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<p>In <i>Freewater</i> (2022) by Amina Luqman-Dawson, alternating narrative perspectives enable the reader to experience characters’ thoughts and actions for making freedom in the maroon community of Freewater in the Great Dismal Swamp. This multivoiced historical novel with nine focalizing narrators in third person point of view advances children’s literature through literary innovation and social criticism. <i>Freewater</i> can be categorized as a “freedom narrative,” in the terminology of Karen Michele Chandler (<CitationRef CitationID="CR3">2024</CitationRef>) in <i>Tending to the Past: Selfhood and Culture in Children’s Narratives about Slavery and Freedom</i>, denoting middle grade historical fiction depicting African American characters asserting agency and freedom as they collectively resist enslavement and dehumanization. In <i>Freewater</i>, which earned the Coretta Scott King Author Award and the Newbery Medal in 2023, the destabilizing use of multiple narrators is part of the counter-storytelling provided by this freedom narrative.</p>

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Making Freedom: Narrative Techniques in Amina Luqman-Dawson’s Historical Novel Freewater

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年4月26日

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  • Amy Cummins

摘要

In Freewater (2022) by Amina Luqman-Dawson, alternating narrative perspectives enable the reader to experience characters’ thoughts and actions for making freedom in the maroon community of Freewater in the Great Dismal Swamp. This multivoiced historical novel with nine focalizing narrators in third person point of view advances children’s literature through literary innovation and social criticism. Freewater can be categorized as a “freedom narrative,” in the terminology of Karen Michele Chandler (2024) in Tending to the Past: Selfhood and Culture in Children’s Narratives about Slavery and Freedom, denoting middle grade historical fiction depicting African American characters asserting agency and freedom as they collectively resist enslavement and dehumanization. In Freewater, which earned the Coretta Scott King Author Award and the Newbery Medal in 2023, the destabilizing use of multiple narrators is part of the counter-storytelling provided by this freedom narrative.