Annotation
"Douglass' Women reimagines the lives of an American hero, Frederick Douglass, and two women - his wife and his mistress - who loved him and lived in his shadow. Anna Douglass, a free woman of color, was Douglass' wife of forty-four years, who bore him five children. Ottilie Assing, a German-Jewish intellectual, provided him the companionship of the mind that he needed. Hurt by Douglass' infidelity, Anna rejected his notion that only literacy freed the mind. For her, familial love rivaled intellectual pursuits. Ottilie was raised by parents who embraced the ideal of free love, but found herself entrapped in an unfulfilling love triangle with America's most famous self-taught slave for nearly three decades."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Awards
2003 Black Caucus of the America Library Association Award
Author Notes
Jewell Parker Rhodes is a professor of creative writing and American literature at Arizona State University.
Characters
| Name | Douglass, Frederick |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Traits | African American |
| Married | |
| Father | |
| Freed slave | |
| Abolitionist | |
| Name | Murray, Anna |
| Gender | Female |
| Traits | African American |
| Married | |
| Mother | |
| Name | Assing, Ottilie |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Traits | German American |
| Mistress | |
| Genre | Biographical Domestic Feminist Fiction Historical |
| Topics | African Americans Race relations Abolitionists Marriage Infidelity Interracial relationships Mistresses Love lost |
| Setting | Baltimore, Maryland New York England |