Embedded Files
Julius Lester
To be a Slave is a book to make you angry. It explores many aspects of slaves' lives in America, interspersing direct quotes from slaves with little bits of text that link those into a narrative. These direct voices allow it to maintain one continuous narrative of exploitation while allowing the range and humanity of the slaves to shine through. The book shows wide ranging responses to slavery and how different people struggled to assert their humanity. This means it escapes the danger of oversimplifying and of presenting the slaves as a simple monolith with experiences other to those of the reader, it instead invites them to see numerous human responses to horrific circumstances and for the reader to recognise themselves in those responses.
The quote below jumped out at me as an explanation for why this book is so desperately needed.
To be a Slave covers all stages of a slave's life. It has sections on being taken from Africa, on being sold at auction block - often separated from family, on the plantations, on forms of resistance both internal, spiritual, resistance and the resistance of knives in the dark, and on emancipation and the years that followed.
The secion on the aftermath of emancipation is particularly important as it prevents readers categorising slavery as an abberation of history rather than something with deep consequences in our current societies. Lots of freed slaves talked about freedom without economic freedom being just another form of slavery, and many had to go back to the plantations usually with just an illusion of pay. The quote below particularly moved me, I have edited out the n word which appears frequently throughout the book, it is needed there but felt less so here.
I don't want to spend too much time analysing why particular bits spoke to me so thought I would share a few of the bits that jumped out at me instead:
The frequency, impunity and suddeness of the violence against the slaves.
The sheer market based nature of it. When Lincoln was elected there was a huge rush to sell slaves by those who thought he would abolish slavery and to buy slaves by those who thought the south would win any war. This split up many families and upended countless lives.
The almost matter of fact coverage of horrific events (a little in the mould of Toni Morrison).
The persistent effects of hegmonic cultural dehumanisation - one slave talked about thinking that to run away he would have been stealing from his master.
The resiliance that made most maintain their sense of self in the face of this dehumanising treatment.
The accounts of Washington and Jefferson's treatment and opinions of their slaves and the fact that early in the civil war Lincoln sent slaves who ran away to join his armies back to the plantations.
The frequency of song in maintaining a sense of identity and self.
I really like Tom Keepings' illustrations, they carry a slightly fuzzy sense of sorrow which works really well with the feel of the text. I particularly like the front cover where the exuberance of the auctioneer add to the horror and the sense of slavery done not as a passive but an active thing.
The book would make a powerful and compelling unit of work in KS3, particularly a history one using its focus on primary sources. I will leave you with the dedication which I feel is a perfect way of highlighting the depth and continuity of the impact of slavery.
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