Alabi's World

<p> "Alabi's World" relates the history of a nation founded by escaped slaves deep in the Latin American rain forest. It tells of the black men and women's bloody battles for independence, their uneasy truce with the colonial government, and the attempt of their great leader, Alabi, to reconcile his people with white law and a white God.

Among their only zealous converts was Alabi, who stood nearly alone in his attempts to bridge the cultural gap between black and white-defiantly working to lead his people on the path toward harmony with their former enemies. From the confluence of these voices-set throughout the book in four different typefaces-Price creates a fully nuanced portrait of the collision of cultures. It is a confrontation, he suggests, that was enacted thousands of times across the slaveholding Americas as white men strained to suppress black culture and blacks resisted- determined to preserve their heritage and beliefs.