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A colored man round the world / David F. Dorr ; edited by Malini Johar Schueller.
LIBRA D975 .D72 1999
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Dorr, David F.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Dorr, David F--Travel--Europe.
- Dorr, David F.
- Travel.
- Europe.
- Dorr, David F--Travel--Middle East.
- Middle East.
- African Americans--Biography.
- African Americans.
- Europe--Description and travel.
- Middle East--Description and travel.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Physical Description:
- xliii, 195 pages ; 23 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [1999]
- Summary:
- A Colored Man Round the World relates the experiences of an African-American man's journey around the world in the 1850s. Written by a former slave, David F. Dorr, it recounts his trip with Louisiana plantation owner Cornelius Fellowes. Fellowes had promised to give Dorr his freedom upon their return from the trip but did not fulfill his promise. Dorr then escaped to Ohio, where he wrote and published his account.
- Malini Johar Schueller has edited and annotated the 1858 text and added a critical introduction that provides useful context for understanding and appreciating this important but heretofore neglected document. Her edition of A Colored Man Round the World provides a fascinating account of Dorr's negotiation of the conflicting roles of slave versus man, taking into account all of the racial complexities that existed at the time. As a traveler abroad, Dorr benefited from the privileges accorded American "Orientalists" venturing in the near East. Although as an American tourist Dorr was empowered on his travels, upon his return as an American slave, that empowerment vanished.
- At all times during his account, Dorr maintains an ironic double posture -- that of a traveler free to roam the world, sharing his adventures with his landed countrymen, and that of a "colored man" who is forever conscious of his enslavement. The book will be welcomed for the rare perspective it provides of the mid-nineteenth century through the eyes of an African-American slave and for the light it casts on world and U.S. history as well as questions of racial and national identity.
- Notes:
- Originally published: Cleveland, Ohio : Printed for the Author, 1858. With a new introduction.
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-195).
- ISBN:
- 047209694X
- 0472066943
- OCLC:
- 41368353
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