The Water Dancer
Enlightening book. Real dive into slavery and the Underground
I love Coates’s writing. Feel like he is telling the story with all the embellishments you would get from an oral rendition. This story was eye-opening and soul-shaking. Gave me a real understanding of the experience of slavery and how the underground worked. The low-class whites (Rylands) were appalling but that behavior and attitude still exist even today. Ideally, read this in a book club as it has some complexity and depth, I am sure I missed some things. This was an excellent book that I would highly recommend
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Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Having already read non-fiction works by Coates, I knew that this was going to be a heavy and beautiful work of art. I was not wrong. First, of, Coates is a wordsmith, his sentence structures and metaphors are gorgeous. But most of all, this is a well-researched piece of historical fiction with light mag
ical elements.
Hiram is a young slave when he realizes his gift of being able to remember EVERYTHING, everything except memories of his mother. Hiram was fathered by the man who is also his master and tasked with taking care of his white brother, who has no business in regular society. But after a near-death experience that takes the life of his brother, Hiram decides that it's time to leave his wretched life of slavery and seek freedom. He knows exactly who to go to to achieve it, at least he thinks he does...
This has all of the horrors of slavery as well as the strength, determination, and sacrifice of those who lived in that time and fought it. I loved crossing paths with Harriet Tubman, and I would love to know of the accuracy of some of the other characters that we meet.
Beautiful book.
Guest 3 years ago
I thought this was a good book. A little on the supernatural, sci-fi side but totally believable! It was a different take on the Underground Railroad that I hadn’t heard before and could certainly explain how she was able to “spirit” so many people to freedom.Write Review:
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