Bessie Stringfield

Tales of the Talented Tenth, no. 2

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Pub Date 01 Oct 2016 | Archive Date 06 Sep 2019

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Description

Winner:
Kirkus Reviews, Best Historical Teen Book of 2016

Imagine a five-foot-two-inch-tall woman riding a Harley eight times across the continental United States. Now imagine she is black and is journeying across the country in the pre-Civil Rights era of the 1930s and ’40s. That is the amazing true story of Bessie Stringfield, the woman known today as The Motorcycle Queen of Miami and the first black woman to be inducted into the American Motorcyclist Association Hall of Fame and the Harley Davidson Hall of Fame. Stringfield was a pioneer in motorcycling during her lifetime; she rode as a civilian courier for the US military and founded the Iron Horse Motorcycle Club in Miami, all while confronting and overcoming Jim Crow in every ride.
Winner:
Kirkus Reviews, Best Historical Teen Book of 2016

Imagine a five-foot-two-inch-tall woman riding a Harley eight times across the continental United States. Now imagine she is black and is...

Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781938486944
PRICE $23.95 (USD)
PAGES 158

Average rating from 10 members


Featured Reviews

I read a book, a while back, that had Bessie Stringfiled in it, and that was how I found out that she was real, so it is wonderful to find this book about this Black woman motocycle rider from the 1930-1950s.

The drawings are a lot of fun, and the attitude shown in the book is great. There is a section where she is running away from the KKK, and she takes a flying leap with her motocycle, and escapes, and all she thinks is, wow, that was fun.

When asked why she didn’t do more for the Civil Rights movement, she said, she was going her part, out running the KKK and JIm Crow people who wanted her hide.

SHe was the only black woman in the army motocycle core, and rode across the United States 8 times, before the Interstate freeway system was built, so that is an amazing feet.

Some of the other reviews complained that we didn’t find out enough about her, but this is a kids book, and it does provide a good overview of her amazing life.

Highly recommend this for libraries, home libraries and schools. What a great woman to teach about, for Black History month, or all year round.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

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I heard of Bessie Stringfield before, and it was great to see her story on the page, Beautifully illustrated, and while the subject matter of her being a black woman traveling alone is not sugar coated at all it is artfully handled for a younger audience.

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This was a powerful, vividly illustrated graphic novel that demands to be read. Joel Christian Gill gives us an illustrated story that speaks to the importance of this medium. I would more than gladly share this book with a wide range of readers, young and old. A wonderful graphic novel, and a valuable story.

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Get Your Motor Running

Bessie Stringfield is such an interesting and admirable character that almost any biography starts out with a high likelihood of being successful. But that said, the biographer still faces the challenge of capturing the personality and pioneering style of this fascinating woman. Joel Christian Gill wrote two entirely different sorts of graphic novels about Stringfield, and each works well in its own way.

The most recent book by Gill is a graphic book aimed at younger readers. It follows Bessie as a young girl, and very cleverly focuses on her desire to ride bicycles, and to ride them Fast!. That book, "Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield's First Ride", has a colorful, almost impressionistic, art style, and tells Bessie's story crisply and with a strong inspirational flavor. The book works so well that it would be appealing even if "Bessie Stringfield" were a fictional character and the book was a fictional adventure. Of course it isn't fiction, as Gill makes clear in his endnotes.

And this brings us to this longer, earlier published, book. This one is a full graphic biography, although it seems to be aimed at middle school and early YA, (like those old "You Are There" sorts of books), and so is still mostly intended to touch the high points and a brief sketch of Bessie's life. (Since Bessie Stringfield reveled in promoting various fantabulous and romantic personal histories, the idea of a "full" biography is rather fluid. Call this one the "Jamaican version".)

We start with young Bessie leaving Jamaica with her parents, losing her mother, being abandoned by her father, being raised in an orphanage, and ultimately being adopted by a childless woman doing her "Christian duty". Wow, and that's before any motorcycles even make their appearance. Once that cycle shows up, Bessie takes off. At this point, because the narrative is set up as Bessie being interviewed by a reporter, the narrative becomes all first person. This works well because we get a sense of Bessie's style and personality as she tells her own story.

My bottom line was that this was an effective way to tell Stringfield's story to a younger audience, and an especially effective way to get across the grit and independence of this pioneering woman. The "Talented Tenth" series is a great way to introduce the personal stories of compelling but often overlooked African Americans, and this book is an especially fine and inspirational entry in the series.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

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