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Iola Leroy

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Book Overview: 

This is the story of Iola Leroy, a free-born, mixed-race woman who passed as white. Her true racial identity eventually discovered, she was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Later freed by the Union Army, she journeyed to find others of her family who had been disunited from each other and strewn across the south by the forces of slavery. In the process she also struggled to improve the economic and social station of African Americans. Iola Leroy is a story about race and gender roles during the antebellum and post-Civil War eras, "passing" and the associated socio-political consequences.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .What's to hinder your continuing to think?" asked Col. Robinson.

"What you tell me changes the whole complexion of affairs," replied the doctor.

"If that be so I am glad I told you before you got head over heels in love."

"Yes," said Dr. Gresham, absently.

Dr. Gresham was a member of a wealthy and aristocratic family, proud of its lineage, which it could trace through generations of good blood to its ancestral isle. He had become deeply interested in Iola before he had heard her story, but after it had been revealed to him he tried to banish her from his mind; but his constant observation of her only increased his interest and admiration. The deep pathos of her story, the tenderness of her ministrations, bestowed alike on black and white, and the sad loneliness of her condition, awakened within him a desire to defend and protect her all through her future life. The fierce clashing of . . . Read More

Community Reviews

A Romantic ending to a debilitating national institution

After imbibing a dearth of slave narratives, autobiographies and sentimental African American novels, I'm glad to end a semester of antebellum literary study with Francis Harper's Iola Leroy. It's difficult to imagine the courage of those who s

'"No, no," said Leroy, tenderly, "it is not that I regret our marriage, or feel the least disdain for our children on account of the blood in their veins; but I do not wish them to grow up under the contracting influence of this race prejudice. I do not wish them to feel that they have been born und

3.5*

I quite liked this.
This is written before Reconstruction ends and its a really good snapshot of this time period in history.
Reconstruction is a unique time in US politics. The loss in rights for Black folks when it ends will take about 100 yrs to recover. We are told that history marches slowly but

A solid 4 1/2. Well worth the time I invested.

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