Carole Boston Weatherford's _You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen_

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.

Marilyn Nelson's _American Ace_

The Plot: Marilyn Nelson's 2016 verse novel (or as she terms it, lyric history) American Ace follows 16-year-old Connor as he discovers his geneaology and his family's connection to American history. When his Italian grandmother, Nonna Lucia dies, she leaves Connor's father a letter explaining that the man who raised him is not his father. Connor's father becomes depressed upon learning this news, and it isn't until he begins to teach Connor to drive that the "glacier... growing between" them begins to melt (15). During their driving practice sessions, Connor's father divulges the contents of Nonna Lucia's letter, they begin to have a discussion about identity and belonging (19). Connor's father tells his extended family the news shortly after and all of them are interested in the romance of being a "love child" (27). In addition to the letter, Nonna Lucia also left a gold class ring that belonged to Connor's biological grandfather. Connor and his father use these two artifacts to begin discovering their family history. After doing lots of research with a local librarian and having Connor's father's DNA tested, Connor and his father discover that Nonna Lucia's lover went to Wilberforce University, which was the first HBCU (historically black colleges and universities) in the United States, and was a Tuskegee Airman, a group of famous all-black fighter pilots in WWII. Shortly after discovering all of this, Connor's father has a stroke, and while he is working through rehab and recovery, Connor continues researching the Tuskegee Airman and writes about them for his senior US History Honors Thesis.

The Poetry: Nelson is well known for her poetry for both young readers and adult readers. This work follows her recent publication of How I Discovered Poetry (which I reviewed earlier this year) and is her ninth verse novel/lyric history. Like How I Discovered Poetry, which is a series of 50 sonnets, in American Ace, Nelson utilizes a consistent stanza form and meter throughout with each of her 45 poems consisting of two 12-line stanzas in loose blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). In addition to these formal constructions, Nelson also uses lyricism (as her categorization of her work as a lyric history implies) throughout to focus her attention on the emotions experienced by a teenage boy learning about his family history and dealing with his father's illness. For example, in the poem "Beginning," which is the second poem in part nine, Connor meditates on how he coped while his father was recovering from his stroke:

The hours I'd spent watching Dad mend his brain:

they were the only ones that held meaning.

Those, and the hours I'd spent discovering

the Tuskegee Airman, that brotherhood

of brothers. (109) 

The Page: American Ace is divided into nine parts, and each part contains five poems. Nelson also includes several photographic images depicting the Tuskegee Airman (86, 90-91, 100, 119) and an author's note entitled "How This Book Came to Be, and Why an Older African American Woman Ended Up Writing as a Young White Man" (120). Nelson also uses another interesting formal approach in parts seven and eight. While the poems in these two sections make up Connor's honor thesis entitled "Discovering the Tuskegee Airmen," each of the poem titles alludes to the stages of Connor's father's recovery ("Acute Care," "Rehab," "Daily Visits," etc.).

I thoroughly enjoyed Nelson's newest verse novel and its approach to lyric history as a poetic form. I give American Ace four stars.