The Children’s Museum of Phoenix will feature the poetry of a 13-year-old Black and Jewish girl from Las Vegas this month. Arianna Shaprow, a recent bat mitzvah, is honored and excited to see a few of her poems on public display in Phoenix and other cities this summer.
“I wrote a poem that resonated with me and my feelings, emotions, my family’s experiences, and then I reached out to the museum and they wanted to have my poem featured. It was such an honor, honestly,” she told Jewish News.
The young poet’s “Juneteenth” will be displayed in the Children’s Museum of Phoenix during the month of June in honor of the federal holiday on June 19. Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state were free by executive decree.
Shaprow’s poem was inspired, in part, by her own heritage. She explained that her ancestors were enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and in the early part of the 20th century, during the “Great Migration” — a historic period named for the large number of Black southerners moving to northern and midwestern cities — Shaprow’s relatives relocated to Chicago in search of a better life.
To read the full article in Jewish News, click here.
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