The Undefeated

A Love Letter to Black America

The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson might be my favorite book that I've found for this blog so far. It's a gorgeous tribute to some of the most influential figures in Black American History. The author, Kwame Alexander, is a New York Times best-selling author and past winner of the Coretta Scott King Book award. Illustrator Kadir Nelson is also well renowned, having written several distinguished picture books and won the Caldecott Honor for illustrators twice.

The gist:

Kwame Alexander describes this book is "a love letter to America. To Black America." It is an ode that highlights the strength, passion and perseverance of some of the greatest Black figures in U.S. history. It includes references to lyrics and lines of poets and musicians (like Gwendolyn Brook's We Real Cool) and beautiful portraits of influential figures.

In his afterword, Kwame Alexander writes "I wanted to establish from the very beginning that much of what I'm talking about in this poem, so much of American history, has been forgotten, left out of textbooks, and that to truly know who we are as a country, we have to accept and embrace all of our woes and wonders." This book does just that. This book highlights so many incredible Black figures in American History, and does not shy away from the "woes" of slavery and racism. Following the afterword, the book goes through each historical figure featured or referenced and gives a short, factually accurate bio. 

My favorite parts:

This book is unafraid to bring to light issues that too often people continue to push into the dark. Like Kwame Alexander says in his afterword, "...We have to accept and embrace all of our woes and our wonders." Our country must acknowledge the racist foundations of this nation and stop brushing them under the rug. We must acknowledge the horrors of slavery, of Jim Crowe, and the racist structures that continue to oppress Black Americans. This book is beautiful in so many ways, but perhaps my favorite part was the tribute to Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin. This page, and their short biographies written at the end of the book, is so incredibly powerful. I cannot do justice to it, so I'll just leave you with this image.

What you can do:

First off, please, please have conversations about race and prejudice with your children and your students. It's so important to begin having these difficult conversations at a young age. Not sure where to start? Listen to this NPR Podcast that provides strategies for talking about race with young children. Then, check out this PBS page, which has tons of articles for you to read as well as resources you can share with your child, including this Arthur video! Who doesn't love Arthur?

This book is designed to help guide your conversations. It will act as a jumping off point for you to lead conversations with your students about all these incredible Black figures. After the initial reading (let the kids just sit and bask in this book's glory the first time around!), you can go back to certain pages or sections and discuss who each figure it. Want to take a deeper dive into the artists highlighted (Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and more)? Great! Grab the art teacher and see what kind of project you can think up! Think your students would prefer learning about the athletes? No problem! There's tons to choose from -- Wilma Rudolph, Michael Jordon, Sheryl Swoopes and SO MUCH MORE. There are so many ways you could use this book as a starting point to bring these historical figures to life.

Happy Reading!