Menu
To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner
Next in the queue
52
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
43/100Critics
61/100Scholars
Author:
Carole Emberton
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Date:
March 8, 2022
The extraordinary life of Priscilla Joyner and her quest--along with other formerly enslaved people--to define freedom after the Civil War.
What The Reviewers Say
On every page, in every single story, author Carole Emberton leads readers to learn something they didn’t know or to meet someone new, and it’s done between the facts of history and social mores, presented concurrently with Priscilla Joyner’s story.
... insightful.
... deft and revealing.
Among the most fascinating chapters are those that assess, with remarkable sensitivity, her decadeslong efforts to create a stable family life within emergent Black communities. Emberton’s description of the importance of romantic love for freedpeople, and its relevance to Joyner’s own marriage, is particularly affecting. Another strength of the book is the author’s alternation of commentary on its central figure with analysis of the broader social context in which she lived: the expansion of opportunities for establishing personal autonomy in private and public life, the routine threats posed by those hostile to racial equality, the need for continual resistance to injustices entrenched in the nation’s institutions. Emberton creates an illuminating view of the daily struggles and triumphs that characterized African Americans’ 'long emancipation'.
