Literatures and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations
Making Freedom: Narrative Techniques in Amina Luqman-Dawson’s Historical Novel Freewater
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-26-2025
Abstract
In Freewater (2022) by Amina Luqman-Dawson, alternating narrative perspectives enable the reader to experience characters’ thoughts and actions for making freedom in the maroon community of Freewater in the Great Dismal Swamp. This multivoiced historical novel with nine focalizing narrators in third person point of view advances children’s literature through literary innovation and social criticism. Freewater can be categorized as a “freedom narrative,” in the terminology of Karen Michele Chandler (2024) in Tending to the Past: Selfhood and Culture in Children’s Narratives about Slavery and Freedom, denoting middle grade historical fiction depicting African American characters asserting agency and freedom as they collectively resist enslavement and dehumanization. In Freewater, which earned the Coretta Scott King Author Award and the Newbery Medal in 2023, the destabilizing use of multiple narrators is part of the counter-storytelling provided by this freedom narrative.
Recommended Citation
Cummins, Amy. “Making Freedom: Narrative Techniques in Amina Luqman-Dawson’s Historical Novel Freewater.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 56, no. 2, June 2025, pp. 273–89, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-025-09620-3.
Publication Title
Children's Literature in Education
DOI
10.1007/s10583-025-09620-3
Comments
Reprints and permissions
https://rdcu.be/erE5y