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The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico. But for all his obvious riches and his elegant appearance, Eliseo was also the possessor of a devastating secret: He was not, in fact, from Mexico at all. Rather, he had begun life as a slave named William Ellis, born on a cotton plantation in Texas during the waning years of King Cotton. After emancipation, Ellis, capitalizing on the Spanish he learned during his childhood along the Mexican border and his ambiguous appearance, engaged in a virtuoso act of reinvention. He crafted an alter ego, the Mexican Guillermo Eliseo, who was able to access many of the privileges denied to African Americans at the time.
The Strange Career of William Ellis offers fresh insights on the history of the Reconstruction era, the US-Mexico border, and the abiding riddle of race. At a time when the United States is deepening its connections with Latin America and recognizing that race is more than simply Black or White, Ellis' story could not be more timely or important.
- Listening Length9 hours and 29 minutes
- Audible release dateDecember 27, 2015
- LanguageEnglish
- ASINB01GP00BCK
- VersionUnabridged
- Program TypeAudiobook
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Product details
Listening Length | 9 hours and 29 minutes |
---|---|
Author | Karl Jacoby |
Narrator | JD Jackson |
Whispersync for Voice | Ready |
Audible.com Release Date | December 27, 2015 |
Publisher | Tantor Audio |
Program Type | Audiobook |
Version | Unabridged |
Language | English |
ASIN | B01GP00BCK |
Best Sellers Rank | #265,773 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #117 in Mexican History #413 in Historical Latin America Biographies #491 in Cultural & Regional Biographies (Audible Books & Originals) |
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speak on campus, and some of William Ellis' family members were there as well. This is one of those
"you can't make this up" kind of stories. A former slave, who learned the fur trading business, spoke fluent Spanish, whose life is a series of border crossings, racial, national, and cultural. His transformations shows how race is truly a man made construct, rather than an evidence based category.
In Texas Ellis is a black man, in his Wall Street business office he's a Mexican businessman, at times. Cuban His financial success came with a price, which was the severing of ties- at least for a time, to his family, identity and culture. He sent money to family members, but couldn't visit. Ellis is portrayed as an isolated figure, because he can't confide in anyone, his true identity is hidden, no one , not even his wife is aware that he is a black man, a former slave whose mother was forced to have sexual relations with her slave master. The book is also as much about the history of Mexico and the southwestern US as it is about Ellis. The rigid, punitive racist laws in the US contrasted sharply with the Mexican government's stance on slavery, and their struggle with American land grabbing. These stories are necessary strands to the tale that Jacoby weaves in this book. Ellis was an enigmatic, enterprising man with a fascinating life story.