Excerpts from Old Solomon; or, A Slave Family in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Introduction: The Francophone Uncle Tom's CabinThe Overlooked American Francophone Novel Le Vieux Salomon, Ou Une Famille D'Esclaves Au XIXE Siècle (OLD SOLOMON; OR, A Slave Family in the Nineteenth Century), by Charles Testut (1819-92), offers a contemporaneous description of slavery as a global commerce with international causes and effects. The novel's geographic scope, as well as Testut's interest in contrasting the life in the French Caribbean with slavery in the United States, makes Old Solomon an ideal text through which to examine the representation of economic and cultural circulation in the Americas. Old Solomon is a clear response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), with some similar characters and situations, but is more trangressive and violent.