Julius Lester has created a unique work.

He writes in a first-person voice with a conversational tone. It is as if the reader and Julius Lester are seated together in an intimate setting while he pours out his heart and implores the reader to involve himself in the "story." He is "begging, pleading, imploring [the reader] not to be passive, but to invest soul and imagine yourself into the images." Lester and Rod Brown want the reader "to come to terms with a historical experience whose legacy continues to affect us all."

There are short vignettes that explore Brown's paintings. Other pages of text are exercises that tug at the reader's mind, soul, and sensitivities as he dips deep within to answer the hard questions posed by Lester.

Sometimes we hear the voices of the slaves as they endure the "crossing," the indignities of the auction...