Growing New Roots. the Book Club of California, 1976.

Clare Leighton.
Growing New Roots. San Francisco: the Book Club of California, 1976.
(SPL) NE1112 .L43 A44 1976
Special Collections, UWM Libraries

This book, designed and printed by Lawton and Alfred Kennedy, consists of an essay and woodcuts by author, illustrator, and immigrant Clare Leighton that celebrates the Bicentennial of the founding of the United States.  After leaving England for America in 1939, Leighton documents her experiences in the American South in this essay, remarking on the beauty of the country of immigrants. An introduction by William J. Fletcher notes that the essence of [America’s] uniqueness has been “immigration, nothing more, nothing less.”

A section of this introduction, on Leighton’s words, reads:

They are typical of what our nation should mean to both immigrant and citizen alike; they sum up what the new-comer experiences in becoming part of a country; they serve well to summarize the American process: old country for new land; they key-note 1976—England to America—and in fact this is how it all began.

This copy is one of an edition of 500, and is signed by Leighton.