Poet Marilyn Nelson wrote and created an important work. A Wreath For Emmett Till is the kind of text that I think can open up a wave of discussions in a a secondary Language Arts classroom. A teacher willing to tackle this short (but very pretty) book could focus on it for days, even with it being just 15 poems long. Racism, violence, civil rights and how it all connects to American history are certainly topics. A teacher could also focus on how Nelson constructed and interconnected the poems, and also take a deep dive into the significance of all the literary references that come at the reader almost line by line.
I’m not sure I can say I enjoyed A Wreath For Emmett Till. A better way of expressing how I feel about the book is that I appreciate the thoughtfulness and skill of Nelson and the importance of the topic. There’s a density in the words, an overall heaviness to A Wreath For Emmett Till that left me more than a little sad and tired.
Initially, I thought of this book as being something more for a junior or maybe sophomore year high school audience. At that age, it might be a touch easier to talk about what happened. Emmett Till was just 14 when he was tortured and murdered. Fourteen-year-olds should be the ones reading Nelson’s book. Fourteen is young, but taking on a difficult text like this, I think, is what education should be about. And being a little sad and tired is okay, too.
And for those who may have never heard the song “Strange Fruit” (mentioned in the second poem), well, Billie Holiday is something special.
The third degree . . . this time education 