African Town
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About this listen
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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2022 Charles Waters and Irene Latham (P)2022 Listening LibraryListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
A 2023 Scott O’Dell Award Winner
A 2024 Sequoya Book Award Nominee (OK)
A 2023-2024 South Carolina Book Award Nominee
A 2022 NPR Books We Love List Pick
A 2022-2023 Yellowhammer YA Book Award Honor (AL)
A 2022 Great Reads from Great Places Reading List Pick (AL)
“African Town is a stunningly powerful and visceral novel.” —Oprah Daily
“A haunting, beautifully told history.” —NPR
“The authors have done a remarkable job of weaving the stories of the characters together and telling the story from both the perspective of the slaves and the people who orchestrated their purchase. Though this story is fictional it is based on a vast amount of research that was done on the actual people who participated in this story. . . This story will inspire readers to do some research to find out more about the real events that took place. . . Not to be missed.” —School Library Connection, starred review
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- By: Jewell Parker Rhodes
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of Voodoo Dreams focuses on two women who loved the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Anna, a free woman of color, was his rescuer, his loving wife and mother to his children. Ottilie Assing, a white German woman, became his intellectual soul mate and mistress. At times, they all lived under the same roof.
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Captivating
- By MJ on 02-09-24
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Sea of Poppies
- Ibis Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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At the heart of this vibrant saga is an immense ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its purpose to fight China's vicious 19th-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.
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ignorance may be bliss
- By Evelyn M Kloepper on 07-27-09
By: Amitav Ghosh
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Newton and Polly
- A Novel of Amazing Grace
- By: Jody Hedlund
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Now remembered as the author of the world's most famous hymn, in the mid-18th century, as England and France stand on the brink of war, John Newton was a young sailor wandering aimlessly through life. His only duty was to report to his ship and avoid disgracing his father - until the night he heard Polly Catlett's enchanting voice caroling. He was immediately smitten and determined to win her affection.
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Seriously wonderful! I couldn't stop listening!
- By Mary :) on 09-27-16
By: Jody Hedlund
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The Irishman's Daughter
- By: V.S. Alexander
- Narrated by: Lucy Rayner
- Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Ireland, 1845. To Briana Walsh, no place on earth is more beautiful than Carrowteige, County Mayo. The small farms that surround the centuries-old Lear House are managed by her father, agent to the wealthy, reckless Sir Thomas Blakely. Tenant farmers sell the oats and rye they grow to pay rent to Sir Thomas, surviving on the potatoes that flourish in the remaining scraps of land. But when the potato crop falls prey to a devastating blight, families Briana has known all her life are left with no food, no resources, and no mercy from the English landowner.
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Wasted a credit
- By Emily Coonce on 05-26-19
By: V.S. Alexander
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Varina
- A Novel
- By: Charles Frazier
- Narrated by: Molly Parker
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives.
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Read it rather than listen
- By Anonymous on 08-31-18
By: Charles Frazier
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Guernica
- A Novel
- By: Dave Boling
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Calling to mind such timeless war-and-love classics as Corelli's Mandolin and The English Patient, Guernica is a transporting novel that thrums with the power of storytelling and is peopled with characters driven by grit and heart.
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Guernica a good historical novel
- By ARLEENE on 04-26-11
By: Dave Boling
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The Bell Messenger
- By: Robert Cornuke
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Adventurer and author Robert Cornuke delivers an archaeological thriller that crosses the globe and spans two centuries. With these hopeful words, a dying Confederate lad bequeaths his Bible to the Union soldier who just shot him: "Be God's messenger as I have been." And so begins the journey of Elijah Bell's cherished Bible as it travels the world, transforming hearts wherever it goes.
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Nice Historical Fiction
- By Michael & Cora on 09-16-24
By: Robert Cornuke
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Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
- By: Allan Gurganus
- Narrated by: Barbara McCulloh
- Length: 49 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.
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Dated.
- By edie butler on 04-06-21
By: Allan Gurganus
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Mudbound
- By: Hillary Jordan
- Narrated by: Ezra Knight, Kate Forbes, Joseph Collins, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Hillary Jordan's mesmerizing debut novel won the Bellwether Prize for fiction. A powerful piece of Southern literature, Mudbound takes on prejudice in its myriad forms on a Mississippi Delta farm in 1946. City girl Laura McAllen attempts to raise her family despite questionable decisions made by her husband. Tensions continue to rise when her brother-in-law and the son of a family of sharecroppers both return from WWII as changed men bearing the scars of combat.
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May this South never rise again.
- By Betty on 03-25-12
By: Hillary Jordan
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Chains
- The Seeds of America Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Laurie Halse Anderson
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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As the Revolutionary War begins, 13-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate, become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion.
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Fabulous!!!
- By Myrisha Goodson on 06-12-22
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Dessa Rose
- A Novel
- By: Sherley Anne Williams
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
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This is the story of an extraordinary friendship between two remarkable women, both caught in the shadow of slavery in the 19th-century South. One is an escaped black slave under sentence of death; the other is white, yet committed to end the horrors her neighbors accept as a matter of course. Ruby Dee's passionate and sensitive readings gives a poignant sense of reality to this magnificent novel of courage, daring and love.
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One Star from Perfect
- By Marty on 01-26-18
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Ship of Magic
- The Liveship Traders, Book 1
- By: Robin Hobb
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 35 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships---rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. The fortunes of one of Bingtown's oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia. For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy unjustly denied her---a legacy she will risk anything to reclaim.
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Horrible Narrator
- By CP on 10-07-10
By: Robin Hobb
What listeners say about African Town
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-10-22
Very well done
This was a great listen. This is the first book I read that talks about the journey to America and it’s honestly heartbreaking. To think about being kidnapped and traveling to a foreign place under those beyond harsh conditions and survive that alone ….. smh
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- Debi S
- 04-10-23
Story in verse
I enjoyed listening to this book as told from multiple points of view. This delivery aided in the understanding of the series of events from different perspectives.
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- Maddie
- 03-21-23
Admirable people
Too much misfortune. A story well told and making me wish to visit the location.
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1 person found this helpful