MoonglotexasIt has been a month since I finished reading The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience by Nikole Hannah-Jones; The New York Times Magazine and I am still reflecting on it. I have started following a number of the artists included. It is hard to explain the impact this book has on the reader, it is heartbreaking, moving, and activating. It reminds one of what one knows factually transpired but fleshes out the long-lasting impact these historic events have had and continue to have in our day-to-day lives.
I am not American, I am South African. This is not a book that requires this story to be your history to be relatable and teaching. The visuals give new depth to this unique historical approach. It has been criticised and banned, it is also necessary and shocking. The canvas from 1619 to today is huge, it is a story of damage and hurt created by those repressing and abusing humans of a different skin tone.
Nikole Hannah-Jones closes her preface with this sentence and it sums it up perfectly “The marriage of beautiful, haunting, and profound words and imagery creates an experience for the reader, a wanting to reflect, to sit in both the discomfort and the joy, to contemplate what a nation owes a people who have contributed so much and yet received so little, and maybe even, to act.”
I cannot recommend it highly enough, it is a phenomenal body of work. The art is amazing as is the poetry. The prose is eloquent and insightful. It is a five out of five on the enJOYment scale.
I received a complimentary copy of the book from Clarkson Potter/ Ten Speed Press through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
From the back cover:
An illustrated edition of The 1619 Project, with newly commissioned artwork and archival images, The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning reframing of the American founding and its contemporary echoes, placing slavery and resistance at the center of the American story.
Here, in these pages, Black art provides refuge. The marriage of beautiful, haunting and profound words and imagery creates an experience for the reader, a wanting to reflect, to sit in both the discomfort and the joy, to contemplate what a nation owes a people who have contributed so much and yet received so little, and maybe even, to act.—Nikole Hannah-Jones, from the Preface
Curated by the editors of The New York Times Magazine, led by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, this illustrated edition of The 1619 Project features seven chapters from the original book that lend themselves to beautiful, engaging visuals, deepening the experience of the content. The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience offers the same revolutionary idea as the original book, an argument for a new national origin story that begins in late August of 1619, when a cargo ship of people stolen from Africa arrived on the shores of Point Comfort, Virginia. Only by reckoning with this difficult history and understanding its powerful influence on our present can we prepare ourselves for a more just future.
Filled with original art by thirteen Black artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Calida Rawles, Vitus Shell, Xaviera Simmons, on the themes of resistance and freedom, a brand-new photo essay about slave auction sites, vivid photos of Black Americans celebrating their own forms of patriotism, and a collection of archival images of Black families by Black photographers, this gorgeous volume offers readers a dynamic new way of experiencing the impact of The 1619 Project.
Complete with many of the powerful essays and vignettes from the original edition, written by some of the most brilliant journalists, scholars, and thinkers of our time, The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience brings to life a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of American history and culture.
