“The 1619 Project: Born on Water” is a collection of interconnected free verse poems that make up an entire story. In the first poem called “Questions” the speaker is a young African-American schoolgirl. She gets an assignment in school to tell about her ancestors, to tell where she came from. The girls only knows the history reaching back to the last three generations in her family, so she leaves her paper blank. At home, she explains to her grandma what happened at school. The grandma gathers the whole family to tell them about their beginnings.
In the next poem called “What Grandma Tells Me” begins the story about the girl’s ancestry. Grandma reveals that before their people were enslaved in 1619 and brought there on the White Lion, they were free people with their own language, culture and land. In the poem “They Had a Language” the speaker of the poem/grandma reveals that their people had a language called Kimbundu and the land was called The Kingdom of Ndongo nestled between the Lukala and the Kwanza Rivers in West Central Africa. Then she explains about the culture and their knowledge of farming, trade, math and science.
In the poem “Their Hands Had a Knowing” grandma explains how the people were smart and resourceful, kind and eager to learn. In the poem “And They Danced” she describes how the people used dance as a form of mourning and celebrating, praying and expressing gratitude to creation. The poem “Stolen” describes how the story grandma tells about their people is no immigration story. It is a story of a cruel kidnapping of people from their homes, with no time to say goodbye or pack dear belongings, by the hands of a white man who baptized them in the name of his god and put them on the bottom of a ship to be brought to a “New World” they never asked to see.
In the following poem called “The White Lion” the speaker describes the slow acceptance of the kidnapped people that they will never see their land again after spending months in misery on a ship called the White Lion. Some died from diseases, some from simply giving up on life, and other by leaping into the ocean. Those remaining swore to survive no matter how, and that is why it is told their people were born on water. The poem
“Point Comfort” describes the arrival of the White Lion to the coast of Virginia, and the white man’s trade of the kidnapped people for a few pound of food and drink. This is where the American slavery began. The poem “Tobacco Fields” describes how the enslaved people worked on tobacco fields that were used for trade with Europe and made profit to the white people of Virginia. In the poem “How to Make a Home” grandma describes how the kidnapped people, exhausted from the labor and missing their homes, decided to make this new land their home. They decided that having each other is all that matters, and they planted the seeds they secretly brought over, as well as seeds of hope and dreams.
“The Tuckers of Tidewater, Virginia” is a poem that tells about Anthony and Isabella in the year 1624. They labored on a farm owned by the Tucker family. They fell in love and had a son. “William Tucker” is a poem that tells about that son. He is the first child of the people born on the water, the first truly American child.
The poem “Resist” tells about the dehumanization of the enslaved people. White people convinced themselves and others that they didn’t feel or love, that they were things to be sold alongside other things. But the people resisted, and the biggest resistance of all is that they kept on living. “Legacy” is a poem that reveals how this resistance and continuation of life brought fruit, and the people fought and succeeded in becoming everything the white man told them they couldn’t: doctors and nurses, athletes and artists, writers and scientists. It is this survival and fight that brought democracy and equality to America, and the people keep fighting still.
The final poem called “Pride” is a conclusion to the grandma’s story, and she tells her granddaughter to be proud of her ancestors, that she is the result of their relentless survival and fight. The girl goes to school the next day and proudly draws an American flag to say that that is the country her ancestors built.
