Not Recommended: PARKER LOOKS UP by Parker Curry, Jessica Curry; illustrated by Brittany Jackson

This evening, I did a thread on Twitter about Parker Looks Up. 

Using the Spooler app, I am pasting the thread here.

Parker Looks Up

Published by Aladdin (Simon and Schuster)

Year published: 2019 

Reviewed by Debbie Reese
Status: Not recommended

As you read through the series of tweets, you will see I am critical with a specific page. It is not an insignificant error. Parents and children of the tribal nations in the original illustration will notice that the headdresses are incorrectly depicted. 

****

Oh no!!!!

You recall the excitement over this photo of a little girl named Parker, gazing up at the painting of Michelle Obama in the National Portrait Gallery?

People in children's lit know that it was going to be turned into a picture book. Well, it came out on Oct 15, 2019. Today a friend wrote to me about this image in it... and I was taken aback. There's a lot to say...

The illustrator's rendering of that art was familiar to me. I've been to that gallery but I did not recall a wall-sized piece of art that size. 

I did a little bit of research and put together this comparison:

So... the size is way out of whack (I found the dimensions at the National Portrait Gallery's website)...

But so is the rendering!

In the picture book, the emphasis is on feathers. 

"Feathers! Lots and lots of brilliant feathers!" 

This is utterly disappointing to me. 

I have no doubt the authors/illustrator and their editors at Aladdin (Simon and Schuster) wanted to do a good thing and show a range of representation.... but they MIS-represented Native people. 

Feathers. Think about that for a minute. 

Why did that happen? Why did feathers get added to that page?! If you look at the angles of the faces, the noses, etc., you know that the illustrator worked from an image of the actual painting...

So WHY? WHY WHY WHY?! 

It was not necessary to do that!

I would have loved to hand this book to young readers, but now? 

Absolutely not.

That page ruins the book--not just for Native kids--but for non-Native kids, too, who will come away from the book with their stereotypical ideas affirmed. 

The reviews from Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Publisher's Weekly do not note this misrepresentation.

Please don't argue with me that the book lifts African American children. 

There is absolutely no reason to lift one marginalized group and misrepresent another. Parker Looks Up is not recommended because of its stereotypical treatment of Native peoples.

---On Dec 15, I added to the thread I did on the 14th:---

Back this morning with more to say about PARKER LOOKS UP.

"Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees" isn't in the National Portrait Gallery. It is in a different museum (the Smithsonian American Art Museum). Editing this info on Dec 16th: Several people have written to tell me that the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery are in the same building, and therefore, Parker could have seen both, the Young Omahaw painting and the portrait of Michelle Obama during a single visit. I did not know the two museums were in one building and am glad for that information. 

In the back matter, we see a note that the paintings in the picture bk are "reimagined as Parker Curry experienced them during her unforgettable and memorable visit to the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian Art Museum."

Parker Curry was two years old when she saw the painting on March 1, 2018 (see NPR story In 'Parker Looks Up," A 2-Year-Old Shares A Moment With Michelle Obama).

To be clear: I adore that moment in Parker Curry's life! It tells us so much about why representations matter!

What I question is the rest of the book... how the story was created and illustrated--by adults. 

Did a two-year old look at the painting of Pawnee men and think "feathers" when there is one feather in the original painting? 

If yes, then the adults in her life have a responsibility to help her understand what stereotypes are, and how they shape the ways we view the world. 

If two-year-old Parker did not think "feathers" when she saw the original painting, and it is her mother and the illustrator who added that to that page because they wanted to make the book inclusive... then somebody should have helped them understand stereotyping. 

That someone could have been their editor at Simon and Schuster.

This year (2019), @simonschuster intervened in what an author/illustrator did with IGLOO FARM. The book was redone, as SNOWY FARM. Their editor asked them to do that (see AICL's blog post, Igloo Farm Becomes Snowy Farm). 

I've read several articles this morning about Parker's experience with the Obama portrait. It seems to me that her mother took her to the Portrait Gallery specifically to see it. 

But in the picture book, that is not the story we're given. 

In the picture book, we're told that the family simply went to the museum, and when it was time to leave, they happened upon the Obama painting and Parker was transfixed.

That invented story takes away from the actual experience, the purpose of that day in their real lives. Who had the idea to make up this story, to get to that moment in Parker's life?

I'll be thinking about that treatment of that day in Parker's life because it matters. It takes away from the political motivation that her mother had, in taking her there in the first place. 

It is parallel to the many mis-representations of Rosa Parks as nothing more than a tired seamstress who made a decision one day (not to give up her seat on the bus) rather than the facts of her life as a political activist.

IGLOO FARM becomes SNOWY FARM

Snowy Farm by Calvin Shaw, with illustrations by Oamul Lu, was published by Simon and Schuster on November 5, 2019. Before it was Snowy Farm, it was Igloo Farm and scheduled to be published in October of 2019. If you do an Internet search of Igloo Farm, you will be taken to pages about Snowy Farm.

I sure would like to know what led to the changes in the title, words, and illustrations for this book. Back in October, I saw the F&Gs for both. (F&G means the pages of a book, folded and gathered but not yet bound. See details about F&Gs at Editorial Anonymous.) On the cover, we see these changes:

• The title word Igloo was replaced with Snowy
• The illustration of an igloo was replaced with a horse
• The skin color of the people was changed 
• Two chickens were inserted on the Snowy Farm cover
• The snowman's scarf was changed from green to orange 

Here's the front cover inside flap.

On the left is Igloo Farm. On the right is Snowy Farm. The words are identical.

They read, in part "Away on a farm in a snowy white home, a family lives life in a way of their own..."

The skin color (as we saw on the cover) of the people is different. In the original book, the man held a spear and his parka has what appears to be fringe at its hem.




Here's the first page of both copies:

The words in the original are:

There's an igloo windmill on an igloo farm, with an igloo house and an igloo barn.

The words in the revised book are:

There's a snowy white windmill on a snowy white farm, with a frosty old house and a snow-covered barn. 

In the original, "igloo house" has been replaced by "house" (the word 'igloo' was deleted) and in the illustration, the domed structure made of ice blocks has been replaced by a pitched roof structure with walls and two windows. The structure representing a barn remains the same in both copies.

In the original, the tree by the igloo is blue; in the revision, that blue color is used for the window of the house and the tree is the same color as the others. Other color changes are made throughout the book. In the original, the sky is gray-purple; in the revised one, the sky is a gray-blue. And, as shown on the cover and the cover flaps, the family's skin tone was changed. The illustrator, Oamul Lu, uses a computer to create his art. A wild guess: changing the skin tone was easily done with a series of keyboard clicks or commands.

Update on Dec 3, 2019 at 5:45 AM:

I continue to look around for information. I did an image search using "igloo windmill" and found that a Romanian artist, Vali Petridean, has the exact same words on some art that he did. Who wrote those words? Petridean? Or, Shaw? 

When I put the URL for Petridean's art into the Internet Archive page, I see that he loaded that image to his website on July 1, 2015. That was a few years before the first images from Igloo Farm began to appear.

Here's Petridean's text/illustration, juxtaposed with Shaw/Lu's (note on December 4 2019--I wrote to Petridean to ask about the illustration on his page. He said it is Shaw's poem):

----end update on Dec 3---

I don't think I can legally share all the photos I took because of copyright laws, so will now switch to descriptions.

Glance back up at the cover. The horse and the chicken shown on the cover of Snowy Farm are in the interior pages of Igloo Farm. In both versions, the farm animals (horse, chickens, goat) wear earmuffs. In both, the man is holding ice carrots, which is what the animals are fed. Later, the man is driving a tractor sled and pulling two boxes of snow apples, which is what he eats when he works the fields.

On one page we are inside the igloo/house where real food is being cooked (by "the wife" or "the mom"). In Igloo Farm, the words are:

The wife of the farmer is cooking inside, with cinnamon spices and eggs to be fried.

In Snowy Farm the words are:

The mom of the family is cooking a dish with savory spices and seasonal fish.

On a subsequent page, the kids come inside to eat. The table in Igloo Farm is white, like if it is made from snow or ice. The table in Snowy Farm is made of lumber. After supper the family sits around an open flame fire, inside. To the left of them is a teapot. In Igloo Farm, the teapot is on a counter made of ice blocks. In Snowy Farm, it is a low table with wooden legs.

When night falls they go to bed. Both families sleep on the floor, covered in brown blankets that seem to have fur on them. The family in Igloo Farm has pillows with a decorative cover (see below); the family in Snowy Farm has plain pillows.

At the end of Igloo Farm is an Author's Note where Shaw tells us that he lived in upstate New York as a child. He and his brother played in the snow, went sledding, built snowmen, and tried to build igloos. Igloo Farm is what he believes living in an igloo would be like. He also writes:

For thousands of years, a group of people known as Inuits have relied on igloos for shelter in the icy cold regions of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska.

He says a few additional things about the Arctic, igloos and Inuits. In his "For Further Reading" list are four books about living in the Arctic, or about igloos.

At the end of Snowy Farm is a completely different Author's Note. No mention at all of Inuits, or igloos or the Arctic (at the North Pole). In fact, he writes about the Antarctic (at the South Pole). He says:

The people who travel to live in Antarctica fall into two main groups, those who live and work on scientific research stations or bases, and tourists. No one lives in Antarctica indefinitely in the way that people do in the rest of the world. Antarctica has no commercial industries, no towns or cities, no permanent residents. 

Curious about Antarctica, I did an Internet search using "who lives in Antarctica" and was--quite frankly--stunned to read those same words on the Cool Antarctica website (that website was the second hit in my search results). In the image below, the screen capture on top is from the website and the one below is my photograph of the Author's Note in Snowy Farm (Note: you see the word "Edited" after the file name? It is there because I used the Contrast option in the "Adjust Color" tool in my laptop's "Preview" app to make the words more legible.):

That plagiarism is stunning.

This book's journey, from start to finish, is striking.

The changes to the book title, the words and illustrations, throughout, are remarkable.

Why did nobody at Simon and Schuster catch the problems with igloo before the book was printed into F&G's?

Who spoke up and said 'hey, we need to revise this book..."

How did those conversations go, in the editorial offices? What did someone say, exactly? And, what did they say to the author and illustrator? Or--was it the author or illustrator who got in touch with the editors and said changes were necessary?

I doubt we'll have answers to any of those questions but I'll tag Simon and Schuster and see if there's any response. If you hear anything, let us know!


Update, 4:34 PM on December 3, 2019

As far as I'm able to determine, there are no professional reviews of Snowy Farm. And yet, when I look in WorldCat, I see that several libraries have copies of the book. That's another puzzle. I thought that libraries purchase books based on 2 or more positive reviews in a review journal. I'm looking into that lack of reviews and will be back with an update when I have some info to share.


Update, 12:30 PM on December 5, 2019

Earlier today, an anonymous person submitted a comment that consists of a link to a discussion on Reddit that appears to be about this post--specifically, the plagiarized author's note. The original poster ("Mister_B_Lank") at Reddit is seeking legal advice on Reddit. 18 hours ago (which would be December 4 in late afternoon), they wrote:

My publisher asked me write an “Author’s Note” that provides information as to what my story is about at the end of the book. I said sure, and submitted it to them. However, when I got the book, I saw that the Author’s Note was drastically changed.

I recently found out that they plagiarized some of the Author’s Note from a website. People online are noticing the plagiarism and are assuming it’s me who wrote the Author’s Note.

Not too sure how to handle this. Any help mucho appreciated. For the record I’m in the U.S.

Here's a screen capture of the post:

In the conversation that took place, the OP ("OP" is shorthand for "original poster") said that the publisher admitted to rewriting what he submitted:

I clicked on the OP's name ("Mister_B_Lank") and saw that, on November 15, he had posted that his book had come out but there wasn't much marketing of it. Another person asked for the book title but the OP did not want to disclose it. He did say this:

Well, I don’t want to disclose too much. But I will say this: It’s a kid’s book. We had to change the title, the characters, and the setting because I am a “non-native” who wrote about another culture. Not disparagingly, but there is a movement right now called “Own Voices” that is derailing the publication of YA and kid’s books written by non-natives (I’m white) . Because of this, I am worried the publisher is barely marketing the book due to some kind of backlash. 

Here's that screen cap:

Another person asked how the OP felt about the changes. The OP replied:

Honestly, it drove me kind of crazy through the publishing process that the book was being altered so heavily. When I finally held the book in my hands for the first time, I didn’t have that much of an emotional response. I’ve become a bit more disgruntled after the release of the book w the lack of marketing, and im currently having a very hard time getting my publisher and agent to respond to my emails about the release

And here's that screen cap:

****

To try to get my own thoughts in order, I'm constructing a timeline. Somewhere between July 16 2018 and September 7, 2019, somebody said 'stop' on the Inuit text and illustrations. The skin tone of the Inuit characters being lightened is the opposite of what we saw take place in publishing in past decades. To make books more inclusive, artists used a darker skin color but didn't change any other features. As noted above in the Author Note for Igloo Farm, Shaw (author) created the book out of his imagination of what life in an igloo would be like. But the book was radically altered. Here's the timeline.

2015 -- Romanian artist named Vali Petridean published an image he created for Shaw (author of Igloo Farm/Snowy Farm). It has the first few lines of Shaw's book on it.

April 10, 2017 -- Publisher's Weekly's Rights Report for April 10, 2017 says that Paula Wiseman at Simon and Schuster bought Igloo Farm by Calvin Shaw, and that Kirsten Hall of Catbird Productions negotiated the deal for world rights.

July 16, 2018 -- Librarian tweeted about Igloo Farm after seeing image of cover on "Reading With Mr. Teut" blog.

September 7, 2019 -- I saw and took photos of the F&G's for both, Igloo Farm and Snowy Farm. 

November 15, 2019 -- Calvin Shaw, the author, posted a question about book marketing, to Reddit. He said his publisher was barely marketing his book, and worried it was because they feared backlash because the original book had Native content and he is White. He referenced Own Voices, saying it is derailing books written by non-Natives. [Note: I learned of Shaw's post to Reddit on Dec 5, when an AICL reader submitted a comment with link to Shaw's December 4 post to Reddit.]

December 2, 2019 -- I published "Igloo Farm becomes Snowy Farm" here, on AICL.

December 4, 2019 -- At Reddit, Calvin Shaw, author of Igloo Farm/Snowy Farm posted his concerns about his publisher's revisions to his Author's Note. The plagiarism, he said, was done by the publisher, not by him.

December 5, 2019 -- Shaw deleted the November 15 post at Reddit, about marketing of the book. The conversation that ensued (where he referenced Own Voices) is still available.

Notes on STONE MIRRORS: THE SCULPTURE AND SILENCE OF EDMONIA LEWIS

Update: Jan 28, 2018
I am tagging Stone Mirrors as not recommended. Too much of what I read made me uneasy. I don't think there's enough material to support the imagined thoughts that Jeannine Atkins attributed to Lewis. It seems to me that Lewis--removed from her Native family at such a young age--did a lot of romantic stereotyping of a Native identity in her sculpture. That adds a tragic dimension to her already tragic life, because it makes her more like the people who say that, in their family lineage, there is an Indian princess. With that tiny bit of information, they imagine all sorts of romantic--but stereotypical kinds of things--based on what they've read. 


Some time back, a reader wrote to ask if I'd seen Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis by Jeannine Atkins. Published this year (2017) by Atheneum/Simon and Schuster, I see that it got starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist.

Here's the description:

From critically acclaimed author Jeannine Atkins comes a gorgeous, haunting biographical novel in verse about a half Native American, half African American sculptor working in the years following the Civil War.

A sculptor of historical figures starts with givens but creates her own vision. Edmonia Lewis was just such a sculptor, but she never spoke or wrote much about her past, and the stories that have come down through time are often vague or contradictory. Some facts are known: Edmonia was the daughter of an Ojibwe woman and an African-Haitian man. She had the rare opportunity to study art at Oberlin, one of the first schools to admit women and people of color, but lost her place after being accused of poisoning and theft, despite being acquitted of both. She moved to Boston and eventually Italy, where she became a successful sculptor.

But the historical record is very thin. The open questions about Edmonia’s life seem ideally suited to verse, a form that is comfortable with mysteries. Inspired by both the facts and the gaps in history, author Jeannine Atkins imagines her way into a vision of what might have been.

And for now, here's my notes. I'll be back with a review of Stone Mirrors. It will have some thoughts and analysis, based on research I'll be doing. When I'm done, I'll come back here and insert a link to that review.

Oberlin, Ohio
1862-1863

Page 3
Edmonia Lewis is 16 and a student at Oberlin College. She's in the woods, thinking:

When she was given a chance to go
to boarding school, her aunts' farewell was final.
People who move into houses
with hard walls don't return to homes
that can be rolled and carried on backs.

As she's in the woods, she reads tracks in the snow. Some are bird or animal tracks, but some are boot prints.

Page 4
Edmonia looks at a deer; the deer looks back. Its gaze "binds them, turns into trust."

Page 5
A boy--Seth--is in the woods, too. Neither of them are supposed to be in the woods. It is against rules. He speaks to Edmonia:

They say you make your own rules.

Edmonia thinks that he's breaking rules, too. She thinks about rules.

She was raised to respect fire, fast water, and heights.

Page 6
Seth tells Edmonia that he read Hiawatha; asks Edmonia if her life was like that and if it is true that she lived outside. She thinks

Most strangers want only a slip of a story,
like those the aunts who raised her gave tourists
to go with the deerskin moccasins
and sweetgrass baskets they bought

Page 7
Edmonia tells Seth that

In winter, we stretched strips of bark
over trees young enough to bend, and slept
with our feet toward the fire in the middle.

Page 10
Here, there's info about her parents. First, her father:

Edmonia can keep secrets. She doesn't speak
of her father, who, not long before her mother died,
left Edmonia with brown skin, round eyes, a wide mouth,
and not one memory. Still, his name is part of hers.

Then, her mother:

She won't speak of manitous, good spirits
who may stay within stone, but might warn
with a cracking branch. Her aunts taught her much
that they warned could be ruined by revelation.

The page also introduces us to Longfellow's influence on her, as she thinks about forbidden romances:

...Romeo and Juliet
defying their families, Hiawatha and Minnehaha
marrying despite fighting between Ojibwe and Sioux.

Page 11
Edmonia is in the art room thinking about work with clay, how working with clay is an art that:

...takes up space
like the deerskin her aunts sculpted into shoes,
the baskets they wove from broken willow branches.

Page 15
Edmonia is with her roommate, Ruth, who is African American. Edmonia tells Ruth she's going upstairs to help Helen (who is White) select clothes for a sleigh ride. Ruth reminds her that she's supposed to be studying, that she's not Helen's servant, and that

We vowed when we came here to be of a character
that no one can criticize. And don't tell me
you're an exception. No matter how many stories
you tell about your past life in the forest,
they don't see halves.
You and I are the same in their eyes.

Edmonia replies:

I'm not like you.

and

My mother was Indian. And my father a freedman.

Page 21
Christine and Helen (the two white girls going on the sleigh ride) are talking. Christine tells Helen

... you can recite all your daffodils and nightingales and shores
of Gitche Gumee, while Seth minds the horses. 

Page 23
It is a Sunday. On Sunday's, students sew blue shirts for soldiers and they write letters home.

Edmonia's aunts roll up their homes each season
and follow signs from rivers and stars.
Edmonia writes, then burns her letters.
Smoke is as useful as stamps she can't afford.

Page 28
In Helen's room, Edmonia:

... looks through a book of poems, stopping
on the page where Hiawatha mourns Minnehaha.
Edmonia hadn't paid enough attention
to this particular poem, or the ends
of Juliet's and Cleopatra's stories:
the betrayals, lost words, poison.

Page 30
Mr. Ennes, Christine's father, says to Father Keep (a school admin)

... our Christine claims that colored girl
who calls herself an Injun poisoned her.

Page 32
In her room,

The bureau Edmonia shares with Ruth is bare on top.
The only charms she has are hidden, a pair
of small moccasins her mother stitched before she died.

Page 36
A boy calls out

Watch out for the wild Indian.
Don't take a drink from her.

And

You gave them an Indian potion. Murderer!

Page 44-45 
Under suspicion of poisoning Helen and Christine, Edmonia is confined to her room. Everyone is at chapel:

Her throat feels as if it were gnawed by
dangerous spirits who tear skin and flesh,
who took her mother, even most of her memory.
There's no end to their greed.

She wonders if she should run away.

She lies down and dreams of her aunts, who praised
her older brother for seeking a new life out west.
They told her no one can go back.
Once traders brought in beads,
women stopped decorating moccasins with quills,
making pictures of turtles, loons, otters,
and starflowers they'd seen in dreams.

After women could buy cloth, thread, and needles,
they rarely sewed deerskin. Steel needles are sharper than bone.
Even as she grew up, the past was breaking.
Her aunts sold its pieces spread on blankets,
turning what was scavenged into mementos and toys.
They sewed pin cushions and small pillows,
stitched English words they couldn't read:
Niagara Falls and Remember Me. 

Edmonia takes out the moccasins her mother made
when she was a baby. The beaded blue flowers
and fish-shaped leaves are beautiful, but there's a hole
by the heel. Ojibwe mothers left an imperfection
to trick spirits into thinking an infant was unloved,
not worth snatching for the long journey to the other side.

She thinks of foods she used to eat and kneels to pray but rather than the words of the people who

 ...built ceilings
between themselves and sky,
laid floors to block the lands, voice,
an old Ojibwe plea runs like a pulse through her.

Page 47
Edmonia is running away but it caught by several men who grab her.

No! she cries, then Naw! Booni'!

She is beaten and raped.

Page 53
Back in her room later, Edmonia says to Ruth

Give me my moccasins.

Edmonia holds them to her face and breathes in their deerskin scent. Then, she says to Ruth:

Burn them.

Aren't they all you have from your mother?

She thinks:

Holes or missing stitches didn't help.

and again, Edmonia asks Ruth to burn them.

Page 58
Edmonia is on her way to a second day of court where she is accused of trying to poison Helen and Christine.

Edmonia wishes she were in the woods
or at least back where she handed sightseers
birchbark tipis and canoes small enough to sail on a palm.
Buyers, turning their backs to the waterfall's beauty
and danger, seemed to crave a glimpse
of her brown hand as much as a toy,
small enough to pocket and forget.
Cross-legged on a woven blanket, she took coins,
traced the embossed reliefs of a bird, star,
wreath, goddess. 

From that time with her aunts, selling items to tourists, she learned how to read their eyes and body language. She uses that skill now, in court.

Her face stays as still as her aunts kept theirs
when strangers picked up beaded belts or willow baskets,
then put them back down.
Stillness was a skill as much as the crafts.

Page 67
The court goes on. Another season sets in.

During the time of Leaves Turning...

Page 74
The court determines she is not guilty of trying to poison Helen and Christine, but plans are made for Edmonia to leave the school. Father Keep tells her of people in Boston, specifically, a person named Mrs. Child, who

...has written much about the evils of slavery and wrongs done to Indians. 

Page 76
As Edmonia packs to leave, she

...opens a drawer and grabs her pencils like a fistful of arrows.

Page 80
Edmonia is on a train for Boston:

Silently, she chants, Faster, fasterwanting to move more swiftly than memory
or manitous who won't stay under branches, stones,
or skin, but shift shape or disappear like shadows.
She has only the future now, a place her aunts
knew was necessary but dangerous,
as they stitched a way forward with thin thread,
making blankets and baskets too small to be used.

And

Will she ever again see her aunts hunching over baskets?
Reeds bend when they're damp, so her aunts lifted them
to their mouths, breathing in life. They held birchbark
over flames, just close enough for it to soften, then curved
it into small canoes they spread on blankets.
Tourists offered a few coins for swift
journeys to places where they'd never live.

Boston, Massachusetts
1863-1865

Page 85
Edmonia is with Mrs. Childs in Boston and as she makes a pie crust,

...wonders if Mrs. Child scrubs the sink and sweeps floors
the way her aunts burned cedar branches
to keep their home safe.

Page 88
Edmonia tells Mrs. Childs that maybe she can be a painter like Mrs. Bannister's husband:

Back when I wove mats and beaded belts,my aunts said I had clever hands and eyes.

Page 91
Mrs. Child's tells Edmonia that she wrote a book about

...a romance between
a white woman and a Pequot Indian. I was charmed by
Mr. Longfellow's poem about Hiawatha.

Then she says

I heard your mother comes from
people I've long admired. Can you tell me
about her and how you grew up?

Page 93
Still in Boston with Mrs. Child's, Edmonia thinks of her life before she was at Oberlin:

Everything she left, the wisps of smoke curling
from the stove, stinging her eyes, the stench of ashes,
is beautiful. She couldn't see that the day
she asked Ruth to burn her old moccasins.
Could she disappear, like those deerskin shoes
or the canoes and bark houses her aunts shaped into toys
to barter to children who wanted a past
fit for children's eyes?

Page 107
Edmonia has begun sculpting. She tells Mrs Child's

I've begun work on a bust of Mr. Longfellow.
Not only a gentleman, but he bought freedom
for some slaves with income from his poems.

Page 111
In Boston Common for a parade celebrating the victory in Gettysburg, Edmonia follows Robert Gould Shaw's eyes as he raises them skyward:

Angels or manitous,
clear as water or wind, beat their wings.
Briefly they touch almost every other soldier.
One grazes the colonel's shoulder,
then a man who looks like Thomas.
She hears the feathery thud of wings
under the beat and breath of drums, fifes, and horns.
Are the spirit choosing who will soon cross with them?

(Note: Thomas is Ruth's beau, back at Oberlin.)

Page 120
Edmonia is in line to visit the works of a Miss Hosmer at a gallery in Boston. She overhears one lady say:

Miss Hosmer grew up near Boston
though now she makes her home in Rome. Her father
did his best after her mother passed over,
but the girl rode horses, paddled in the river,
was raised like a wild Indian.

Page 124
Edmonia is getting ready to leave for Italy.

Mrs. Child gives her a knitted pair of slippers.
Did I tell you how much sickness can be avoidedby putting on slippers every morning?Edmonia folds them so they fit in her hands
like the small sculptures of deerskin
her mother made when she was a baby,
smooth as a swan's wings collapsing back
into her own feathered body.

Rome, Italy
1865-1875

Page 131
In Rome, Edmonia learns she'll be sculpting in a courtyard located in a neighborhood that is convenient for tourists to stop in to watch her sculpt.

People watch you sculpt? Edmonia remembers
her aunts weaving sweetgrass while strangers stared.

Page 143
Edmonia is in Italy:

Months have different names, but through the times
of Snow Crust, Broken Snowshoes, then Maple-Sugar-Making,
Edmonia hunches over her work the way her aunts had
over baskets woven of rumor, nostalgia, and some truth.
One afternoon, a wealthy widow with two homes
to decorate orders a marble statue of Minnehaha
bidding her father good-bye.

Edmonia starts to work on the statue of Minnehaha bidding her father good-bye:

Slowly she sees a Sioux man carving arrowheads
just before his daughter leaves everything
she knows to live among the Ojibwe. 

Page 150
Edmonia has a dream in which Ruth hands her a pair of soft, small moccasins. When she wakes, she wonders:

Did Ruth keep the small moccasins,
burn something else, then put them
in the carpetbag Edmonia left behind?

She can almost smell the worn deerskin.
She knows the texture of each perfectly placed bead,
the deliberately ragged edge. Her mother
must have always wanted her to find beauty
in both careful stitches and unraveling borders.

---End of Notes---