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Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:Mosley deftly weaves historical and speculative fiction into a powerful narrative about the nature of freedom.
A gripping Young Adult fiction debut by bestselling author
Walter Mosley.
Walter Mosley is one of the best known writers in America.
In his first book for young adults, Mosley deftly weaves historical and
speculative fiction into a powerful narrative about the nature of freedom.
47 is a young slave boy living under the watchful eye of a brutal slave
master. His life seems doomed until he meets a mysterious run-away slave,
Tall John. Then 47 finds himself swept up in a struggle for his own
liberation.
1.
I lived as a slave on the Corinthian
Plantation my whole life up to the time that Tall John ran out of the
back woods and into my life. I have no idea exactly how long the time
before Tall John might have been, but I was most likely about fourteen
years old at that time. Slaves didn't have birthday parties like the
white children of Master or the white folk that either worked for Master
or lived on the larder of his home.
Slaves didn't have birthday parties and so they didn't have ages like
the white people did. Big Mama Flore always said that "White peoples
gots as many ages as you can count but slaves on'y gots four ages.
That's babychile, boy or girl, old boy or old girl, an' dead."
I loved Big Mama Flore. She was round and soft and always gave me a
big hug in the morning. She was one of the only ones who ever showed me
...
According to Mosley, "Tall John himself is a reflection of an old slave myth about a spirit named High John the Conqueror. High John, the myth goes, came from Africa to confound the white masters and to ultimately free the slaves."
Zora Neale Hurston writes of High John de Conquer (pronounced conker) in The Sanctified Church, a collection of essays on Afro-American folklore, legend and myth with a particular focus on the spiritual character of the Southern Black Christian Church. She depicts him as a trickster/shaman figure (similar to Anansi and Br'er Rabbit) who is said to have been an African prince sold into slavery in the Americas, but whose spirit was never broken.
Another traditional story is told byVirginia Hamilton, in ...
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