As the story begins, Moinette is a 14-year-old slave on a Louisiana plantation. She is "yellow" (i.e., of mixed race), and has always lived with only her mother in le quartier (slave quarters), but is one day moved into the main house to be the personal handmaiden and hairdresser to the owner's teenage daughter, Céphaline. When Céphaline succumbs to disease, Moinette is only a reminder to her parents of their loss, and without warning Moinette is uprooted from the only life she has known.

Many nights I did not get enough sleep because, while reading in bed, I simply could not stop reading. There are many, many bite-sized sections within each chapter, each tantalizingly entreating, Oh, you know you have time to read just one more tiny, tiny piece! Look how small the next passage is! (repeat 53x) I appreciated the author's skill at storytelling in such a way that I was unable to guess what was going to happen next -- that I was even conscious of this made me aware of how even original plots are often somewhat transparent. A Million Nightingales is heartbreaking, but Moinette also has her triumphs, small and large. ( )

Set in Louisianna in first half of the nineteenth century, this is the story of Moinette, a slave mulatresse (half-white, half-black) and her search for freedom and love. Moinette is the daughter of a slave laundress who can remember crossing the ocean with her mother in a slave ship.

Moinette's mother tells her Moinette belongs to her, but in fact Moinette is sold and sent away around age 14 without a chance to say good-bye to her mother after the daughter of her owner dies (Moinette had served as her maid).

One of the things that interests me about this book is how in Moinette's view white women are only marginally better off than slave women. Cephaline, the daughter of the plantation, loves to learn, but is being prepared to marry someone wealthy in order to bring money into the family. Pelagie, another white woman she serves later in the book, is prevented from living the life she wishes to live as well. White women are sold into marriage.

Moinette tries to run back to the plantation where her mother lives, but doesn't succeed. She is raped twice in the book; the first rape results in a child, but her work takes precedence over childcare, and she doesn't get to spend much time with him. She is later sold again away from the plantation he lives on.

Her third owner, a white man from the northern US, treats her as a human being, and things start to look up. I was a bit afraid at one point that this story was going to have a happier ending than I thought was possible for the time and place, but I needn't have worried. Though the ending was a bit rushed, it did not "pretty up" slavery. ( )

A mesmerizing novel. Following the stream-of-consciousness of the narrator, Straight draws the reader in. The early chapters are like seeing what was happening through a veil of Spanish moss. Part of what slavery means for Moinette, the narrator, is a constant state of uncertainty.

The book is set in first decades of the 1800s in the sugar-cane country around New Orleans.
Although the United States obtained the region in 1803, the planters and their culture remained French for years, making the book a subtle variation of our images of slavery in this country. Moinette is a “gift girl,” the daughter of an African-born mother and a white sugar buyer who visited the plantation. She is very intelligent and observant, as well as full of unanswerable questions and contradictory thoughts. She wonders who she really belongs to: her mother, her owner, the African gods, herself.

I read this book for the “Real Help” group reading the books recommended by the Association of Black Women’s Historians in response to the book and movie The Help. Read the rest of my review on my blog: me, you and books
http://mdbrady.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/a-million-nightingales-by-susan-straight...

Well written, although the use of metaphor while cleverly done is so prevalent it almost seems like overkill. Good historical insight into French Louisiana and slavery as well the social fabric of the times. ( )

One of the best books I've ever and immediately-felt book about slavery to come out in a very long time. ( )