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A Million Nightingales
by Susan Straight

A Million Nightingales Cover

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

A haunting, beautifully written novel set in early-nineteenth-century Louisiana: the tale of a slave girl?s journey — emotional and physical — from captivity to freedom.

Susan Straight has been called "a writer of exceptional gifts and grace" (Joyce Carol Oates). In A Million Nightingales she brings those gifts to bear on the story of Moinette, daughter of an African mother and a white father she never knew. While her mother cares for the plantation linens, Moinette tends to the master's daughter, which allows her to eavesdrop on lessons. She also learns that she is property, and at fourteen she is sold, separated from her mother without a chance to say goodbye. Heartbroken and terrified, and with a full understanding of what she will risk, Moinette begins almost immediately to prepare herself for the moment when she will escape.

It is Moinette's own voice that we hear — bright, rhythmic, observant, and altogether captivating — as she describes her journey through a world of brutality, sexual violence, and loss. Quick to see the patterns of French, American, and African life play out around her, Moinette makes her way from sugarcane fields through mysterious bayous to the streets of Opelousas, where the true meaning of freedom emerges from the bonds of love.

An uncommonly rich novel, brimming with event and character, A Million Nightingales is a powerful confirmation of the remarkable novelist we have in Susan Straight.

Review:

"Set in Southern plantations and bayous during the years just following the Louisiana Purchase, Straight's impressionistic character study effectively evokes the conflicted mlange of races, nationalities and cultures that defined the early 19th-century territory. The novel spans the life of Moinette, a 'mulatresse,' beginning with the events that wrench her from her mother at age 14, to her final days in her 40s. Moinette's first young mistress, Cephaline, exposes her to book learning, and Moinette struggles to negotiate the contradictions between the language of science and her mother's belief in traditional Senegalese spirits, a dichotomy that haunts her throughout her life. After Cephaline's premature death, Moinette, light-skinned and beautiful, is sold upriver and separated from her beloved mother. She repeatedly suffers sexual assault and must use her wits to protect herself, and later her son and daughters. While Straight (Highwire Moon) vividly depicts the danger and degradation black women faced, she also makes feminist comparisons between Moinette's enslavement and the situations of her wealthy white mistresses. However, the terms of Moinette's very sophisticated understanding of what's happening to her seem anachronistic, and the success she achieves, combined with the handy coincidences that lead to it, although tempered with tragedy, are too convenient to be entirely convincing." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"Straight has given this body of work a historical foundation, a point of reference in the past. But her novel is, besides, a powerful and moving story, written in language so beautiful you can almost believe the words themselves are capable of salving history's wounds." Megan Marshall, New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Told in her own voice, Moinette's story is a richly textured picture of antebellum plantation life.... Straight has illuminated a corner of hopefulness in an otherwise grim world that stood behind one of manners and hoopskirts." Brad Hooper, Booklist (starred review)

Review:

"From the first beautiful sentence, I felt transported to a world as vivid as the one outside my window. Moinette is one of those rare characters who enlarges both our sense of history and our humanity." Judith Freeman, author of Red Water

Review:

"In all of her novels, Susan Straight has given voice to characters whose struggles for dignity and love have been fought on the twentieth-century battleground of race; with A Million Nightingales she digs even deeper into our common ground. But it is love and humanity, not race, that ultimately gives such wrenching power to A Million Nightingales — a beautiful, redemptive novel." Kate Moses, author of Wintering

Synopsis:

Haunting and beautifully written, this novel of 19th-century Louisiana is the tale of a slave girl's journey--emotional and physical--from captivity to freedom.
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About the Author

Susan Straight is the author of five previous novels, including the best-selling I Been in Sorrow?s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots and Highwire Moon, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the California Book Award. She is a regular commentator for NPR, and her fiction and essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, the New York Times, the Nation, Salon, Zoetrope, McSweeney's, and Best American Short Stories, among many other publications. She has received a Lannan Foundation Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Riverside, California, with her three daughters.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
GRMX, May 2, 2006 (view all comments by GRMX)
When I read a novel, I try to imagine the characters coming to life. I want their words, ideas and actions to be plausible. Not just plausible but, true and real. The main character Moinette lived on every page. Her life unfolded before me and she took me with her. Stories of slavery are a hard read because of the inhuman degradation. There were times I wondered how Moinette went on and where would she go next. I even found myself turning my head away from the pages "hoping". I believed Moinette, I knew her actions were true and real to her existence.

Susan Straight delivered. I am amazed that she was able to capture the life of this young girl and bring her to us. Get this novel and pass it around. Everyone should read and know about Moinette.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780375423642
Author:
Straight, Susan
Publisher:
Libri
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Historical - General
Subject:
Teenage girls
Subject:
Plantation life
Publication Date:
March 2006
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
340
Dimensions:
9.52x6.56x1.25 in. 1.45 lbs.
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