Fiction by Laila Ibrahim.
Elizabeth Wainwright is born on a Virginia planation in 1837 and immediately passed from her mother to Mattie, an enslaved woman who is required to leave her own baby back in the slave quarters and be wet nurse in the big house. What follows is almost a love affair; Elizabeth bonds so completely to Mattie that she cannot bear for them to be separated. And Mattie, although still longing for her home and family, loves Elizabeth too. They are mother and daughter in their hearts, but life circumstances will not allow them to be truly so.
As an aside, the cover of this book spoke to me because I have seen similar images in my own family's photo albums. My white ancestors were lovingly raised by black nannies a hundred years ago. These women were not enslaved, but were likely still overworked and underpaid. Did they too have to leave their own children take care of someone else's? The history of the American South is complicated.
This picture, taken around 1920 in Birmingham, Alabama, shows my grandfather's sisters Ruthe and Sara with a woman also called Mattie. Great-Aunt Ruthe labeled everything in this album herself as an adult; she must have remembered Mattie's name even though she is an infant in this picture.
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