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Free enterprise : a novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant / by Michelle Cliff.
Van Pelt Library PR9265.9.C55 F74 2004
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LIBRA - Special PR9265.9.C55 F74 2004
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- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Cliff, Michelle.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Pleasant, Mary Ellen, 1814-1904--Fiction.
- Pleasant, Mary Ellen.
- Pleasant, Mary Ellen, 1814-1904.
- African American women abolitionists--Fiction.
- African American women abolitionists.
- African American businesspeople--Fiction.
- African American businesspeople.
- San Francisco (Calif.)--Fiction.
- San Francisco (Calif.).
- Underground Railroad--Fiction.
- Underground Railroad.
- African Americans--Fiction.
- African Americans.
- Fugitive slaves--Fiction.
- Fugitive slaves.
- Hotelkeepers--Fiction.
- Hotelkeepers.
- Earthquakes--Fiction.
- Earthquakes.
- Hotels--Fiction.
- Hotels.
- Genre:
- Fiction.
- Historical fiction.
- Penn Provenance:
- Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)
- Physical Description:
- 213 pages ; 21 cm
- Edition:
- First City Lights edition.
- Place of Publication:
- San Francisco : City Lights, 2004.
- Summary:
- In 1858, two black women meet at a restaurant and begin to plot a revolution. Mary Ellen Pleasant owns a string of hotels in San Francisco that secretly double as havens for runaway slaves. Her comrade, Annie, is a young Jamaican who has given up her life of privilege to fight for the abolitionist cause. Together they join John Brown's doomed enterprise and barely escape with their lives.
- With mesmerizing skill, Cliff weaves a multitude of voices into a gripping, poignant story of the struggle for liberation that began not long after the first slaves landed on America's shores.
- Michelle Cliff is the author of "No Telephone to Heaven," among other books of fiction, and a forthcoming essay collection, "Apocalypso." She lives in Santa Cruz, CA.
- Contents:
- I. Annie Christmas 1
- II. Plague 33
- III. She Was a Friend of John Brown 67
- IV. Tender Comrades 155.
- Notes:
- "Free enterprise was first published by Dutton in 1993"--T.p. verso.
- Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Awards - Fiction, Honor, 1994
- ISBN:
- 0872864375
- OCLC:
- 55229101
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