Books by Tom Feelings
The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargos /
Jambo Means Hello /
Moja Means One /
To Be a Slave
Soul Looks Back in Wonder /
Daydreamers /
I Saw Your Face /
Now Sheba Sings the Song
Zamani Goes to
Market /
Tommy Traveler in the World of
Negro History /
Black Pilgrimage
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On the Passing of an Artist of the
People
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Tom Feelings
By Marvin X His mighty pen connected continents of Africans
from Ghana to Guyana to Haiti and Gullahland
griot of the Middlepassage
the triangular trade of human flesh and souls
he gave the blueprint of remembrance
for those suffering amnesia and passivity
a quiet giant whose brush was razor sharp
whipping and stirring broken souls into shape
if they only looked at his canvas
a mirror for millions in the Diaspora
a map of the past, present and future
describing the happy times and mournful moments
in our daily round
Tom made us not forget the bigger picture
called humanity and eternity. |
| Tom Feelings (1933-2003), born May 19,
1933, in Brooklyn, NY, was the son of Samuel (a cab driver) and
Anna Nash (Morris) Feelings. Tom married Muriel Grey (a school
teacher and author), 1968; they divorced, 1974. The had two
sons, Zamani and Kamili. Feelings received his education and
training at Cartoonists and Illustrators' School, New York, NY,
1951-53; and the School of Visual Art, New York, NY, 1957-60.
He was an illustrator in Graphics Division of the U .S. Air
Force, London, England, 1953-57. From 1986, he was a member of
the Schomberg Center for Research. His career as a private citizen began in 1958 at
the New York Age as a creator and writer of the Tommy
Traveler in the World of Black History comic strip |
 |
From 1961-1962, Feelings was a freelance illustrator and
contributor to various magazines. In Tema, Ghana (1964-1965), he worked as
an illustrator for African Review, illustration
instructor and art consultant For the Guyana Ministry of
Education (1971-1974), Feelings worked as a teacher and
consultant. He was artist in residence at the university of
South Carolina, 1990-1995.
Tom Feeling was involved in a number of book projects:
(Illustrator)
Bola and the
Oba's Drummers, McGraw, 1967.
(Illustrator)
To Be a Slave , Dial,
1968.
(Illustrator)
Zamani Goes to
Market, Seabury, 1970.
(Illustrator)
Jambo Means Hello,
Dial, 1971.
Black Pilgrimage, Lothrop,
1972.
(Illustrator)
Moja Means One : A
Swahili Counting Book, Dial, 1974.
(Illustrator)
Something on My
Mind, Dial, 1978.
(Illustrator)
Daydreamers,
Dial, 1981.
(Illustrator)
Now Sheba Sings
the Song, Dial, 1987.
Tommy Traveler in the World of
Negro History, Black Butterfly Books, 1991.
Soul Looks Back in Wonder ,
Dial, 1993.
The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargos, Dial,
1995.
His awards were numerous and included:
Caldecott Honor Book, 1972, for Moja Means One; Coretta Scott
King Award runner up for Black Pilgrimage, Outstanding
Achievement Award, School of Visual Arts, 1974; Coretta Scott
King Award, for Something on My Mind, 1979, and for Soul Looks
Back in Wonder, 1994; Visual Artists Fellowship Grant, National
Endowment of the Arts, 1982; National Book Award nomination for
Jambo Means Hello, 1982; Distinguished Service to Children
Through Art award, University of South Carolina, 1991.
Feelings in his own words:
"When I am asked what kind of work I do, my answer is
that I am a storyteller, in picture form, who tries to reflect
and interpret the lives and experiences of the people that gave
me life. When I am asked who I am, I say, I am an African who
was born in America. Both answers connect me specifically with
my past and present ... therefore I bring to my art a quality
which is rooted in the culture of Africa ... and expanded by the
experience of being in America. I use the vehicle of 'fine art'
and 'illustration' as a viable expression of form, yet striving
always to do this from an African perspective, an African world
view, and above all to tell the African story ... this is my
content. The struggle to create artwork as well as to live
creatively under any conditions and survive (like my ancestors),
embodies my particular heritage in America."
"I feel blessed to work on something that I love doing,
that is central to my life, but that serves a collective
purpose. I can't think of anything more important than that....
That you can reach other people with it, connect with it?
That just turns me
on!"
Tom Feelings died August 2003 in Mexico.* * *
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update
18 February 2012
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