Centuria, Volume 1

 

Rating: 3 for the balance between death and love, tragedy and hope

My Thoughts:

Julian is a teenager who sneaks onto a slave ship as a stowaway to get away from his cruel master. His own mother sold him into slavery for a few coins, so he also has a sole survivor instinct that tells him that no one will protect him but himself. But when he is caught on the slave ship and the captain threatens to kill him, a pregnant slave, Mira, offers to share her food with him. For the first time, through his relationship with Mira who mothers him, Julian understands that it is not natural human behavior to sell your children off.

Tragedy happens on the ship. An ancient monster from the deep asks for a sacrifice in exchange for supernatural power. In the end, Julian is left to get to land and take care of Miraʻs baby. As this is a series, more will happen, but what Julian is learning about is the ability to nurture and love Diana, the baby. Along the way, he also learns about the power of a mother's love, as other women take him (and the baby) under wing. In return, he is growing to be someone who has the capacity to contribute and nurture, despite the horrors that happen to him.

From the Publisher:

Sold into slavery by his own mother, Julian has known nothing but pain and brutality. All that changes when, aboard a slave ship, he experiences the kindness and tender touch of a loving person for the first time. But fate has plans for Julian in the bloody awakening of an ancient god who strikes a cruel bargain: an innocent life in exchange for extraordinary powers—abilities he must use to protect a helpless baby in a cruel and violent world!

Caught as a stowaway aboard a slave ship, Julian narrowly escapes death by the kindness of fellow slaves who take pity on him, especially a pregnant slave by the name of Mira. But when the slaver decides to liquidate his holdings, the bloodbath calls forth an ancient god from the sea. A deal is made at the cost of a life and Julian is forever changed, gaining fantastic powers. But even with his new abilities, monsters at sea and on land pose a threat in this dark and dangerous world!

Publication Information:

Author: Tohru Kuramori

Publisher: VIZ Media LLC (February 17, 2026)

Length: 200 pages

AfricanTown

 

My Thoughts:

This novel in verse is a work of fiction created from historical events around the true story of the last American slave ship. Taking a myriad of voices, both animate and inanimate, including the ship,  the poems from their voices reveal a more chilling history because of the way the authors vary the voices. I think it is also so haunting because the poems keep rolling in like a dark tide. I definitely had to stop reading and put it down for a bit. Guess what, the story doesn't get more palatable. The voices, even the ships, are highly personal. As a reader, I feel their fear, There is no redemption. 

Still, this is a great way to immerse readers into the horror of slavery through the eyes of those involved both directly and indirectly. It makes the research that should go alongside this more immediate and present.  

From the Publisher:

Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse.

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered. At the end of the Civil War, the survivors created a community for themselves they called African Town, which still exists to this day. Told in 14 distinct voices, including that of the ship that brought them to the American shores and the founder of African Town, this powerfully affecting historical novel-in-verse recreates a pivotal moment in US and world history, the impacts of which we still feel today.

Denmark Vesey's Garden

Like Sachiko by Caren Stilson, I have been on the hunt for a well researched multi genre mentor text on slavery. The introduction to this book promises just that:

Denmark Vesey's Garden - the first book to trace the memory of slavery from its abolition in 1865 to the present - offers historical context for this contemporary divide. 

This book, on the complexity of black history in America, uses  Charleston, South Carolina to tell a much larger story about race relations.  This extensively researched book covers both what is known and what is normally hidden (or forgotten).   Although this is not for my audience of middle level readers, this is definitely a powerful resource for my social studies colleagues who are interested in bringing into their classroom larger ideas around perspective, historic empathy and the grayness of cause and effect. 

An early digital copy was provided by Net Galley and the publisher for an honest review. 

Atar Gull, a slavery story

Description:

Africa, 1830. Atar Gull, a strapping young slave, finds himself on a certain Captain Benoît's ship, on his way to the West Indies to be sold. This is no ordinary slave. He is the son of one of the great tribal kings, an athlete, a warrior. He will come at a high price, and not just in terms of money. After a long, unimaginably tough trip, Atar Gull winds up in Jamaica in the service of a plantation owner. It is with this plantation owner that his tragic destiny is entwined. This is a staggering adventure narrated through a superb 88-page volume that will be sure to haunt you long after you've turned the last page.

My thoughts:

This story is haunting because I am not sure if there is a hero. Perhaps slavery narratives have no heroes. Perhaps moral centers cannot come from amoral situations. 

I don't want to spoil the story but this kind of haunting is similar to the real actions turned into fiction in Toni Morrison's book Beloved. Margaret Garner, the real slave who becomes Sethe in the fictionalized novel, fled from Kentucky to the free state of Ohio in 1856. When she was set upon by slave catchers, she chose to kill her own child instead of allowing the slave holders to enslave and possibly sell her child. It is this same kind of psychological horror that is part of the slave narrative in Atar Gull as well as in Beloved. Perhaps not before 8th grade.