The Plot: Carole Boston Weatherford's 2016 verse novel You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen is her eleventh poetry collection for young readers. In this collection, Weatherford uses the second person throughout in order to, as the front matter suggests, "allow readers to fly too." The narrative explores the history of the Tuskegee Airmen, much like Marilyn Nelson's American Ace, but Weatherford's collection employs a slightly more didactic approach, emphasizing specific historical dates, describing real-life individuals such as Lena Horne, and calling out the racist attitudes and segregation of the time period. The narrative of You Can Fly begins with the speaker of the poem's (the you's) desire to "Head to the Sky" (1)—to be trained as a pilot—and the speaker's meditation upon the image of the Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster and its implications for young African Americans entering the military at that time (2). The reader then follows the speaker to Tuskegee (4), through training in both the classroom and on the air field (14-15), on a first solo flight (16-17), overseas on deployment after the events at Pearl Harbor (44-45), and finally back home where racist attitudes still prevalent provide "No Hero's Welcome" (57).The Poetry: Weatherford's verse novel is told through a series of 33 free verse poems. The most significant feature of the collection in terms of the poetic technique is the use of the second person throughout; this approach, as the front matter suggests, draws the reader closer, decreasing the narrative distance, and allowing the reader to step directly into the shoes of a young Tuskegee airman. In one poem, "The Fight Song," Weatherford includes the use of rhyme in order to foreground the ways in which song plays a significant role in the unity of a company: "Sailing through the blue/ Gallant sons of the 99th/ Brown men tried and true" (41). In the final poem in the collection, which includes an epigraph from an executive order issued by President Harry Truman in 1948 that declares "there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin" (63), the speaker uses anaphora through the repetition of the phrase "If you live long enough" in order to underscore the ways in which the efforts of the Tuskegee airmen cleared the way for other important advances in the representation and advancement of people or color in all realms of society including MLB, NASA, and the White House.
The Page: One of the most significant features of Weatherford's verse novel are the incredibly detailed, 23 scratchboard illustrations created by Jeffery Boston Weatherford. These black and white illustrations accompany almost every poem in the collection. At times the entire page is blacked out and the text and the scratchboard illustration appear in white to contrast. Along with many other historical verse novels for young readers, Weatherford's You Can Fly includes an author's note, a detailed historical time line that begins in 1865 and carries through until 2009, and a list of resources.
You Can Fly is a fine verse novel and a great companion read to Nelson's American Ace; I give it three stars.
