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Sto caricando le informazioni... Island Queen: A Novel (edizione 2021)di Vanessa Riley (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaIsland Queen di Vanessa Riley
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Based on the true life of Dorothy (Doll) Kirwan Thomas, born a slave in Montserrat, she worked countless years to buy her (& her family’s) freedom to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in the Caribbean. Repeatedly raped by her white brother, surviving multiple rebellions, saving a sister from auction, her beginnings were so harsh. She is written as a very real person, with her past very much shaping how she approached life. view of slavery from a tender age of five when she hadn’t quite grasped that she was “owned.” As she grew up and through her life her views on slavery also grew up. It was eye-opening and poignant. Sweeping family saga that covers sixty years in the life of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas (aka Miss Doll or Dolly). Born in 1756, she is a no-nonsense strong woman who works her way up from slavery to business owner. She starts a housekeeping business on several Caribbean islands. Her home base is Roseau, Dominica. We meet her various men, many of whom desert her after she bears them one or more children. She is fiercely loyal to her family. Dorothy Kirwan Thomas was a real person, and Vanessa Riley has done a wonderful job of bringing her to life as a complex personality with many strengths and weaknesses. She overcomes a variety of obstacles such as illiteracy, racial issues, postpartum depression, sexual abuse, and patriarchal laws. It feels a bit lengthy (600 pages), especially toward the end. This book would make a fabulous mini-series. The story began when Dorothy was five-years-old. It started out slow but picked up when Dorothy was 18. At that point I couldn't put the book down. There were a couple of unsavory sections where Dorothy or another female family member were being raped and/or referred to with racist and sexist language. The book is not for everyone but it does tell a part of history that we don't usually hear about. I was surprised at how easily and quickly Dorothy was able to save money to buy herself and several family members freedom from their slave owners. This ease seemed wrong from the history that I have been told over the years. Her ability to get away with talking back to her white owners did not feel right to me either. Perhaps she was able because she lived in the Caribbean. I am not sure. Dorothy was able to build several businesses and became one of the most wealthy women in the Caribbean. It would be interesting to find out whether this was a norm or an anomaly for black women in the Caribbean during the early 1800s. Dorothy pushed her daughters to marry white men. She prospered off of these relationships but perhaps her motivation was just to ensure that her children had food to eat. These white husbands had the power of manumission and this was one way for Dorothy to keep her descendants free people. The language used in the book took some getting used to. The West Indies dialect as well as the Irish words used by the white slave owners was very hard to get used to. Most of this language was used in the first half of the book. It got alot better in the second half. With all of these issues in my mind I am still thinking to myself about my feelings about the novel. There are many questions that the Author's Note does not answer. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Premi e riconoscimentiMenzioni
Fiction.
African American Fiction.
Historical Fiction.
HTML: "Riveting and transformative, evocative and immersive...by turns vibrant and bold and wise, discovering Dorothy's story is a singular pleasure."??The New York Times A remarkable, sweeping historical novel based on the incredible true life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free Black woman who rose from slavery to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies. Born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, Doll bought her freedom??and that of her sister and her mother??from her Irish planter father and built a legacy of wealth and power as an entrepreneur, merchant, hotelier, and planter that extended from the marketplaces and sugar plantations of Dominica and Barbados to a glittering luxury hotel in Demerara on the South American continent. Vanessa Riley's novel brings Doll to vivid life as she rises above the harsh realities of slavery and colonialism by working the system and leveraging the competing attentions of the men in her life: a restless shipping merchant, Joseph Thomas; a wealthy planter hiding a secret, John Coseveldt Cells; and a roguish naval captain who will later become King William IV of England. From the bustling port cities of the West Indies to the forbidding drawing rooms of London's elite, Island Queen is a sweeping epic of an adventurer and a survivor who answered to no one but herself as she rose to power and autonomy against all odds, defying rigid eighteenth-century morality and the oppression of women as well as people of color. It is an unforgettable portrait of a true larger-than-life woman who made her mark on hist Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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Don’t be put off by the length. Each chapter is bite-sized.
I was very impressed by what the author was able to infer from historical documents. The narrative voice for Dolly was also good. I had never heard of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas before this. But I wanted more about how Dolly started training her workers than all the dalliances with mens.