Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits
Written by Tiya Miles
Narrated by Allyson Johnson
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree-both native and African American-in the frontier outpost of Detroit, a place wildly remote yet at the center of national and international conflict. Skillfully assembling fragments of a distant historical record, Miles introduces new historical figures and unearths struggles that remained hidden from view until now. The result is fascinating history, little explored and eloquently told, of the limits of freedom in early America, one that adds new layers of complexity to the story of a place that exerts a strong fascination in the media and among public intellectuals, artists, and activists.
A book that opens the door on a completely hidden past, The Dawn of Detroit is a powerful and elegantly written history, one that completely changes our understanding of slavery's American legacy.
Tiya Miles
Tiya Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Cundill History Prize, and the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. She has been awarded more than twenty historical and literary prizes for her books and articles on slavery and race. She is also the author of Ties That Bind, The House on Diamond Hill, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts and Tales from the Haunted South, a published lecture series.
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Reviews for Dawn of Detroit
12 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wonderful borderlands history; as a Canadian fascinating to read how slavery and freedom operated on both sides of the river and all in the context of Indigenous dispossession. Miles is masterful in weaving together this narrative despite the small documentary record.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Though I thought that this book was worth my time, I also can't deny that I found it a bit slight, which is more a commentary on the paucity of material Miles had to work with than on her ability as a writer or analyst. The irony here is that, having started this book as a reaction to exemplary stories about Detroit's role in the Underground Railroad, you can feel the relief when Miles has an exemplary story to latch onto in the form of the experiences of the African-American Denison Family, whose activities really stand out in the history of the Detroit of the Early American Republic. It would also be interesting to know how old hands at the history of the first nations responded to Miles' treatment, as she is as interested in the conditions of "Indian" slavery as she is in African bondage. Apart from that I did wind up wondering who this book was really written for, considering that it has a lot more of the structure of an academic monograph than the average general reader would normally deal with; I see a lot of AP History and Michigan history freshman being assigned this text.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A history of Detroit from the perspective of it's unfree people. The source material about slaves in Detroit is spotty, giving this history an episodic quality, and some of the episodes can't be told in full. That is a bit disappointing for the reader, but doesn't detract from the overall arc of the book. Recommended for anyone interested in the history of Detroit, of Michigan or the Michigan Territory, and of slavery.