To follow up my post about the Christmas season and the trauma that sometimes accompanied the new year in the slave quarters, I thought I would add a quick note about one January 1 that brought hope. It was January 1, 1863. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He had written a version of […]
The Christmas and New Year holidays fell in the time between the end of one farming cycle and the beginning of the next. While much of my commentary below applies to the plantation system in general, I am writing primarily about Virginia. In December, work on plantations there was at the lowest level of the […]
My post from March 23, 2021, looked at Mary Moore Easter’s excellent book of poetry, Free Papers. The poems in it reveal the trials and obstacles of a woman–Eliza Winston–determined to obtain her freedom in a society groomed to deprive her of it. The title refers to the manumission papers that would declare an end […]
Saturday was Plantation Day. I visited three of the most famous and best preserved James River plantations–Berkeley, Shirley, and Westover. All three are built in the Georgian style of architecture and took at least five years to complete. The reason for the long completion time was that all the construction materials, except the glass windows […]
Last week I received the new book of poetry, Free Papers, by my friend, Mary Moore Easter. In poetry that grips and won’t let go, she chronicles the path to freedom of Eliza Winston, a woman enslaved in Mississippi. It is a wrenching story of heartbreak and persistence. Eliza’s grit and determination to win the […]
I took the plunge last week and signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) 2020. My goal is to finish revising the first draft of my novel, Destiny Reclaimed (working title). With the help of my astute, compassionate, and generous critique group, I have already made considerable progress, and have learned a lot about […]
The Plot Thickens 