudah Equiano who was around ten years old when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. After many years and experiences (good, bad, and horrible), he was able to buy his freedom and eventually wrote his autobiography to let others know about the horrors of slavery. I then began reading aloud  The Kidnapped Prince, an adaptation of Olaudah’s autobiography for children by Ann Cameron.

As I mentioned to you, there has been some debate as to whether or not Olaudah was born in Africa or not.  Check out this link for some reasons this could or could not be true.  The author of that website concludes,

“The bottom line is that we just don’t know. As the above table shows, there is evidence on both sides of the debate. Just about the only thing we can say for certain is that, when he was younger, Equiano told people he was from Carolina, but when he was older, he told people he was from Africa. Whether you believe the younger Equiano or the older Equiano is entirely up to you…

Next I will show you a multimedia presentation of Olaudah’s description of life in Africa which consisted of images from my own time in Africa, other relevant images, maps, sound, and much more.

Inspired by the above description of Margru (one of the original profiles of the Amisated captives in John Barber’s book): we created the following persona poem.

Margru

What I remember of home is this:

green – green mangoes, green snakes, green bananas:
brown – my mother, my father, myself, the tree
trunks, the brown earth, the color of my language,
Mende,
the only language I had
to describe these things.

Often I think of
how I came to be here:

my father pawning me, waving goodbye,
his face crumpled, tightened, looking
away from me.

I felt my captor’s white, cold hand
tighten around my wrist as if
he were a solid ghost taking me away.

Now I wish to see again
the green rice fields,
my father’s brown face,
clouds in the sky —
the only white things,

to hear someone speaking my language,
someone saying

Margru.

******* 

Now I want you to create your own poems. Take a look at the Amistad profiles I am going to hand out to you. Perhaps you want to do a persona poem about one of them? Or a found poem like “Other Cargo.” Or something else.

Write your poem as you wish. Revise. Proofread. Show a teacher.

Then create a collage with your poem in it. Here are some from last year’s class to give you an idea where to go. (Of course, I hope yours are completely unique and different!)

Finally, you will scan in your poem, post it on your blog, and I will put all the collages on the bulletin board outside the classroom!

The oldest poem is by Phillis Wheatley. She was born around 1753 in Africa (one source I’ve read said she was from Gambia and another said Senegal), taken captive and brought to the United States when she was around eight. Her mistress taught her and soon Phillis was writing and publishing poems of her own. Here is one in which she is reflecting on the experience of being taken captive in Africa and brought to America:

On Being Brought from Africa to America

‘TWAS mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Tought me benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negros, black Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

*******

 

Next is a poem written by African-American poet James Monroe Whitefield and published by him in a collection of poetry several years after the Amistad affair in 1853.

 

 

*********

Moving into the twentieth century, here are a few excerpts from a very long poem, “Freedom’s Plow” by Langston Hughes.

… A long time ago, but not too long ago,
Ships came from across the sea
Bringing the Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
Adventurers and booty seekers,
Free men and indentured servants,
Slave men and slave masters, all new-
To a new world, America!

With billowing sails the galleons came
Bringing men and dreams, women and dreams.
In little bands together,
Heart reaching out to heart,
Hand reaching out to hand,
They began to build our land.
Some were free hands
Seeking a greater freedom,
Some were indentured hands
Hoping to find their freedom,
Some were slave hands
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
But the word was there always:
Freedom….

A long time ago,
An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
The plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and shelter grow
Until all races and all peoples know its shade.
KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!

******

Last of all we are going to read several Amistad poems from Elizabeth Alexander’s collection America Sublime.  One of them, Other Cargo, is a found poem from this news article.

1. To start, come up with a direction for your post. Here are some ideas, but you may have another one:

Respond to a particular part in the story.
Respond to the literary devices.
Respond to the various images used.
What in Margru’s story surprised you? What did you learn?
Comparison to your oral history? Or your historical fiction book? Someone even mentioned that it has Cinderella elements. Do you want to write about that perhaps?
Is there something more you want to know?

2. Once you have a direction begin with a good topic sentence, some examples, and end with a conclusion.

3. Proofread as always.

4. Have an adult check it.

5. Post!

A few weeks ago, as part of our study of historical fiction, I read aloud Amistad Rising by Veronica Chambers with illustrations by Paul Lee. Now we are going to look at the Amistad story again through the eyes of one of its participants — Sarah Margru Kinson. The Amistad captives were mostly Mende, people who live in a part of Africa that is now in the country of Sierra Leone where I lived many years ago as a teacher for the Peace Corps.

Through Sarah Margru’s story, a story I’ve slightly fictionalized and told here (I will give you the username and password in class to access it), I hope you will have a deeper sense of forced immigration. So, here is what I want you to do:

As you read Margru’s story, write notes and responses in the chapbook I will give you. Divide each page up into three parts (I’ll show you how in class) so that you can take notes on these things:

Literary Stuff Here you can jot down any words or that seem descriptive, poetic, or otherwise give a literary sense.

Historical Stuff
Here you can jot down words, phrases, and titles of images that are clearly from history. (Be sure to include the images as most are primary sources and you may want to use them later in your blog posts and project.)

Response
Here you need to write how the part you read made you feel, questions you may have, or anything else you want.

We will be, of course, also talking a lot about Margru’s story. I will be showing you artifacts and photos of Sierra Leone (her homeland) from when I was there. You can also look at another version of her story — one I wrote first as nonfiction — so you can see what is different between writing historical fiction and nonfiction. When you are done reading with all this you will be writing a blog post and also doing a poetry project related to Margru’s story and the Amistad.