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About Good Fortune
Product Description In the tradition of Copper Sun and Chains, this is the stirring tale of a girl’s journey from Africa to freedom and from youth to womanhood, as recounted in this dazzling debut novel. Ayanna Bahati lives in a small African village when she is brutally kidnapped, along with her brother, and forced onto a slave ship to America. As Ayanna, renamed Anna, rises from the cotton fields to the master’s house, she finds the familial love she’s been yearning for in elderly Mary and Mary’s son Daniel—but she is also faced with more threats to her survival. Risking everything to escape the plantation, Anna manages to make it north and to freedom, eventually settling in the free black community of Hudson, Ohio, and educating herself to become a teacher. From School Library Journal Grade 9 Up—Sarah, Anna, and Ayanna are the names used by one person over the course of her life. First she is Sarah, a slave on a plantation in Tennessee. Her days are full of endless labor, humiliation, and the threat of rape. She struggles to understand the meaning of freedom and to educate herself despite the danger. After witnessing a brutal whipping, she flees north to freedom. Barely surviving the harrowing journey, Sarah and her adopted brother arrive in Ohio, only to find that freedom is not as sweet as she had hoped. She changes her name to Anna and begins a new life, but she worries about loved ones left behind and is embittered by the severe restrictions and discrimination faced by free blacks. One of the more effective literary devices is how Anna's narration gradually shifts from slave patois to more refined speech as her education progresses. Ayanna was her name as a child in Africa, remembered in nightmares, where the memories of the murder of her mother, the horrifying ocean passage in the belly of a slave ship, and being separated from her brother on the auction block haunt her. The transitions between the dreams and waking life are occasionally jarring, but on the whole the narrative flows smoothly and is well paced. An author's note about fact and fiction in the book adds weight to the historical information included.— Caroline Tesauro, Radford Public Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. From Booklist In the stirring narrative of young Sarah on a Tennessee plantation in the early nineteenth century, this lengthy debut novel tells an American slavery story, weaving together the brutal labor and threats of sexual assault with Sarah’s memories of capture in Africa. When she escapes with her “brother” Daniel, she leaves behind her tender, adoptive mother and John, the young man she loves, and she discovers that escape does not mean freedom. As they reach Ohio, Sarah, now 14, dreams of education, but she encounters vicious prejudice, including the n-word (“You have no idea what education is, and if you did, you wouldn’t know what to do with it”). She does know what education is, of course, and later she even establishes a school. With many spelled-out messages, Carter’s novel tries to fold in too much for one story, and in the long afterword, which distinguishes fact from fiction, she acknowledges plot contrivances. Despite these shortfalls, though, the harsh, realistic history will captivate readers, as will the brave young girl’s struggle and triumph. Grades 8-11. --Hazel Rochman Review "Noni Carter was only a child when she first conceived of this story of a young girl's journey from freedom to slavery and back to ultimate freedom--but her debut novel is written with wisdom and heart far beyond her years. Well researched and delightfully well-written, Good Fortune is an empowering testament to history that will move readers both young and old." -- Tananarive Due, American Book Award-winning author of The Black Rose and Joplin's Ghost "Noni Carter is an old wise soul in the body of a beautiful young woman. She has list
