About this project
My project is a creative nonfiction book - tentatively titled You Will Not Be Forgotten - about the people who were enslaved on the plantation where I was raised. The project incorporates essays about the individual people who lived and worked here as well as my own personal reflections about living on this place, the process of researching these individuals, and the legacy of slavery.
Learn about Lucy Nicholas, the nurse for the owner's children, who helped raise them and made herself of such great import that she was buried in the owner's family cemetery and given a full procession of family and enslaved people for her interment.
Read about General John Hartwell Cocke, a man very much divided against himself about slavery and who worked to find a solution he thought viable to free his slaves even while keeping most of them as his property.
Travel with me as I try to make sense of feelings of privilege and opportunity at being raised on a beautiful place that was created on the backs of people who had no choice.
I am seeking Kickstarter support for the research portion of this project which will entail several trips - potentially including one to Liberia - to research the stories of these people as well to try and locate their descendants. The funds would also help support the library-intensive research and travel to and from academic and government libraries in the southeastern U.S.
My desire is to write a book that shows the people who were enslaved on this plantation as people, not just archetypes or statistics, and to explore the vast complexities of slavery as a cultural institution and its legacy in the United States and my life today.
FAQ
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No, it will be creative nonfiction, which is fact-based writing that uses the tools of fiction. So there will be character development and climax and all those good things you learned in your English classes.
Have a question? If the info above doesn't help, you can ask the project creator directly.
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Funding Successful
This project successfully raised its funding goal on December 19.
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Anyone giving $10 or more will receive a hand-written note from me that includes a brief story about the life of one of the people enslaved here.
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Anyone giving $25 or more will receive a signed draft of one of the chapters of the book.
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Anyone giving $50 or more will receive a personally inscribed and signed copy of the book when it is published. Date of publication is tentative.
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Anyone giving $100 or more will receive all rewards as well as a personal invitation to the book release party. Date of publication and book release are, of course, tentative.
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For anyone who gives $500 or more and lives on the East Coast or in Mississippi/Alabama, I will give a presentation on the book - including slide show, sample documents, and signed copies of the book for up to 15 friends.
Project By
Connected as Andi Cumbo (1172 friends)
Andrea (Andi) Cumbo is a writer and writing teacher who lives in Central Virginia. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch Univ., an MA in Literature from Case Western Reserve Univ., and a BA in English and History from Messiah College. She blogs daily at http://www.andilit.com, and most evenings, she can be found with a cat at her feet and yarn in her hand.
