![\"\"](\"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/kadirnelson1.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
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In a new picture book titled <\/b>The Undefeated<\/i><\/b>, artist Kadir Nelson brings Kwame Alexander\u2019s \u201cThis One Is For Us\u201d <\/b>poem<\/b><\/a> to life through eye-catching illustrations. <\/b><\/p>\n Written in 2008, the poem was inspired by the election of our first African-American president, Barack Obama, which coincided with the birth of his daughter. \u201cThis poem was my tribute to both,\u201d said Alexander. <\/b><\/p>\n Kadir Nelson found the poem to be quite powerful, and decided to create a picture book to capture generations of Black American heroes who are now rightfully earning their light. <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cIt begins with Jesse Owens literally jumping out of the darkness into the light,\u201d Nelson told <\/b>NPR <\/b><\/a>in an exclusive interview. \u201cBy the time we get toward the middle and end of the book, those shadows have disappeared and the brilliance and excellence of the subjects have completely emerged into the bright light.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n But Nelson doesn’t only honor the well-known Black American heroes. There\u2019s also an ode to those who survived America \u201cby any means necessary,\u201d as shown in the illustration below. \u00a0\u201c<\/b>I just really think about people in my family, people that I know, who are the unsung heroes,\u201d he explained. \u201cThe people throughout history who we don’t necessarily know \u2014 who we may never know \u2014 but all their contributions to the story of America are just as important.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n There\u2019s even a moment of silence depicted in the book with a blank page. \u00a0It\u2019s for the voices silenced throughout history, for anyone left in the dark, for the heroes who were not seen. <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cThis is for the unspeakable,\u201d reads a page that represents the slave trade. We see rows of black bodies and are reminded of the abhorrent past. \u201c<\/b>The subject matter is very difficult. It’s not pretty,\u201d said Nelson. \u201cSo even though I’m an artist and I try to create images that are visually pleasing, it was important that this subject be portrayed in the way that I think it should be. It’s striking, it’s unsettling, and it also gives you pause. This really happened.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Nelson dedicated <\/b>The Undefeated<\/i><\/b> to the woman who perhaps inspires him the most, his grandmother. While her face may not be in the book, he is reminded of her through his illustration of the Black family shown above. \u201c<\/b>My grandmother, she is from the Deep South and she married my grandfather who was a white American and they moved to the north and created a whole life for themselves,\u201d he said. \u00a0\u201cI come from a family of ancestors who were sharecroppers. … I look at what she was able to do to push her family forward and create a life for the whole family.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cI see her face in all these faces,\u201d Nelson continued. \u201cI see her face in that family, I see her face in Harriet Tubman or in Zora Neale Hurston. All of these heroes who have drawn upon something greater than themselves and created beauty out of something that was not beautiful.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n The Undefeated<\/i><\/b> is now available for purchase on <\/b>Amazon.<\/b><\/a> To stay up to date with Kadir Nelson, please visit his website at <\/b>kadirnelson.com<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a new picture book titled The Undefeated, artist Kadir Nelson brings Kwame Alexander\u2019s \u201cThis One Is For Us\u201d poem to life through eye-catching illustrations. Written in 2008, the poem was inspired by the election of our first African-American president, Barack Obama, which coincided with the birth of his daughter. \u201cThis poem was my tribute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174,175],"tags":[627,32,31,151,626,628,625,51],"class_list":["post-3941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-books","category-arts-culture","tag-black-book","tag-books","tag-featured","tag-kadir-nelson","tag-kadir-nelson-the-undefeated","tag-kwame-alexander","tag-the-undefeated","tag-trending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/kadirnelson2.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
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