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A review by nelsonminar
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs
5.0
Phew, what a book. Read this on the back of Kindred, a fictional slave narrative. Figured I should read a real one to balance it out. Really glad I did.
The remarkable thing about this book is what a well told story it is. It reads like a novel, a coherent and understandable narrative you can read from beginning to end. I apologize if that sounds like weird praise but there's a whole lot of autobiographies (and more than a few novels) that are not that well structured. For a woman suffering the restrictions of slavery from birth to write a book of this quality is a real testament to her brilliance and perseverance.
But no, the real remarkable thing about this book is it exists at all. That a woman enslaved at birth in 1813 could learn to write, and write this book, and get it published, and get it read. To remember all these details with such clarity and then to write them down decades later when she was finally safe and had a hope of getting it published.
Or maybe the most remarkable thing is her ability to describe attitudes and daily life in an understandable way. Her family, foremost. Her fellow slaves. And her experiences of the white people around her.
I'll dwell on the white people since it's what I could relate to most, imagining myself as one of them. Hopefully one of "the good ones". And there's a real variety of white people in her life and she writes with detail, empathy, and absolutely no mercy about all of them. The kind mistress, the monstrous slaver who tried to rape her the moment she was old enough (ie: 13), her mostly useless congressman lover, the whites who helped her escape slavery. There's a really heartbreaking part about 80% through where she's been helped by two or three white people in a row and she confesses that even though they seem nice she can't really let herself trust any white person because so many have abused or betrayed her. She almost apologizes for this! Imagine.
The final turns of the story.. Her precarious freedom in New York completely upended by the Fugitive Slave Act. How awful. Her whole story is awful. And also.. not inspirational, but amazing. Her ability to live, and protect her children, and write this book while suffering the worst abuses of America. It's hard to imagine having that kind of fortitude.
I feel very lucky to be able to read the words of someone who suffered this experience. Never again.
The remarkable thing about this book is what a well told story it is. It reads like a novel, a coherent and understandable narrative you can read from beginning to end. I apologize if that sounds like weird praise but there's a whole lot of autobiographies (and more than a few novels) that are not that well structured. For a woman suffering the restrictions of slavery from birth to write a book of this quality is a real testament to her brilliance and perseverance.
But no, the real remarkable thing about this book is it exists at all. That a woman enslaved at birth in 1813 could learn to write, and write this book, and get it published, and get it read. To remember all these details with such clarity and then to write them down decades later when she was finally safe and had a hope of getting it published.
Or maybe the most remarkable thing is her ability to describe attitudes and daily life in an understandable way. Her family, foremost. Her fellow slaves. And her experiences of the white people around her.
I'll dwell on the white people since it's what I could relate to most, imagining myself as one of them. Hopefully one of "the good ones". And there's a real variety of white people in her life and she writes with detail, empathy, and absolutely no mercy about all of them. The kind mistress, the monstrous slaver who tried to rape her the moment she was old enough (ie: 13), her mostly useless congressman lover, the whites who helped her escape slavery. There's a really heartbreaking part about 80% through where she's been helped by two or three white people in a row and she confesses that even though they seem nice she can't really let herself trust any white person because so many have abused or betrayed her. She almost apologizes for this! Imagine.
The final turns of the story.. Her precarious freedom in New York completely upended by the Fugitive Slave Act. How awful. Her whole story is awful. And also.. not inspirational, but amazing. Her ability to live, and protect her children, and write this book while suffering the worst abuses of America. It's hard to imagine having that kind of fortitude.
I feel very lucky to be able to read the words of someone who suffered this experience. Never again.