The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines   

The incredible true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to this day—by the journalist who discovered the ship’s remains. 

Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide evidence of the crime, allowing the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts. 

Traveling from Alabama to the ancient African kingdom of Dahomey in modern-day Benin, Raines recounts the ship’s perilous journey, the story of its rediscovery, and its complex legacy. Against all odds, Africatown, the Alabama community founded by the captives of the Clotilda, prospered in the Jim Crow South. Zora Neale Hurston visited in 1927 to interview Cudjo Lewis, telling the story of his enslavement in the New York Times bestseller Barracoon. And yet the haunting memory of bondage has been passed on through generations. Clotilda is a ghost haunting three communities—the descendants of those transported into slavery, the descendants of their fellow Africans who sold them, and the descendants of their American enslavers. This connection binds these groups together to this day. At the turn of the century, descendants of the captain who financed the Clotilda’s journey lived nearby—where, as significant players in the local real estate market, they disenfranchised and impoverished residents of Africatown. 

From these parallel stories emerges a profound depiction of America as it struggles to grapple with the traumatic past of slavery and the ways in which racial oppression continue to this day. And yet, at its heart, The Last Slave Ship remains optimistic—an epic tale of one community’s triumphs over great adversity and a celebration of the power of human curiosity to uncover the truth about our past and heal its wounds. 

This is not a particularly easy read as it deals, in frank detail, about slavery and the slave trade. It, however, eye opening. The history of the Clotilda was something I had never heard about and I cannot imagine a better introduction to this piece of history than The Last Slave Ship. For one thing, the historical research is detailed and written with a narrative voice that makes it understandable. But it also never loses sight of the fact that this is something that happened to people. Their descendants are alive today, living largely in the same area that the ship arrived at. There are social and economic consequences that are ongoing, all stemming back to this incident. 

Ben Raines does something throughout the book that I had heard was frowned upon in journalism: being an active participant in the story. But I can’t fault him for it as it lends depth to the coverage. He cites interviews with the descendants of the people brought here on the titular ship rather than only referring to historical documents (which would be recorded only by one side of history). He also becomes a very real participant by being instrumental in the discovery and identification of the actual wreckage of the Clotilda. The book absolutely starts as a log of the voyage of the slave ship, and by extension a diary of the slavers. But by the end it firmly plants the descendants of those stolen and moved across the ocean to Africa Town at the center. It’s a humanizing look at an utterly inhumane event in American history.

Review by Adam

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

 It’s May, Grand Slam tennis is back! The French Open tennis tournament is in full red-court swing.  I had slated an altogether different book to review this month, Rootless by Krystle Zara Appiah, but this story about a fictional former World #1 tennis player trying to make one final comeback is the perfect book to pair with the Parisian fortnight.  Even if you aren’t a tennis fan, but especially if you are. Even if you haven’t read Taylor Jenkins Reid, but especially if you have.  The French Open tournament itself, the 2nd in the Grand Slam calendar year and the one played on red clay,  even plays a prominent role in the book as an important goal for the main character and as a setting for many chapters.   I hadn’t read any of Reid’s insanely popular books yet (they are always checked out!) but I did enjoy this and will read more of her books now.  This book is her latest, from 2022.  From reading some reviews,  I learned that the titular character,  Carrie Soto, first appeared in Reid’s Malibu Rising as a woman who had an affair with the husband of that book’s main character.  Now she gets her own story. The author has done her homework.  I thought for sure she must have played tennis in high school or college but no, she hasn’t.  In one author interview, she mentioned that prior to writing this book, the most she knew about tennis was how to keep score.   Kudos to her research.  She gets the fundamental details of tennis strokes and the nuances of match strategy right.  In lesser hands, the lack of personal experience could have shortcutted the tennis passages into shallow, unrealistic descriptions and detracted from an all-too-believable, compelling story and character. Though Carrie Soto is fictional, she is an amalgam of what many tennis fans will be reminded of in various real tennis champions:  the beautiful slice and also aloofness (Graf), the grace on the court (Federer),  the competitive fight and determination (in all of them, else they wouldn’t be champions but Sharapova, Seles and Serena may come to mind),  the blonde bombshell celebrity (Kournikova, Wozniaki, Bouchard), the retirement comebacks (Connors, Hingis, Clijsters, Hewitt), all those players who were coached by a family member and the heartbreaking challenges this can create (Agassi, Williams’, Graf, Sharapova, Dokic, Kenin, etc…).  This book was published in 2022, a timely book on tennis retirement in the year of the major dual retirements of Roger Federer and Serena Williams.   (My only quibble with all these researched mixes of biographies is the description of Carrie as both “The Battle Axe” and a superbly graceful player.  Sure,  those descriptions don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but my image of a “Battle Axe”  does not call to mind balletic grace. Federer is graceful. Serena Williams is the “Battle Axe.”  Minor complaint though.)   In her adept storytelling, Reid uses the realistic ebbs and flows and drama of a tennis match to propel the personal and psychological drama in the narrative.  Through the point of view of Carrie,  who could represent any competitor who has reached success at the top of their field, a realistic picture is painted of the lives and pressures (media, mental, personal)  and sacrifices and spirits of champions.  While tennis is just an example, the book uses it to really ask the questions:  What is excellence?,  What is greatness?,  What is success?,  How do you measure these?,  What is joy?,  What is most important?  One of my favorite quotes in the book is from the character of Carrie Soto’s agent who says, “Honor is…. sometimes just a nice word for ego.”  There is a difference between confidence and ego and in that nuanced difference is the mark of an honorable character, or not. How can Carrie cope if she is not perfect?   If she is not winning?  What kind of life can a former top player have when they have to give it up?  The book begins with her on one side of a philosophical divide with her father who has a different measure of success and joy.  That divide leads her to another coach whose philosophy is “being the very best is antithetical to being happy.”  You will read through the story to see if and how Carrie Soto’s philosophy and life will change.  You may even cry at the end.  You may even smile.