ABSTRACT
Freedom's a-Callin Me is a picture book that vividly represents the institution of slavery. In Freedom's a-Callin Me, Ntozake Shange and Rod Brown pair paintings and poems to illuminate the horrors of slavery and the burning desire of many enslaved Blacks to escape north to freedom. Throughout the text, there are poems and paintings that represent work in the fields, cruel whippings, flights through the woods, the pursuit of escaped slaves by bloodhounds and slave hunters, and other horrors that slaves faced. The poems, which are all narrated by an enslaved young Black man, present his various experiences of living under the institution of slavery. It is through this young man that readers discover how the characters that appear throughout the text experienced the institution of slavery. The inclusion of the financier in the text allows readers to consider complex race and class relations under the institution of slavery.
