Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans (review)

The fictional narrator, an elderly African-American woman, weaves together family lore and American history to impart to her child listener understanding and pride in his heritage: "You have to know where you come from so you can move forward." The resulting narrative is an intimately styled history lesson in which family members who took part in landmark events, from the Revolutionary War through the civil rights movement, take their rightful place beside players of greater renown. The narration spins out smooth as silk, and that is paradoxically the strength and the weakness of the title—a social studies lesson in which historical episodes are retold more compellingly than in any textbook, yet so ably and unfalteringly presented that the narrator herself seems (despite the frequent, down-homey interjections of "chile") implausibly glib. There is ample reward here, however, even for children who don't read a word of the text. Nelson's monumental paintings portray the humblest laborers, the most prosaic families as heroic figures in the epic drama of their history, and unnamed faces are imbued with the same dignified pride as those of Douglass and King and Parks. A timeline, bibliography, and index will assist students trolling for report material, but it's the powerful imagery that ultimately makes this essential to the American History collection.