Clotel, or The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown

Hello my lovely readers! I was inspired to read this book after I read Junie. I was looking for a more authentic telling of life in the 1800s and I had this book on my shelf. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
First published in December 1853, Clotel was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves. The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage—then sells her. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct.
MY THOUGHTS
This book is fascinating. 

It's not the typical "fiction," that I'm used to. I'm not sure if all novels were written this way in the 1850s/1860s, but I'm going to find out! I have a few other books that were published during this time as well that I'm excited to get my hands on.

I found this book to be so interesting on a number of fronts.

1. Clotel, her sister Althesa and her mom Currer were almost afterthoughts to the story in certain parts of the book. There was so much exposition about life during slavery through various stories or dialogue and then Brown would add Currer or Clotel and the very end of the paragraph to say that they'd been in the room or they'd saw what happened. 

2. Brown would directly talk to the reader, which I found unusual. After another long exposition about the horrors of slavery or something similar, he'd tell the reader that the particular story was true or that this is the true nature of the United States.

3. Brown would also insert himself into the story and then go back to the fictional telling of Clotel and her life. There was a brief biography about Brown at the beginning of my book and it stated that he moved abroad and lo and behold, Mary and George move abroad at the end of the book. It gave me a chuckle.

This book is not a light nor easy read, in my opinion. My book, the 1853 version (Brown wrote several versions of this book), clocks in at 150 pages and it took me a few days to read it just because of the source material...and of course being a mama.

Clotel was more of an amalgamation of fact, fiction and eyewitness accounts that I found refreshing, if not fascinating.

We see the these three women go through hurdle after hurdle as they deal with love, betrayal and life while trying to reunite. This was an extremely well-written, gripping, moving tale that I won't soon forget. It may be hard to get through, but it's definitely worth the read.