The Declaration of Independence also expressed high-minded ideals, such as the idea that “all men are created equal” and have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But in Chains, enslaved people like Isabel and Curzon find that American Patriots are, on the whole, unwilling to extend the same freedom to enslaved Black people, who at the time made up about one-fifth of the colonies’ population. In the novel, Isabel reads Thomas Paine’s influential political pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and offered a moral argument for why the colonies must fight for independence from Britain. By its conclusion, the 13 American Colonies had won independence from Great Britain and become the United States of America.

Anderson has been married twice she is currently married to her high school sweetheart.Ĭhains takes place during the American Revolutionary War, which began in 1775 and ended in 1783. Chains, and the other two novels in the Seeds of America Trilogy, have received major acclaim, with Chains winning the prestigious Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Speak, which is about a high school student who is sexually assaulted, is loosely autobiographical-Anderson later published a memoir, Shout, about the sexual violence she experienced as a high school student. She published her first novel in 1996 ( Ndito Runs, about Kenyan Olympic marathon runners) but rose to fame in 1999 after publishing the young adult novel Speak. Following this, Anderson got a job as a journalist working for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Upon her return to the U.S., Anderson attended community college and ultimately graduated from Georgetown University in 1984 with a degree in languages and linguistics. As a teenager, she participated in an exchange program and spent a year on a pig farm in Denmark. Laurie Halse Anderson has loved reading and writing since she was a young child, but she never envisioned herself becoming a writer.

Chains laurie halse