quoththegirl 's review for:

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

5.0

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I had read excerpts of this for school but somehow had never read the entire book. It's an absolutely vital work, and should be required reading in high school as far as I'm concerned. I was particularly struck by Douglass's observation that if slavery were truly biblically sanctioned based upon the "descendants of Ham" argument, it would already have ceased to be biblically sanctioned by Douglass's day since white slaveowners were continually raping slave women and thus adding their own bloodlines to that of Ham. In general, his scathing criticism of Christian slaveowners was one of the most powerful parts of the book, although learning of his personal experiences in his own words was also invaluable.