![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() An enslaved woman, Mattie, has just given birth to her own child – a boy named Samuel. Following the tradition and custom of the time, Miss Anne cannot imagine nursing the baby herself – like the vast majority of women born to privilege, she decides to place the baby in the care of a wet-nurse. When the story begins, the plantation owner’s wife, Miss Anne Wainwright, has just given birth to the baby Elizabeth. The novel takes place in the mid-1800s on the Virginia plantation Fair Oakes. Instead, we see the protagonist struggle with and ultimately reject the hateful ideology of those around her. Although optimistic and hopeful, this young adult novel does not shy away from some of the harsh realities of slave life. Drawing on her background in developmental psychology, and in particular in the attachment theory of how babies bond with caregivers, Ibrahim imagines what it might be like for a child to suddenly be exposed to the idea that her most beloved caretaker does not actually count as a full person in the eyes of other adults. The 2014 novel Yellow Crocus by author Laila Ibrahim is set in the antebellum South and tells the story of a white girl growing up in a slave-owning family. ![]()
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