A review by terrahome
Clotel: Or, the President's Daughter by William Wells Brown

3.0

Definitely historically significant and worth a read. Reading this today in the context of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, it struck me how even this novel from 1853 understands how every systemically racist aspect of American society can be traced back to the slave trade. The fact that this has been known and acknowledged by African American writers for literal centuries makes African-American literature's lack of representation in high school curriculums across the country all the more frustrating. Novels like Clotel so effortlessly convey the hypocrisy and disgusting cruelties of slavery and racial prejudice that they really should be read by every student in the United States. Still, as a work of fiction, I can't deny that Clotel is not the greatest read. It's really more of an abolitionist manifesto taking examples of real life self-liberated and recaptured slaves and fictionalizing them for a narrative format. It often feels more like a pamphlet about the author's political message than it does a story, made all the more glaring by how most of the narrative here is told to the reader rather than shown in scene. Such is the case with many sentimental novels of its era though, and the themes and messages here are still powerful enough that it remains relatively engaging in spite of these craft issues.