Annotate With Sara

Spanning 300 Years of History, like Orlando and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

No Cookie Cutter Genre for The American Daughters

I thought about genre a lot while reading Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s newest novel, The American Daughters, which releases on February 27, 2024 ($28.00, One World Books). The publisher categorizes The American Daughters as Historical Fiction, which is accurate but inadequate for what this book truly is. The American Daughters reading experience is a multifaceted jewel¹. It shines as Historical Fiction, but also as Fictional Literary Biography, Afrofuturism, Romantic Suspense, Coming-of-Age, and maybe as Bildungsroman too.

Bildungsroman is not a genre term I confidently parade in public, but I do like to try it on in the privacy of my house. Its nearest synonym is “coming-of-age story.” Saying bildungsroman is fancy fun, like I’m playing English major dress up.

Sidenote: I was an English major in the early 2000s, but I didn’t learn the term then. Bookstagram introduced me to it!

The American Daughters Reflections

The American Daughters is set in New Orleans and the city’s surrounding rural areas. The plot follows Adebimpe (Ady)—an educated, enslaved Black-Indigenous woman—in the 1850s and 60s as she comes of age. I love what Maurice Carlos Ruffin did with her character. Ady is special, someone I rooted for and cried for. 

Character Highlights

Ady loves her friends and family fiercely. She resists enslavement her whole life, eventually joining a powerful Black-women led insurgency group. Ady is a writer too! Her journal, the Crisis Notebook, has triumphant, pond-rippling effects on history.

Uncanny Book Synergy: Wildly Different Stories with the Similar Elements

The American Daughters had some intense parallels with Orlando by Virginia Woolf and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. All these books are very different, but share some interesting core similarities (see list below).

The American Daughters, Orlando, and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue all explore

1. The process of writing a biography.
2. Primary source documents within a biographical narrative.
3. Techniques for writing about time passing (all three book handle a 300+ year historical timespan).
4. Queer female love.
5. Feminism.
6. The necessity of artistic expression for self-determination and happiness.
7. Gender roles and civilian involvement in war.²

Possible Orlando Allusions in The American Daughters

My homework—for nerdy funzies!—is to reread Orlando before The American Daughters releases next year. I want to investigate if Maurice Carlos Ruffin directly alluded to Orlando. I felt allusions instinctually, but I haven’t read Orlando since college in 2007. I’m partly spurred to do this investigative reread because the epilogue of The American Daughters pays homage to Virginia Woolf and Ann Petry. (The Street is on my TBR too!)

Thanks to One World Books and Net Galley for an advanced reader copy of The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin in exchange for an honest review.

See my review on The StoryGraph and Goodreads.

1. I annotated jewels in the plot as I read. They came up in Chapters 7, 12, 13, 14, 18, 21, and 23. ↩︎
2. Wars:
   The American Daughters: American Civil War
   Orlando: The Crusades
   The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: World Wars I and II ↩︎