Tavernier’s “The Picnic Season,” a cover for The Daily Graphic, depicts a picnic excursion up the Hudson River. The narrative begins as picnickers board a steamer from Jones Wood, a famous commercial picnic ground in northern Manhattan (an area on the east side between 66 and 75th Streets, or to Fort Lee, New Jersey. According […] read more

Ali’s family picnic is outwardly happy but inwardly troubled. After twenty years, Nazneen’s marriage to Chanu Ahmed has gone wobbly. She’s never loved Chanu, but at the time of the picnic, she’s conflicted by guilt and lust-fueled by Karim, a Muslim political activist whose notion of romantic love is to tell her to take off […] read more

The yellow basket and the yellow summer hat in They Arrived in Pittsburgh suggest that there will be a picnic. The grimy factory stacks spewing smoke suggest otherwise. The basket and hat symbolize the hope that in Pittsburgh (or any other industrial city), the traveling family will find a good life with jobs and housing. […] read more

Woodson’s We Had a Picnic This Sunday Past (1997) is a joyous family gathering with mounds to eat. It’s a story about an African American family reunion picnic in an urban park. The narrator, a young girl, comes with her Grandma, who has worked frying chicken and baking biscuits all morning. The other eighteen picnickers […] read more