The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo

by Tom Feelings

Book Overview

Alex Haley's Roots awakened many Americans to the cruelty of slavery. The Middle Passage focuses attention on the torturous journey which brought slaves from Africa to the Americas, allowing readers... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803718047
• ISBN13: 9780803718043
• Release Date: November 1995
• Publisher: Dial Books
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 13.8" x 10.3"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

dynamic and haunting images

The Middle Passage is a phenominal series of paintings depicting the transportation of black slaves across the Atlantic. I use this large format book as a visual aid in my N.Y.C. art classes. It has inspired the type of dialogue we all want to have in our classrooms.

Silent Testimony

Inaccessible and obscure to many because of its controversial categorization under children's books, Tom Feelings' The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo relays a story that simply cannot go untold. People of all ages will experience a strong reaction to the vivid, black and white illustrations chronicling the brutal history of America, of race, and of humanity that can never really be fully remembered. I would advise against simply handing the book to a child without being prepared to undergo the painful process of explaining the meaning of the narrative relayed by Feelings. The artist graphically captures many of the different atrocities that occurred: violence, rape, and dehumanizing conditions. The book sparks productive discussion between all people on the slave trade and on the different methods of representing that history.

POWERFUL !! A Must-Have for Libraries

Excellent pencil drawings depict the harvesting and the transport of human beings as commodities to be sold in the slave trade. A powerful resource. This book has been classified as an Art book. Share it with every Art Teacher you know !!! Horrific, terrifying illustrations should motivate us to ensure that something like this NEVER happens again !!!

Artistically Truthful

While teaching the 6 traits of writing to middle school students, I was given The Middle Passage to use as an example of a book with strong voice. The book completely awed me with its dark, powerful images. Page after page, the illustrations evoke incredibly strong emotional reactions in the reader despite the absence of words. While the story is certainly worth sharing and keeping alive, the black and white drawings are graphic enough that I decided to save the book for a time when I could provide students with more background information to prepare them for the harsh realities depicted. This is a book that I will keep in my collection because of its artistic power, historical accuracy, and vivid impact.

FEELINGS COME ALIVE

This book evokes many feelings although there are no written words in the story. The feelings portrayed in the book vividly are anger, shame, sympathy, and compassion to name a few. I believe students would have feelings arosed in them. I highly suggest people from young adult through adults read this book.