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Black History Month Young Adult
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Start giftingAfrican Town
Length
6 hours 50 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Cassandra Campbell, Ronald Peet, Andrew Eiden, Cary Hite, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Sandra Okuboyejo, Soneela Nankani, Nene Nwoko, Michael Obiora, Prentice Onayemi, Mark Sanderlin, Mirron Willis & Patrick Zeller
Bookseller recommendation
“The strength of this book is in its description of the lives of a group of Africans who were captured and sold in the mid-19th century. It does not sensationalize their experience; their perspectives (each read by a different narrator in this excellent audio production) are told in a familiar tone, and the horrors of the Atlantic voyage are not exploited or minimized, but simply and clearly summarized. There are also chapters by the slavers and by the actual ship, with perspectives familiar to those who read fiction of the time, but the Africans' own stories, interwoven over the voyage and then intertwined in the town they founded in Alabama, are the treasure in this rich narrative.”
Nialle,
The Haunted Bookshop
Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse.
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.
* This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF with a glossary and additional resources.
Irene Latham & Charles Waters are “Poetic Forever Friends” first and collaborators second. They are the writing team behind Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship, which was awarded a Charlotte Huck Honor, and Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z, an NCTE Notable Poetry Book. They share a passion for poetry and are committed to creating meaningful books for young readers. This is their first novel together.
Irene Latham & Charles Waters are “Poetic Forever Friends” first and collaborators second. They are the writing team behind Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship, which was awarded a Charlotte Huck Honor, and Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z, an NCTE Notable Poetry Book. They share a passion for poetry and are committed to creating meaningful books for young readers. This is their first novel together.