Reviews for Clotel, or, The president's daughter

The average rating for Clotel, or, The president's daughter based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-08-27 00:00:00 Dario Machleidt 4.5/5 You may place the slave where you please; you may dry up to your utmost the fountains of his feelings, the springs of his thought; you may yoke him to your labour, as an ox which liveth only to work and worketh only to live; you may put him under any process which, without destroying his value as a slave, will debase and crush him as a rational being; you may do this, and the idea that he was born to be free will survive it all. It is allied to his hope of immortality; it is the ethereal part of his nature, which opposition cannot reach I'm surprised that Clotel has such a low rating on here; it's that rare novel that lives in the intersection of books that are both hard to put down and important. Brown, a fugitive slave himself, writing from London for fear of being returned to his former owner, weaves the stories of three generations of women trying to find freedom together. Currer, based loosely on Sally Hemmings, her daughters Clotel and Althesa, and Clotel's own daughter Mary are all caught up in a world that refuses to acknowledge their existence as human beings. Brown is keenly aware of the irony that Jefferson, after giving anti-slavery speeches and famously writing that "all men are created equal" kept his own family in bondage. And he uses this bitter fact as a vehicle to give his fiery thoughts to Americans complacent living in a land built on the backs of others. I read this book for my Early American Novels class, and I found myself amazed at how new it felt. Brown relies on shifting perspectives, and interjections of his own voice and real life events to give a broad image of the painful conditions of slave life. He utilizes a playful form offsetting a difficult reality. As Clotel, Althesa and Currer are lured into intimacy by their white owners, each generation is forced to feel the same pain as their parents. The sins of the fathers give their daughters misery in a cycle that seems as unbreakable as it is unbearable. There's something so valuable about the fact that Brown doesn't seem to care about being perceived as moralizing. Someone complained in class that this was a book too filled with earnest speeches and condemnations of wealthy American society. And while it's true that I've labeled books with many fewer tangents as "preachy", I never felt that way in Clotel. Because of the ways that each speech was able to lay bare the institutions designed to rob slaves of their freedoms, I never found anything wrong with their inclusions. Whether literature knows it or not, it owes a huge debt to William Wells Brown. I can hear echoes of his voice in everything from Light in August to The Conservationist to Beloved. Goodreads says this book has a small number of ratings, whixh is awful because this is a novel that deserves to survive even longer and to be read by many, many more people.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-10-26 00:00:00 Sungnam Lee "Clotel" is the story of a slave woman who was allegedly the daughter of Thomas Jefferson. At the time the book was published in 1853, rumors were rife about Jefferson's relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings. We now know, through DNA testing, that those rumors were true -- but the author could only go on supposition. However, Brown's narrative is well-informed for a variety of reasons. Not only is this the first historical novel written by an African-American; Brown was an escaped slave living in London when he wrote and published the tale. His book not only relies on his story-telling skills (this book is far less preachy than Uncle Tom's Cabin, despite the similar subject matter) but also on contemporary documents such as newspaper articles, first-person accounts and so on to create his tale. Clotel, along with her sister Althesa and their mother, Currer, is sold in the slave markets after her master's death. We see the story arcs for all three characters as they go through hurdle after hurdle trying to reunite. The story is gripping, moving, and well-written. I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of primary sources as additional atmosphere. Those who enjoy classic historical novels would do well to investigate this book.