Kalela Williams

Tangleroot is a novel. All of the characters are made up and pulled from my imagination, but they were often inspired by real people or actual circumstances in history. And so it’s a work born of hours and hours (and hours upon hours) of research over many years. As I portrayed the voices and learned to understand the lives of my fictional historical characters, I turned to primary sources (firsthand accounts like letters, newspapers, and diaries); as well as the works of scholars, researchers, and even content creators on social media.

Informing Cuffee’s, Molly’s, Isaiah’s and Euphemia’s Lives and Voices:

The Bondwoman’s Narrative
Hannah Crafts
Edited by Henry Louis Gates

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938
Library of Congress

Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember
Edited by James Mellon

Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South
Stephanie M. H. Camp

Emilie Davis’s Civil War: The Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia, 1863-1865
Edited by Judith Giesberg and Transcribed and Annotated by The Memorable Days Project

Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841-1967: Letters of Rosetta Douglass Sprague
Library of Congress

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Harriet Jacobs

The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimkë
Edited by Brenda Stevenson

Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual
Tyler D. Parry

Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup

Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household
Thavolia Glymph

We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century
Edited by Dorothy Sterling

Informing the Askew Family’s Lives and Voices:

Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern
Jayna Brown

“Coon Songs Must Go!”
Indianapolis Freeman, January 2, 1909

Leon Gardiner Collection of American Negro Historical Society Records
Historical Society of Pennsylvania

The Philadelphia Negro
W.E.B. DuBois

Theater Poster Collection
Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Informing the Dearborns’ Lives and Voices:

Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age During the Civil War
Victoria E. Ott

Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston
Elizabeth Preston Allan

Mary Chesnut’s Diary
Mary Boykin Chesnut

Scarlett’s Sisters: Young Women of the Old South
Anya Jabour

Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth Century America
Karen Lystra

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

Waller Family Papers
Library of Virginia

General and Miscellaneous Research

African Religions and Philosophy
John S Mbiti

Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia
Lynn Rainville

Historic Houses of Virginia: Great Plantation Houses, Mansions, and Country Places
Kathryn Mason

“Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears”
Smithsonian Magazine
Edward Ball

Virginia Plantation Homes
David King Gleason

The Virginia House: A Home for Three Hundred Years
Anne M. Faulconer

Women’s Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present
Edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler

“The Racial Symbolism of the Topsy Turvy Doll”

Julian K. Jarboe
The Atlantic Magazine

Visits of Note:

Sweet Briar Burial Ground (Sweet Briar College)
Amherst County, Virginia

Fairview Cemetery
Staunton, Virginia

Old City Cemetery
Lynchburg, Virginia

Virginia Museum of History and Culture
Richmond, Virginia

Other Works of Interest:

Some of these works were either published after I had finished corresponding research and writing of Tangleroot, or they simply served as inspiration. All of them are part of a complete contextual story that Tangleroot tells.

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Tiya Miles

“at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989,” The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton: 1965-2010
Lucille Clifton

“Coon Songs Must Go! Coon Songs Go On…”
Tyehimba Jess
Callaloo

Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footsteps of Slavery
Joseph McGill Jr.

Content Creators:

I found the works of these scholar-creators to be especially meaningful as I re-researched and rewrote Tangleroot:

Cheyney McKnight
Not Your Momma’s History

Joseph McGill
The Slave Dwelling Project

Johnathan Michael Square
Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom