Joyce Carol Thomas was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Although she moved to California at the age of ten, she never forgot her Oklahoma background. Known for her poetry, playwriting, and novels-especially for children and young adults-her books resonate with the language, and rhythms of Oklahoma. Her work evokes a childhood when she made up songs, stories, and poems and shared them with her family and playmates.

I Have Heard of a Land
by Joyce Carol Thomas

Drawing upon her own family history, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Thomas has crafted an unforgettable anthem to these brave and determned people from America's past. Richly illustrated by Coretta Scott King Award honoree Floyd Cooper, I Have Heard of a Land is a glorious tribute to the Afrian-American pioneer spirit. National Book Award­winning author Joyce Carol Thomas draws on family history for this lyrical account of America's little-known past.

In the late 1880s, thousands of pioneers, many African Americans newly freed from slavery, raced to the Oklahoma Territory. Here all one needed to stake a claim was hope and courage'and the determination to journey west. Richly illustrated by Coretta Scott King Award Honor­recipient Floyd Cooper and complete with an author's endnote, I Have Heard of a Land commemorates the strength of the African-American pioneers. It is a hymn to liberty and unity, an ode to a land where what can be dreamed can be accomplished.

Questions for Further Thought

  1. Joyce experienced prejudice when she was a young girl growing up in Ponca City, Oklahoma. How do explain her devotion to our state now?
  2. Do you think that growing up in a big family influenced Joyce as a writer?
  3. What personal qualities seem to make Joyce a poet?
  4. In her poetry collection I Have Heard of a Land, which is set in Oklahoma, Joyce writes, “I have heard of a land where the imagination has no fences.” What kind of fences do you think she means?
  5. Joyce always says that that she thinks of the characters in her novels and her poems as real people. How would that make her a better writer?
  6. What did you learn about Joyce from this interview?
  7. If you could ask Joyce one more question, what would it be?

Try This

Compare Joyce’s use of the word fences with Robert Frost’s use of the term in “Mending Wall.” Then write a line using the word yourself.