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novels about slavery

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Divia
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novels about slavery

Post by Divia » Sat September 27th, 2008, 12:07 am

Some people have been throwing some really cool books around that deal with American slavery and I thought I'd make a list. If you can think of any please add them :)
  • Isle of Canes by Elizabeth Shown Mills
  • Letters from an Age of Reason: A Novel by Nora Hague
  • Cane River by Lalita Tademy
  • Red River by Lalita Tademy
  • A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight
  • Property by Valerie Martin
  • The Known World by Edward P. Jones
  • Sweetsmoke by David Fuller
  • Roots by Alex Haley
  • Queen by Alex Haley
  • The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
  • Sally Hemmings: A Novel by Barbara Chase-Riboud (1979)
  • Someone Knows My Name: A Novel by Lawrence Hill
  • Song Yet Sung by James McBride
News, views, and reviews on books and graphic novels for young adult.
http://yabookmarks.blogspot.com/

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Ariadne
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Post by Ariadne » Sat September 27th, 2008, 12:13 am

Another one I liked a lot is Gretchen Craig's Always and Forever. Review online here. Dreadful title, good book :D

For some reason I've always liked reading plantation novels.

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Amanda
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Post by Amanda » Sat September 27th, 2008, 12:31 am

Beloved by Toni Morrison. I haven't read any other of her works but I would think she would deal with it in other works to.

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MLE (Emily Cotton)
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Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
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Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Sat September 27th, 2008, 12:32 am

I have read McBride's Miracle at St Anna's (hope that's the right name) and also his autobiography, the Color of Water. I love his writing style!

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MLE (Emily Cotton)
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 3566
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
Location: California Bay Area

Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Sat September 27th, 2008, 12:33 am

[quote=""Amanda""]Beloved by Toni Morrison. I haven't read any other of her works but I would think she would deal with it in other works to.[/quote]
She does deal with it as backstory in Song of Solomon. Fascinating book.

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Alaric
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Post by Alaric » Sat September 27th, 2008, 4:53 am

"Flash for Freedom!," by George MacDonald Fraser. It's set in the slave trade in Mississippi and the underground railway.

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Vanessa
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Currently reading: The Farm at the Edge of the World by Sarah Vaughan
Interest in HF: The first historical novel I read was Katherine by Anya Seton and this sparked off my interest in this genre.
Favourite HF book: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell!
Preferred HF: Any
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Post by Vanessa » Sat September 27th, 2008, 8:42 am

A friend has lent me Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons by Anne Rinaldi. Here's the blurb:

This is a moving historical novel based on the story of Phillis Wheatley - the first African American female poet. It is an intriguing and moving story of a young girl kidnapped from her home in Senegal and sold, in 1761, as a slave to the wealthy Wheatley family of Boston. Phillis Wheatley - as she comes to be known - has a keen intelligence and a knack for learning. When the family discover her gift for writing poetry, they begin to mould her future by having her 'perform' for influential guests. Eventually, she is sent to England, where her work is finally published - the first book of poetry by an African American woman. However, all the trappings of success do nothing to change the fact that she is still a slave.

Anybody read it?
currently reading: My Books on Goodreads

Books are mirrors, you only see in them what you already have inside you ~ The Shadow of the Wind

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Divia
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Post by Divia » Sat September 27th, 2008, 11:49 am

Ya know Anne Rinaldi is a well known YA historical fiction author and yet I havent read anything by her!
News, views, and reviews on books and graphic novels for young adult.
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KeyWestLiterarySeminar
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Post by KeyWestLiterarySeminar » Fri October 10th, 2008, 3:45 pm

March by Geraldine Brooks - it won the Pulitzer Prize; tells the story of a Concord abolitionist who falls in love with a slave and later serves in the Civil War and tries to establish a farm where recently-freed slaves go to school and work for wages.

Also- Madison Smartt Bell's trilogy on the 1804 Haitian Revolution, the story of which is integral to the end of slavery in America.

annis
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Post by annis » Fri October 10th, 2008, 6:27 pm

Frank Yerby wrote several "plantation" novels, starting with "The Foxes of Harrow".

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