Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from The Underground Railroad by Betty DeRamus

Hello my lovely readers! This has been on my shelf for a while and I'm glad I finally picked it up! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Forbidden Fruit is a collection of fascinating, largely untold tales of ordinary men and women who faced mobs, bloodhounds, bounty hunters, and bullets to be together -- and defy a system that categorized blacks not only as servants, but as property.

Here you'll meet, among other extraordinary characters, a fugitive slave from Virginia who spends seventeen years searching for his wife. A Georgia slave couple that sails for England with federal troops trailing behind. A white woman who falls in love with her deceased husband's slave. A young slave girl who is delivered to her fianc inside a wooden chest.

Acclaimed journalist Betty DeRamus gleaned these anecdotes from descendants of runaway slave couples, unpublished memoirs, Civil War records, census data, magazines, and dozens of previously untapped sources. This is a book about people pursuing love and achievement in a time of hate and severely limited opportunities. Though not all of the stories in Forbidden Fruit end in triumph, they all celebrate hope, passion, courage, and triumph of the human spirit.

Vigilance by Andrew K. Deimer

 

Hello my lovely readers!

Just before the end of the month, I finished this absolute beauty of a book. 

I came across Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad by Andrew K. Deimer several weeks ago while in a local bookstore. I'd recognized the name because when I first started my Bookstagram account and this blog, The Underground Railroad  by William Still was the first book I reviewed. So it was a welcome surprise to find a full biography on Still that was just published last year.

Let's get into it.

The Underground Railroad: Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts by William Still

 

Hello my lovely readers!

Welcome to Naomi's Global Book Nook. This is my very first post and I'm so excited to share my thoughts on this book. So let's get right into it shall we?

"What do you think of Slavery anyhow?"

"I think it's a great curse, and I think the Baptists in Richmond will go to the deepest hell, if there is any, for they are so wicked they will work you all day and part of the night, and wear cloaks and long faces, and try to get all the work out of you they can by telling you about Jesus Christ."

William Still was a born in 1821 to formerly enslaved parents. He went on to become an abolitionist, businessman and philanthropist.

He's commonly known as the "Father of the Underground Railroad," leading approximately 800 slaves to their freedom.

The Underground Railroad is a compilation of interviews and letters from the people he helped free from slavery. There's also legal texts throughout the book that gives a well-rounded view to what was going on during this time.

In the winter of 1852, Still and other  Philadelphia abolitionists,  formed a group called the General Vigilance Committee. He was the executive director and secretary. Together, they worked to keep records of the stories of slaves that escaped to the North.

The book was published shortly  after the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished. It contains stories of fear, strength, resiliency, bravery, cleverness and ultimately freedom.