Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson

Narrated by Cary Hite & Sisi Aisha Johnson

Pre-K thru 6th grade – Coretta Scott King Nominee/Winner – Juvenile Fiction

Genre or category

Fiction

Historical Fiction

African American

Target Age Group

Ages 9 - 12

4th - 7th grade (EBSCOhost, 2022)

Summary

After escaping Southerland Plantation with his younger sister in tow, 12-year-old Homer finds himself in the swamp-dwelling of Freewater, thankful for freedom but devastated that his mother and friend were left behind. Shortly after their arrival, Homer finds new friends and is surprised by the changes he is seeing in himself. Eventually, Freewater finds itself in trouble, and Homer must act to save his new home and rescue his mother.

Justification

My local public library has this novel cataloged and shelved as Juvenile Fiction and most recently has been selected by the Oklahoma Library Association as a Sequoyah Master List book for 2024 (Oklahoma Library Association, n.d.). Freewater has received several accolades including the Coretta Scott King Award for Authors in 2023, and the Newberry Medal in 2023 (EBSCO, 2022; Goodreads, n.d.). The author has a background in similar subject matter before the publication of this novel (aminaluqman-dawson.com).

Evaluation

For this review, I will be evaluating point of view, setting, and pacing.

Freewater is told from two primary perspectives (Homer and Sanzi), two secondary perspectives (Anna and Nora) and is occasionally interjected by perspectives from other voices as well. Homer, a young slave boy who escaped Southerland Plantation with his younger sister and had to leave his mother and best friend behind. Anna, Homer’s friend and a slave girl who dreams of finding her mother up north. Nora, the youngest daughter of the plantation owners, is beginning to realize that her life is not all it seems. And Sanzi, a freeborn girl in the escaped people’s dwelling of Freewater who longs for adventure and to prove herself. From these four ~mostly~ primary perspectives, we gain insight into life in Freewater and Southerland, and we can see how different circumstances influenced each character’s inner thinking and physical actions. For example, Homer and Sanzi are like chalk and cheese. Homer has lived his life trying to stay out of the way, unseen. He has a big love for his family, but still prefers to remain in the shadows. Sanzi on the other hand dreams of being revered just like the almost mythical Freewater huntsman, she is brazen and outspoken and often finds herself in trouble for not obeying her mother’s rules, but she does this with a deep love for her people. The author did justice to this story by providing more than one perspective. It truly leans into the understanding that different life experiences shape the way we look at and tackle adversity. 

This novel mostly takes place in the forest-dwelling of Freewater, derived from the true swamp and forest dwellings, or maroon communities (Reed, n.d.), of the American South that escaped slaves developed and joined on their quest for freedom. Even without knowing that such communities existed before starting Freewater, I found this narrative and its setting entirely plausible. People are very resilient and do what it takes to survive. In Freewater, the people used the swamp and all its advantages, they grew crops and used the trees and surrounding foliage for tools, clothes, and building. The swamp was their haven, their home, their home. By having the predominant setting be in Freewater, Amina Luqman-Dawson is pushing for her readers to see the conflicts and lives of these people and give a voice to those who haven’t been heard by history.

My one qualm with listening to this novel as an audiobook was the pacing. While you can speed up the timing of the narrators, you may run the risk of not having an even-paced story. If you choose to listen to at what is considered “normal” speed, you run the risk of being too slow. At least, this is the problem I ran into. It made it hard to determine if and when the author was trying to linger over something she deemed as important. Although I greatly enjoyed this story, I found it slow to build; when we finally got to the biggest conflict of the narrative, there were less than 3 hours left in my 10-hour listen. Some of this slowness could be attributed to the narrators, but they were just conduits for Luqman-Dawson’s story.

I listened to this book as an audiobook per the assignment's requirements and accessed it via Libby. I have a love-hate relationship with audiobooks as I seem to be very picky about the narrators. In the case of Freewater, I enjoyed both of the narrators immensely. They did a phenomenal job with voice changes, providing emotion behind the storyline, and lending a true sense of being a part of the story. Listening to this story rather than reading it helped me with the pronunciation of names, allowing me to feel like I was doing justice to the characters when I wrote or spoke about them.

 

References and other helpful resources

About Amina. (n.d.) Aminaluqman-dawson.com. Retrieved March 20, 2024. https://www.aminaluqman-dawson.com/about-amina

EBSCOhost. (2022). Freewater. NoveList Plus. https://search-ebscohost-com.db.tulsalibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=neh&tg=UI&an=11046462&site=novp-live

Goodreads. (n.d.) Freewater. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58275990-freewater

Luqman-Dawson, A. (2022). Freewater (C. Hite, Narr.; S. A. Johnson, Narr.) [Audiobook]. Hachette Audio. https://libbyapp.com/search/tulsa/creator-2524458/page-1/7456795

Tulsa City-County Library. (n.d.) Freewater. Catalog. https://tccl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S980C7456795

Reed, P. (n.d.) Maroon community. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/maroon-community