Things past telling

Resource Information

The work Things past telling represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Deschutes Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Things past telling

Statement of responsibility

Sheila Williams

Creator

• Williams, Sheila, (Sheila J)

Subject

• African American women -- Fiction
• Courage -- Fiction
• Enslaved persons -- Fiction
• Enslaved women -- Fiction
• African American midwives -- Fiction
• Slavery -- Fiction
• Historical fiction

Genre

• Historical fiction
• Fiction

Language

eng

Summary

Born in West Africa in the mid-eighteenth century, Maryam Prescilla Grace--a.k.a "Momma Grace" will live a long, wondrous life marked by hardship, oppression, opportunity, and love. Though she will be "gifted" various names, her birth name is known to her alone. Over the course of 100-plus years, she survives capture, enslavement by several property owners, the Atlantic crossing when she is only eleven years of age, and a brief stint as a pirate's ward, acting as both a spy and a translator. Maryam learns midwifery from a Caribbean-born wise woman, whose "craft" combines curated techniques and medicines from African, Indigenous, and European women. Those midwifery skills allow her to sometimes transcend the racial and class barriers of her enslavement, as she walks the razor's edge trying to balance the lives and health of her own people with the cruel economic mandates of the slave holders, who view infants born in bondage not as flesh-and-blood children but as investment property. Throughout her triumphant and tumultuous life Maryam gains and loses her homeland, her family, her culture, her husband, her lovers, and her children. Yet as the decades pass, this tenacious woman never loses her sense of self

Cataloging source

YDX

Dewey number

813/.6

Index

no index present

Literary form

fiction

Target audience

adult