Africaville

September 23, 2019
Inspired by Africville,
a neighborhood in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Colvin’s intriguing and memorable debut shines a light on a little-known black experience: the freed slaves from the Caribbean and U.S. who established a community in Canada in the 1800s. This family saga extends from 1918 to 1992 and focuses on descendants of the Sebolt and Platt families, who are joined when Omar Platt has an affair with Kath Ella Sebolt in 1936 right before his accidental death. She gives birth to a son and leaves Halifax for Montreal to further her education, meeting her future husband there, a white man who adopts baby Omar, renaming him Etienne. Etienne moves to Alabama in the 1960s, passes for white, marries a white woman, and ignores the black side of his family to such an extent that his own son, Warner, doesn’t find out about his black heritage until after his father’s death. Colvin expertly weaves in the subject of owning one’s heritage as Warner comes to terms with his Canadian past and the tragedies that dogged the Sebolts and Platts. The book covers much territory—the black experience in a small enclave in Canada and Etienne’s and Warner’s grappling with their racial identity—and sometimes these varying plots feel like they belong in two different books, making for a novel that feels diffuse. Nevertheless, this is a penetrating, fresh look at the indomitable spirit of black pioneers and their descendants.

October 1, 2019
In his debut novel, Colvin tracks three generations of an African Canadian family hailing from the fictional settlement of Woods Bluff in Nova Scotia, a dizzyingly diverse community founded in the 18th century by itinerant Americans, bold Africans, and rebellious Caribbean blacks. We enter this world in 1918 alongside Kath Ella Sebolt, a bright young girl who soon earns a scholarship to attend college in Montreal. As she drifts away from Woods Bluff, she gets close to Omar Platt, an exiled African American from Mississippi. Kath eventually becomes pregnant with Omar's son, Little Omar. But with Omar out of the picture, and her life firmly set in Montreal, Kath marries a white man named Timothee, who adopts Little Omar as his own. Renamed Etienne, Little Omar struggles with his racial identity. He becomes an academic, has a son of his own, and moves to Alabama, where he and his son, Warner, must reckon with racial realities and their family history. Colvin's storytelling ranges back and forth in time, unearthing his fictional community's history, examining everything from the uses of baby dolls to cure fevers to the origins of the phrase "You're a lying crow." This results in an exploration of how time and migration can change a family and impact its experience of race, but it can also turn the narrative into a confused jumble of incidents. Important characters like Kiendra, Kath's prankster friend whose antics doom her, are too thinly drawn to have the impact Colvin intends. Meanwhile, time that could be used to round out these characters is spent on detours that don't pay off. Colvin's prose can also plod. A scene in which Kath throws a rock to avenge Kiendra's fate means to stun the reader but mostly frustrates. "The rock descends toward the window, moving and tumbling and cutting....A fraction of an inch before the window pane, the rock's leading edge shakes off the last bit of dust, the last length of spider filament, the last bit of rat's hair..." A promising debut that aims high but stumbles.

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November 1, 2019
Colvin plumbs the little known history of African Canadians in this multigenerational family saga . Africaville, settled and populated in the late eighteenth century by the descendants of escaped slaves from Jamaica and the U.S., was a real town in Nova Scotia, bordering Halifax. Colvin follows the travails of the Sebolt and Platt families, including determined Kath Ella Sebolt, who refuses to let any missteps derail her dreams of becoming a teacher, and Omar Platt, the son of two imprisoned Black revolutionaries seeking his own place in a community that would rather forget him. Kath Ella and Omar's descendants wander far from home, losing touch with their race and their community, yet Africaville's rich history will always draw them back, forcing them to confront and celebrate their heritage. Colvin depicts the heartbreaking neglect and ultimate destruction of Africaville by white Canadian governments while also dramatizing the resilience that enabled its residents to survive.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

December 6, 2019

DEBUT Moving magisterially between a windy bluff in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where African Americans settled well over a century ago, and the American South from which their forbears came and to which some of their children returned, Colvin's absorbing and fluidly written debut novel captures an acute sense of ties loosened and rebound. In the early 1900s, Kath Ella, momentarily misled by a friend she looses to tragedy, manages a scholarship to college in Montreal, where she eventually settles with a white husband after having a child with Omar, a boy from her hometown sent to Canada from Mississippi by his imprisoned protester parents for his safety. Son Etienne, adopted by her husband, can pass for white and eventually settles in Alabama, turning away from his African Canadian roots, much as he loved his mother. But his son, Warner, works his way back. The town itself, fractured by various names and incomers, regroups as Africaville mid-20th-century, with Kath's sister Louella among those strongest in maintaining family and tradition. Throughout, the longing to define oneself for oneself vies with the powerful rootedness defined by Africaville, and the pain caused by shuffled-off family bonds is palpable. VERDICT Excellent reading that revives our sense of community while revealing North America's racial complexity in a new light. [See Prepub Alert, 5/20/19.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019

The story of three contentious generations unfolds in a small town in Nova Scotia settled by the formerly enslaved, moving from the Great Depression to Sixties social protest to the economic floundering of the 1980s as Kath Ella, her life shaped by hardship and the continuing prejudice against those with dark skin, sees beloved son Omar/Etienne turn his back on their Canadian town, with grandson Warner drifting further away. But they, too, remained shaped by Africaville in a story that investigates issues of race, identity, and home. Lots of in-house excitement for this debut novel by a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Harvard University, and Columbia University's MFA program; with a 25,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.