The American Daughters / Maurice Carlos Ruffin.
Publisher: New York : One World, an imprint of Random House, ©2024Edition: First editionDescription: 285 pages : map ; 22 cmContent type:- text
- cartographic image
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780593729397
- 0593729390
- Enslaved women -- Fiction
- Women -- Fiction
- Freed persons -- Fiction
- Slavery -- Fiction
- Slavery -- Fiction
- United States -- History -- 1815-1861 -- Fiction
- New Orleans (La.) -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
- United States
- Historical fiction
- New Orleans (La.) -- Fiction
- United States -- History -- 1815-1861 -- Fiction
- Historical fiction
Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Shelving location | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Cherry Hill Public Library | Cherry Hill Public Library | Fiction | Fiction New Book Shelf | FICTION RUF (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Checked out | 05/07/2024 | 33407005178403 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
"An enthralling tale of a secret resistance movement run by Black women in pre-Civil War New Orleans."-- Time
"Stirring . . . In telling this important, neglected history with imagination-fueled research, The American Daughters offers an inspiring story of people who show a way forward with their perseverance, bravery and love." --The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl, and her fierce mother, Sanite, are inseparable. Enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the pair spend their days dreaming of a loving future and reminiscing about their family's rebellious and storied history. When mother and daughter are separated, Ady is left hopeless and directionless until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. Lenore invites Ady to join a clandestine society of spies called the Daughters. With the courage instilled in her by Sanite--and with help from these strong women--Ady learns how to put herself first. So begins her journey toward liberation and imagining a new future.
The American Daughters is a novel of hope and triumph that reminds us what is possible when a community bands together to fight for their freedom.
"When Adebimpe is ten, she is sold with her mother, Sanite, to plantation owner John du Marche. He soon renames her Ady but Sanite never lets her daughter forget who she really is--a person who can read and write and understand numbers. Most importantly, Sanite reminds Ady that she must never reveal these abilities to a white person, especially not her true name. Tasked with maintaining du Marche's home in vibrant New Orleans, Ady takes in the city and starts to envision life beyond her dire circumstances. One day, she notices a beautiful stranger, radiant and poised with a colorful Tignon wrapped regally around her head. Ady realizes that she is a Free Woman. Inexplicably drawn to her, but not knowing who she is or what she does, Ady begins to search for answers--which eventually brings her to Lenore, a free woman who owns the Mockingbird Inn. When Lenore invites Ady to join The Daughters, Ady finds spiritual and sexual liberation, and with their help, imagines a new future for herself and her family"--
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
Ruffin (The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You) sets his potent latest in pre--Civil War New Orleans, where an enslaved girl joins a secret resistance movement run by women. Ady is raised by her mother, Sanite, who came of age in a runaway settlement deep in the forests and swamps of Louisiana and teaches Ady basic survival skills such as hunting, planting, and foraging healing herbs. She's seven when they are sold to John du Marche and forced to work at his townhouse, and a preteen when Sanite dies from yellow fever, leaving Ady lonely, scared, and confused until she meets Lenore, the young free African American woman who owns the Mockingbird Inn, an integrated establishment in the French Quarter. There, Ady experiences a facsimile of freedom along with a burgeoning friendship with Lenore, who hires her to work at the inn during hours when she's not expected by du Marche. After a dramatic incident involving a slave hunter's visit to the Mockingbird, Ady learns that Lenore has been hiding a secret: the Mockingbird is a cover for a web of women engaging in espionage and violent resistance against slavery. Ruffin's dignified prose and focus on the bonds of women of color help elevate the novel from the tropes of slavery narratives, and he paints a vibrant picture of antebellum New Orleans. Readers won't be able to resist this stirring story of freedom by any means necessary. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Mar.)Booklist Review
Ruffin, author of the terrifying racial dystopia We Cast a Shadow (2019), re-creates the slave narrative in this imaginative Civil War-era meta novel. Ady, an enslaved young girl, has been sold along with her mother, Sanite, to planter John Du Marche. Sanite is a woman of ingenious talents skilled in carpentry, fishing, herbalism, orienteering, and combat, which become increasingly necessary survival skills as she and Ady make various attempts to escape. Recaptured and separated from her mother and her baby brother Emmanuel, Ady finds herself trapped in "the open-air prison of New Orleans," where she discovers the free colored Creole aristocracy. Invited to work at the Mockingbird, an inn run by the coy and mysterious Lenore, Ady is gradually drawn into the American Daughters, an underground network of Black women and girls working to undermine the Confederacy from within. As her relationship with Lenore deepens, Ady must decide whether to devote her life to the sisterhood's mission and fulfill her mother's destiny. Ruffin creates added resonance with "historical" documents: bills of sale, "wanted" posters, research reports, and a poignant interview with the elderly Emmanuel, who was never able to reconnect with his lost family. A sobering yet liberatory portrayal of American slavery and of the courage, determination, and intelligence required to survive it.Kirkus Book Review
An enslaved Black girl in antebellum New Orleans joins a female spy network against the Confederates. The impulse toward freedom is ingrained in Ady, born in slavery to her mother Sanite, who spent part of her own childhood in a runaways' settlement. When Ady is 10, she and her mother are sold to the vulpine John du Marche, who's living his best 1850s life as a decadent businessman and political insider in the French Quarter. Sanite provides her daughter with a taste of freedom as they escape from du Marche, making camp in the outlying woods. It isn't long before they're returned to their master and Sanite dies from scarlet fever. Ady's customary high spirits are laid low by grief, melancholy, and fear until she becomes friends with another African American she at first knows only as "the Free Woman." Lenore owns a racially integrated establishment in the French Quarter called the Mockingbird Inn, with "the strong pleasant scent" of "lemons, sawdust, cloves, beer, and warm bread." Inspired by seeing Lenore compel a gang of slave hunters to leave the Mockingbird, Ady seeks employment there as a helper on those occasions when she can get away from du Marche's manse. She soon learns that Lenore and other women are working as a far-flung spy network to subvert the emerging Confederacy. Ady later finds out that the network has a name: "the Daughters." ("In honor of our mothers," Lenore tells her.) As Ady and the other "Daughters" covertly wreak havoc in various ways, the novel becomes all at once a high adventure, a revealing history, and a chronicle of one woman's self-realization. Ruffin also displays some of the cunning imagination and caustic wit he showed in his previous work--most recently We Cast a Shadow (2019)--by interspersing his narrative with imagined transcripts from the past, present, and even the future. Black women as agents--literally--of their own liberation. Who wouldn't be inspired? Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.There are no comments on this title.