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    Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis
    Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis
    Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis
    Ebook159 pages1 hour

    Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis

    By Jeannine Atkins

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    About this ebook

    From critically acclaimed author Jeannine Atkins comes a “memorable, poetic tale” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about a half–Native American, half–African American sculptor working in the years following the Civil War.

    A sculptor of historical figures starts with givens but creates her own vision. Edmonia Lewis was just such a sculptor, but she never spoke or wrote much about her past, and the stories that have come down through time are often vague or contradictory. Some facts are known: Edmonia was the daughter of an Ojibwe woman and an African Haitian man. She had the rare opportunity to study art at Oberlin, one of the first schools to admit women and people of color, but lost her place after being accused of poisoning and theft, despite being acquitted of both. She moved to Boston and eventually Italy, where she became a successful sculptor.

    But the historical record is very thin. The open questions about Edmonia’s life seem ideally suited to verse, a form that is compatible with mysteries. Inspired by both the facts and the gaps in history, author Jeannine Atkins imagines her way into a vision of what might have been.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateJan 10, 2017
    ISBN9781481459075
    Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis
    Author

    Jeannine Atkins

    Jeannine Atkins is the author of books for young readers featuring women in history, including Borrowed Names: Poems about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C. J. Walker, Marie Curie and their Daughters. She is an adjunct professor at Simmons College and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She welcomes readers to visit her online at www.jeannineatkins.com.

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    • 3/5
      The plus here: learning about the existence and art of Edmonia Lewis. The minus -- well, the verse form leaves a lot to the imagination -- which makes it a reasonable choice for a figure whom much is unknown, but is frustrating in its slender narrative.

    Book preview

    Stone Mirrors - Jeannine Atkins

    Oberlin, Ohio

    1862–1863

    Forbidden

    Old branches crack as Edmonia breaks

    a path through the woods. She wants

    to outrun fury, or at least make a distance

    between herself and the poison spoken

    at Oberlin. The school is a shop where she can’t buy,

    a supper she’s never meant to taste,

    a holiday she can’t celebrate

    though she doesn’t want to be left out.

    She runs under trees taller than those in town,

    where they’re sawed into lumber,

    turned into tables, rifles, or walls.

    These woods are as close to home

    as she may ever again get.

    When she was given a chance to go

    to boarding school, her aunts’ farewell was final.

    People who move into houses

    with hard walls don’t return to homes

    that can be rolled and carried on backs.

    Edmonia crouches to touch tracks

    of birds and swift squirrels sculpted in snow,

    the split hearts of deer hooves.

    Boot prints are set far enough apart

    to tell her the trespasser is tall,

    shallow enough to guess he’s slender.

    Her cold breath stops, like ice.

    She looks up at a deer whose dark gaze

    binds them, turns into trust.

    Then a branch breaks. The deer flees.

    Hands

    Brush rustles. A boy lopes through a clearing.

    His hair shines like straw in sun. He says,

    Hello. I’ve seen you at school.

    Aren’t you friends with Helen and Christine?

    With Helen. Maybe. We live in the same dormitory.

    Friend isn’t from her first language.

    She recognizes Seth as one of the boys,

    about seventeen, in the class ahead of hers

    and just behind those enrolled in the college.

    She looks, as the deer taught her, for signs

    of danger beyond weapons or words.

    They say you make your own rules,

    Seth says. I see they’re right.

    You’re not supposed to be in the woods.

    Or alone with a boy. Neither are you.

    She was raised to respect fire, fast water,

    and heights. But some school rules seem

    like ropes meant to bind, choke, or trip

    rather than keep someone safe. The woods

    are her refuge from the school famous as the first

    to open to both boys and girls,

    white and colored,

    rich and poor,

    the good and the better-be-grateful,

    though the lines between them are as firm as fences.

    The trees call me, Seth says.

    She looks up into the boughs. Is he teasing?

    Or does he mean that trees call with

    a hush and hum that never needs translation?

    Each room at school—art, composition, geometry—

    has its own language. Maybe the woods do, too.

    I read Hiawatha, he says. Was your life like that?

    Is it true you used to live outside?

    When most people ask where she came from,

    the question draws a line between them.

    Most strangers want only a slip of a story,

    like those the aunts who raised her gave tourists

    to go with the deerskin moccasins

    and sweetgrass baskets they bought,

    reminders that history is as fragile as the present.

    But Seth’s voice is soft as an opening door.

    He seems to ask about the past not to measure,

    but to touch. There’s no quiz in his eyes,

    no examination of the pink-brown terrain of her palms,

    the geography of her twisting hair.

    She says, In winter, we stretched strips of bark

    over trees young enough to bend, and slept

    with our feet toward the fire in the middle.

    I wish I could live like that. Seth raises

    his voice. Or run away and help crush the Rebs,

    never mind what my father says.

    They walk silently a while to honor the dead

    or missing slaves and soldiers.

    They stop at the edge of the woods.

    Smoke stains the sky. A train whistle blasts.

    Small animals scurry across the field.

    Seth crouches and holds his hand out flat,

    as one would with salt for a horse,

    as if he could tempt a hare back to the woods.

    Here, homes are hidden—

    burrows under snow, or in the hollows of trees—

    as if secrets and dangers can’t be the same.

    Snowflakes start to fall. She and Seth walk again.

    Their breath claims the same rhythm

    before a waterfall frozen in mid-motion,

    its power and old noise half-hidden.

    A brook below trickles over rocks

    and around small islands of ice.

    Seth’s eyes, green as the forest at dusk,

    cast a spell. The wool of his jacket

    mixes with the scent of his skin,

    earthy and vaguely sweet, like clover.

    He leans forward, offers a warm mouth.

    Chickadees swoop and chirp.

    Wind rattles dried grasses.

    Edmonia hears another branch split.

    Or is that the sound of old rules breaking?

    Her breath unstitches.

    She slips off a mitten.

    Their fingers wind together.

    Her small hand feels safe as an egg

    within the nest of his wide one.

    She feels a new pulse in her palm

    keeping time with the snowflakes

    melting on her face.

    Their hands around each other’s become

    the warmest spot in the woods.

    The First Promise

    Before starting on separate paths back to the school,

    Seth says, Don’t tell anyone.

    Edmonia’s breath flows smoothly as a needle

    through cloth. Her self fits within her skin

    the way moccasins mold to feet,

    a river wends through land,

    or a crow slices her shape through the sky.

    She says, I won’t tell. Ever since

    she heard how her mother invited a man heading north

    —a man who was free, but a dangerous color—

    into her bark house, Edmonia understood

    that hiding and courage were part of love.

    Old Stories

    Edmonia can keep secrets. She doesn’t speak

    of her father, who, not long before her mother died,

    left Edmonia with brown skin, round eyes, a wide mouth,

    and not one memory. Still, his name is part of hers.

    She won’t speak of manitous, good spirits

    who may stay within stone, but might warn

    with a cracking branch. Her aunts taught her much

    that they warned could be ruined by revelation.

    Edmonia won’t won’t even whisper what her aunts held close.

    But she wishes she could hint about the kiss

    to the girls who share a room upstairs. Helen and Christine

    like tales of forbidden romance: Romeo and Juliet

    defying their families, Hiawatha and Minnehaha

    marrying despite fighting between Ojibwe and Sioux,

    Cleopatra luring a Roman into a barge

    filled with gold and roses, forgetting

    her country, careless that she was queen.

    Portraits

    The art room is undivided by chairs set in rows.

    It smells of charcoal sticks and spiral shavings

    from pencils sharpened with knives.

    Landscapes are pinned to the walls.

    White plaster busts of heads with empty eyes

    and casts of hands and feet fill the shelves.

    Nothing is shown of the body between.

    Only after long practice on what’s flat

    are the older students allowed to work with clay.

    They claim

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