{"id":49138,"date":"2022-03-14T11:12:51","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T15:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=49138"},"modified":"2022-03-08T18:42:37","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T23:42:37","slug":"african-town-by-irene-latham-and-charles-waters-in-booklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/african-town-by-irene-latham-and-charles-waters-in-booklist\/","title":{"rendered":"African Town by Irene Latham and Charles Waters [in Booklist]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-49140\" src=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2022\/03\/African-Town-Charles-Waters-Irene-Latham-BookDragon-530x800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"530\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2022\/03\/African-Town-Charles-Waters-Irene-Latham-BookDragon-530x800.jpg 530w, https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2022\/03\/African-Town-Charles-Waters-Irene-Latham-BookDragon.jpg 676w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 530px) 100vw, 530px\" \/>Fourteen voices (each embodying a specific poetic form!) \u2013 enlivened by 14 performers \u2013 take turns bearing witness in this novel in verse. Perspectives shift among the enslavers, the enablers to such inhumanity, their victims, and their descendants, revealing decades from capture to post-Civil War freedom to the founding of African Town by survivors of the ship <em>Clotilda<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Despite such a stellar full cast, the immediate reaction at recording\u2019s end couldn\u2019t be more diametric: gratitude for who-read-whom acknowledgment (far too rare) overshadowed by disappointment (far too common, alas) over why producers don\u2019t prioritize consistency. Between narrators and chapters, pronunciation seems especially challenging (K\u00eahounco, Kossola, and\u00a0Cudjo\u00a0all vary, and characters\u00a0can become unrecognizable depending on who\u2019s narrating).<\/p>\n<p>And yet overall, Irene Latham and Charles Waters&#8217; superb verse epic is an illuminating and necessary record of the <em>Clotilda<\/em>, a ship on which 110 kidnapped African people were transported to be enslaved in Alabama in 1860 \u2013 52 years <em>after<\/em> the U.S. ban on human importation \u2013 as the result of a wager between boastful, entitled white men. Latham and Waters also append extensive backmatter (available as a PDF download) for further enlightenment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Review<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.booklistonline.com\/African-Town-\/pid=9759741\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">&#8220;Media,&#8221; <em>Booklist<\/em>, March 1, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n<p><strong>Published<\/strong>: 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fourteen voices (each embodying a specific poetic form!) \u2013 enlivened by 14 performers \u2013 take turns bearing witness in this novel in verse. Perspectives shift among the enslavers, the enablers to such inhumanity, their victims, and their descendants, revealing decades from capture to post-Civil War&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,142,6,94,6535,7933],"tags":[10185,10178,6608,6668,8627,221,10188,10186,10,24,51,10187,13,10182,10181,10183,212,10180,39,10184,840,9921,10179,7869,146,1720],"class_list":["post-49138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-black-african-american","category-fiction","category-poetry","category-repost","category-verse-novel","tag-african-town","tag-andrew-eiden","tag-bookdragon","tag-booklist","tag-cary-hite","tag-cassandra-campbell","tag-charles-waters","tag-clotilda","tag-family","tag-historical","tag-identity","tag-irene-latham","tag-love","tag-mark-sanderlin","tag-michael-obiora","tag-mirron-willis","tag-murder","tag-nene-nwoko","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-patrick-zeller","tag-prentice-onayemi","tag-ronald-peet","tag-sandra-okuboyejo","tag-sean-patrick-hopkins","tag-slavery","tag-soneela-nankani"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>African Town by Irene Latham and Charles Waters [in Booklist] - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/african-town-by-irene-latham-and-charles-waters-in-booklist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"African Town by Irene Latham and Charles Waters [in Booklist] - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fourteen voices (each embodying a specific poetic form!) \u2013 enlivened by 14 performers \u2013 take turns bearing witness in this novel in verse. Perspectives shift among the enslavers, the enablers to such inhumanity, their victims, and their descendants, revealing decades from capture to post-Civil War...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/african-town-by-irene-latham-and-charles-waters-in-booklist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-03-14T15:12:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-03-08T23:42:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2022\/03\/African-Town-Charles-Waters-Irene-Latham-BookDragon.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"676\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1020\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"African Town by Irene Latham and Charles Waters [in Booklist] - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/african-town-by-irene-latham-and-charles-waters-in-booklist\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"African Town by Irene Latham and Charles Waters [in Booklist] - BookDragon","og_description":"Fourteen voices (each embodying a specific poetic form!) \u2013 enlivened by 14 performers \u2013 take turns bearing witness in this novel in verse. 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