Fortune's Bones is a requiem to manumission written by Marilyn Nelson. She recounts the story of Fortune, an 18th century slave owned by a Connecticut doctor. The doctor preserved his skeleton after he died. The skeleton of Fortune had a long twisted history until it was finally properly honored in the late 20th century. Each page of the requiem has an accompanying page that has facts and the history of the Fortune and his family. This would be an excellent book for discussing topics such as manumission, slavery, respect for the dead, and American history. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. I love poetry so I was interested to see what this book was like. I do think the combination of facts about fortune and the poems really work well together. I think this is a great book for middle school and higher because of the content and vocabulary. ( )

(4Q, 3P) A very short book with an interesting idea: collected poems relating to a man named Fortune, a slave in the 1700s, whose bones were kept after death and put on display, with the identity of their original owner lost for a long time. Few details of his life are known, and to their credit the poems turn this to their advantage; rather than creating a fictional persona and labeling it Fortune, he's cast as an everyperson who could have been anybody. The Preface asks "Was Fortune bitter? Was he good or bad? Did he sometimes throw back his head and laugh?" This book raises some interesting areas of though--how, if at all, will we be remembered? What fundamental facts about a life can we deduce from a skeleton? What's the morality of displaying human remains in this way; is putting his bones up in a museum less respectful than using them as artistic inspiration? The poems are concrete rather than abstract, and easy to follow, and the history is interesting--that, combined with the brevity of the book, make me think that it could be good for reluctant readers who are hesitant about poetry. (Alternately, it could be a good starter way to make history less dry for someone who enjoys poetry.) ( )

Powerful and spare poems written around the story of Fortune, a doctor's slave, who was rendered after his death into a skeleton used by the family and students for anatomy study. ( )

This book is a collection of poems with notes and archival photos written to commemorate the life, death, and post-death of a Connecticut slave from the late 1700s. The bones of Fortune, the slave, were preserved by his master and eventually made their way to the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut.

A compelling presentation, and might be of interest to reluctant readers, since it’s only 31 pages with lots of pictures. However, there are a lot of complex issues raised about slavery, the fate of the bones, and of the museum exhibit. This would be useful as part of a unit on slavery, and a way to get people thinking about the difference between “slavery” the concept, and the lives and identities of individuals. ( )