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Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant
«The axe is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck there will be more money to help.» — M.E.P.
This message was found on John Brown’s body following his ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry. History books do not record the contribution of his mysterious collaborator, “M.E.P.,” but in Free Enterprise, acclaimed novelist Michelle Cliff tells the remarkable story of frontier legend Mary Ellen Pleasant.
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 cater to wealthy whites and 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.
This message was found on John Brown’s body following his ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry. History books do not record the contribution of his mysterious collaborator, “M.E.P.,” but in Free Enterprise, acclaimed novelist Michelle Cliff tells the remarkable story of frontier legend Mary Ellen Pleasant.
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 cater to wealthy whites and 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.
213 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
6 people are currently reading
421 people want to read
About the author
Michelle Cliff
27 books64 followersMichelle Cliff (born 2 November 1946) is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise.
Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism. Her works explore the various, complex identity problems that stem from post-colonialism, as well as the difficulty of establishing an authentic, individual identity despite race and gender constructs. Cliff is a lesbian who grew up in Jamaica.
Cliff was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946 and moved with her family to New York City three years later. She was educated at Wagner College and the Warburg Institute at the University of London. She has held academic positions at several colleges including Trinity College and Emory University.
Cliff was a contributor to the Black feminist anthology Home Girls.
As of 1999, Cliff was living in Santa Cruz, California, with her partner, poet Adrienne Rich. The two were partners from 1976; Rich died in 2012.
(from Wikipedia)
Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism. Her works explore the various, complex identity problems that stem from post-colonialism, as well as the difficulty of establishing an authentic, individual identity despite race and gender constructs. Cliff is a lesbian who grew up in Jamaica.
Cliff was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946 and moved with her family to New York City three years later. She was educated at Wagner College and the Warburg Institute at the University of London. She has held academic positions at several colleges including Trinity College and Emory University.
Cliff was a contributor to the Black feminist anthology Home Girls.
As of 1999, Cliff was living in Santa Cruz, California, with her partner, poet Adrienne Rich. The two were partners from 1976; Rich died in 2012.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 18, 2011
I feel obligated to write a half-ass review rather than the crude jokes I normally post, because this book was pretty awesome and there is only two other reviews. I’ll have to reread this eventually, there’s so much going on in this very slim volume of historical metafiction that I’m sure I’ve missed quite a bit.
Mary Ellen Pleasant was a successful hotelier, abolitionist, civil rights hero, who financed John Brown’s raid on Harper’s ferry. Cliff paints John Brown as merely an ally rather than a leader, and much of this novel is a critique of not only that event, but all school textbook history, the “Official versions for public consumption . . . printed, bound, and gagged, resides in schools, libraries, the majority unconscious. Serves the common good. Does not cause trouble. Walks across tapestries, the television screen. Does not give aid and comfort to the enemy. Is the stuff of convocations, colloquia; is substantiated -like the host- in dissertation." Cliff captures the confusion of history making, the tendency to give credit to one man for the collective actions of many and how storytelling is just as valuable as written history, fairy tales function as ‘an antidote’ to prayers.
There’s a leper colony replaying out the subjugation of indigenous people. Missionaries precede armies, spiritual colonization justifies the actually, then taken over by the United States government and the reduction of people to numbers, ending in propagandist media and the utter indifference of the colonized, now only concerned with superficial distractions like sports. There so much here that is applicable to us today.
Also there was a bit about Captain James Cook. Pretty much most of what I know about Cook now comes from Cliff and Hunter Thompson.
The craziest thing about this book is its pro-Capitalism bent. She cleverly challenges what she refers to as John Brown’s Christian communism, which “saw our people’s experience as somehow ennobling; that we were better than capitalism, since we had been crucified by it.” Cliff cautions against the dangers of romanticizing oppression by viewing it as some form of a divine test,“the notion of suffering into redemption.” Her character correctly points out that African Americans have already paid for capitalism in sweat and blood and what is suggested is the creation of a level playing field through violent revolution for her idea of some sort of honest capitalism. This leads in to question of how much responsibility falls on citizen that support, through inactivity, the laws that keep people in oppressed. I certainly wasn’t taught about John Brown in high school (I did read about him on my own) but I did hear about Nat Turner repeatedly and there was always this slant to it, “oh, how gruesome to kill ‘innocent’ people”, yet the cause itself, is often glossed over and there is hardly the shock at the murder of hundreds of thousands of women and children perpetrated by an entire nation.(Someone please tell me that I just had a shitty history teacher once, rather than this being institutionalized racism feed to children?!?!?)
There’s so much more in these 213 pages.
Malcolm X’s future ghost hangs out in the background.
“I stare at photographs of myself, the only evidence at hand that I exist, am three-dimensional, and I can’t recognize the subject. Who is she?”
Mary Ellen Pleasant was a successful hotelier, abolitionist, civil rights hero, who financed John Brown’s raid on Harper’s ferry. Cliff paints John Brown as merely an ally rather than a leader, and much of this novel is a critique of not only that event, but all school textbook history, the “Official versions for public consumption . . . printed, bound, and gagged, resides in schools, libraries, the majority unconscious. Serves the common good. Does not cause trouble. Walks across tapestries, the television screen. Does not give aid and comfort to the enemy. Is the stuff of convocations, colloquia; is substantiated -like the host- in dissertation." Cliff captures the confusion of history making, the tendency to give credit to one man for the collective actions of many and how storytelling is just as valuable as written history, fairy tales function as ‘an antidote’ to prayers.
There’s a leper colony replaying out the subjugation of indigenous people. Missionaries precede armies, spiritual colonization justifies the actually, then taken over by the United States government and the reduction of people to numbers, ending in propagandist media and the utter indifference of the colonized, now only concerned with superficial distractions like sports. There so much here that is applicable to us today.
Also there was a bit about Captain James Cook. Pretty much most of what I know about Cook now comes from Cliff and Hunter Thompson.
The craziest thing about this book is its pro-Capitalism bent. She cleverly challenges what she refers to as John Brown’s Christian communism, which “saw our people’s experience as somehow ennobling; that we were better than capitalism, since we had been crucified by it.” Cliff cautions against the dangers of romanticizing oppression by viewing it as some form of a divine test,“the notion of suffering into redemption.” Her character correctly points out that African Americans have already paid for capitalism in sweat and blood and what is suggested is the creation of a level playing field through violent revolution for her idea of some sort of honest capitalism. This leads in to question of how much responsibility falls on citizen that support, through inactivity, the laws that keep people in oppressed. I certainly wasn’t taught about John Brown in high school (I did read about him on my own) but I did hear about Nat Turner repeatedly and there was always this slant to it, “oh, how gruesome to kill ‘innocent’ people”, yet the cause itself, is often glossed over and there is hardly the shock at the murder of hundreds of thousands of women and children perpetrated by an entire nation.(Someone please tell me that I just had a shitty history teacher once, rather than this being institutionalized racism feed to children?!?!?)
There’s so much more in these 213 pages.
Malcolm X’s future ghost hangs out in the background.
“I stare at photographs of myself, the only evidence at hand that I exist, am three-dimensional, and I can’t recognize the subject. Who is she?”
April 27, 2013
Free Enterprise is a valuable novel on the economics of slavery and the necessity of keeping one's history alive, even if only orally. One aspect of this novel that I found particularly fascinating was the leper colony scene to illustrate the treatment of indigenous peoples and African Americans. The story is told in almost a dreamlike quality, led by two captivating and dynamic central female characters.
October 29, 2017
Wou. Vaikuttava, ajatuksia herättävä. Kokoelma välähdyksiä todellisuudesta josta en tiedä mitään. Pitää lukea uudestaan joskus, lukea taustoja tapahtumille.
October 3, 2015
Less a novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant and more a collection of interactions, "Free Enterprise" is, nevertheless, an excellent book. Told almost in reverse, it begins with a woman (re)named Annie Christmas, who has made her home on the edge of Carville, LA, near the infamous colony of lepers. From there, a the story of a pair of cousins, Alice and Clover Hooper, is related. The reader is taken on a wondrous, often disjointed voyage that mixes United states and Caribbean history with African Diasporic mythology. Examinations of race, religion, and economy are made. Mentions of the original Annie Christmas, Nanny of the Maroons, and various African gods. The reader is given information about the Arawaks, the Carib, and the legend of John Brown. M.E.P, herself often a "hologrammatical man" as a visitor, who would be known in the future, years past her death, as "Detroit Red." 3.5 stars for failure to remain linear or focus solely on Mary Ellen Pleasant. 4.0 stars for the teaching moments, the lyrical, historic recountings, and generally being a thought-provoking journey.
May 28, 2012
This mesmerizing 1993 novel revolves around two nineteenth-century women. An actual historical figure, Mary Ellen Pleasant is a free black woman, a business owner and an abolitionist. A fictional character, Annie Christmas, is a mulatto who walks away from a privileged life in Jamaica to fight slavery. I can’t remember when I was last so deeply involved in characters in a book. I breathed with these women, listened and walked with them.
http://www.bmorrison.com/blog/free-en...
http://www.bmorrison.com/blog/free-en...
April 5, 2013
Critical Annotation Project
Primary Text: Free Enterprise by Michelle Cliff
Research Question: I would like to further investigate how Cliff uses the formal features like form and language to create plurality within history and to (re)construct the lives of her characters. I am especially interested in her creation (or discovery) of ‘woman warriors’ and how she constructs them in the text.
Secondary Text: Ghostwriting Transnational Histories in Michelle Cliff’s Free Enterprise by
Erica L. Johnson.
(Re)Searches: When searching, I always like to be intentionally vague. It leaves room to uncover the unexpected. It’s especially helpful when you’re not sure what you’re looking for. I started with what interested me the most about the novel (1) how it’s written, (2) the use of mythology and (3) woman warriors. I tried Jstor first just because it’s the database I am most familiar with and has always produced good results. Below are those that appeared most fruitful-
Jstor -> ‘free enterprise’ -> ‘free enterprise michelle cliff’ -> The Art of History -> Fluidity Without Postmodernism -> Add ‘mythology’ -> Front Matter -> Add ‘women warrior’ -> Michelle Cliff and the Authority of Identity
Then when I didn’t stumble across anything that sounded good enough from browsing the abstracts I tried
Project Muse.
Project Muse -> ‘Michelle Cliff Free Enterprise’ -> Ghostwriting Transnational Histories -> ‘michelle cliff free enterprise mythology’ -> ‘feminism Michelle Cliff’ -> Gendered legacies of Romantic Nationalism -> Configurations of Caribbean History
A lot of the results were either book reviews or interviews with the author, ultimately unhelpful. There were also lots of results that featured other works by Michelle Cliff such as No Telephone to Heaven. Unfortunately, the first article I got really excited about, Reconfigurations of Caribbean History: Michelle Cliff’s Rebel Women, focuses on Cliff’s novel Abeng.
Summary:
Johnson begins with a quote from Nada Elias, Trances Dances and Vociferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives. The quote explains that in many disciplines, such as the sciences and poetry, there is a certain amount of guesswork involved. However, only in the histories of women and other marginalized characters is that guess work considered fiction. Johnson follows this epigraph with several quotes from Cliff herself, showing artistic intent and establishing an objective view for the novel. She owns that she had to invent a certain amount of material but likens her piece to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, “she uses on historical event but re-imagines it (Johnson, 115.)”
Johnson then opens her argument that Cliff’s novel and others like it, are actually a form of ghostwriting. She then gives two major points towards her argument. The writers use real but poorly documented subjects and uses literary strategy to flesh out their histories. Secondly, the writers use archival material as referents and shape their narratives to serve historical truth (Johnson, 116.) Specifically, in Free Enterprise, the character of Mary Ellen Pleasant is being fleshed out. There is evidence that she somehow participated in the raid of Harper’s Ferry but she is excluded from the ‘official’ history. Johnson explains these types of historical figures as the ghosts present in history, like the ghosts present in Morrison’s novels. Cliff creates Mary Ellen’s story and in doing so “works as a novelist, historian, and biographer, a combination that produces a framework specific to the genre of ghostwriting (Johnson,17.)”
According to Johnson, Cliff uses many writing strategies and strategies of representation to mold the collaboration between her artistic license and existing documentation of Pleasant, placing Pleasant into a pluralized history. She does this by playing off of undeniable truths in history, ie events, figures and artifacts.
Her first point that “Cliff draws on the adjacencies of various colonial contexts throughout the novel” focuses specifically on the ghosts left behind from slavery. Ghosts are created by violent or criminal acts because violence is often purposely forgotten. The winners tell the tale and the conquered become the haunts of history. Thus by pairing Mary Ellen with the character of Regina, Annie Christmas, she shows the adjacencies of Jamaica and the U.S., (117) two places connected by the slave trade. Pleasants life is shaped by her struggle against ‘the trade’ and those that joined her in stories of resistance (118.) For example, Annie Christmas, Marian Adams, Malcolm X, all make appearances in the novel entering into a give and take with Pleasant showing what one life can lend to another. The lives of her friends and acquaintances not only root her within history but help remember her story through dialogue and letters. Integrating Mary Ellen’s story in with others, showing a wider background of resistance (123)
Cliff further integrates Pleasants story into history through the insertion of historical artifacts such as JMW painting of the Zong and the Shaw Memorial. “The novel presents a powerful pair of visual allegories of historical (re)construction (123) JMW Turners painting and the Shaw Memeorial- connects characters to history. “The thing is behind us. Surely we can enjoy the art it engendered (124.)” “the pronoun “we” is not universalizing but rather encompasses divergent perspectives (124.)” Shaw memorial- sculpt the likeness of missing men
Johnson summarizes the ‘official’ historical information on Pleasant claiming that Cliff bases “her depiction of Pleasant on letters and newspapers from San Francisco’s city achieves and on the unpublished autobiography Pleasant dictated to a ghostwriter in her later years (Johnson, 121)”
This point argues for her main point that Free Enterprise is ghostwritten by proving her point that the story is not all based in Cliff’s imagination but holds similar to history.
Enlarges relationship between Annie and Mary to intgrate Mary into ‘a global mechanism of resistance (125)” – letters
Oral storytelling
Leper colony, dangerous bodies (127) “Cliff also draws on the lotif of plague, quarantine, and contamination in order to invert the very notions of ostracism and marginalization (128), characters share a contaminated space knowledge, mutial understanding
Cliff creates a multi-history, listening to the voices of ghosts and conjectures, then weaves Mary Ellen’s story throughout. Dialogic nature/storytelling, epistolary, historical narration
Insertion of historical artifacts
“a book about the black-centered struggle for emancipation, a struggle which for the most part has been excised from the official record… (120)”
“Cliff ‘rescues’ Brown (131)132 sitaution her character through historical evidence
“This margin -to-center strategy (133.)”
Does not claim to be the one, undisputed history, but rather creates pluralization within history. Quotes Wendy Walters, it is the natural will to take fragments and create something objective and whole- but there too many stories, too many histories for that to be an option (119) –lending to Cliff’s form, gaps, jumpy, switches.
Critical Response:
One of the main draws from this text is that it creates a discussion of Cliff’s work with that of Morrison, which we read earlier in the semester. Johnson draws similarities that I had not before thought of. Morrison and Cliff both come at their subjects through a form of recovery (or rememory), re-imagination and invention. Johnson discusses historical ghosts, people like Mary Ellen Pleasant and those affected by the middle passage that through the crime and violence of marginalization have been forced out of the ‘official’ history. Also, smaller, less obvious similarities like the theme of ‘falling apart.’ The characters of Beloved all share the experience of falling apart as do the lepers in Cliff’s novel. Holding with the integration of these similarities I would also pull in Beloved as source material for my research paper.
Johnson uses many sources that I would like to explore further. For instance, Nada Elia, Traces, Dances and Vorciferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives, Wendy Walters, and NourbSe Philips. I think it’s important when analyzing Cliff to put her into perspective with other authors opinions and their strategies of representation.
I agree in full with the article. This is easy because like Free Enterprise itself the article doesn’t make any sweeping claims, if you agree that the novel is a form of ghostwriting it is hard not to also agree with her main claims: that Cliff uses undeniable facts like people, events, and artifacts to place her characters into history and that she uses strategies of representation such as dialogue, a historical narrator and letters to re-imagine and create a pluralized history.
It is also hard to dispute Johnson because she uses Cliff herself abundantly. In the beginning saying, “No one is more articulate about Michelle Cliff’s work than Cliff herself (115.)” and following with a plethora of quotes on the novel and how it works. There’s no way to argue with an author on their intent.
Johnson also uses full advantage of indisputable truths in her article.
Primary Text: Free Enterprise by Michelle Cliff
Research Question: I would like to further investigate how Cliff uses the formal features like form and language to create plurality within history and to (re)construct the lives of her characters. I am especially interested in her creation (or discovery) of ‘woman warriors’ and how she constructs them in the text.
Secondary Text: Ghostwriting Transnational Histories in Michelle Cliff’s Free Enterprise by
Erica L. Johnson.
(Re)Searches: When searching, I always like to be intentionally vague. It leaves room to uncover the unexpected. It’s especially helpful when you’re not sure what you’re looking for. I started with what interested me the most about the novel (1) how it’s written, (2) the use of mythology and (3) woman warriors. I tried Jstor first just because it’s the database I am most familiar with and has always produced good results. Below are those that appeared most fruitful-
Jstor -> ‘free enterprise’ -> ‘free enterprise michelle cliff’ -> The Art of History -> Fluidity Without Postmodernism -> Add ‘mythology’ -> Front Matter -> Add ‘women warrior’ -> Michelle Cliff and the Authority of Identity
Then when I didn’t stumble across anything that sounded good enough from browsing the abstracts I tried
Project Muse.
Project Muse -> ‘Michelle Cliff Free Enterprise’ -> Ghostwriting Transnational Histories -> ‘michelle cliff free enterprise mythology’ -> ‘feminism Michelle Cliff’ -> Gendered legacies of Romantic Nationalism -> Configurations of Caribbean History
A lot of the results were either book reviews or interviews with the author, ultimately unhelpful. There were also lots of results that featured other works by Michelle Cliff such as No Telephone to Heaven. Unfortunately, the first article I got really excited about, Reconfigurations of Caribbean History: Michelle Cliff’s Rebel Women, focuses on Cliff’s novel Abeng.
Summary:
Johnson begins with a quote from Nada Elias, Trances Dances and Vociferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives. The quote explains that in many disciplines, such as the sciences and poetry, there is a certain amount of guesswork involved. However, only in the histories of women and other marginalized characters is that guess work considered fiction. Johnson follows this epigraph with several quotes from Cliff herself, showing artistic intent and establishing an objective view for the novel. She owns that she had to invent a certain amount of material but likens her piece to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, “she uses on historical event but re-imagines it (Johnson, 115.)”
Johnson then opens her argument that Cliff’s novel and others like it, are actually a form of ghostwriting. She then gives two major points towards her argument. The writers use real but poorly documented subjects and uses literary strategy to flesh out their histories. Secondly, the writers use archival material as referents and shape their narratives to serve historical truth (Johnson, 116.) Specifically, in Free Enterprise, the character of Mary Ellen Pleasant is being fleshed out. There is evidence that she somehow participated in the raid of Harper’s Ferry but she is excluded from the ‘official’ history. Johnson explains these types of historical figures as the ghosts present in history, like the ghosts present in Morrison’s novels. Cliff creates Mary Ellen’s story and in doing so “works as a novelist, historian, and biographer, a combination that produces a framework specific to the genre of ghostwriting (Johnson,17.)”
According to Johnson, Cliff uses many writing strategies and strategies of representation to mold the collaboration between her artistic license and existing documentation of Pleasant, placing Pleasant into a pluralized history. She does this by playing off of undeniable truths in history, ie events, figures and artifacts.
Her first point that “Cliff draws on the adjacencies of various colonial contexts throughout the novel” focuses specifically on the ghosts left behind from slavery. Ghosts are created by violent or criminal acts because violence is often purposely forgotten. The winners tell the tale and the conquered become the haunts of history. Thus by pairing Mary Ellen with the character of Regina, Annie Christmas, she shows the adjacencies of Jamaica and the U.S., (117) two places connected by the slave trade. Pleasants life is shaped by her struggle against ‘the trade’ and those that joined her in stories of resistance (118.) For example, Annie Christmas, Marian Adams, Malcolm X, all make appearances in the novel entering into a give and take with Pleasant showing what one life can lend to another. The lives of her friends and acquaintances not only root her within history but help remember her story through dialogue and letters. Integrating Mary Ellen’s story in with others, showing a wider background of resistance (123)
Cliff further integrates Pleasants story into history through the insertion of historical artifacts such as JMW painting of the Zong and the Shaw Memorial. “The novel presents a powerful pair of visual allegories of historical (re)construction (123) JMW Turners painting and the Shaw Memeorial- connects characters to history. “The thing is behind us. Surely we can enjoy the art it engendered (124.)” “the pronoun “we” is not universalizing but rather encompasses divergent perspectives (124.)” Shaw memorial- sculpt the likeness of missing men
Johnson summarizes the ‘official’ historical information on Pleasant claiming that Cliff bases “her depiction of Pleasant on letters and newspapers from San Francisco’s city achieves and on the unpublished autobiography Pleasant dictated to a ghostwriter in her later years (Johnson, 121)”
This point argues for her main point that Free Enterprise is ghostwritten by proving her point that the story is not all based in Cliff’s imagination but holds similar to history.
Enlarges relationship between Annie and Mary to intgrate Mary into ‘a global mechanism of resistance (125)” – letters
Oral storytelling
Leper colony, dangerous bodies (127) “Cliff also draws on the lotif of plague, quarantine, and contamination in order to invert the very notions of ostracism and marginalization (128), characters share a contaminated space knowledge, mutial understanding
Cliff creates a multi-history, listening to the voices of ghosts and conjectures, then weaves Mary Ellen’s story throughout. Dialogic nature/storytelling, epistolary, historical narration
Insertion of historical artifacts
“a book about the black-centered struggle for emancipation, a struggle which for the most part has been excised from the official record… (120)”
“Cliff ‘rescues’ Brown (131)132 sitaution her character through historical evidence
“This margin -to-center strategy (133.)”
Does not claim to be the one, undisputed history, but rather creates pluralization within history. Quotes Wendy Walters, it is the natural will to take fragments and create something objective and whole- but there too many stories, too many histories for that to be an option (119) –lending to Cliff’s form, gaps, jumpy, switches.
Critical Response:
One of the main draws from this text is that it creates a discussion of Cliff’s work with that of Morrison, which we read earlier in the semester. Johnson draws similarities that I had not before thought of. Morrison and Cliff both come at their subjects through a form of recovery (or rememory), re-imagination and invention. Johnson discusses historical ghosts, people like Mary Ellen Pleasant and those affected by the middle passage that through the crime and violence of marginalization have been forced out of the ‘official’ history. Also, smaller, less obvious similarities like the theme of ‘falling apart.’ The characters of Beloved all share the experience of falling apart as do the lepers in Cliff’s novel. Holding with the integration of these similarities I would also pull in Beloved as source material for my research paper.
Johnson uses many sources that I would like to explore further. For instance, Nada Elia, Traces, Dances and Vorciferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives, Wendy Walters, and NourbSe Philips. I think it’s important when analyzing Cliff to put her into perspective with other authors opinions and their strategies of representation.
I agree in full with the article. This is easy because like Free Enterprise itself the article doesn’t make any sweeping claims, if you agree that the novel is a form of ghostwriting it is hard not to also agree with her main claims: that Cliff uses undeniable facts like people, events, and artifacts to place her characters into history and that she uses strategies of representation such as dialogue, a historical narrator and letters to re-imagine and create a pluralized history.
It is also hard to dispute Johnson because she uses Cliff herself abundantly. In the beginning saying, “No one is more articulate about Michelle Cliff’s work than Cliff herself (115.)” and following with a plethora of quotes on the novel and how it works. There’s no way to argue with an author on their intent.
Johnson also uses full advantage of indisputable truths in her article.
June 10, 2020
Back in April, when the worst thing was still a global pandemic, I heard that my favorite used book store - Rodger's Book Barn in Hillsdale, New York, may it stay open forever - was doing book care packages for customers. So I sent them note with a line or two about my favorite authors and what I was looking to read next, and the next week I had almost two dozen paperbacks on my side table. It felt like magic, a silver lining all the more sweet for being unlooked for.
It's June now. You don't need me to tell you how radically our definition of "worst thing" has changed. But I now know that stack of books is in fact magic, because back in April I asked Karen at the Book Barn to help me remedy a gap in my reading life: 20th century writers of color, particularly women, and so exactly when I needed to read it, Michelle Cliff's Free Enterprise was at my fingertips. It is a transporting and prismatic take on the life of Mary Ellen Pleasant - were you taught about her in school? I sure wasn't - and it reads like it was written this past Monday, not almost 30 years ago. As a white feminist grappling with my own racism, I found indictment, grace, fury, and enlightment in its pages, couched in prose more beautiful than I can tell you.
Don't read it because I'm assigning it to you like homework. Read it because it belongs on your shelf between Beloved and Your Silence Will Not Protect You : revelatory, wondrous, magic.
It's June now. You don't need me to tell you how radically our definition of "worst thing" has changed. But I now know that stack of books is in fact magic, because back in April I asked Karen at the Book Barn to help me remedy a gap in my reading life: 20th century writers of color, particularly women, and so exactly when I needed to read it, Michelle Cliff's Free Enterprise was at my fingertips. It is a transporting and prismatic take on the life of Mary Ellen Pleasant - were you taught about her in school? I sure wasn't - and it reads like it was written this past Monday, not almost 30 years ago. As a white feminist grappling with my own racism, I found indictment, grace, fury, and enlightment in its pages, couched in prose more beautiful than I can tell you.
Don't read it because I'm assigning it to you like homework. Read it because it belongs on your shelf between Beloved and Your Silence Will Not Protect You : revelatory, wondrous, magic.
November 26, 2018
This is the story of two women friends who are involved in the anti-slavery movement, and are supporters of John Brown. I learned a great deal from the book and parts of it were very beautifully written, but overall, it didn't hang together as a novel the way I might have liked. I suspect this is one of those novels that I'm going to perceive in the short-term as ambitious but flawed but also one I may be thinking about for a really long time. Even if this book did nothing more than make me aware of the real-life person of Mary Ellen Pleasant, I'd say it was well worth the read.
February 6, 2020
Gorgeously fluid and fiery and raw, written in juxtaposition and mosaic rather than any attempt at “realism”. But this text alludes to the struggles for cross-racial solidarity, the beauty and pain of hybrid identities, and the powers and pitfalls of stories in ways I’ve never encountered before. This book is a song rather than a text; let it wash over you and you’ll get something from it, even if you don’t understand what it is or how it was transmitted to you.
May 18, 2021
I had to read this book for a class. I was not a fan. I really didn't like it at all. HOWEVER. I can 100% see that this is an amazing book and why people love it. Cliffs writing is so unique and recognizable and beautiful. Which I can appreciate, which is why the rating is a 3.
February 9, 2019
Y'all seriously need to read this!
October 28, 2019
I feel as though the way this was written, a lot of it went over my head, but wow, it's quite striking. I'm glad I read this novel.
March 23, 2021
Confident and confusing.
June 24, 2022
"We all know how history comes down to us, which stories, which versions tend to be passed on." p48
"The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere in between. It usually does." p51
"The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere in between. It usually does." p51
December 3, 2025
3 1/2 stars
September 28, 2019
An incredibly interesting book to read and to get a new look into the historical story of John Brown and Mary Ellen Pleasant's revolt. The relationships between the different characters are fantastically portrayed and it shows how there was remaining tensions between blacks fighting for their freedom and their white supporters. The use of Turner's painting within the novel is incredible in showing these tensions and varying beliefs.
I'm happy to have read this novel in my "Postcolonial literature" class because the professor was able to open my eyes to ideas and movements mentioned in the novel, which I had never learned about in previous history classes.
I'm happy to have read this novel in my "Postcolonial literature" class because the professor was able to open my eyes to ideas and movements mentioned in the novel, which I had never learned about in previous history classes.
December 28, 2013
This is an impressionistic novel about the hidden history of abolition that won't be silenced. It was inspired by a note found on John Brown's body after the raid at Harper's Ferry indicating that a wealthy part-black woman, among other women, had supported and funded Brown, calling for a violent overthrow of their oppressors. There is beautiful language here and history worth telling, but I felt the parts didn't hang together as a whole.
October 15, 2008
How oppression affects both sides in this novel, set during the post-Civil war period.
Read
October 2, 2016"She was a friend of John Brown."
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews