Contending Forces


Read by Margaret Espaillat

(4.8 stars; 8 reviews)

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, despite an impressive record of productivity and creativity as a novelist, playwright, short fiction writer, editor, actress, and singer, is an African-American woman writer who has essentially been consigned to the dustbins of American literary history. Though contemporary with Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, Hopkins is only now beginning to receive the kind of critical attention that Harper has enjoyed for a slightly longer period and that Chesnutt and Dunbar have always had. Hopkins had work published in several genres, but her reputation today rests primarily upon Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South, the novel she published in 1900. (Introduction by Margaret) (9 hr 1 min)

Chapters

Preface 5:17 Read by Margaret Espaillat
A Retrospect of the Past 20:01 Read by Margaret Espaillat
The Days "Before the War" 13:56 Read by Margaret Espaillat
"Coming Events Cast their Shadows Before" 29:42 Read by Margaret Espaillat
The Tragedy 21:42 Read by Margaret Espaillat
Ma Smith's Lodging-House 23:31 Read by Margaret Espaillat
Ma Smith's Lodging-House - Concluded 22:20 Read by Margaret Espaillat
Friendship 37:19 Read by Margaret Espaillat
The Sewing-Circle 34:55 Read by Margaret Espaillat
"Love Took up the Harp of Life" 23:44 Read by Margaret Espaillat
The Fair 18:13 Read by Margaret Espaillat
The Fair - Concluded 30:40 Read by Margaret Espaillat
A Colored Politician 27:51 Read by Margaret Espaillat
The American Colored League 19:58 Read by Margaret Espaillat
Luke Sawyer Speaks to the League 13:06 Read by Margaret Espaillat
Will Smith's Defense of his Race 15:47 Read by Margaret Espaillat
John Langley Consults Madam Frances 18:10 Read by Margaret Espaillat
The Canterbury Club Dinner 21:46 Read by Margaret Espaillat
What Easter Sunday Brought 28:39 Read by Margaret Espaillat
The Bitter Arrow 23:50 Read by Margaret Espaillat
Mother-Love 28:40 Read by Margaret Espaillat
After Many Days 37:13 Read by Margaret Espaillat
"So He Bringeth Them into their Desired Haven" 25:00 Read by Margaret Espaillat

Reviews

Lovely reading of the horrible history of treatment of African Slaves and discr…


(4 stars)

Contending Forces by Pauline E. Hopkins. Read by the fine voice of Margaret Espaillat. Espaillat has a lovely mature voice and reads at a human pace. She has one of the best voices of american or Canadian readers for Librivox. Let us never forget the evil treatment of human beings from sub Saharan Africa.However in this book we are informed of the abolitionist movement in England. And by the late 19th century the Boston region being a haven of hope for African Americans. I was dissapointed that the horrible crimes committed against a British former slave owner who moved from Bermuda to North Carolina where the viscious murders and crimes occured, was not further developed upon. One of the most evil Holacuasts ever committed in human history was King Leopold of Belgium's working, torturing, amputating, beheading to death 10 million Africans in the Congo in the late 19th century

First-Rate Reading


(5 stars)

Margaret Espaillat does an excellent job reading this important 1900 novel. The transitions are very good, the diction is always clear, and the dialect is accurate without embarrassing. I can't thank her enough.