Osceola Mays’ grandmother was ten years old when she was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, Osceola still recalls the stories and songs her grandmother passed down. Osceola learned, too, through the songs and poems her mother encouraged her to memorize so she wouldn’t forget her history. These memories of Osceola’s life, which has spanned the 20th century, are collected in oral history interviews conducted over a 15-year period. In two- or three-page chapters, she describes her life on a sharecropping farm in East Texas, talks about things she learned from her elders, and recites the poems she can call up from memory. Expressionistic color portraits illustrate each chapter. (Ages 8-12)

A sharecropper's daughter describes her childhood in Texas in the early years of the twentieth century.