American Daughters
Huguley continues her interest in highlighting the lives of Black professional women who make a place for themselves in the corridors of American power. Following up her well-received By Her Own Design (about Ann Lowe, the woman who created Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress), this novel imagines the details of a friendship between Alice Roosevelt Longworth (daughter of President Teddy) and Portia Washington Pittman, daughter of Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee University. Little is known about why these women were friends, only that they were, and Huguley finds ample parallels in their life experiences to make a rapport between them not only possible but entirely believable.
They were both groundbreakers in their own way: Alice was an acknowledged political mover and shaker who worked closely with her father and Congressman husband, while Portia, a gifted musician, helped pioneer the arrangement and performance of Black spiritual music at Tuskegee and around the nation. Both had tumultuous marriages, and it is their family life that Huguley (an award-winning author of inspirational romances) chooses to focus on, beginning with their entry into adult life in 1901 and continuing to 1930. This makes her characters emotionally appealing but can sometimes be frustrating because it glosses over the larger effects of institutional sexism and racism on their lives. In particular, we’re often reminded of Longworth’s political genius, but her thoughts are almost constantly portrayed as concerns about what the men in her life think of her. Pittman is a more well-rounded character, a moving example of the talent and genius of the Black intellectuals of the early 20th century whose struggles inspired the Civil Rights Movement.
