SPI’s Conversation with the Legendary Ashley Bryan
Ashley is renowned for the extraordinary range and depth of his talent.
Story Preservation Initiative went to Little Cranberry Island, Maine to record the personal narrative of the legendary artist, writer, poet, anthologist, storyteller, and scholar of African and African-American folklore, Ashley Bryan. His story offers insight into his life, beliefs, and creative genius. SPI developed projects, found in the Learning Lab site, use his books and illustrations as templates for students in grades 4-12 to create their own original stories. For this recording, hyperlinks direct students and educators to relevant sites that include, among much else, related Library of Congress collections.
Ashley’s home and studio, Little Cranberry Island, Maine where the door was always open. Photo by Rose Russo, 2015.
Having seen his art, read his books, and listened to his recitation of poetry, it came as no surprise, when finally meeting Ashley face-to-face, to find him to be everything imagined. Ashley is all-embracing, inspiring, warm, colorful, joyous, and bursting with song. During our time together people - complete strangers to Ashley - wandered in and out of his home and studio; a place better described as a living museum. On each occasion Ashley stopped and took whatever time necessary to speak with them and show them some of his works in progress. His door, he explained, “is always open.”
Ashley’s work with African-American poetry and spirituals are, as he describes, “a tender bridge” connecting past to present and reaching across distances of time and space. Ashley’s numerous awards and honors include - but are not limited to - the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration; six Coretta Scott King Honors; the Arbuthnot Prize, one of the highest honors in children’s literature; and a Fulbright Scholarship.
His writing, poetry, and art have and continue to influence a whole generation of children.
Ashley doesn’t speak his stories, he sings them, fingers snapping, feet tapping, his voice articulating. His entire body is immersed in the tale.”
Listen to an excerpt of Ashley’s recording titled “African Folktales” here.
To watch and listen to Ashley recite Langston Hughes’ poem “My People,” click here.
Born in 1923 in Harlem to West Indies immigrants, Ashley’s childhood was filled with books, music, and art, even though resources tended to be scarce during the Great Depression. The second of six children, Ashley says he “cannot remember a time when he was not drawing or painting.” His first memories were of his parents sending him to Government run WPA classes which were free, and where he learned to draw, paint and play musical instruments. Ashley's mother sang and his father played the piano.
After graduating from high school, he applied for a scholarship at a prominent art institution, but was essentially told that a scholarship would not be wasted on a colored person. Under the guidance of his high school teachers, Ashley then applied and was accepted into New York's prestigious Cooper Union Art School. Two years later he was drafted into the army to serve in World War II. At the age of nineteen, he was part of the fleet that sailed to Normandy and landed on Omaha Beach. Throughout, Ashley drew whenever he could, keeping a sketch pad and art supplies in his gas mask.
Those sketches along with a narrative of his wartime experience can be found in his book “Infinite Hope": A Black Artist’s Journey from World War II to Hope,” named a Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade Book of 2019, (Simon & Schuster, 2019). Described as a “deeply moving picture book memoir about serving in the segregated army during World War II, and how love and the pursuit of art sustained him.” Ashley kept his wartime experience private, only at the age of 95 did he finally put pen to paper to share this part of his life.
After the war Ashley went on to study philosophy at Columbia University to, as he says, “understand war.” He then received a Fulbright scholarship to study art in Europe, and became the head of the art department at Dartmouth College.
The idea for his book Freedom Over Me (Simon & Schuster, 2016) was sparked when Ashley acquired a collection of slave-related documents that were found among an 1828 estate appraisal. These documents became the basis for the book in which “eleven slaves are listed for sale with the cows, hogs, cotton; only the names and prices of the slaves are noted (no age is indicated). From those names, Ashley imagined their lives into being.”
The book emphasizes the full humanity of these individuals, it speaks the imagined truths of their lives but also gives weight and breath to their imagined hopes and dreams. The atrocity of slavery is represented first and foremost by the purchase price accompanying every portrait. “These are human beings who are owned, who are ‘appraised’ and assigned a dollar value like cotton or cattle.”
A original SPI project tasks students with creating their own book, using Freedom Over Me as their template. For reference, students are directed to the Library of Congress collection Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938, which contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
Because of the breadth of his talent, Ashley’s recording is cross-referenced in the 4-12 Learning Lab.
See Art / Children’s Book Illustrators/ Authors and / or Humanities / American History.
All at SPI send our best wishes to teachers, librarians, parents, and educators of all stripes as you sail away into the summer months for a well-deserved rest.
We’ll be back in touch from time-to-time throughout the course of the summer but, until then, blessings and rest. It has been quite a year.
Story Preservation Initiative makes its work available to all, free of charge. We are a small non-profit dedicated to inspiring young people by sharing first-person stories told by extraordinary people in the arts, sciences, and humanities.
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