Thinking of Words and Images
Sean Qualls, Illustrator
“I’m a full-time freelance illustrator and artist. I was born in Cocoa Beach, Florida. After graduating from high school, I moved to Brooklyn to attend Pratt Institute. I dropped out after a year and a half. I have taken a few night courses at SVA (the School of Visual Arts) but consider myself to be mostly ‘self-educated.’ I spend my days listening to music, visiting libraries and bookstores, and of course, painting and drawing. I get most inspired when listening to music, reading, going for long walks, or visiting museums.”
Entry Question
Responding to Engle’s biography through art is a way to blend and complement words and images. Sean Qualls, the illustrator of The Poet Slave of Cuba, uses a variety of media to create his illustrations. One method Qualls utilizes is to paint over newsprint with tempera or acrylic paints.
How do Sean Qualls’ white, black, and gray illustrations enhance and extend the historical novel in verse?
What materials, techniques, or ideas would you use to illustrate this novel?
Understanding the Last Section
. Juan Francisco Manzano has the opportunity of briefly living a semi-free life as a poet/reader with Don Nicolás. This experience allows him to fully grasp that another reality beyond slavery is possible and how literature can help him achieve his dream of freedom.
.La Marquesa del Prado Ameno regains control over Juan, however, this time, his rebelliousness and defiance are more direct, especially after his mother dies. To some extent, the power structure flips.
.Juan Francisco Manzano increasingly considers ways of achieving literary and real freedom and finally decides to escape completely.
Three Goals of the Novel in Verse
.Marronage/cimarronaje implies practices of freedom and the creation of a world outside of the colonial gaze/rule (or a partial alternative to that gaze/rule). Margarita Engle is locating Manzano’s poetics and thus Afro-Latinx literature as marronage.
.Engle wants to bring back the content of Juan Francisco Manzano’s The Autobiography of a Slave to new 21st-century audiences using different embodied narrative/poetic voices.
.She contextualizes Juan Francisco Manzano as one of the forefathers of Cuban (mulato), Caribbean, (Afro) Latin America, and US (Afro) Latinx literature for his innovation engaging still relevant topics like censorship, abolition, and Afro-diasporic Latinx identities.
Presentation(s) by:
Group Work
OPTION ONE
Discuss the ways Manzano achieves his dream of literacy and poetic rebellion.
OPTION TWO
Elaborate on how Manzano values her deceased mother’s spiritual well-being at all costs. How does the death of his mother amplify his rebelliousness?
OPTION THREE
In the last poem, Juan Francisco Manzano conveys the notion of a collectivity (concrete and abstract) praying for him, singing, and wishing him well in his escape from La Marquesa’s plantation. Expand on Manzano’s vision. How his escape represents a form of historical awareness?
Compare it to Juan Francisco Manzano’s ending.