Teaser Tuesdays: Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
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My teaser is from a historical novel called Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbon, by Anne Rinaldi. It's about the life of a real historical figure, Phyllis Wheatley, the first African-American to become a published poet. She was born in Senegal and, as a small child, was snatched from her home in 1761 and carried aboard a slave ship to America. In Boston, Massachusetts, she was bought by a wealthy family who recognized her intelligence and taught her to read and write. From the time she was very small she held a privileged position among the slaves, even eating at the table with the Wheatley family. Still, she understood that she was not free and that even her master's kind treatment and her ability to read were not enough to give her a real place in society.
"I was twelve years old and of a sudden I hated the way I looked.... My skin was as black as if I'd been rubbed with fireplace ashes, and I was starting to know that no matter what I did, no matter how smart or amiable I managed to be, I was still not white folk."