He was a poet, storyteller, children’s book author, artist, teacher, performer and puppeteer. But most of all, Ashley Bryan was an inspiration to every child and adult who knew him or his work. Mr. Bryan died last week at the age of 98. The joy he put into the world during his long life will endure for decades to come.
I had the amazing good luck to work with Ashley on two occasions called Poetry Concerts. The creation of the Milwaukee Public Library, these events consisted of a week of special poetry and art workshops in local grade schools culminating with a gala performance, or concert, featuring the week’s special guest and mentor, a nationally famous children’s book poet and writer. Without a doubt, Ashley Bryan was the most dynamic person I have ever met.
Ashley’s life was not without hardships, but he was a constant creator of joy. His parents left their sun-filled Caribbean island of Antigua for Harlem out of economic necessity. His father was a printer by trade, but could only find janitorial work when he and his future wife arrived in America. When he finally found a job as a greeting card printer, he moved his growing family to a walk-up railroad apartment in the Bronx. The family needed more room, there were six children, plus three cousins his parents adopted after their mother died.
Ashley’s description of life in that long, skinny tenement that only had windows at the front and back end tells much about the power of the human spirit. In his autobiography for children, Words To My Life’s Song, he relates how his mother loved flowers and put them wherever there was light in their apartment. And where there was no light, she and the children made crepe paper flowers to brighten up the gloom.
His father loved birds and lined the living room walls with shelves of birdcages for his beloved canaries, finches, warblers and parakeets. But those birds had competition. Ashley relates, “My mother sang from one end of the day to the other. When childhood friends visited, they would say, ‘Your mother sings!’ I thought all mothers sang.”
Ashley loved to draw from the time he was a small child, and his parents gave him his own desk to work on and good paper left over from printing orders at his father’s workplace. His childhood was filled with art including free classes provided at W.P.A. workshops.
Graduating from high school at sixteen, he needed a scholarship to go to college. When he initially submitted his portfolio, he was told that it was one of the best the interviewer had ever seen, but “it would be a waste to give a scholarship to a colored person.” He then presented his work to Cooper Union which judged the portfolios blind. He was admitted to the art school which was tuition-free.
After two years of college, he was drafted into the army to serve in World War II and was sent overseas where he took part in the invasion of Normandy. When the war ended, he continued to paint and draw, but switched his major to philosophy, feeling a compelling need for answers to the question, “Why does Man, knowing the overwhelming tragedies of war, choose war”?
But art and writing were to be his life work. In his long and award-filled career, Ashley Bryan wrote over fifty books for children. When he went to a library as a young boy, no children’s books depicted young people who looked like him. Ashley Bryan was one of the foremost artists who changed that situation.
Fascinating!