| Contents |
Introduction / by Joycelyn M. Davis -- Home is where the story is -- Dreams and schemes -- Life interrupted -- Ouidah -- Voyage to America -- Mobile swamplands -- Enslaved -- When war comes to town -- The truth about freedom -- African Town -- Life is but a dream -- Author's note -- Voices -- More about the characters -- Africatown today -- Selected time line -- Glossary -- Poetry forms/styles -- Learn more about the shipmates, the Clotilda, and African Town. |
| Abstract |
Chronicles the story of the last Africans brought illegally to the United States on the Clotilda in 1860. |
| Abstract |
1859. The transatlantic slave trade has been banned for more than fifty years, and the South is facing the threat of a civil war. Timothy Maeher resents the government interference in his right to make a living. Making a bet that he can smuggle enslaved Africans into the United States without being caught, he commissions the Clotilda, and brings back 110 African captives. Among them are Abilè, Gumpa, Kêhounco, Kossola, and Kupolee, who survive the voyage and arrive in Alabama still clinging to the hope of one day returning home. -- adapted from jacket |
| Abstract |
In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered. At the end of the Civil War, the survivors created a community for themselves they called African Town, which still exists to this day. Told in 14 distinct voices, including that of the ship that brought them to the American shores and the founder of African Town, this powerfully affecting historical novel-in-verse recreates a pivotal moment in US and world history, the impacts of which we still feel today. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 433-435). |
| Interest age level |
Ages 12 and up |
| Interest grade level |
Grades 7-9. G.P. Putnam's Sons. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Latham, Irene. African Town. New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, [2022] 9780593322895 |
| Genre/form | Young adult works. |
| Genre/form | Fiction. |
| Genre/form | History. |
| Genre/form | Novels in verse. |
| Genre/form | Historical fiction. |
| Genre/form | Novels in verse. |
| Genre/form | Historical fiction. |
| LCCN | 2021041737 |
| ISBN | 9780593322888 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0593322886 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | electronic book |
| Stock number | Penguin Group USA, Order Processing Dept 120 Woodbine st, Bergenfield, NJ, USA, 07621 SAN 201-3975 |
