American Struggle: Teens Respond to Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was one of the greatest narrative painters in American art history, and perhaps the most important African American artist of the twentieth century.  He developed a series of thirty panels over the course of two years, each measuring 12 × 16 inches, depicting signal moments in the American Revolution and the early decades of the American republic, as well as featuring the words and actions of founding fathers, enslaved people, women, and Native Americans.  In the spirit of Lawrence’s project, this collection includes brief interpretive texts written by teens in response to the Struggle series. This illustrated book features a chorus of thirty singular young adult voices expressing how Lawrence and his Struggle series speaks to them on a personal, emotional level. One youth voice coming from Seattle is that of Lucia Santos, a member of SAM’s Teen Art Group since 2018.  Lucia has been a curator of a youth-focused exhibition in our SAM Community Gallery, an ill