Art Against the Odds: From Slave Quilts to Prison Paintings.

Art Against the Odds: From Slave Quilts to Prison Paintings. Susan Goldman Rubin. New York: Crown Books, 2004. Illus., hardcover, 48 pp., $19.95.

This is a collection of reports on objects sometimes included as "outsider art" or simply made by people well outside the mainstream. We find quilts emerging from slave cultures; pictures produced by men and women behind bars in Japanese internment camps, Civil War's Andersonville prison, or from insane asylums. The accessible text supplies background information on the makers and their environments. The many reproductions inform us of the visions, the frequently compelling images produced by relatively untutored people with strong needs to objectify emotions. Middle school students will find this book insightful.