Libertie
A Times Book of the Month and Roxane Gay's Book Club May Pick
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction 2022
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 PEN AMERICA OPEN BOOK AWARD
A Times Book of the Month
One of Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Picks
'A feat of monumental thematic imagination' - The New York Times Book Review
'An elegantly layered, beautifully rendered tour de force that is not to be missed' - Roxane Gay
Libertie Sampson was named by her father as he lay dying, in honour of the bright, shining future he was sure was coming. The only daughter of a prosperous Black woman physician, she was born free in a country still blighted by slavery. But she has never felt free. Shrinking from her mother's ambitions for her future, Libertie ventures beyond her insulated community, hoping that somehow, somewhere, she will create a life that feels like her own.
Immersive, lyrical and deeply moving, Libertie is a novel about legacy and longing, the story of a young woman struggling to discover what freedom truly means - for herself, and for generations to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greenidge (We Love You, Charlie Freeman) delivers another genius work of radical historical fiction. Libertie Sampson, a freeborn Black girl in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, is pushed by her mother, a doctor, to follow in her footsteps. But Libertie, whose day-to-day experience differs from her mother due to her darker skin, is more interested in music and wants to follow her own path. In her poetic narration, she gives testimony to the injustices of white supremacy she witnesses and reflects on colorism, "colorstruck" misogyny, and the potential shackles of marriage, all the while turning over the question of what freedom is. When her mother insists on treating the same white women who recoil at Libertie's dark skin, she believes her mother "gave up co-conspirators for customers." Desperate to secure a future for Libertie, her mother sends her off to Cunningham College in Ohio, but Libertie turns away from her studies after she meets fellow students Experience and Louisa: "When I sang with them, my whole history fell away. There was no past, no promised future, only the present of one sustained note." After Libertie is kicked out of Cunningham, she schemes to bring Experience and Louisa to Brooklyn and sing for the Black community. But her road gets rockier, and a marriage proposal from a Haitian man brings mixed blessings, leading her to continue reflecting on the limits of freedom for a Black woman. This pièce de résistance is so immaculately orchestrated that each character, each setting, and each sentence sings.
