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Loading... Pitch Blackby Youme Landowne, Anthony Horton
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This book takes you into the life of those who live in the subway tunnels under New York City. The art is pretty awesome. ( ) PItch Black is a graphic novel about a homeless man meeting a person on the subway train in New York. They chat on the train ride and he shows her a whole society and underground world in the sewers from where he lives. Many people have made the tunnels their homes and life in darkness but the darkness also hides some society illnesses. Great book to introduce African American Vinicular, orphan, art, safety, graffiti, homeless and trains. I spent a fair amount of time wondering if the first author’s name is a pseudonym -- “you” and “me” and “land-own”-ing in a book about friendship and homelessness. It’s a short graphic-format memoir of the authors/illustrators’ friendship and Horton’s discovery of a place to live deep below the New York City subway, and I rated it an “okay” book … until I read a New York Times article. And then I realized that the book had infiltrated me, had developed such a rich characterization of Horton that I teared at how true this passage felt: “When he saw a friend, he would deliver a bear hug that pulsed with warmth.” I first learned about Anthony Horton when he died in a fire in his underground home in a subway tunnel in New York City. Mr. Horton was given away by his birth parents and then spent years in the foster care system. He was involved with the criminal justice system and lived in homeless shelters. He found the shelters to be dangerous and undesirable places. While running from the transit police, he accidentally found the underground subway tunnel community that exists in New York, as well as in many other cities such as Las Vegas. Somehow through all of this he maintained a noticeable kindness that was remarked on by others and thus made friends and benefactors. Some of these benefactors attempted to help him live a "normal" life which he did for awhile. However, he was not able to find happiness in that aboveground life and returned to the tunnels, where he lived in his two room tunnel home which was furnished with a sofa, bookcases, bed and other items found in the trash. After reading about Mr. Horton and his artwork in the tunnels and finding that some of his work had been published, I wanted to find his book. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/nyregion/the-fiery-end-of-a-life-lived-beneath... The book is co-written by an artist Mr. Horton met in the subway with whom he formed a friendship. It is basically a graphic memoir with illustrations by both authors. I think it is an important work as well as a fascinating story and includes his rules for living underground. The most important one may be "Remember, anything you need can be found in the garbage." Five stars no reviews | add a review
"[Landowne and Horton] collaborate here to bring Horton's story of perseverance and hope to print, and the fluid black-and-white sequential panels tell it well. The horrors attendant on homelessness are not sugarcoated, and the language is as raw and gritty as one might expect. Powerful."--Kirkus Reviews On the subway, do ever notice that people are always looking, but they only see what they want to? Things can be sitting right in front of them and still they can't see it. That's your guide Anthony speaking. He'll show you how he lives in the tunnels underneath the New York City subway system--that is, if you'll let him. Which is exactly what Youme decided she would do one afternoon when she and Anthony began a conversation in the subway about art. It turns out that both Youme and Anthony Horton are artists. While part of Youme's art is listening long and hard to the stories of the people she meets, part of Anthony's is makingart out of what most people won't even look at. Thus began a unique collaboration and conversation between these two artists over the next year, which culminated in Anthony's biography, the graphic novelPitch Black. With art and words from both of them, they map out Anthony's world--a tough one from many perspectives, startling and undoing from others, but from Anthony's point of view, a life lived as art. Youme Landowne (known asYoume) is a painter and book artist who thrives in the context of public art. She studied cross-cultural communication through art at the New School for Social Research and Friends World College. She has interned in public schools and has been a student at the Friends World College at the Nairobi and Kyoto campuses. Youme has lived in and learned from the United States, Kenya, Japan, Haiti, Laos, and Cuba. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Anthony Horton lived most of his life as a homeless artist, surviving and creating in the secret underground tributaries of the NYC subway system. On February 5, 2012 Anthony died in a fire in an abandoned subway room under the city. "Mr. Horton found solace in the blackness of the tunnels. He made the subway the subject of his canvases, the muse for a graphic novel that he co-wrote, and the place he called home for the better part of his adult life, even when he had other places to stay." --New York Times, Feb. 6, 2012 No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)305.3896942092Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people People by gender or sex Specific groups of menLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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