novels about slavery

Divia · 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

Ariadne · 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

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

Amanda · 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.

MLE (Emily Cotton) · 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!

MLE (Emily Cotton) · 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.

Alaric · 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.

Vanessa · 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?

Divia · 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!

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

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