A review by classiccarissa
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

3.0

I tried to finish but six hours into the twenty-two-hour audiobook I just sort of...gave up. it is so heavy to read. for me, the knowledge that the fourth wall breaks AND several conversations were meant to appeal to the sympathies of white women, which pushed abolition to the forefront of American politics during that period, fell so flat for me. I kept trying to put myself in the headspace of that time, but the references to African-Americans as "creatures" and seeing them constantly stereotyped and othered made that an impossible task. I think this book would be best read (at least for me) in excerpts, accompanied by some kind of annotations, like first-person memoirs of slavery. Have read parts of slave narratives, or accounts from Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs who were enslaved in America, those stories felt so much richer than this one. I tried reading this book as part of due diligence I felt I owed the author since I did a project on her when I was much too young to read the book or possibly understand the concepts within, but I just can't bring myself to finish it.