When Adebimpe is ten, she is sold with her mother, Sanite, to plantation owner John du Marche. He soon renames her Ady but Sanite never lets her daughter forget who she really is - a person who can read and write and understand numbers. Most importantly, Sanite reminds Ady that she must never reveal these abilities to a white person, especially not her true name. Tasked with maintaining du Marche's home in vibrant New Orleans, Ady takes in the city and starts to envision life beyond her dire circumstances. One day, she notices a beautiful stranger, radiant and poised with a colorful Tignon wrapped regally around her head. Ady realizes that she is a Free Woman. Inexplicably drawn to her, but not knowing who she is or what she does, Ady begins to search for answers - which eventually brings her to Lenore, a free woman who owns the Mockingbird Inn. When Lenore invites Ady to join The Daughters, Ady finds spiritual and sexual liberation, and with their help, imagines a new future for herself and her family.
Stirring ... The real texture of these lives has long been missing from our understanding of the past. It is this texture that The American Daughters captures in strong prose ... Such lyricism is occasionally marred by clunky repetition ... In telling this important, neglected history with imagination-fueled research, The American Daughters offers an inspiring story of people who show a way forward with their perseverance, bravery and love.
A compelling story, well told ... Keenly observed ... In several short chapters and a lengthy epilogue, Ruffin time-travels his narrative, touching down in the 1950s, in 2028 and in 2172 to show how the story of Ady and the Daughters fades in and out of view in different eras and by different authors. These addenda seem disposable to me, as long as we get Ady's old story, which is so vividly told in the here and now.
