![]() ![]() The proverbial “melting pot” is the narrative America tells about itself, despite the current political climate, where immigrants, people of color, and other marginalized humans fight to assert and maintain their claim to America’s story. Through seemingly simple words and art, Mora paints a picture of what America strives to be. Omu’s neighbors - children, adults, professionals, blue-collar workers, and artists - are different colors, and by the end of the story they gather together through Omu’s extraordinary generosity. The choice of collage as illustration medium for this sweet story adds depth and dimension, which on many levels can be seen as metaphorical - the stew (many ingredients making a delicious dish) the community (many different people coming together) and the collages (many different materials coming together to create a beautiful picture). It appears that Omu’s generosity has worked to her detriment, until the community that has benefited from her largesse comes to thank her with a delicious meal to share. Omu generously shares her meal but then finds that, at dinnertime, there is nothing left for herself. As the smell of her stew wafts through the neighborhood, Omu gets a string of visitors hoping for a taste of her dinner. Thank You, Omu! takes us to Omu’s (the Igbo word for queen) apartment on the corner of First and Long streets in an unnamed city, where she is preparing a delicious red stew for her evening meal. Few of us have ever used collage to tell an entire story, nor has our work been as skilled and talented as that of Oge Mora, the author and illustrator of Thank You, Omu! We sometimes think of collage as an art form that we learned in elementary school - cut or torn pieces of paper, pictures from magazines, newspapers, etc., all pasted together to convey a message or paint a picture.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |