Infinite Hope, A Black Artist’s Journey from WWII to Peace review

A couple of years ago Ashley Bryan’s artwork made a stop at High Museum of Art. It was our first introduction into the way he told stories. It’s a way that speaks to children, as well as adults. Bryan is also a children’s author and his art made reference to the fact that he served in WWII. Infinite Hope, A Black Artist’s Journey from World War II to Peace is a thorough written look at his time in the military, as well as the art that he created while serving in various locales.

Ashley Bryan is a talented painter who dazzles his high school art teachers. However, shortly after being accepted to The Cooper Union, an art school in New York City, the world starts to change. It’s 1943, the war has been going on for a while and Bryan is drafted into the army. As a young man he’s aware of the happenings going on in the world and the atrocities that Hitler is doing in Europe. He’s knows and has experience the subtle and sometimes, not so much, bigoted actions of racists.

Bryan trains for his duties as a crane operator in Boston. He’s keenly aware that this was a lucky assignment because of the things he’d heard about the training outposts in the south. When he’s not learning the mechanics he’s got his pencil and paper out sketching all sorts of things. There are the neighborhood kids, freight yards, his other friends in the service and more. Once he gets his departure orders he sends off all of his drawings to his parents.

As he travels from Glasgow to France he realizes that he’s treated much better in those countries than the one he’s fighting for. When he finally encounters some Nazi POWs, he’s shocked to see that they have privileges that he doesn’t.

Every place he goes, he keeps sketching and mailing the finished ones back home. He’s also taking notes about where they’re going, what missions they’re about to do and how they lived. Infinite Hope is peppered with hundreds of his sketches, stamps from the letters they were mailed home in, handwritten letters, photographs and colored paintings.  

People who have seen his art exhibition might remember, like I did, that Bryan served in WWII. However, that period of his life, prior to this book was never mentioned. It’s a secret of sorts, or something that he didn’t want to share until now in Infinite Hope.

It’s an oversized, almost coffee table style book due to its art and beauty. Once you dig into the words the book becomes something more; it’s a person’s first account into a heroic, difficult and twisted period of history. He and other minority soldiers were doing something for a country that should have provided them boundless opportunities, yet segregated them in various ways at any possible time. Against all of that, the book is war journal about what it was really like in the trenches of Omaha Beach.

Some of Bryan’s previous books are great for elementary school ages. Infinite Hope skews just a bit older and is appropriate for ages 10 and up. There’s nothing violent or graphic about the book, it’s just that the reading level, as well as a higher degree of patience will be needed. Adults who read the book will want to say thanks to Bryan for his service, give him a hug, buy him a cup of coffee (or the book!) and apologize for the undercurrent of segregation that he served in. It’s challenging to think that people who were on the same side of a battle; could have had such hard, built-in strata that separated soldiers who shouldn’t have been competing against one another. The maddening intersection of racism and war is one that many people probably haven’t read about, especially in such an artistic vehicle as this book.

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