# African Town

**Author:** Irene Latham
**Grade range:** Grades 7–12
**First published:** 2022
**Page count:** 449
**ISBN-13:** `9780593322895`
**ISBN-10:** `0593322894`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/african-town
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse. In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered. At the end of the Civil War, the survivors created a community for themselves they called African Town, which still exists to this day. Told in 1

## Where this book is assigned

### Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction

- **recommended** · 7th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 2023 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)
- **recommended** · 8th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 2023 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)
- **recommended** · 9th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 2023 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)
- **recommended** · 10th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 2023 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)
- **recommended** · 11th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 2023 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)
- **recommended** · 12th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 2023 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)

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