quoththegirl 's review for:

12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

4.0

---

A vital contribution to the body of slave narrative literature, this memoir provided a perspective I had heard comparatively little about--a free Black man living in the North who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South, for whom the due process of law actually works for once (albeit slowly and imperfectly), and who is eventually restored to his family. I know the first half of that was fairly common, but the latter half was incredibly rare, so reading about Northrup's legal escape at the end almost had a surreal feel. The descriptions of cotton and cane farming were useful and important, but also a bit dry and hard to follow; I'm sure historians eat up those details, though. The rest was all the more moving for Northrup's restrained way of relating his tragic experiences. I wanted to know what happened to Northrup in later years, but there's very little information, which is suprising since he was quite a public figure for a while after his return. Some have thought he was kidnapped and sold back into slavery again (I can't think of anything more horrible), while others have said that's unlikely since his age would not have made him a tempting sale at that point.