TWICE ENSLAVED

The true story of a woman who escaped slavery twice—and won reparations.

Born in 1820 into chattel slavery “on the wrong side / of the Ohio River,” Henrietta Wood was separated from her family as a teen. (Castrovilla explains that the river separated “Kentucky’s slavery” from “Indiana’s freedom.”) As a young adult, she was given her freedom, but after five years, the daughter of the woman who freed her orchestrated a plot to trick her back into slavery. Kidnapped and put on the slave market, she endured brutal conditions throughout the South until news of emancipation came to Texas. With no means to start a new life other than her own hands, she agreed to work for her former enslaver for pay that never came. So she found other jobs and made her way north with her son; ultimately, she decided to sue the man who had kidnapped her. She won a fraction of the amount she sued for, but it was the largest amount paid in reparations for enslavement. Castrovilla’s efficient lines of verse make for a digestible, fast-paced account, while Robinson’s full color art spreads between chapters add emotion and depth to this layered rendering of a woman who endured injustice after injustice. Though readers will easily read this tale in a single sitting, its lessons will linger.

A testament to the resilience of the human spirit.