the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction
(2000), which showcases distinguished writers
and many newcomers, and the global So Long
Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and
Fantasy (2004). Hopkinson has also coedited
TESSERACTS NINE: New Canadian Speculative
Fiction (2005), an anthology of Canadian science
fiction and fantasy with Geoff Ryman; developed
a graphic novel, Mr. Fox, in collaboration with
David Findlay; and written two novels, Egungun
and The Old Moon’s Arms.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hopkinson, Nalo. Brown Girl in the Ring. New York:
Warner Aspect, 1998.
———. Midnight Robber. New York: Warner Aspect,
2000.
———. Mojo: Conjure Stories. Introduction by Lui-
sah Teish. New York: Warner Aspect, 2003.
———. The Salt Roads. New York: Warner Books,
2003.
———. Skin Folk. New York: Warner Aspect, 2001.
———, ed. Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Ca-
ribbean Fabulist Fiction. Montpelier, Vt.: Invisible
Cities Press, 2000.
Hopkinson, Nalo, and Uppinder Mehan, eds. So Long
Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and
Fantasy. Vancouver, B.C.: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004.
Elizabeth McNeil
Horton, George Moses (1797–1883)
Born a slave in Northampton County, North
Carolina, Horton, according to William H. Rob-
inson, was “America’s first professional black poet”
(18). He was well known by the male students of
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(UNC). According to DARWIN T. TURNER, who calls
Horton “a black Cyrano,” students “commissioned
him to write love lyrics to their sweethearts” (17).
He earned anywhere from 25 to 75 cents for each
of his poems. Given his popularity with UNC’s
students, Horton arranged with his master to rent
himself out, which allowed him to move closer to
the campus, where he “began something like full
time support of himself by dictating until he could
write and then by writing occasional verses, some
of which found their way into the local newspa-
per” (Robinson, 18), the Raleigh Register. Horton
found favor not only with the students who helped
him and paid him to write his poems but also with
the college president, Joseph D. Caldwell. The
black abolitionists and anticolonizationists also
embraced him. For example, SAMUELS CORNISH
and John B. Russwurm published Horton’s poems
in Freedom’s Journal, “the first black edited, black
controlled periodical in the United States” (Bruce,
165), placing Horton and his work in the vanguard
of the antislavery movement for many years. Wil-
liam Lloyd Garrison, the leader of the American
Abolitionist Movement, published Horton’s poem
“Slavery” in his abolitionist newspaper, The Lib-
erator, in March 1834.
However, it was Horton’s friendship with the
New England–born poet and novelist Caroline Lee
Hentz that enhanced his career as a poet and led
to the publication of his first collection of poems,
Hope of Liberty (1829), in Raleigh, North Caro-
lina, with which he hoped to earn enough money
to purchase his freedom and, some believe, to sail
to Liberia, the American colony in West Africa. He
accomplished neither of these goals. Although he
republished his collection of poems under a new
name, Poems by a Slave (1837), Horton did not ac-
quire the sum necessary to purchase his freedom.
He remained a slave until the Civil War brought
an end to slavery in 1865. Horton published his
last collection of poems, Naked Genius, the same
year. Poetical Works of George M. Horton, the Col-
ored Bard of North Carolina (1845), which includes
a prefatory autobiography, “The Life of George M.
Horton, the Colored Bard of North Carolina,” pre-
ceded Naked Genius.
Horton wrote on a variety of topics, including
love, Christianity, slavery, and liberty. His work
shows the clear influence of Byron and Wesleyan
hymns. “The Lover’s Farewell” and “To Eliza” are
exemplary of the love poems he wrote for UNC
students. In the former, the lover pines because of
unrequited love: “I strove, but could not hold thee
fast, / My heart flies off with thee at last.... I leave
my parents here behind, / And all my friends—to
love resigned— / ’Tis grief to go, but death to stay:Horton, George Moses 255