At Break of Day by Nikki Grimes

At Break of Day by Nikki Grimes

In the Danish West Indies, hundreds of enslaved men and women and a handful of Danish judges engaged in a broken, often distorted dialogue in court. Their dialogue was shaped by a shared concern with the ways slavery clashed with sexual norms and family life. Some enslaved men and women crafted respectable Christian self-portraits, which in time allowed victims of sexual abuse and rape to publicly narrate their experiences. Other slaves stressed African-Atlantic traditions when explaining their domestic conflicts. Yet these gripping stories did not influence the legal system. While the judges cunningly embraced slave testimony, they also reached guilty verdicts in most trials and punished with extreme brutality. Slaves spoke, but mostly to no avail. In Slave Stories, Gunvor Simonsen reconstructs the narratives crafted by slaves and traces the distortions instituted by Danish West Indian legal practice. In doing so, she draws us closer to the men and women who lived in bondage in the Danish West Indies (present-day US Virgin Islands) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Nikki Grimes won the 2005 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award for Dark Sons. She is the distinguished author of more than thirty-one children's books, including What is Goodbye?, a 2004 ALA Notable Book. She received the 2003 Coretta Scott King Award for her novel Bronx Masquerade as well as a 2003 Coretta Scott King Author Honor for her picture book Talkin' About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman. Many of her other books have been cited as Notable Books by the American Library Association, including Come Sunday, a picture book in verse; Something on My Mind; and Meet Danitra Brown, which also won a Coretta Scott King Honor. She lives in Corona, California.

Ral Coln has illustrated more than twenty-five books for children including Celebration by Jane Resh Thomas, A Band of Angels by Deborah Hopkinson, and What Is Goodbye? by Nikki Grimes. He's won a Pura Belpr Award for Illustration for Doa Flor: A Tall Tale About A Giant Woman With A Great Big Heart by Pat Mora, and has been awarded a Silver and Gold medal from The Society of Illustrators. He lives and works in New York.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780802851048
ISBN 10	0802851045
Title	At Break of Day
Author	Nikki Grimes
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	William B Eerdmans Publishing Co
Year published	1999-10-01
Number of pages	32
Prizes	Short-listed for Christian Retailing's Best (Children's) 2001
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable