Fortunes Bones: The Manumission
Requiem (Coretta Scott King Author
Honor Books) by Marilyn Nelson
Fortune's Remains The Mattatuck Museum
There is a skeleton on display in the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury,
Connecticut. It has been in the town for over 200 years. Over time, the
bones became the subject of stories and speculation in Waterbury. In 1996
a group of community-based volunteers, working in collaboration with the
museum staff, discovered that the bones were those of a slave named
Fortune who had been owned by a local doctor. After Fortunes death, the
doctor dissected the body, rendered the bones, and assembled the
skeleton. A great deal is still not known about Fortune, but it is known that
he was baptized, was married, and had four children. He died at about the
age of 60, sometime after 1797. Marilyn Nelson was commissioned by the
Mattatuck Museum and received a grant from the Connecticut Commission
on the Arts to write a poem in commemoration of Fortunes life. The
Manumission Requiem is that poem. Detailed notes and archival materials

provide contextual information to enhance the readers appreciation of the
poem.
Personal Review: Fortunes Bones: The Manumission Requiem
(Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books) by Marilyn Nelson
There are as many ways of honoring the long forgotten as there are ways
of mucking that honor up. I came to "Fortune's Bones" with just a bit of
trepidation, I admit. Though I knew author Marilyn Nelson had created this
book to honor a man long dead in the best way she knew how, I was still
recovering from a similar, and foul, title called, "Journey To the Bottomless
Pit" which also came out in 2004. In both books, a man who was a slave
during his lifetime is honored with a children's book of fiction. In "Journey",
the book was a simplistic version of a complicated man's life. I prayed that
"Fortune's Bones" would not be the same. Those prayers were answered
tenfold. Marilyn Nelson tells the story of Fortune in a manner respectful of
his life, then accompanies this retelling with a requiem written in his honor.
Though I would have enjoyed further factual information on the topic, this
is a worthy addition to any poetry collection or non-fiction collection, for
children, teens, or grown adults, anywhere.
There once was a man named Fortune. Born a slave in the 1700s, he and
his wife and his children all belonged to a Dr. Preserved Porter. Later tests
on Fortune's bones show that his life was not an easy one. His back was
once broken and though he had a healthy skeleton, he died at the age of
60. When he did, Dr. Porter took Fortune's death as an opportunity to
study human anatomy. He removed Fortune's skeleton, tapped the bones,
and made himself a complete human skeleton. Every bone was carefully
marked and studied by Porter and his ancestors. Years later, Fortune's
name was lost and the skeleton was mislabeled "Larry" and given to the
Matttatuck Museum. In the 1990s historians did research on it and found
Fortune's true name once again. Now the only question that remains is
what to do with Fortune's bones. Do we bury them and put him to rest at
long last, or do we learn more from them about 1700s slaves and slavery?
The question remains unanswered, but author Marilyn Nelson has done
what she can. In this book she writes a requiem in Fortune's memory.
Filled with free verse poetry, a Kyrie of the Bones, and a Sanctus at the
end, "Fortune's Bones" is a text of respect.
One of the many things I loved about this book was the fact that as an
author/poet, Nelson tells us why she wrote what she did. One poem is
entitled, "Not My Bones", in which Fortune states clearly, "I am not my
body", to anyone who cares to listen. This phrase comes from the
Vietnamese Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hahn, a fact that could well have
gone uncredited by a less careful author. Each poem in this book is
accompanied by factual information pertaining to Fortune's story, along
with photographs, papers, tapestries, maps, and other important
documents of the period. As a whole these poems speak beautifully
together, forming a single Requiem. I especially liked "Dinah's Lament" in
which Fortune's wife speaks of the cruel injustice of being forced to dust

the bones that once would, "hold me when I cried; to dust where his soft
lips were, and his chest what curved its warm against my back at night".
Nelson, the accomplished voice behind her other great book, "Carver: A
Life In Poems", is at her best here.
Admittedly, there were aspects of this book left unspoken that I (and I'm
sure others) would have liked to have heard more about. The book is a
Requiem and doesn't dwell on the fascinating process scientists took to
discover Fortune again. There's a small series of three pictures on one
page that shows three stages of facial reconstruction of Fortune, taken
from his bones. That's something that would have made for a fascinating
story in and of itself. Or how did the researchers and historians eventually
discover who Fortune really was? Who did they talk to? What did they
read? Sadly, such information will have to wait for another book. It's not
answered here.
"Fortune's Bones", will obviously be snatched up by any child and/or teen
assigned to read a book of poems since it's a mere 32 pages altogether.
This is a great good thing. In spite of its scant length, this is a title that will
teach a lot of information to a lot of kids in a wonderfully stirring way. The
poems are mindful of the past and give the greatest of respect to a man of
whom we know so little. A wonderful publication
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