“Show Way” by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Hudson Talbott.
G.P Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2005, 48 pages, Grades K-4.
The history of slavery is one of the most painful parts of the national fabric. African people were transported to the United States against their wills and sold into slavery. There is nothing about this entire experience that is anything other than brutality. It was a crime against humanity.
But even in this pit of evil, many slaves yearned for a better day and worked to achieve it. Some of the slaves ran away to freedom. Others nurtured their young with stories of freedom. Since most of the slaves were beaten if they tried to learn to read, common symbols, such as the North Star, were sewn into quilts and blankets showing the slaves the road to freedom.
Jacqueline Woodson, the famous poet and author, writes an autobiographical account of generations of women in her family as displayed through these quilts. There are seven generations in Woodson’s family, with Soonie being the fourth in the family line. It is both a heartbreaking and heroic account of Woodson’s ancestors overcoming hatred to achieve freedom. The name of this powerful picture book is “Show Way.”
The story begins with the brutal sale of Soonie’s great-grandma from her birthplace in Virginia to a plantation in South Carolina. There, all the slaves labor under the burning sun with the fear of the whip never far behind. In this awful situation, the slave families draw together and strengthen each other. This solidarity is often broken with the sale of a family member to another plantation.
Through it all, the older women keep the stories of the families alive. Because education is forbidden to the slaves, the women often turn to sewing blankets and quilts filled with symbols understandable to the slaves. These quilts are like maps and the symbols are the guideposts leading the people out of slavery into the freedom in the North. The quilts give hope to the people and the promise that some day this evil will end.
In the inner life of the slaves, we see the love and joy that they have for each other. They play with their children as the youngsters laugh with joy. The punishing life that oppresses the slaves cannot extinguish the care they have for each other. As the little ones grow, the older women tell them the stories of their family’s history. The quilts depict signs to see during an escape from slavery. The signs are about common things, but when put together into a silent language, the children know the way to freedom.
As the years pass, freedom eventually makes its way into their lives. But there are still many obstacles to overcome. The final half of the book tells this part of the story. Why does this happen?
I hope you get a chance to read this outstanding book. Reading “Show Way” together with a younger family member is a good way to share this book. It is heartbreaking and hard to read at times because slavery was an evil and brutal system, and a loving adult may help the child understand the book better. But the evident beauty of the Woodson women through seven generations is an inspiring story of love and courage in the face of vicious racism. When you finish the book your heart has been broken by their pain and uplifted by their heroism. They were giants on the earth.
Jacqueline Woodson was the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015-2017 and has won numerous awards for literature. Her most famous book is the poignant, “brown, girl dreaming.” She is an exceptional writer and I hope you get a chance to read “Show Way” or any of her other fine works.
