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STARRED REVIEW

The Water Dancer

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ debut novel is grounded in a profoundly simple truth: A person’s humanity is tied to their freedom.

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Review of ‘The Water Dancer’

Hiram was born into “tasking”—what Ta-Nehisi Coates calls slavery in this beautiful, wrenching novel—but he has always stood slightly apart from the other people who are “Tasked” on the Virginian estate called Lockless. 

The son of an enslaved woman named Rose, Hiram learned early in life that his father was the Lockless master, Howell Walker.…

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