“‘Girl like you...they’ll have you bedded down with the master in no time. And when he gets tired of you, they’ll mate you like a hog to some old field hand...’”
Remembrance is a historical fiction novel set in three centuries—the 1700s, 1800s and present day.
The premise of this novel is that through magical powers, a slave has created a safe harbor on the Underground Railroad where whites, or blancs, cannot enter.
This book came at a time in my reading life when I was also reading Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which has an in depth review of the particular hell Black women endured during slavery. As this book had three sister duos, the reality of what they faced was brought home in the pages of Ain’t I a Woman: rape, blame and punishment for “seducing” their white rapists, brutal beatings, losing their children, watching their daughters raped, and obviously enslavement.
Remembrance falls under my very favorite historical fiction niche: speculative/sci-fi historical fiction. Prepare yourself because this book is a doozy. It was incredibly easy to lose myself in the pages of the story. The novel features four different narrators, which sounds especially complicated for a first-time novelist, but the end result is brilliant. What is even more amazing than a debut novel this well-developed and executed is the author, who is a family doctor by trade. Her medical knowledge is a boon to the book, which features more than one healer.
This book deals with a few themes, and I’m not certain others reading it would see the same things I did. First, three of the narrators have a sister, for whom they would do anything. There are grandmothers not just to the characters but to jackass white slaveholders as well. There’s a storyline where children are separated from their mother. Children born in Remembrance are all twins. This novel is about the ties that bind us, the souls we’ve lost that we carry on in our hearts.
It’s also about the choice to stay and fight or run. Are you a part of a community or an island, fighting alone? Several times in the book, a group of enslaved people band together to fight against whites. These weren’t just plot points, they are historical moments touched on during the novel that point to this theme. There is the constant threat of freed Black men and women being caught out without papers and being sold into slavery again. That is the white people sticking together and for evil reasons. Can a community of the good fight to keep what they have?
This isn’t a tidy novel with an easy conclusion. It is a rich, layered story that will have you thinking back on its themes months down the line.
Remembrance is a historical fiction novel set in three centuries—the 1700s, 1800s and present day.
The premise of this novel is that through magical powers, a slave has created a safe harbor on the Underground Railroad where whites, or blancs, cannot enter.
This book came at a time in my reading life when I was also reading Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which has an in depth review of the particular hell Black women endured during slavery. As this book had three sister duos, the reality of what they faced was brought home in the pages of Ain’t I a Woman: rape, blame and punishment for “seducing” their white rapists, brutal beatings, losing their children, watching their daughters raped, and obviously enslavement.
Remembrance falls under my very favorite historical fiction niche: speculative/sci-fi historical fiction. Prepare yourself because this book is a doozy. It was incredibly easy to lose myself in the pages of the story. The novel features four different narrators, which sounds especially complicated for a first-time novelist, but the end result is brilliant. What is even more amazing than a debut novel this well-developed and executed is the author, who is a family doctor by trade. Her medical knowledge is a boon to the book, which features more than one healer.
This book deals with a few themes, and I’m not certain others reading it would see the same things I did. First, three of the narrators have a sister, for whom they would do anything. There are grandmothers not just to the characters but to jackass white slaveholders as well. There’s a storyline where children are separated from their mother. Children born in Remembrance are all twins. This novel is about the ties that bind us, the souls we’ve lost that we carry on in our hearts.
It’s also about the choice to stay and fight or run. Are you a part of a community or an island, fighting alone? Several times in the book, a group of enslaved people band together to fight against whites. These weren’t just plot points, they are historical moments touched on during the novel that point to this theme. There is the constant threat of freed Black men and women being caught out without papers and being sold into slavery again. That is the white people sticking together and for evil reasons. Can a community of the good fight to keep what they have?
This isn’t a tidy novel with an easy conclusion. It is a rich, layered story that will have you thinking back on its themes months down the line.