slave fiction essay

In the aftermath of the Turner revolt and the South’ s iron-fisted response to it, a new generation of reformers in the North proclaimed their uncompromising opposition to slavery. Led by the crusading white journalist William Lloyd Garrison, these abolitionists demanded the immediate end of slavery throughout the United States. Free blacks in the North lent their support to Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society, editing newspapers, holding conventions, circulating petitions, and investing their money in protest actions. Searching for a means of galvanizing public concern for the slave as “a man and a brother,” this generation of black and white radical abolitionists began actively soliciting and publicizing the narratives of fugitive slaves. Southern response to the Turner revolt spurred anti-slavery agitation, including the publication of slave narratives. From 1830 to the end of the slavery era, the fugitive slave narrative dominated the literary landscape of antebellum black America, far outnumbering the autobiographies of free people of color, not to mention the handful of novels published by African Americans. Most of the major authors of African American literature before 1865, such as Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Jacobs, launched their writing careers via narratives of their experience as slaves.

Advertised in the abolitionist press and sold at antislavery meetings throughout the English-speaking world, a significant number of antebellum slave narratives went through multiple editions and sold in the tens of thousands. The widespread, sometimes international, popularity of the narratives of celebrated fugitives such as Douglass, William Wells Brown, Henry Box Brown, Henry Bibb, and William and Ellen Craft was not solely attributable to the publicity the narratives received from the antislavery movement. Readers could see that, as one reviewer put it, "the slave who endeavours to recover his freedom is associating with himself no small part of the romance of the time." To the noted transcendentalist clergyman Theodore Parker, slave narratives qualified ironically as the only indigenous literary form that America, the reputed “land of the free,” had contributed to world literature. To Parker, "all the original romance of Americans is in [the slave narratives], not in the white man’s novel."

In 1845 the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself became an antebellum international best seller. A fugitive from Maryland slavery, Douglass spent four years honing his skills as an abolitionist lecturer before setting about the task of writing his autobiography. The genius of Douglass’s Narrative , often considered the epitome of the slave narrative Douglass's Narrative links literacy and freedom. before 1865, was its linkage of the author’s adult quest for freedom to his boyhood pursuit of literacy, thereby creating a lasting ideal of the African American hero committed to intellectual achievement and independence as well as physical freedom. During the first five years of its publication, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is estimated to have sold at least 30,000 copies, a greater number of sales than Moby-Dick (1851), Walden (1854), and Song of Myself (1855) could have amassed in common during the first five years of their publication.

In the late 1840s well-known fugitive slaves such as William Wells Brown, Henry Bibb, James W. C. Pennington, and William and Ellen Craft reinforced the rhetorical self-consciousness of the slave narrative by incorporating into their stories trickster motifs from African American folk culture, extensive literary and biblical allusion, and a picaresque perspective on the meaning of the slave’s flight from bondage to freedom. As social and political conflict in the United States at mid-century centered more and more on the presence and fate of African Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom expanded the scope of the slave narrative to critique racism. Americans, the slave narrative took on an unprecedented urgency and candor, unmasking as never before the moral and social complexities of the American caste and class system in the North as well as the South. My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Douglass’s second autobiography, conducted a fresh inquiry into the meaning of slavery and freedom, adopting the standpoint of one who had spent enough time in the so-called “free states” to understand how pervasive racism and paternalism were, even among the most liberal whites, the Garrisonians themselves. Harriet Jacobs, the earliest known African American female slave to author her own narrative, also challenged conventional ideas about slavery and freedom in her strikingly original Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861).

Jacobs’s autobiography shows how sexual exploitation made slavery especially oppressive for black women. But in demonstrating how she fought Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl challenges the image of the female slave as victim. back and ultimately gained both her own freedom and that of her two children, Jacobs proved the inadequacy of the image of victim that had been pervasively applied to female slaves in the male-authored slave narrative. The writing of Jacobs; the feminist oratory of the "Libyan sybil," Sojourner Truth; and the renowned example of Harriet Tubman, the fearless conductor of runaways on the Underground Railroad, enriched African American literature with new models of female self-expression and heroism.

In the 1850s, slave narratives contributed to the mounting national debate over slavery. The most widely read and hotly disputed American novel of the nineteenth century, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), was profoundly influenced by its author’ s reading of slave narratives, to which she owed many graphic incidents and the models for some of her most memorable characters. Uncle Tom, she explained, had been inspired by her reading of The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada (1849). Stowe’s novel, in turn, spurred the publication of narratives that promised to out-do her in exposing the full truth about the horrors of slavery. The most famous—and widely read—was Solomon Northup’s ghostwritten autobiography, whose title summed up his shocking story: Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana (1853).

After the abolition of slavery in 1865 former slaves continued to publish their autobiographies, often to show how the rigors of slavery had prepared them for full participation in the post-Civil War social and economic order. A notable example of the post-Civil War slave narrative flowed from the pen of Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, whose Behind the Scenes: or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868) recounted the author’s successful rise from enslavement to independent businesswoman and confidante to the First Lady of the United States, Mary Todd Lincoln. The influence of the slave narrative reaches into the twentieth-first century. In November 1874, Mark Twain broke into the prestigious Atlantic Monthly with “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It,” the narrative of Mary Ann Cord, the Clemens family cook, who had been enslaved for more than sixty years before emancipation. Ten years later, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , ostensibly the autobiography of a poor-white teenager who tries to help an older slave escape, became a major white contribution to the American fugitive slave narrative. The biggest selling of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century slave narratives was Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery (1901), a classic American success story that extolled African American progress and interracial cooperation in the Black Belt of the deep South since the end of slavery in 1865. Notable twentieth-century African American autobiographies, such as Richard Wright’s Black Boy (1945) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), as well as prize-winning novels such as William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), Ernest J. Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1989), and Edward P. Jones’s The Known World (2004), bear the unmistakable imprint of the slave narrative, particularly in probing the origins of psychological as well as social oppression and in their searching critique of the meaning of freedom for twentieth-century black and white Americans alike.

Guiding Student Discussion

What does the title page of a slave narrative tell us?

The title page of a slave narrative bears significant clues as to the authorship of the narrative itself. Subtitles often convey the role that the subject named in the narrative’s title actually played in the production of the narrative. The narratives of Equiano, Grimes, Douglass, Wells Brown, and Bibb, for instance, all bear the subtitle Written by Himself . Though the title page of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl does not name the “Slave Girl” whose life story follows, the subtitle of the book states that it was Written by Herself . Narratives that identify the subject and author of the text as one and the same represent, in the eyes of many scholars, the most authoritative texts in the tradition. Ask students why it would be important for white readers of the mid-nineteenth century to see the Written by Himself or Herself subtitle in these narratives? Why is authorship of one’s own story so important? Students should understand that identifying a slave narrator as literate and capable of independent literary expression was a powerful way to combat a key proslavery myth, which held that slaves were unself-conscious and incapable of mastering the arts of literacy. Students should remember that in mid-nineteenth-century America, where many whites had had little or no schooling, literacy was a marker of social prestige and economic power.

What is the significance of the prefaces and introductions found in many slave narratives?

Typically, the antebellum slave narrative carries a black message inside a white envelope. Prefatory (and sometimes appended) matter by whites attest to the reliability and good character of the black narrator while calling attention to what the narrative would reveal about the moral abominations of slavery. Notable examples of white prefaces to black texts (only a small minority of nineteenth-century slave narratives carry a preface by a person of African descent) are William Lloyd Garrison’s in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Lydia Maria Child’s in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl . In both cases, the prefaces seek to authenticate the veracity of the narratives that follow them. A good question to ask students is, why did these narratives need such prefaces? Would the race or color of the preface writer—both Garrison and Child were white—matter to the slave narratives’ primarily white readership?

What is the plot of most pre-Civil War slave narratives?

Beyond the prefatory matter, the former slave’s autobiographical narrative generally centers on his or her rite of passage from slavery in the South to freedom in the North. Usually, the antebellum slave narrator portrays slavery as a condition of extreme physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual deprivation, a kind of hell on earth. Since most antebellum narratives Slave narratives adapt the rite-of-passage story to propagandistic purposes. were intended to serve a propagandistic purpose—to illustrate in graphic but authoritative terms the hardships of actual day-to-day life in slavery—the focus of most of these narratives tends to be more on the institution of slavery rather than on the consciousness of the individual slave. Students will learn a great deal from some narratives—such as those of Grimes, Bibb, and Northup—about the day-to-day grind of back-breaking agricultural labor that we often associate with slavery. Such narratives are not always as self-reflective as readers today might like. Students should understand that fugitive slaves could not assume that whites were interested in what they thought or how they felt about matters other than slavery.

In studying such narratives as Douglass’s, Wells Brown’s, Jacobs’s, and the Crafts’, students might explore what slavery was like for comparatively fortunate slaves. Douglass, for instance, spent a crucial part of his boyhood in a port city where he had access to information and had the opportunity to learn to read. In his young manhood he had the opportunity to learn a trade and hire his time in Baltimore. Wells Brown, another skilled slave, had the advantage of working primarily as a house servant, not a field hand. So did Harriet Jacobs and William and Ellen Craft. Students could ask themselves why slaves with these comparative advantages were the ones who not only risked everything to escape but then wrote so passionately and eloquently about the injustices of their enslavement.

What is the turning-point in a slave narrative? Is it when the slave resolves to escape or when he or she arrives in the North? How does the slave arrive at the decision to escape? Does the narrator portray a process of growing awareness, dissatisfaction, and resistance that culminates in the escape effort?

Most slave narratives portray a process by which the narrator realizes the injustices and dangers facing him or her, tries to resist them—sometimes physically, sometimes through deceit or verbal opposition—but eventually resolves to risk everything for the sake of freedom.

Precipitating the narrator’s decision to escape is usually some sort of personal crisis, such as the sale or death of a loved one (Box Brown), insults and cruelties too great to bear (Pennington), a dark night of the soul (Henson), or simply a rare opportunity too inviting to forego (Jacobs). Many readers were fascinated by the harrowing accounts of flight featured in some of the most popular slave narratives, such as Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery, Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide (1849) and Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (1860). Douglass, on the other hand, refused to disclose the means by which he made his escape, thereby directly contradicting the expectations of the form he himself had adopted. Why would Douglass make such a decision, knowing his readership wanted to read these kinds of escape accounts (in his post-Civil War Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , he explained how he made his way to freedom)?

How do most slave narratives end? How do they portray life in the North?

Impelled by faith in God and a commitment to liberty and human dignity comparable (some narrators insist) to that of America’ s Founders, the slave’s arduous quest for freedom almost always climaxes in his or her arrival in the North. In some well-known antebellum narratives, the attainment of freedom is signaled not simply by reaching the so-called free states but by renaming oneself (Douglass and William Wells Brown make a point of explaining why), finding employment, marrying, and, in some cases, dedicating significant energy to antislavery activism. Few slave narratives condemn the widespread racial discrimination and injustice that African Americans endured in the North. The Life of William Grimes is a remarkable exception. If students compare the final paragraphs of this autobiography and the last chapter of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to the final scene of Douglass’s Narrative (see below), they will have a chance to compare and contrast three different perspectives on life in the North.

Different Perspectives on Life in the North from Three Slave Narratives

From The Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave, Written by Himself (1825) PDF file . . . Those slaves who have kind masters, are perhaps as happy as the generality of mankind. They are not aware that their condition can be better, and I dont know as it can: indeed it cannot by their own exertions. I would advise no slave to leave his master. If he runs away, he is most sure to be taken. If he is not, he will ever be in the apprehension of it. And I do think there is no inducement for a slave to leave his master, and be set free in the northern states. I have had to work hard; I have been often cheated, insulted, abused, and injured; yet a black man, if he will be industrious and honest, he can get along here as well as any one who is poor, and in a situation to be imposed on. I have been very unfortunate in life in this respect. Notwithstanding all my struggles and sufferings, and injuries, I have been an honest man. There is no one who can come forward and say he knows any thing against Grimes. This I know, that I have been punished for being suspected of things, of which, some of those who were loudest against me, were actually guilty. The practice of warning poor people out of town is very cruel. It may be necessary that towns should have that power, otherwise some might be overrun with paupers. But it is mighty apt to be abused. A poor man just gets a going in business, and is then warned to depart. Perhaps he has a family, and dont know where to go, or what to do. I am a poor man, and ignorant. But I am a man of sense. I have seen them contributing at church for the heathen, to build churches, and send out preachers to them, yet there was no place where I could get a seat in the church. I knew in New-Haven, Indians and negroes, come from a great many thousand miles, sent to be educated, while there were people I knew in the town, cold and hungry, and ignorant. They have kind of societies to make clothes, for those, who they say, go naked in their own countries. The ladies sometimes do this at one end of a town, while their father’s who may happen to be selectmen, may be warning a poor man and his family, out at the other end, for fear they may have to be buried at the state expense. It sounds rather strange upon a man’s ear, who feels that he is friendless and abused in society, to hear so many speeches about charity; for I was always inclined to be observing. I have forebore to mention names in my history where it might give the least pain, in this I have made it less interesting and injured myself. I may sometimes be a little mistaken, as I have to write from memory, and there is a great deal I have omitted from want of recollection at the time of writing. I cannot speak as I feel on some subjects. If those who read my history, think I have not led a life of trial, I have failed to give a correct representation. I think I must be Forty years of age but don’t know; I could not tell my wife my age. I have learned to read and write pretty well; if I had opportunity I could learn very fast. My wife has a tolerable good education, which has been a help to me. I hope some will buy my books from charity, but I am no beggar. I am now entirely destitute of property; where and how I shall live I don’t know; where and how I shall die I dont know, but I hope I may be prepared. If it were not for the stripes on my back which were made while I was a slave. I would in my will, leave my skin a legacy to the government, desiring that it might be taken off and made into parchment, and then bind the constitution of glorious happy and free America. Let the skin of an American slave, bind the charter of American Liberty. From Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) PDF file Mrs. Bruce came to me and entreated me to leave the city the next morning. She said her house was watched, and it was possible that some clew to me might be obtained. I refused to take her advice. She pleaded with an earnest tenderness, that ought to have moved me; but I was in a bitter, disheartened mood. I was weary of flying from pillar to post. I had been chased during half my life, and it seemed as if the chase was never to end. There I sat, in that great city [New York], guiltless of crime, yet not daring to worship God in any of the churches. I heard the bells ringing for afternoon service, and, with contemptuous sarcasm, I said, "Will the preachers take for their text, ’Proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them that are bound’? or will they preach from the text, ’Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you’?" Oppressed Poles and Hungarians could find a safe refuge in that city; John Mitchell was free to proclaim in the City Hall his desire for "a plantation well stocked with slaves;" but there I sat, an oppressed American, not daring to show my face. God forgive the black and bitter thoughts I indulged on that Sabbath day! The Scripture says, "Oppression makes even a wise man mad;" and I was not wise. I had been told that Mr. Dodge [Jacobs’s current owner] said his wife had never signed away her right to my children, and if he could not get me, he would take them. This it was, more than any thing else, that roused such a tempest in my soul. Benjamin was with his uncle William in California, but my innocent young daughter had come to spend a vacation with me. I thought of what I had suffered in slavery at her age, and my heart was like a tiger’s when a hunter tries to seize her young. Dear Mrs. Bruce! I seem to see the expression of her face, as she turned away discouraged by my obstinate mood. Finding her expostulations unavailing, she sent Ellen to entreat me. When ten o’clock in the evening arrived and Ellen had not returned, this watchful and unwearied friend became anxious. She came to us in a carriage, bringing a well-filled trunk for my journey-trusting that by this time I would listen to reason. I yielded to her, as I ought to have done before. The next day, baby and I set out in a heavy snow storm, bound for New England again. I received letters from the City of Iniquity, addressed to me under an assumed name. In a few days one came from Mrs. Bruce, informing me that my new master was still searching for me, and that she intended to put an end to this persecution by buying my freedom. I felt grateful for the kindness that prompted this offer, but the idea was not so pleasant to me as might have been expected. The more my mind had become enlightened, the more difficult it was for me to consider myself an article of property; and to pay money to those who had so grievously oppressed me seemed like taking from my sufferings the glory of triumph. I wrote to Mrs. Bruce, thanking her, but saying that being sold from one owner to another seemed too much like slavery; that such a great obligation could not be easily cancelled; and that I preferred to go to my brother in California. Without my knowledge, Mrs. Bruce employed a gentleman in New York to enter into negotiations with Mr. Dodge. He proposed to pay three hundred dollars down, if Mr. Dodge would sell me, and enter into obligations to relinquish all claim to me or my children forever after. He who called himself my master said he scorned so small an offer for such a valuable servant. The gentleman replied, "You can do as you choose, sir. If you reject this offer you will never get any thing; for the woman has friends who will convey her and her children out of the country." Mr. Dodge concluded that "half a loaf was better than no bread," and he agreed to the proffered terms. By the next mail I received this brief letter from Mrs. Bruce: "I am rejoiced to tell you that the money for your freedom has been paid to Mr. Dodge. Come home to-morrow. I long to see you and my sweet babe." My brain reeled as I read these lines. A gentleman near me said, "It’s true; I have seen the bill of sale." "The bill of sale!" Those words struck me like a blow. So I was sold at last! A human being sold in the free city of New York! The bill of sale is on record, and future generations will learn from it that women were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth century of the Christian religion. It may hereafter prove a useful document to antiquaries, who are seeking to measure the progress of civilization in the United States. I well know the value of that bit of paper; but much as I love freedom, I do not like to look upon it. I am deeply grateful to the generous friend who procured it, but I despise the miscreant who demanded payment for what never rightfully belonged to him or his. I had objected to having my freedom bought, yet I must confess that when it was done I felt as if a heavy load had been lifted from my weary shoulders. When I rode home in the cars I was no longer afraid to unveil my face and look at people as they passed. I should have been glad to have met Daniel Dodge himself; to have had him seen me and known me, that he might have mourned over the untoward circumstances which compelled him to sell me for three hundred dollars. When I reached home, the arms of my benefactress were thrown round me, and our tears mingled. As soon as she could speak, she said, "O Linda, I’m so glad it’s all over! You wrote to me as if you thought you were going to be transferred from one owner to another. But I did not buy you for your services. I should have done just the same, if you had been going to sail for California to-morrow. I should, at least, have the satisfaction of knowing that you left me a free woman." My heart was exceedingly full. I remembered how my poor father had tried to buy me, when I was a small child, and how he had been disappointed. I hoped his spirit was rejoicing over me now. I remembered how my good old grandmother had laid up her earnings to purchase me in later years, and how often her plans had been frustrated. How that faithful, loving old heart would leap for joy, if she could look on me and my children now that we were free! My relatives had been foiled in all their efforts, but God had raised me up a friend among strangers, who had bestowed on me the precious, long-desired boon. Friend! It is a common word, often lightly used. Like other good and beautiful things, it may be tarnished by careless handling; but when I speak of Mrs. Bruce as my friend, the word is sacred. My grandmother lived to rejoice in my freedom; but not long after, a letter came with a black seal. She had gone "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." Time passed on, and a paper came to me from the south, containing an obituary notice of my uncle Phillip. It was the only case I ever knew of such an honor conferred upon a colored person. It was written by one of his friends, and contained these words: "Now that death has laid him low, they call him a good man and a useful citizen; but what are eulogies to the black man, when the world has faded from his vision? It does not require man’s praise to obtain rest in God’s kingdom." So they called a colored man a citizen ! Strange words to be uttered in that region! Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage. I and my children are now free! We are as free from the power of slaveholders as are the white people of the north; and though that, according to my ideas, is not saying a great deal, it is a vast improvement in my condition. The dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own. I still long for a hearthstone of my own, however humble. I wish it for my children’s sake far more than for my own. But God so orders circumstances as to keep me with my friend Mrs. Bruce. Love, duty, gratitude, also bind me to her side. It is a privilege to serve her who pities my oppressed people, and who has bestowed the inestimable boon of freedom on me and my children. It has been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could. Yet the retrospection is not altogether without solace; for with those gloomy recollections come tender memories of my good old grandmother, like light, fleecy clouds floating over a dark and troubled sea. From Narrative of the Life Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845) PDF file I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New Bedford. The impression which I had received respecting the character and condition of the people of the north, I found to be singularly erroneous, I had very strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of the comforts, and scarcely any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at the north, compared with what were enjoyed by the slaveholders of the south. I probably came to this conclusion from the fact that northern people owned no slaves. I supposed that they were about upon a level with the non-slaveholding population of the south. I knew they were exceedingly poor, and I had been accustomed to regard their poverty as the necessary consequence of their being non-slaveholders. I had somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could be no wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north, I expected to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated population, living in the most Spartan-like simplicity, knowing nothing of the ease, luxury, pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such being my conjectures, any one acquainted with the appearance of New Bedford may very readily infer how palpably I must have seen my mistake. In the afternoon of the day when I reached New Bedford, I visited the wharves, to take a view of the shipping. Here I found myself surrounded with the strongest proofs of wealth. Lying at the wharves, and riding in the stream, I saw many ships of the finest model, in the best order, and of the largest size. Upon the right and left, I was walled in by granite warehouses of the widest dimensions, stowed to their utmost capacity with the necessaries and comforts of life. Added to this, almost every body seemed to be at work, but noiselessly so, compared with what I had been accustomed to in Baltimore. There were no loud songs heard from those engaged in loading and unloading ships. I heard no deep oaths or horrid curses on the laborer. I saw no whipping of men; but all seemed to go smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand his work, and went at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which betokened the deep interest which he felt in what he was doing, as well as a sense of his own dignity as a man. To me this looked exceedingly strange. From the wharves I strolled around and over the town, gazing with wonder and admiration at the splendid churches, beautiful dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens; evincing an amount of wealth, comfort, taste, and refinement, such as I had never seen in any part of slaveholding Maryland. Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no dilapidated houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked children and barefooted women, such as I had been accustomed to see in Hillsborough, Easton, St. Michael’s, and Baltimore. The people looked more able, stronger, healthier, and happier, than those of Maryland. I was for once made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without being saddened by seeing extreme poverty. But the most astonishing as well as the most interesting thing to me was the condition of the colored people, a great many of whom, like myself, had escaped thither as a refuge from the hunters of men. I found many, who had not been seven years out of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders in Maryland. I will venture to assert that my friend Mr. Nathan Johnson (of whom I can say with a grateful heart, "I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took me in") lived in a neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the moral, religious, and political character of the nation,--than nine tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot county, Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man. His hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but those also of Mrs. Johnson. I found the colored people much more spirited than I had supposed they would be. I found among them a determination to protect each other from the blood-thirsty kidnapper, at all hazards. Soon after my arrival, I was told of a circumstance which illustrated their spirit. A colored man and a fugitive slave were on unfriendly terms. The former was heard to threaten the latter with informing his master of his whereabouts. Straightway a meeting was called among the colored people, under the stereotyped notice, "Business of importance!" The betrayer was invited to attend. The people came at the appointed hour, and organized the meeting by appointing a very religious old gentleman as president, who, I believe, made a prayer, after which he addressed the meeting as follows: " Friends, we have got him here, and I would recommend that you young men just take him outside the door, and kill him! " With this, a number of them bolted at him; but they were intercepted by some more timid than themselves, and the betrayer escaped their vengeance, and has not been seen in New Bedford since. I believe there have been no more such threats, and should there be hereafter, I doubt not that death would be the consequence. I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop with a load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at it with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It was a happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by those who have been slaves. It was the first work, the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a pleasure I had never before experienced. I was at work for myself and newly-married wife. It was to me the starting-point of a new existence. When I got through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of calking; but such was the strength of prejudice against color, among the white calkers, that they refused to work with me, and of course I could get no employment. * Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I threw off my calking habiliments, and prepared myself to do any kind of work I could get to do. Mr. Johnson kindly let me have his wood-horse and saw, and I very soon found myself a plenty of work. There was no work too hard—none too dirty. I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal, carry the hod, sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks,—all of which I did for nearly three years in New Bedford, before I became known to the anti-slavery world. In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man to me, and inquired if I did not wish to take the "Liberator." I told him I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber to it. The paper came, and I read it from week to week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to describe. The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds—its scathing denunciations of slaveholders—its faithful exposures of slavery—and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution—sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as I had never felt before! I had not long been a reader of the "Liberator," before I got a pretty correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but what I could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt happier than when in an anti-slavery meeting. I seldom had much to say at the meetings, because what I wanted to say was said so much better by others. But, while attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored people’s meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable ease. From that time until now, I have been engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren—with what success, and with what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my labors to decide. * I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking in New Bedford—a result of anti-slavery effort.

Tuesday, October 02, 2018

Writing about slavery in historical fiction.

The Nailers all returned to work & executing well some heavy orders, as one from D. Higinb.m for 30.000. Xd. Moses, Jam Hubbard Davy & Shephard still out & to remain till you order otherwise—Joe cuting nails—I had given a charge of lenity respecting all: (Burwell absolutely excepted from the whip alltogether) before you wrote: none have incurred it but the small ones for truancy & yet the work proceeds better than since George.

Our Shared Responsibility

Writing slavery in historical fiction, 1. don’t sanitize the truth., 2. but don’t glorify it either., 3. remember to write people who are people..

1. Are there two named characters of color? 2. Do they have dialogue? 3. Are they not romantically involved with one another? 4. Do they have any dialogue that isn’t comforting or supporting a white character? 5. Is one of them visibly not magic ?

Understand What You’re Taking On

3 comments:.

Great post. Thought-provoking. I'm writing about blacks and whites in 1952 (but reflecting back on slavery issues). It's tough to write authentically. Thanks for all your observations.

This is very timely to me as I have a friend who was lip-lashed for writing about slavery in her historical novel, by an editor. I am sending her the link. Thanks for this.

I've been considering a story idea that would require involving slavery. I've not done a historically based novel before and the idea of traversing a story terrain with slavery in the thick of its folds has been a bit daunting. I find your tips very helpful as I work through building this story idea out. Thank you very much. And yes, this is now one of my bookmarks for quick reference.

ENGL405: The American Renaissance

Essay on the slave narrative.

The slave narrative can broadly be defined as any first-person account of the experience of being enslaved. Read this introductory essay on the slave narrative as a literary genre.

No experience of enslavement has been as fully recorded as that of African Americans in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite the large numbers of first-person accounts of slavery in the United States – hundreds from the early-nineteenth century (e.g. pamphlet-length documents and numerous book-length texts), significant numbers from the post-Civil War era, and thousands collected through the WPA during the Depression – these resources were commonly dismissed as merely abolitionist propaganda or skewed memories until the late-twentieth century. Over the past half century, however, the slave narrative in its various incarnations has helped reshape our understanding not just of slavery in the U. S. but of American culture and American literature more broadly. At the same time that these narratives are significant for the picture they paint of African-American life and culture (and American life and culture more broadly), they repeatedly emphasize the importance of the individual former slave and his or her struggles against a system that would deny his or her individuality as a human. For the purposes of this class, we will focus on what could be seen as the classic era of the slave narrative, the decades immediately preceding the Civil War when hundreds of such works were produced, including its most popular and most influential individual texts, all part of the larger anti-slavery movement intent on making Americans, especially white Northerners, recognize the true crime of slavery and the essential humanity of those enslaved.

The slave narrative can broadly be defined as any first-person account of the experience of being enslaved. Modern slave narratives, emerging from the transatlantic slave trade of Africans, first appeared in English in the late-eighteenth century with the development of a broad abolitionist movement in Britain. The first slave narratives tended to be short and often focused more on the writer's conversion to Christianity and acceptance of God's grace over the horrors experienced in slavery. The most prominent slave narrative of this period, Olaudah Equiano's The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), mirrors this tendency even as it begins to approximate the more focused abolitionism of later narratives. In his narrative, Equiano narrates being kidnapped from his home in Africa and taken to the new world, producing a picture of Africa as a kind of Edenic region being despoiled by European greed. Over the first half of his narrative, he focuses on his experience as a slave, as he serves during the Seven Years' War on board a British privateer, expecting to earn his freedom only to be sold to a new owner in the Caribbean. He escapes the worst treatment in the Caribbean by becoming a valuable sailor for his owner, eventually accumulating enough money to buy his freedom. Unlike in many later slave narratives, however, Equiano's acquisition of freedom does not become the culminating moment of his narrative, as the second half of the narrative continues, describing his adventures (including his participation in an attempt at exploring the North Pole) and his experiences of racism and dangers of being re-enslaved, foregrounding, in the end, his religious conversion and concluding with him making an economic argument for abolitionism. Equiano's narrative reveals the formal instability of the slave narrative at the time, as it draws on several disparate literary traditions, most notably the Protestant conversion narrative, the related captivity narrative, natural history and travel narratives, and picaresque adventure fictions such as Daniel De Foe's Robinson Crusoe .

Over the course of the first decades of the nineteenth century, numerous former slaves produced published accounts of their lives, often through the help of a white amanuensis, but frequently on their own. As anti-slavery sentiment began to become both more wide-spread and more radical in the 1830s, black and white activists began to seek out more first-hand accounts of slavery's cruelties. Accounts written by the former slaves themselves served an important second purpose, providing evidence of the intellectual capacity of African Americans and thus countering claims of their mental inferiority. These dual purposes came together most forcefully, famously, and influentially in Frederick Douglass's The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845). Douglass had already established himself as a well-known abolitionist lecturer, and, in fact, he produced the narrative largely to counter claims that he had never been a slave. Much of the focus of the narrative, then, is on authenticating his life story, as he provides names and locales and, as often as possible, dates to corroborate his account. The work was immediately quite popular, with seven American and nine British editions appearing over the next five years, and more than 30,000 copies being sold. Douglass's Narrative helped to consolidate the slave narrative as a form, bringing together some of the key thematic and structural elements of earlier narratives into a more unified form, and it thus often serves as representative of the form as a whole. Douglass's Narrative begins with introductory letters from William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, two of the most prominent white abolitionists of the time. The letters attest to Douglass's truthfulness and to the fact that he wrote the narrative himself, at the same time providing readers with a template of the narrative's chief points. While many slave narratives, especially those published by the authors themselves, did not have such introductory frames, they were common to many of the more widely disseminated, longer works. This prefatory material authorized the text that followed, thus empowering the former slave to tell his or her story, but the apparent necessity of such authorization reinforced the former slave's dependence on white power structures and readership.

Like many slave narratives, Douglass's begins with a simple statement of the fact that he was born, an announcement of his existence as a human being. This standard opening of many slave narratives – "I was born" – announces the existence of the slave as a human. But in what follows, he emphasizes all the ways that the system of slavery attempted to deny that humanity and treat him like an animal, by keeping him ignorant of his birthdate, by separating him from his mother and his family, by leaving him naked and assessing his worth alongside that of farm animals. Douglass thus reinforces Garrison's overarching argument against slavery: slavery's chief crime lies in the fact that it "reduces those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a level with four-footed beasts". This point introduces the central rhetorical problematic of Douglass's and most other slave narratives, the need to demonstrate how slavery destroys the humanity of the slaves (and of the slave-owners) while contending for the slaves' fundamental humanity. Douglass, in other words, must at once show how the slaves have been dehumanized while simultaneously humanizing them in the eyes of his readers.

The production of the work itself by the former slave played a central role in this operation. Like many other slave narratives, Douglass's title reinforced that it was "written by himself". In a culture and society that prized literacy as one of the markers of intelligence and within an intellectual tradition that ranked non-literate, non-European cultures as fundamentally inferior, African-American literary production could provide strong evidence of black intelligence, thus rebutting pro-slavery arguments that Africans were intellectually incapable of freedom. That focus on literacy and on writing one's self into existence becomes a central theme of Douglass's and many other slave narratives. Douglass repeatedly recurs to the importance of literacy in his developing desire for freedom and in his actual escape from slavery. He recounts how Sophia Auld began to teach him the alphabet only to be warned by her husband that it was dangerous and worthless to do so, a warning that only spurred Douglass's desire. He then tells us how he used poor white boys in his neighborhood in Baltimore to teach him and how he found an old copy of the The Columbian Orator , a common primer of the time, that he used as his textbook. In describing the impact of the Orator on him, Douglass states that it "gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance". As such, he seems to suggest that literacy helps to consolidate an innate desire for freedom that slavery and enforced ignorance darkens but cannot destroy.

Foregrounding the importance of literacy, Douglass characterizes the slaves who remain illiterate as living in a darkened world where they have only an inkling of the fundamental wrongs they suffer. He furthers this depiction of how slaves are kept enslaved – but not happy – through his account of his time with the slave-breaker Covey. In this episode, Douglass emphasizes how a combination of work, discipline, mental and emotional manipulation, and violence breaks down even the most resistant slave: "I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!" Yet he also emphasizes his individual ability to rise above this dehumanization and to violently resist and re-establish his manhood and his humanity when he resists Covey and proclaims his refusal to be a "slave in fact" no matter how long he might remain a "slave in form". Despite all the deprivations of slavery, some innate human desire for freedom remains. It is in convincing his audience of that innate desire and of the importance of defending that desire that Douglass makes his strongest case to his audience.

As much as Douglass's Narrative provided a template later writers would follow, it cannot stand in for the wide-range of experiences former slaves would narrate and their often very different emphases on the slave experience. In particular, part of the success of Douglass's Narrative derived from its ability to reformulate the already standard American narrative of the self-made man. To an extent that many other slave narratives do not, Douglass emphasizes his own agency in overcoming the trials of slavery, his ability through sheer will and some luck to put himself in a position where he can escape to freedom. Such an emphasis is particularly lacking in slave narratives by women, in which the former slave's relationship to her family, especially her children, tends to be emphasized. For example, in what is now the best-known slave narrative by a woman, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), she foregrounds how familial connections both drive her desire for freedom and curtail her ability to achieve freedom. She also stresses her position as a woman, as the victim of sexual assault, directly addressing Northern white women to work on behalf of their black sisters who receive none of the protection they are supposedly guaranteed. In particular, she faces a different but parallel rhetorical position to Douglass. Like Douglass, she must make a case for her own humanity – and by extension the humanity of all slaves – while also emphasizing the dehumanizing nature of slavery. As Douglass describes how slavery emasculates male slaves, yet he is able to prove his own manhood, so Jacobs explains how slavery strips women of the kind of moral (sexual) protections that Victorian American society supposedly provided. For Jacobs, though, she feels compelled both to apologize for her sexual activity and to use it as evidence of slavery's immorality. While the turning point in Douglass's Narrative is his physical resistance to slavery in the form of Covey, Jacobs's describes how she attempts to escape the advances of her master by having a child with another white man, asking white readers not to judge her by the same standards as other women even as she evidences her place as a true woman through her devotion to her children.

In addition to the different position they take in respect to their audience, Jacobs also differs from Douglass in her emphasis on family and community. Jacobs finally attempts to evade her master – and to convince him to sell her children to their father or one of her relatives – by hiding, for seven years, in the attic of the house of her grandmother, a freed black woman. During this period of hiding, she highlights the torture of being disconnected from her children and her reliance on the support of her family and the broader slave community. While Douglass describes his commitment and intense feelings for his fellow slaves in his first attempt at escape and elaborates the significance of slave songs early in his narrative, his more individual-focused text de-emphasizes the slave community and slave culture in a way others do not. Given the incredible importance of those connections to African-American survival in slavery, it is important to recognize Douglass's relative lack of attention to those areas.

Douglass's Narrative may have been the most influential and popular work of its sort, but many others also found wide audiences, including that by William Wells Brown, another influential African-American abolitionist who would go on to publish the first African-American novel, Clotel (1853). Other popular slave narratives often featured sensational tales and escapes, such as Henry "Box" Brown's account of boxing himself up and shipping himself to the North; William and Ellen Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860), in which the married couple narrates how Ellen passed as a white man with William as her slave in their escape (Wells Brown included a fictional version of this tale in Clotel ); and Solomon Northrup's Twelve Years a Slave (1853), which describes how he, a free man in the North, was kidnapped in New York and taken South. Much of the popularity of these texts derived from increasing anti-slavery sentiment in the North, but recent scholars have begun exploring in more depth the ambivalent psychological, sometimes prurient interest readers may have taken in these texts. For example, slave narratives frequently pushed accepted boundaries in discussing sexual matters, straddling a line of accusing slavery of rendering the South a den of sexual iniquity while drawing readers in through hinting at sexual details largely kept out of respectable literature of the time. Similarly, these narratives' compelling stories of psychological and physical torture, emotional turmoil, and life-threatening escapes could potentially, for some readers at least, overwhelm their political thrust. Finally, many slave narratives made quite sentimental appeals to their readers, attempting to inculcate strong identifications with the slaves by accessing readers' own familial connections, emotional ties, and moral sense of right and wrong. At the same time, though, such emotional connections could become the end themselves, offering a kind of vicarious pleasure of identification and rendering slaves nothing but pitiable victims and thus potentially lessening their political effect.

These possibly ambivalent effects of the slave narrative carry over to some of the works influenced by them during the antebellum period, most notably Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-52), and can be seen as one reason a number of African-American writers began exploring fictive literary forms in the 1850s. Stowe drew heavily on Josiah Henson's slave narrative in crafting her incredibly popular, groundbreaking work. As we will see, however, Stowe's interlacing of a form of racialism with her anti-slavery appeal and her overall characterization of the slaves as largely passive victims has, from its first appearance, been seen as problematic by black writers. For African-American authors writing in the wake of the Civil War, the slave narrative became a foundation to build on, a template of black life, and a model to escape from. For example, Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery (1901), the most famous post-bellum slave narrative, stresses how far Washington – and the African-American people – has come since the end of slavery, in many ways attempting to erase slavery as an influence on black life. Even as it does so, however, Washington's text, as with many African-American fictional works of the era, continues the slave narrative's emphasis on describing and explaining African-American life and culture from a sociological and political framework. For many African-American writers of the twentieth-century, this emphasis seemed somewhat limiting, and slave experience in itself tended to remain in the background in African-American literature until late in the century, when a number of writers began writing what has been called the neo-slave narrative – fictional accounts of slave narrative that grew out of the reformulation of the history of slavery that emerged alongside the Civil Rights Movement. Among the most important works that fall into this genre are Margaret Walker's groundbreaking Jubilee (1966), award-winning works such as Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Edward P. Jones's The Known World (2004), and revisionary, experimental works such as Octavia Butler's time-travelling science-fiction novel Kindred (1979) and postmodern works such as Ismael Reed's Flight to Canada (1976) and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage (1990).

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Autobiography: slave narratives.

Lynn Orilla Scott
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.658
Published online: 26 July 2017

Slave narratives are autobiographical accounts of the physical and spiritual journey from slavery to freedom. In researching her groundbreaking 1946 dissertation, Marion Wilson Starling located 6,006 slave narratives written between 1703 and 1944 . This number includes brief testimonies found in judicial records, broadsides, journals, and newsletters as well as separately published books. It also includes approximately 2,500 oral histories of former slaves gathered by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s. The number of separately published slave narratives, however, is much smaller. Although exact numbers are not available, nearly one hundred slave narratives were published as books or pamphlets between 1760 and 1865 , and approximately another one hundred following the Civil War. The slave narrative reached the height of its influence and formal development during the antebellum period, from 1836 to 1861 . During this time it became a distinct genre of American literature, and achieved immense popularity and influence among a primarily white, northern readership. A few, in particular The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself ( 1845 ), displayed a high level of rhetorical sophistication. With the end of slavery, however, interest in the narratives declined sharply. Furthermore, one consequence of the social and political repression of the black population following Reconstruction was the “loss” of the slave narratives for sixty years. During the last few decades of the twentieth century , scholars recovered, republished, and analyzed slave narratives. Both historians and literary critics came to value their importance to the historiography of American slavery and to the development of African-American autobiography and fiction.

The Early Narratives

The form and content of the slave narratives evolved over the course of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Several eighteenth-century narrators were African-born freemen of high status who contrasted their lives before captivity with their enslavement. Their narratives assailed slavery, especially the Atlantic slave trade, on moral and religious grounds. The narrator's journey through the trials of slavery to freedom was represented in conjunction with his conversion to Christianity and his westernization. Similar to the questing hero of Pilgrim's Progress ( 1678 ), the subjects of eighteenth- and early- nineteenth-century black autobiography reflected Puritan religious values and the popular modes of writing of the time, which included conversion narratives, spiritual autobiography, Indian captivity narratives, and criminal confessions. Most early black autobiographical accounts were dictated to a white amanuensis or editor who selected and arranged the former slave's oral report, “improved” the style and wording, and provided an interpretive context in the preface and in the choice of metaphors that gave shape and meaning to the former slave's story. Consequently, as William L. Andrews has pointed out, in much early African-American autobiography it is often impossible to separate the voice of the black autobiographical subject from that of the white writer recording and interpreting the story.

An important exception to this literary ventriloquism is The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself , first published in London in 1789 . The most famous and influential of the eighteenth-century slave narratives, Equiano 's Life went through eight British editions and one American edition in his lifetime and numerous editions after his death. Equiano's narrative includes descriptions of his early life among the Igbo people of Africa, his kidnapping and enslavement at eleven years of age, and the terror of the middle passage. Eventually sold to a British Royal Navy captain, Equiano was spared the crueler existence of life on a Caribbean or American plantation, and in 1766 he purchased his freedom. One of the most well-traveled men of the eighteenth century , Equiano served in the Seven Years' War in Canada and in the Mediterranean, accompanied the expedition of Constantine John Phipps to the Arctic in 1772 and 1773 , and spent six months among the Miskito Indians in Central America. A strong indictment of the Atlantic slave trade and the evils of human bondage, Equiano's narrative was presented to members of the British Parliament and played an important part in the eventual abolition of the British slave trade. It also served as a prototype for many of the later fugitive slave narratives.

The Antebellum Slave Narratives

By the 1830s slave narratives had undergone a transformation. The African, freeborn narrator had disappeared and was replaced by the American-born fugitive slave narrator who escapes southern bondage to northern freedom. American slavery had not declined following the abolition of the African slave trade in 1807 , as some had believed it would. On the contrary, the growth and profitability of cotton agriculture resulted in increasingly harsh conditions for many enslaved people. In contrast to the earlier narratives, antebellum narratives explicitly indicted slavery as an institution, emphasizing its dehumanizing and hellish aspects. Sold at antislavery meetings and advertised in the abolitionist press, the fugitive slave narratives were an activist literature that developed in the context of a growing and increasingly militant antislavery movement. As a reviewer of Henry Bibb 's narrative wrote in 1849 :

This fugitive slave literature is destined to be a powerful lever. We have the most profound conviction of its potency. We see in it the easy and infallible means of abolitionizing the free states. Argument provides argument, reason is met by sophistry. But narratives of slaves go right to the heart of men.

A number of antebellum narratives went through multiple editions and sold in the tens of thousands, far exceeding sales of contemporary works by Herman Melville , Henry David Thoreau , or Nathaniel Hawthorne . Among the best-selling were A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery ( 1837 ); Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself ( 1845 ); Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself ( 1847 ); Solomon Northrup 's Twelve Years a Slave ( 1853 ); and Josiah Henson 's second autobiography, Truth Stranger than Fiction: Father Henson's Story of His Own Life ( 1858 ). Frederick Douglass 's narrative sold more than 30,000 copies in the first five years and became an international best-seller. Douglass would go on to write two later versions of his autobiography: My Bondage and My Freedom ( 1855 ) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass ( 1881 ; expanded edition, 1892 ). Josiah Henson, who became identified with Harriet Beecher Stowe 's character Uncle Tom, of Uncle Tom's Cabin ( 1852 ), also published multiple versions of his autobiography.

The authors of the antebellum narratives wrote within an established literary tradition. Often written after the fugitive slave's story had been told at antislavery gatherings, the material was honed by repeated oral performance and influenced by the narratives of other slaves. The result is a highly formulaic body of literature with a number of features in common, beginning with the title page, which asserts that the narrative was written by the slave himself or dictated to a friend. Before the narrative proper, and sometimes after it as well, are authenticating documents written by prominent white citizens and editors who describe their relationship to the fugitive slave and testify to his good character and to the veracity of the story. In addition, the introduction often claims that the narrative understates rather than overstates the brutality of slavery.

Following the prefatory material, the narratives almost always begin with the phrase, “I was born.” Then, in contrast with the conventions of white autobiography, the slave narrator emphasizes how slavery has denied him specific knowledge of his birth and parentage. The slave narrator goes on to describe the precarious and dehumanizing aspects of slavery, including scenes where slaves are brutally beaten, sold at auction, and separated from family members. A critical turning point in most narratives describes the slave's desperate awakening in which he determines to be a slave no longer. Following this determination, he plans and eventually executes his escape. Often the details of the narrator's escape are suppressed so as not to compromise those individuals who helped him or to limit the possibilities for other slaves to use similar means of escape. However some slave narratives focus on an adventurous escape such as the Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery in a Box Three Feet Long, Two Wide, and Two and a Half High ( 1849 ). An example is Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery ( 1860 ). The antebellum slave narrative moves from south to north, from rural to urban, and from slavery to freedom. The typical narrative ends with the narrator's arrival in either the northern states or Canada and with the former slave's adoption of a new name.

Themes and Style

Drawing from techniques used in popular historical novels and sentimental fiction, the antebellum slave narratives are episodic in structure, melodramatic in tone, and didactic in their appeal to commonly held moral values. Slave narrators appealed to the religious and secular values of their white audiences, arguing that slavery dehumanized the masters as well as degraded the slaves. They often noted that the most fervently religious masters were the most brutal. Thus, the narratives sought to expose slaveholding ideology as religious hypocrisy and to distinguish the slave as the true spiritual pilgrim. Similarly, the slave narrative appealed to the national values of liberty and equality as stated in the Declaration of Independence. It is the American romance with freedom, in particular, that the nineteenth-century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker had in mind when he stated that

there is one portion of our permanent literature, if literature it may be called, which is wholly indigenous and original.… I mean the Lives of Fugitive Slaves. But as these are not the work of the men of superior culture they hardly help to pay the scholar's debt. Yet all the original romance of Americans is in them, not in the white man's novel.

In addition to arguing against slavery by appealing to the religious and political values of the white readers, the slave narratives are arguments for literacy as evidence of black humanity. European intellectuals had long equated being human—or at least being mentally and culturally superior humans—to having a written language. The value Europeans gave to writing is reflected in a key metaphor of early African-American autobiography, which Henry Louis Gates Jr. ( 1985 , p. xxvii) has identified as “the figure of the talking book.” Gates has argued that early black autobiography is a self-conscious refutation of the European charge that blacks could not write. The direct link between literacy and freedom is a thematic matrix that occurs in all of the major antebellum narratives as well. By the nineteenth century , it was generally illegal and believed dangerous to teach a slave to read and write. A number of fugitive narrators vividly recount their struggle to gain an education despite the prohibitions and denounce slavery's attempt to limit the slave's awareness of his condition and his capacity to learn. In the classic slave narrative, the acquisition of literacy is the precondition for the slave's decision to revolt against his enslavement, and literacy becomes the first step toward mental as well as physical freedom. This process is expressed most eloquently in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself ( 1845 ). Douglass recounts the moment when he first understands the importance of literacy. He hears his master, Hugh Auld , tell his wife, “if you teach that nigger…to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.” Douglass's response is often cited as evidence of the rhetorical art, which makes his narrative the finest example of the genre.

These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought.… I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.… Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instructions, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results that, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.

While the slave narratives provided a voice for black experience, they also circumscribed that voice. The antebellum slave narrator portrayed himself as an objective and representative witness of southern slavery in order to persuade white northern audiences to join the antislavery cause. This narrative stance required that the slave's subjective experience be repressed or in some cases excised from the text. The pressure to speak in representative terms of the slave's experience left little room for the individual voice or for a discussion of the narrator's interior life except as it specifically related to slavery. In her Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Antebellum Slave Narratives ( 1994 ), Frances Smith Foster has argued that “the desire to recognize oneself and to be recognized as a unique individual had to counter the desire to be a symbol, and it created the tension that is a basic quality of slave narratives.” In addition, slave narrators had to be careful not to offend their white audiences, and thus the narratives did not directly challenge the ideology of white supremacy or sharply criticize the northern racism that negatively affected the lives of the fugitive and newly freed blacks.

Women's Narratives

Male narrators and male experience dominate the slave narrative genre. Nineteenth-century cultural prohibitions against women's involvement in the public sphere carried over to the antislavery movement, in which women's “proper” role was of considerable controversy. Of the known slave narratives, women wrote only 12 percent. The first known woman's slave narrative is The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself , published in London in 1831 . Prince asserts herself as an authentic voice of the slave experience when she says,

All slaves want to be free—to be free is very sweet.… I have been a slave myself—I know what slaves feel—I can tell by myself what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery—that they don't want to be free—that man is either ignorant or a lying person.

The finest of the antebellum narratives written by a woman is Linda: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself . Originally published under the pseudonym Linda Brent in 1861 , the narrative was long thought to be a fiction written by Lydia Maria Child . In 1981 , Jean Fagan Yellin demonstrated that it is, in fact, the autobiography of Harriet Jacobs , who did, indeed, write it herself. Employing techniques from sentimental fiction, Jacobs describes her struggle to avoid the predatory sexual advances of her master and to gain freedom for herself and her children. While enslaved women are portrayed as passive victims of sexual exploitation in narratives written by men, women narrators portray themselves as active and heroic agents in the struggle for freedom. Women-authored narratives also tend to place a greater emphasis on the role of family relationships.

Postbellum Narratives and Beyond

Following the Civil War, newly freed blacks wrote autobiographies that clearly borrowed from the conventions of the antebellum narratives; however, the emphasis and purposes of these autobiographies were different. After 1865 slave narratives argued for full participation of black Americans in the new postwar society and therefore downplayed the past horrors of slavery. As William L. Andrews has stated in To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865 ( 1986 ), narratives written during this period depicted slavery “as a kind of crucible in which the resilience, industry, and ingenuity of the slave was tested and ultimately validated.” An early example of a Reconstruction-era slave narrative is Elizabeth Keckley 's Behind the Scenes; Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House ( 1868 ). The most famous slave narrative of this post-Reconstruction period, Booker T. Washington 's Up From Slavery ( 1901 ), is a classic success story that testifies to black economic progress and promotes interracial cooperation.

The influence of slave narratives on American literature should not be underestimated. Harriet Beecher Stowe's enormously popular novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin ( 1852 ), was directly influenced by a number of slave narratives that Stowe had read before writing her novel. White authors were not only influenced by slave narratives; a few composed fraudulent ones and attempted to pass them off as genuine. Richard Hildreth 's The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore ( 1836 ) and Mattie Griffiths 's Autobiography of a Female Slave ( 1857 ) are such imitations. However, scholars have been most interested in the influence of the slave narrative on the African-American literary tradition. Vernon Loggins , Arna Bontemps , Henry Louis Gates Jr. , Robert B. Stepto , Joanne M. Braxton , and several other scholars have long argued that the antebellum slave narrative is the foundation of African-American autobiography and fiction.

A number of twentieth-century classics of African-American literature, including Richard Wright 's Black Boy ( 1945 ), Ralph Ellison 's Invisible Man ( 1952 ), Alex Haley 's The Autobiography of Malcolm X ( 1965 ), Maya Angelou 's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ( 1969 ), and Alice Walker 's The Color Purple ( 1982 ) contain many of the formal patterns and thematic concerns of the slave narrative. These patterns include the movement from south to north, from slavery or neoslavery to freedom, and from perceptual blindness to enlightenment or illiteracy to literacy. Like the slave narratives, these twentieth-century works provide a sharp critique of the effects of racial injustice and challenge America to live up to its stated values of freedom and equality. A number of twentieth-century African-American writers are interested in reimagining slavery in ways that give voice to the kinds of subjective and psychological experience repressed in the slave narrative. Examples of these neo-slave narratives include Ernest Gaines 's novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman ( 1971 ), Ishmael Reed 's parody of the slave narrative Flight to Canada ( 1976 ), Octavia E. Butler 's science-fiction novel Kindred ( 1979 ), Sherley Anne Williams 's novel Dessa Rose ( 1986 ), Toni Morrison 's novel Beloved ( 1987 ), and Charles Johnson 's novel Middle Passage ( 1990 ). As a form that embodies the collective experience of an oppressed people and the individual struggle to control one's own destiny, the slave narrative genre continues to offer a rich vein of exploration for contemporary African-American writers.

See also Autobiography: General Essay ; Haley's Autobiography of Malcolm X ; Douglass, Frederick ; and Stowe, Harriet Beecher .

The freedom to remember: narrative, slavery, and gender in contemporary Black women's fiction

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Nicole M Gipson

Nicole M Gipson PhD

In 1780, my ancestor Marguerite escaped the Guillory plantation in Opelousas in the Louisiana Territory. She traveled over two hundred kilometers and arrived in New Orleans where she became a free woman. Now within her rights and despite her illiteracy, she sued her former owners for the freedom of her four children - and won. This memoir deals with both the historical Marguerite and her legal battles for freedom for herself and her children and picks up her fictional avatar, 'Binta' where the facts leave off.

SMART M O V E S J O U R N A L IJELLH

Abstract Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) is a modern day rendition of the nineteenth-century genre of the slave narrative. This fictionalized narrative, based on the true story of Margaret Garner, a slave woman from Kentucky, falls under the rubric of the neoslave narrative. This new literary form is developed by the twentieth-century writers to engage their historical and literary past. The paper analyses how Morrison’s Beloved as a twentieth-century “slave narrative” re-reads nineteenth-century female slave author Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and fills up the silences left in the work of the earlier Black woman. This text is not the simple renewal of the nineteenth-century narrative as it revises and recreates the concept of sexuality and motherhood, two vital concerns of Black women. Keywords: Slave narrative, sexuality, motherhood, recreates.

The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery: Biocapitalism and Black Feminism's Philosophy of History

Alys Eve Weinbaum

Markus Nehl

Markus Nehl focuses on black authors who, from a 21st-century perspective, revisit slavery in the U.S., Ghana, South Africa, Canada and Jamaica. Nehl's provocative readings of Toni Morrison's A Mercy, Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother, Yvette Christiansë's Unconfessed, Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes and Marlon James's The Book of Night Women delineate how these texts engage in a fruitful dialogue with African diaspora theory about the complex relation between the local and transnational and the enduring effects of slavery. Reflecting on the ethics of narration, this study is particularly attentive to the risks of representing anti-black violence and to the intricacies involved in (re-)appropriating slavery's archive.

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Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies.

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Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction

Around that same time, my father got a subscription to The New Yorker . (For the cartoons. I’m serious.) I remember one cover had something to do with Malcolm X , and there were these small illustrations of white faces on it, with the words “white devil” floating around them. I saw this magazine in the bathroom a few times a day for a week, and it stung and confused me every time. I didn’t understand it. Why were they devils? Was that even okay to say? Was I a white devil? What the hell did I do?

The next year, I went to junior high in west L.A., a bigger and far more racially diverse school than the one I had graduated from. Because everyone was different at this school, because I was different, I began to truly understand what difference meant. People sometimes identified me as “white girl” in the hallways, and it made sense. After all, I was white. Really white: I burned easily, I wore Converse and shorts from the Gap, and my parents listened to The Grateful Dead . Twice I was asked, snickering, if my name was Becky. I learned some Spanish slang. I learned that some kids went to school on Saturday, to master their parents’ native tongues. A boy in English class pointed out that Black History month was the shortest month of the year–and that blew my mind. It had never occurred to me.

It was at this school, with my sense of self and the world all shook up, that I read Roots . Haley called his book “faction”–fiction mixed with fact, and later genealogists debunked his claim that the book told his actual family history. None of that mattered to me then–or matters now. My teacher had assigned it as a novel, and like all good fiction, it felt authentic. I devoured the book, and I couldn’t get it off my mind. I can still remember how I felt reading the section on the slave ship, Kunta Kinte packed in with hundreds of other slaves: the darkness, the suffering, the stench of bodies. I had learned about the Middle Passage in school, but it wasn’t until it was translated into narrative that it affected me so. I was appalled and frightened by a history I already knew, for the story of slavery is far more powerful than a “unit” on it.

In the eighth grade, I began to understand that I, and every American, had inherited something shameful. I began to connect race to history to power, and it was all because of a book.

2. Reading narrative requires empathy. The character’s perspective becomes your own, and through this relationship you begin to feel as another person would. As I read Roots , I felt what Kunta Kinte felt, saw what he saw, and by becoming him, I understood intimately the horrors of slavery. It’s why nonfiction slave narratives, like those of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass , were so important to the abolitionist movement, and why fictional slave narratives persist today.

But stories also require complicity: the reader participates in the action of the story simply by imagining and interpreting it. As Zadie Smith points out in this short interview :

Fiction is like a hypothetical area in which to act. That’s what Aristotle thought—that fictional narrative was a place to imagine what you would do in this, that, or the other situation. I believe that, and it’s what I love most about fiction.

I agree with Smith here, and it’s why I don’t like books that make that arena of ethics too simplistic. I don’t need my characters to be heroic; in fact, I prefer them not to be. Their choices should be difficult, their situations complicated, and if they emerge from events unaffected or unscathed, then they do not seem authentic. They stop mattering to me.

But what if a novel’s “hypothetical area in which to act” is a historical landscape that places pressures on its characters that we haven’t experienced ourselves? What if that landscape is the antebellum South? My empathy is immediately ignited by these stories, but so too is my complicity. As a white reader, I’m simultaneously made to understand the experience of slavery, and I also must wrestle with how I’m implicated in that past. For although I identify with the book’s main characters, there’s another part of my brain that knows I can’t. If this book were made into a movie, I think, I’d look more like the overseer’s wife than the protagonist . I know I’m not the only one who’s experienced that awful feeling. On goodreads a few months ago, some dolt wrote that he hated books about slavery because, and I paraphrase: “I wasn’t the one to rape your great, great, great grandmother!” In other words, it wasn’t his fault slavery happened, he didn’t want to hear any more about it. And that’s the thing: slave narratives keep us hearing about it, they keep that chain between the past and the present alive. For me, reading one can be complicated and uncomfortable business, and it’s partly why I continue to seek them out.

3. But only partly. In Victor La Valle’s Year in Reading post , he wrote:

I don’t know about you, but when I read that book takes place during slavery my defenses go up immediately. It’s going to be “serious” and “important” and “teach us something” and….oh, I’m sorry, I almost fell asleep.

He’s right–“serious” and “important” are sometimes just synonyms for “boring.” But good books about slavery are readable, very much so. Is it wrong to say they’re entertaining? Well, they can be. This isn’t “tea towel” fiction, it’s fiction where the stakes are high, and people’s lives are at risk. There are secrets. There is real fear. The power dynamics between characters are complicated and fascinating, or they should be. People are fighting for a sliver of self that isn’t owned and denigrated by another person, and that makes me care and keeps me turning the pages.

What research on the subject Jones undertook was, in fact, quickly derailed after he happened upon an account of a white slave owner who spent her days abusing one of her black slaves, a little girl, by beating her head against a wall. “If I had wanted to tell the whole story of slavery, Americans couldn’t have taken that,” Jones told an interviewer. “People want to think that there was slavery, and then we got beyond it. People don’t want to hear that a woman would take a child and bang her head against the wall day after day. It’s nice that I didn’t read all those books. What I would have had to put down is far, far harsher and bleaker.

Marlon James, on the other hand, did seem to read all of those books, and his novel faces those harsh realities head on. But Jones and James’ books are similar in that their characters are multidimensional, no matter their race, and the smallest dramas are specific and deeply felt, which makes these historical backdrops all the more real for a contemporary reader. In the Book of Night Women , for instance, Lilith becomes romantically involved with her Irish overseer, Quinn. He believes, as an Irishman, that he understands oppression as she does, but she knows that can’t be (and we, as readers of this narrative, know it, too). Their relationship is tender and sexy at times, and weird and upsetting at others. And usually it’s all of those qualities simultaneously, and you feel at once turned on, repelled, skeptical, nervous, grateful and vulnerable.

Dana’s white husband Kevin is also taken into the past with her, and it’s here that the book is most compelling and thought-provoking to me. In Maryland, Dana and Kevin must play slave and master in order to spend the night together, and after Kevin’s trapped in the past for years, he takes on the same speech patterns as the whites during that time. The couple want to believe that their personal relationship can remain pure, that the political and social climate of slavery won’t infect their interactions, but that’s impossible. The very first time Dana returns from Maryland, she momentarily mistakes Kevin for a white southerner, out to hurt her, and she is frightened of him. The past has already trespassed onto the present, where she is supposed to feel safe and equal. It happens quickly.

With Kindred , I identified with Dana, even if, were I to time travel back to antebellum Maryland, my problems would probably be more similar to Kevin’s. But like Dana, I’m a woman who lives in Los Angeles. Like Dana, I’m a writer. And like Dana before she time travels, I’ve read about slavery, and so I can only approach it as a reader. Because Dana is a modern woman, she is wearing pants when she is transported, and in antebellum Maryland, characters ask her why she’s dressed as a man. They want to know why she talks as she does. And how she learned to write. They wonder aloud if she thinks she’s white–she sure does carry herself that way. Maybe Dana’s belief in her own equality ties her more strongly to me, a contemporary female reader, than race ties her to the black slaves in antebellum Maryland. Or it only does, until a point. Or it does and it doesn’t, at the same time. Either way, Butler has performed a kind of identity magic trick with her novel. By experiencing this world as Dana does, as any contemporary person would, I too must suffer at the hands of slavery.

Edan Lepucki is a staff writer and contributing editor for The Millions. She is the author of the novella If You're Not Yet Like Me , the New York Times bestselling novel, California , and Woman No. 17 . She is the editor of Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers As We Never Saw Them .

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The Narrative Matters: Guidelines on Writing about Slavery

January 25, 2016 Cazzie Reyes Opinion News

Earlier this week, one of the headlines in The Guardian posed the question: What happens when children’s books fail to confront the complexity of slavery? Referring to the controversial cover of A Birthday Cake for George Washington depicting a smiling black cook and his daughter baking a cake for the president, the article’s author posits that keeping the narrative about chattel slavery honest is constant work.

In addition, it’s not just representations in popular media and creative mediums that more or less water down the history of slavery. Textbooks such as the one published in Texas saying ‘The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations’ wrongly suggests that slavery was some form of voluntary migrant work. Historic sites and house museums referring to slaves as “servants” in order to dissuade visitors’ discomfort do so at the risk of minimizing the abuses faced by slaves.

Challenges and problems with portrayals of slavery continue on to the present. We’ve already talked about the visual stereotypes for human trafficking . This post discusses points to keep in mind when writing or talking about human trafficking today.

When referring to a person who is or was trafficked, ask what they’d prefer to be called whenever possible. Some want to be identified as victims, while others want to be called survivors. Moreover, there are people that don’t want to be forever associated with those two terms and would like to be acknowledged by the life and work they’ve carried out after their trafficking ordeal.

Next, use adjectives carefully. When describing those in slave-like conditions, it’s easy to see the despair and only call them helpless, hopeless or powerless. However, these words create a savior mindset and ignore the fact that trafficked people have the agency and ability to make choices and be active participants in their own recovery. On that note, avoid infantilizing trafficked people. For example, don’t call women “girls.”

Last, check the text throughout the story to see how individuals are framed. Is the narrative overemphasizing the fact that a trafficked person is also an illegal immigrant? Is the prostituted person called a stripper or a sex worker? Doing so creates bias against him or her, suggests complicity and assigns culpability.

Cite peer reviewed articles and use statistics from reputable sources, but be transparent about the limitations of these studies. Furthermore, be aware of the possibility that what might be true for one group of people might not be true for an individual.

Additionally, try to be inclusive and to reflect the global distribution of human trafficking. Oftentimes, men, boys, women and transgendered people are left out because popular discourse is completely focused on girls forced into prostitution.

To close, just as mentioned in the visual stereotypes post, avoid telling sexualized and graphic stories if the only purpose is to sensationalize or trivialize someone’s experience. There are times when people who survived trafficking wish to disclose all that happened to them, and yes, absolutely give them the space to do that. But, be mindful of how you use their narratives in the future.

Amidst the controversy and social media backlash, Scholastic stopped distributing A Birthday Cake for George Washington . This instance is a reminder of how differently we all interpret and think of slavery. It is also an opportunity for us to reevaluate the way we talk about human trafficking and slavery. After all, the stories that we tell are pivotal to the way that people today – and generations from now – understand slavery, both chattel and its more modern forms.

Topics: News

About the Author

Cazzie Reyes

Cazzie reyes graduated from bradley university with a bachelor's degree in international studies and a minor in women's studies. , related posts, forced labor.

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September 5, 2017, the late alex tizon and "my family's slave": his first memory, and his last byline, the atlantic story, published just weeks after his death, drew a firestorm of criticism; a pulitzer winner and friend examines the craft, and the loss.

By Jacqui Banaszynski

Tagged with

Photo: The Atlantic

The story of the woman called Lola begins and ends with ashes. Ashes that “filled a plastic box about the size of a toaster.” Ashes sheltered in a canvas tote bag from a suburb north of tech-hip Seattle to a rice-farming village deep in the poverty of the Philippines. Ashes finally buried with enduring love complicated by lifelong shame.

Alex Tizon’s journey, as he carries those ashes home, provides the frame of a disturbing family memoir and a long-overdue homage to Eudocia Tomas Pulido, the woman he called, simply, Lola. She was his first memory, and his last byline. She was the secret he never told, and the story he said he was born to write. She was, as the June 2017 cover of The Atlantic so baldly stated, “My Family’s Slave.”

It is the saddest of ironies that Tizon didn’t live to see the publication of Lola’s story. His unexpected death in March , at 57, adds another layer to the narrative’s metaphor, but leaves him silent in the face of the fierce reaction it has inspired.

“My Family’s Slave” went viral as soon as it hit The Atlantic’s website. Fans declared it Pulitzer-worthy – a courageous confession that unveiled a necessary truth: Human enslavement remains a modern-day curse, sometimes masked or excused as cultural convention.

Others slammed it as an apologia absolving Tizon of responsibility in the face of his family’s shame: A destitute teenager had been “given” to his mother decades earlier in the Philippines in a lodging-for-labor swap. She toiled in the Tizons’ service for the nearly 60 years – unpaid, uneducated and seldom spoken of outside the family.

My own reaction to “My Family’s Slave” was clouded by a stew of emotions I’m still sorting out. I was Tizon’s editor for two years at The Seattle Times, although it felt more like piloting a wing-walker than editing. After we both moved on, we stayed close, sharing a passion for travel and teaching and books and the lonely struggles of writing and for stories that explore the mess and wonder of the human condition. On March 14 this year, I wrote a letter recommending him for tenure at the University of Oregon. On March 31, I wrote his eulogy .

Alex Tizon, center, and Jacqui Banaszynski, bottom left, at one of the annual Power of Storytelling conferences in Romania. The Power of Storytelling

I knew then that Tizon was writing a profile of Lola. Though I was as pained as anyone by what it revealed, I was thrilled to see it in print. The writing not only shone with mastery, but with a comfort of mastery that comes only after decades of self-doubt. I always knew Tizon as a gifted writer – as much a philosopher-poet-essayist as a straight-ahead journalist. But with this piece, following his exploration of race and identity in his 2014 memoir, “Big Little Man,” it seemed he had finally found the voice and calm he needed to face what haunted him.

Tizon spoke of Lola frequently, always with an intriguing combination of humor and reverence. I never fully understood where she fit in the family tree, and when I asked one time, he shrugged off my question, as he usually did when it came to his personal life. He simply said she was an older, distant relative who had always lived with their family, a not uncommon custom among Filipinos. Lola, after all, is a Tagalog term often used for “grandmother.” Seven years after her death, she remained an honored presence at his memorial service. One of Tizon’s sisters remembered asking why Lola’s death felt harder to bear than their mother’s. His response: “Because she was the best person we ever knew.”

After the story ran, I watched the attacks pile up on Twitter – many of them attacks on Tizon’s motives and integrity. I remain conflicted by a piece in The Seattle Times, which published what amounted to a correction on Pulido’s obituary , based on a lengthy interview with Tizon, calling it a lie of omission.

I don’t dismiss the outrage sparked by the revelations in “My Family’s Slave.” But I hope this doesn’t become an asterisk that overshadows the trove of a storied career, including a team project that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting .

Instead, I hope Tizon’s final story becomes the first chapter in a larger narrative. I’ve since read several thoughtful pieces by people inspired to reconsider their own family secrets. The Atlantic has built an archive of commentary, and is pursuing several follow-up stories on human trafficking and cultural slavery. And on Wednesday, the Gates Foundation is hosting a public discussion prompted by the story.

It is the saddest of ironies that Tizon didn’t live to see the publication of Lola’s story. His unexpected death in March, at 57, adds another layer to the narrative’s metaphor, but leaves him silent in the face of the fierce reaction it has inspired.

I also hope journalists don’t dismiss the chance to learn from “My Family’s Slave” – not just about a societal scourge, but about the level of talent and plain hard work it takes to bring those scourges to light. Tizon was a woodworker as well as a writer. You might not like the piece he built, but the construction is nearly flawless.

Consider the story’s craft:

The writing is deceptively simple. Tizon gets out of the story’s way, delivering his most dramatic material with understatement. He uses few complex sentences; no fussy words; easy markers that let readers know where they are in time and place.

The narrative is carefully polished, yet suggests the intimacy of a one-to-one conversation. Read Tizon’s piece aloud. You will hear the story he is telling. Read it a second time for rhythm. The cadence is coherent but not staccato. Longer sentences are punctuated by short, with the shorter ones carrying more weight.

“We never talked about Lola.”

“She often slept among piles of laundry.”

“I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs – the American dream. And then I had a slave.”

The structure is cinematic. Tizon uses words the way a filmmaker uses a camera. He zooms in close on crucial scenes, letting us hear Lola’s wails and his father’s derision, letting us see Lola try to chew with her crumbled teeth. He pulls back to place the specific story into the larger context of culture and history. Along the way, he puts us in the taxi as he winds his way to Lola’s village, like a camera panning to show passage of time or distance.

Tizon employs a few other tools that are more subjective. They leave his searing piece open to equally searing debate because they put him in control not just of the story’s telling, but of its very meaning.

He climbs up and down the ladder of abstraction . The story is built of concrete words and scenes, but is really probing universal life themes – human feelings we all experience even if our literal experiences are far different.

Mashing food for a sick child? Disgusting drudgery. Or maybe deep devotion.

Enduring a beating for someone else’s crimes? Powerlessness. Or maybe a deep well of defiance.

Called by a name that is more a status than a name? Inferiority. Or maybe honor.

And that cheap plastic box filled with Lola’s ashes? Regret. Shame. Penance. Love. A promise failed and a promise kept. Pretty much the entire circle of a life, ashes to ashes.

That same approach allows Tizon to blend moments of light amid the dark, adding readability and authenticity. His mother was guilty of monstrous behavior, but was not a complete monster. Lola’s life was steeped in torment, but was not without laughter or love.

I knew that Tizon was writing a profile of Lola. Though I was as pained as anyone by what it revealed, I was thrilled to see it in print. The writing not only shone with mastery, but with a comfort of mastery that only comes only after decades of self-doubt.

I’m not surprised that some readers wanted this story to climb to a different place on the ladder than Tizon took it. Just as he failed to rescue Lola from his parents’ brutality, he failed to deliver an investigation into cultural servitude. Wouldn’t we all applaud a tale that left Lola standing as a noble survivor, or had a happier ending? Or maybe some readers thought the ending was too happy by far – too much a trick of writerly craft that wrapped things into a neat bow – while they were left standing at the edge of a road they didn’t anticipate, with darker questions and darker paths ahead.

Journalism is obsessed, these days, with metrics. Narratives tend to defy those calculations; there are no metrics to measure the impact on the human heart. Tizon’s story, on its own, did not change laws or close down systemic corruption. But perhaps it will do something even more important, which is to open our eyes to people who often go unseen.

The unseen person in “My Family’s Slave” is Lola. And at first glance, the story purports to be hers. We are taken through the chronology of her life. We wince as we witness her abuse. We want to cradle her when she cowers, and again when she is carried in laughter to the driver’s seat of a car, and again when she is placed on a gurney, and finally when her ashes are brought home to rest. But for all that, we don’t ever fully understand what life felt like for her. She looks out from the cover of The Atlantic, in a haunting and beautiful portrait by Alan Berner of The Seattle Times. But even then, she looks off into the distance, at something we can’t see. She doesn’t look at us. For all we know about her, we never really know her .

That distance from Lola runs through the harshest of rebukes leveled at Tizon’s story. Some thought that “My Family’s Slave” diminished Eudocia Tomas Pulido one more time. That even as Tizon finally brought her out of the shadows of his family’s secret, she was never given more standing than to be his Lola.

I read this story differently. Maybe because my reading is colored by my deep affection for Tizon and my abiding grief at his death. Maybe because for years I watched his struggle to unspool the true story of Lola to his friends, and then to unspool that truth in a written piece. Maybe because, in that written piece, I still read his struggle to discover who she really was.

They say every true narrative is a journey, and inside the journey is a quest. The journey Tizon takes us on is his. As is the quest, one desperate to come to terms with how his life with Lola touched and tormented and, finally, graced him.

My Family’s Slave

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

点击这里阅读中文版本 (Chinese) | Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Tagalog (Tagalog)

Alex Tizon passed away in March. He was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self . For more about Alex, please see this editor’s note .

T he ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

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Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.

To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.

After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.

At baggage claim in Manila, I unzipped my suitcase to make sure Lola’s ashes were still there. Outside, I inhaled the familiar smell: a thick blend of exhaust and waste, of ocean and sweet fruit and sweat.

Early the next morning I found a driver, an affable middle-aged man who went by the nickname “Doods,” and we hit the road in his truck, weaving through traffic. The scene always stunned me. The sheer number of cars and motorcycles and jeepneys. The people weaving between them and moving on the sidewalks in great brown rivers. The street vendors in bare feet trotting alongside cars, hawking cigarettes and cough drops and sacks of boiled peanuts. The child beggars pressing their faces against the windows.

Doods and I were headed to the place where Lola’s story began, up north in the central plains: Tarlac province. Rice country. The home of a cigar-chomping army lieutenant named Tomas Asuncion, my grandfather. The family stories paint Lieutenant Tom as a formidable man given to eccentricity and dark moods, who had lots of land but little money and kept mistresses in separate houses on his property. His wife died giving birth to their only child, my mother. She was raised by a series of utusans , or “people who take commands.”

Slavery has a long history on the islands. Before the Spanish came, islanders enslaved other islanders, usually war captives, criminals, or debtors. Slaves came in different varieties, from warriors who could earn their freedom through valor to household servants who were regarded as property and could be bought and sold or traded. High-status slaves could own low-status slaves, and the low could own the lowliest. Some chose to enter servitude simply to survive: In exchange for their labor, they might be given food, shelter, and protection.

When the Spanish arrived, in the 1500s, they enslaved islanders and later brought African and Indian slaves. The Spanish Crown eventually began phasing out slavery at home and in its colonies, but parts of the Philippines were so far-flung that authorities couldn’t keep a close eye. Traditions persisted under different guises, even after the U.S. took control of the islands in 1898. Today even the poor can have utusans or katulongs (“helpers”) or kasambahays (“domestics”), as long as there are people even poorer. The pool is deep.

Lieutenant Tom had as many as three families of utusans living on his property. In the spring of 1943, with the islands under Japanese occupation, he brought home a girl from a village down the road. She was a cousin from a marginal side of the family, rice farmers. The lieutenant was shrewd—he saw that this girl was penniless, unschooled, and likely to be malleable. Her parents wanted her to marry a pig farmer twice her age, and she was desperately unhappy but had nowhere to go. Tom approached her with an offer: She could have food and shelter if she would commit to taking care of his daughter, who had just turned 12.

Lola agreed, not grasping that the deal was for life.

“She is my gift to you,” Lieutenant Tom told my mother.

“I don’t want her,” my mother said, knowing she had no choice.

Lieutenant Tom went off to fight the Japanese, leaving Mom behind with Lola in his creaky house in the provinces. Lola fed, groomed, and dressed my mother. When they walked to the market, Lola held an umbrella to shield her from the sun. At night, when Lola’s other tasks were done—feeding the dogs, sweeping the floors, folding the laundry that she had washed by hand in the Camiling River—she sat at the edge of my mother’s bed and fanned her to sleep.

One day during the war Lieutenant Tom came home and caught my mother in a lie—something to do with a boy she wasn’t supposed to talk to. Tom, furious, ordered her to “stand at the table.” Mom cowered with Lola in a corner. Then, in a quivering voice, she told her father that Lola would take her punishment. Lola looked at Mom pleadingly, then without a word walked to the dining table and held on to the edge. Tom raised the belt and delivered 12 lashes, punctuating each one with a word. You. Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. You. Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. Lola made no sound.

My mother, in recounting this story late in her life, delighted in the outrageousness of it, her tone seeming to say, Can you believe I did that? When I brought it up with Lola, she asked to hear Mom’s version. She listened intently, eyes lowered, and afterward she looked at me with sadness and said simply, “Yes. It was like that.”

Seven years later, in 1950, Mom married my father and moved to Manila, bringing Lola along. Lieutenant Tom had long been haunted by demons, and in 1951 he silenced them with a .32‑caliber slug to his temple. Mom almost never talked about it. She had his temperament—moody, imperial, secretly fragile—and she took his lessons to heart, among them the proper way to be a provincial matrona : You must embrace your role as the giver of commands. You must keep those beneath you in their place at all times, for their own good and the good of the household. They might cry and complain, but their souls will thank you. They will love you for helping them be what God intended.

My brother Arthur was born in 1951. I came next, followed by three more siblings in rapid succession. My parents expected Lola to be as devoted to us kids as she was to them. While she looked after us, my parents went to school and earned advanced degrees, joining the ranks of so many others with fancy diplomas but no jobs. Then the big break: Dad was offered a job in Foreign Affairs as a commercial analyst. The salary would be meager, but the position was in America—a place he and Mom had grown up dreaming of, where everything they hoped for could come true.

Dad was allowed to bring his family and one domestic. Figuring they would both have to work, my parents needed Lola to care for the kids and the house. My mother informed Lola, and to her great irritation, Lola didn’t immediately acquiesce. Years later Lola told me she was terrified. “It was too far,” she said. “Maybe your Mom and Dad won’t let me go home.”

In the end what convinced Lola was my father’s promise that things would be different in America. He told her that as soon as he and Mom got on their feet, they’d give her an “allowance.” Lola could send money to her parents, to all her relations in the village. Her parents lived in a hut with a dirt floor. Lola could build them a concrete house, could change their lives forever. Imagine .

We landed in Los Angeles on May 12, 1964, all our belongings in cardboard boxes tied with rope. Lola had been with my mother for 21 years by then. In many ways she was more of a parent to me than either my mother or my father. Hers was the first face I saw in the morning and the last one I saw at night. As a baby, I uttered Lola’s name (which I first pronounced “Oh-ah”) long before I learned to say “Mom” or “Dad.” As a toddler, I refused to go to sleep unless Lola was holding me, or at least nearby.

I was 4 years old when we arrived in the U.S.—too young to question Lola’s place in our family. But as my siblings and I grew up on this other shore, we came to see the world differently. The leap across the ocean brought about a leap in consciousness that Mom and Dad couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make.

Lola never got that allowance. She asked my parents about it in a roundabout way a couple of years into our life in America. Her mother had fallen ill (with what I would later learn was dysentery), and her family couldn’t afford the medicine she needed. “ Pwede ba? ” she said to my parents. Is it possible? Mom let out a sigh. “How could you even ask?,” Dad responded in Tagalog. “You see how hard up we are. Don’t you have any shame?”

My parents had borrowed money for the move to the U.S., and then borrowed more in order to stay. My father was transferred from the consulate general in L.A. to the Philippine consulate in Seattle. He was paid $5,600 a year. He took a second job cleaning trailers, and a third as a debt collector. Mom got work as a technician in a couple of medical labs. We barely saw them, and when we did they were often exhausted and snappish.

Mom would come home and upbraid Lola for not cleaning the house well enough or for forgetting to bring in the mail. “Didn’t I tell you I want the letters here when I come home?” she would say in Tagalog, her voice venomous. “It’s not hard naman ! An idiot could remember.” Then my father would arrive and take his turn. When Dad raised his voice, everyone in the house shrank. Sometimes my parents would team up until Lola broke down crying, almost as though that was their goal.

It confused me: My parents were good to my siblings and me, and we loved them. But they’d be affectionate to us kids one moment and vile to Lola the next. I was 11 or 12 when I began to see Lola’s situation clearly. By then Arthur, eight years my senior, had been seething for a long time. He was the one who introduced the word slave into my understanding of what Lola was. Before he said it I’d thought of her as just an unfortunate member of the household. I hated when my parents yelled at her, but it hadn’t occurred to me that they—and the whole arrangement—could be immoral.

“Do you know anybody treated the way she’s treated?,” Arthur said. “Who lives the way she lives?” He summed up Lola’s reality: Wasn’t paid. Toiled every day. Was tongue-lashed for sitting too long or falling asleep too early. Was struck for talking back. Wore hand-me-downs. Ate scraps and leftovers by herself in the kitchen. Rarely left the house. Had no friends or hobbies outside the family. Had no private quarters. (Her designated place to sleep in each house we lived in was always whatever was left—a couch or storage area or corner in my sisters’ bedroom. She often slept among piles of laundry.)

We couldn’t identify a parallel anywhere except in slave characters on TV and in the movies. I remember watching a Western called The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance . John Wayne plays Tom Doniphon, a gunslinging rancher who barks orders at his servant, Pompey, whom he calls his “boy.” Pick him up, Pompey. Pompey, go find the doctor. Get on back to work, Pompey! Docile and obedient, Pompey calls his master “Mistah Tom.” They have a complex relationship. Tom forbids Pompey from attending school but opens the way for Pompey to drink in a whites-only saloon. Near the end, Pompey saves his master from a fire. It’s clear Pompey both fears and loves Tom, and he mourns when Tom dies. All of this is peripheral to the main story of Tom’s showdown with bad guy Liberty Valance, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Pompey. I remember thinking: Lola is Pompey, Pompey is Lola.

One night when Dad found out that my sister Ling, who was then 9, had missed dinner, he barked at Lola for being lazy. “I tried to feed her,” Lola said, as Dad stood over her and glared. Her feeble defense only made him angrier, and he punched her just below the shoulder. Lola ran out of the room and I could hear her wailing, an animal cry.

“Ling said she wasn’t hungry,” I said.

My parents turned to look at me. They seemed startled. I felt the twitching in my face that usually preceded tears, but I wouldn’t cry this time. In Mom’s eyes was a shadow of something I hadn’t seen before. Jealousy?

“Are you defending your Lola?,” Dad said. “Is that what you’re doing?”

“Ling said she wasn’t hungry,” I said again, almost in a whisper.

I was 13. It was my first attempt to stick up for the woman who spent her days watching over me. The woman who used to hum Tagalog melodies as she rocked me to sleep, and when I got older would dress and feed me and walk me to school in the mornings and pick me up in the afternoons. Once, when I was sick for a long time and too weak to eat, she chewed my food for me and put the small pieces in my mouth to swallow. One summer when I had plaster casts on both legs (I had problem joints), she bathed me with a washcloth, brought medicine in the middle of the night, and helped me through months of rehabilitation. I was cranky through it all. She didn’t complain or lose patience, ever.

To now hear her wailing made me crazy.

In the old country, my parents felt no need to hide their treatment of Lola. In America, they treated her worse but took pains to conceal it. When guests came over, my parents would either ignore her or, if questioned, lie and quickly change the subject. For five years in North Seattle, we lived across the street from the Misslers, a rambunctious family of eight who introduced us to things like mustard, salmon fishing, and mowing the lawn. Football on TV. Yelling during football. Lola would come out to serve food and drinks during games, and my parents would smile and thank her before she quickly disappeared. “Who’s that little lady you keep in the kitchen?,” Big Jim, the Missler patriarch, once asked. A relative from back home, Dad said. Very shy.

Billy Missler, my best friend, didn’t buy it. He spent enough time at our house, whole weekends sometimes, to catch glimpses of my family’s secret. He once overheard my mother yelling in the kitchen, and when he barged in to investigate found Mom red-faced and glaring at Lola, who was quaking in a corner. I came in a few seconds later. The look on Billy’s face was a mix of embarrassment and perplexity. What was that? I waved it off and told him to forget it.

I think Billy felt sorry for Lola. He’d rave about her cooking, and make her laugh like I’d never seen. During sleepovers, she’d make his favorite Filipino dish, beef tapa over white rice. Cooking was Lola’s only eloquence. I could tell by what she served whether she was merely feeding us or saying she loved us.

When I once referred to Lola as a distant aunt, Billy reminded me that when we’d first met I’d said she was my grandmother.

“Well, she’s kind of both,” I said mysteriously.

“Why is she always working?”

“She likes to work,” I said.

“Your dad and mom—why do they yell at her?”

“Her hearing isn’t so good …”

Admitting the truth would have meant exposing us all. We spent our first decade in the country learning the ways of the new land and trying to fit in. Having a slave did not fit. Having a slave gave me grave doubts about what kind of people we were, what kind of place we came from. Whether we deserved to be accepted. I was ashamed of it all, including my complicity. Didn’t I eat the food she cooked, and wear the clothes she washed and ironed and hung in the closet? But losing her would have been devastating.

There was another reason for secrecy: Lola’s travel papers had expired in 1969, five years after we arrived in the U.S. She’d come on a special passport linked to my father’s job. After a series of fallings-out with his superiors, Dad quit the consulate and declared his intent to stay in the United States. He arranged for permanent-resident status for his family, but Lola wasn’t eligible. He was supposed to send her back.

Lola’s mother, Fermina, died in 1973; her father, Hilario, in 1979. Both times she wanted desperately to go home. Both times my parents said “Sorry.” No money, no time. The kids needed her. My parents also feared for themselves, they admitted to me later. If the authorities had found out about Lola, as they surely would have if she’d tried to leave, my parents could have gotten into trouble, possibly even been deported. They couldn’t risk it. Lola’s legal status became what Filipinos call tago nang tago , or TNT—“on the run.” She stayed TNT for almost 20 years.

After each of her parents died, Lola was sullen and silent for months. She barely responded when my parents badgered her. But the badgering never let up. Lola kept her head down and did her work.

My father’s resignation started a turbulent period. Money got tighter, and my parents turned on each other. They uprooted the family again and again—Seattle to Honolulu back to Seattle to the southeast Bronx and finally to the truck-stop town of Umatilla, Oregon, population 750. During all this moving around, Mom often worked 24-hour shifts, first as a medical intern and then as a resident, and Dad would disappear for days, working odd jobs but also (we’d later learn) womanizing and who knows what else. Once, he came home and told us that he’d lost our new station wagon playing blackjack.

For days in a row Lola would be the only adult in the house. She got to know the details of our lives in a way that my parents never had the mental space for. We brought friends home, and she’d listen to us talk about school and girls and boys and whatever else was on our minds. Just from conversations she overheard, she could list the first name of every girl I had a crush on from sixth grade through high school.

When I was 15, Dad left the family for good. I didn’t want to believe it at the time, but the fact was that he deserted us kids and abandoned Mom after 25 years of marriage. She wouldn’t become a licensed physician for another year, and her specialty—internal medicine—wasn’t especially lucrative. Dad didn’t pay child support, so money was always a struggle.

My mom kept herself together enough to go to work, but at night she’d crumble in self-pity and despair. Her main source of comfort during this time: Lola. As Mom snapped at her over small things, Lola attended to her even more—cooking Mom’s favorite meals, cleaning her bedroom with extra care. I’d find the two of them late at night at the kitchen counter, griping and telling stories about Dad, sometimes laughing wickedly, other times working themselves into a fury over his transgressions. They barely noticed us kids flitting in and out.

One night I heard Mom weeping and ran into the living room to find her slumped in Lola’s arms. Lola was talking softly to her, the way she used to with my siblings and me when we were young. I lingered, then went back to my room, scared for my mom and awed by Lola.

Doods was humming. I’d dozed for what felt like a minute and awoke to his happy melody. “Two hours more,” he said. I checked the plastic box in the tote bag by my side—still there—and looked up to see open road. The MacArthur Highway. I glanced at the time. “Hey, you said ‘two hours’ two hours ago,” I said. Doods just hummed.

His not knowing anything about the purpose of my journey was a relief. I had enough interior dialogue going on. I was no better than my parents. I could have done more to free Lola. To make her life better. Why didn’t I? I could have turned in my parents, I suppose. It would have blown up my family in an instant. Instead, my siblings and I kept everything to ourselves, and rather than blowing up in an instant, my family broke apart slowly.

Doods and I passed through beautiful country. Not travel-brochure beautiful but real and alive and, compared with the city, elegantly spare. Mountains ran parallel to the highway on each side, the Zambales Mountains to the west, the Sierra Madre Range to the east. From ridge to ridge, west to east, I could see every shade of green all the way to almost black.

Doods pointed to a shadowy outline in the distance. Mount Pinatubo. I’d come here in 1991 to report on the aftermath of its eruption, the second-largest of the 20th century. Volcanic mudflows called lahars continued for more than a decade, burying ancient villages, filling in rivers and valleys, and wiping out entire ecosystems. The lahars reached deep into the foothills of Tarlac province, where Lola’s parents had spent their entire lives, and where she and my mother had once lived together. So much of our family record had been lost in wars and floods, and now parts were buried under 20 feet of mud.

Life here is routinely visited by cataclysm. Killer typhoons that strike several times a year. Bandit insurgencies that never end. Somnolent mountains that one day decide to wake up. The Philippines isn’t like China or Brazil, whose mass might absorb the trauma. This is a nation of scattered rocks in the sea. When disaster hits, the place goes under for a while. Then it resurfaces and life proceeds, and you can behold a scene like the one Doods and I were driving through, and the simple fact that it’s still there makes it beautiful.

A couple of years after my parents split, my mother remarried and demanded Lola’s fealty to her new husband, a Croatian immigrant named Ivan, whom she had met through a friend. Ivan had never finished high school. He’d been married four times and was an inveterate gambler who enjoyed being supported by my mother and attended to by Lola.

Ivan brought out a side of Lola I’d never seen. His marriage to my mother was volatile from the start, and money—especially his use of her money—was the main issue. Once, during an argument in which Mom was crying and Ivan was yelling, Lola walked over and stood between them. She turned to Ivan and firmly said his name. He looked at Lola, blinked, and sat down.

My sister Inday and I were floored. Ivan was about 250 pounds, and his baritone could shake the walls. Lola put him in his place with a single word. I saw this happen a few other times, but for the most part Lola served Ivan unquestioningly, just as Mom wanted her to. I had a hard time watching Lola vassalize herself to another person, especially someone like Ivan. But what set the stage for my blowup with Mom was something more mundane.

She used to get angry whenever Lola felt ill. She didn’t want to deal with the disruption and the expense, and would accuse Lola of faking or failing to take care of herself. Mom chose the second tack when, in the late 1970s, Lola’s teeth started falling out. She’d been saying for months that her mouth hurt.

“That’s what happens when you don’t brush properly,” Mom told her.

I said that Lola needed to see a dentist. She was in her 50s and had never been to one. I was attending college an hour away, and I brought it up again and again on my frequent trips home. A year went by, then two. Lola took aspirin every day for the pain, and her teeth looked like a crumbling Stonehenge. One night, after watching her chew bread on the side of her mouth that still had a few good molars, I lost it.

Mom and I argued into the night, each of us sobbing at different points. She said she was tired of working her fingers to the bone supporting everybody, and sick of her children always taking Lola’s side, and why didn’t we just take our goddamn Lola, she’d never wanted her in the first place, and she wished to God she hadn’t given birth to an arrogant, sanctimonious phony like me.

I let her words sink in. Then I came back at her, saying she would know all about being a phony, her whole life was a masquerade, and if she stopped feeling sorry for herself for one minute she’d see that Lola could barely eat because her goddamn teeth were rotting out of her goddamn head, and couldn’t she think of her just this once as a real person instead of a slave kept alive to serve her?

“A slave,” Mom said, weighing the word. “A slave ?”

The night ended when she declared that I would never understand her relationship with Lola. Never . Her voice was so guttural and pained that thinking of it even now, so many years later, feels like a punch to the stomach. It’s a terrible thing to hate your own mother, and that night I did. The look in her eyes made clear that she felt the same way about me.

The fight only fed Mom’s fear that Lola had stolen the kids from her, and she made Lola pay for it. Mom drove her harder. Tormented her by saying, “I hope you’re happy now that your kids hate me.” When we helped Lola with housework, Mom would fume. “You’d better go to sleep now, Lola,” she’d say sarcastically. “You’ve been working too hard. Your kids are worried about you.” Later she’d take Lola into a bedroom for a talk, and Lola would walk out with puffy eyes.

Lola finally begged us to stop trying to help her.

Why do you stay? we asked.

“Who will cook?” she said, which I took to mean, Who would do everything? Who would take care of us? Of Mom? Another time she said, “Where will I go?” This struck me as closer to a real answer. Coming to America had been a mad dash, and before we caught a breath a decade had gone by. We turned around, and a second decade was closing out. Lola’s hair had turned gray. She’d heard that relatives back home who hadn’t received the promised support were wondering what had happened to her. She was ashamed to return.

She had no contacts in America, and no facility for getting around. Phones puzzled her. Mechanical things—ATMs, intercoms, vending machines, anything with a keyboard—made her panic. Fast-talking people left her speechless, and her own broken English did the same to them. She couldn’t make an appointment, arrange a trip, fill out a form, or order a meal without help.

I got Lola an ATM card linked to my bank account and taught her how to use it. She succeeded once, but the second time she got flustered, and she never tried again. She kept the card because she considered it a gift from me.

I also tried to teach her to drive. She dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand, but I picked her up and carried her to the car and planted her in the driver’s seat, both of us laughing. I spent 20 minutes going over the controls and gauges. Her eyes went from mirthful to terrified. When I turned on the ignition and the dashboard lit up, she was out of the car and in the house before I could say another word. I tried a couple more times.

I thought driving could change her life. She could go places. And if things ever got unbearable with Mom, she could drive away forever.

Four lanes became two , pavement turned to gravel. Tricycle drivers wove between cars and water buffalo pulling loads of bamboo. An occasional dog or goat sprinted across the road in front of our truck, almost grazing the bumper. Doods never eased up. Whatever didn’t make it across would be stew today instead of tomorrow—the rule of the road in the provinces.

I took out a map and traced the route to the village of Mayantoc, our destination. Out the window, in the distance, tiny figures folded at the waist like so many bent nails. People harvesting rice, the same way they had for thousands of years. We were getting close.

I tapped the cheap plastic box and regretted not buying a real urn, made of porcelain or rosewood. What would Lola’s people think? Not that many were left. Only one sibling remained in the area, Gregoria, 98 years old, and I was told her memory was failing. Relatives said that whenever she heard Lola’s name, she’d burst out crying and then quickly forget why.

I’d been in touch with one of Lola’s nieces. She had the day planned: When I arrived, a low-key memorial, then a prayer, followed by the lowering of the ashes into a plot at the Mayantoc Eternal Bliss Memorial Park. It had been five years since Lola died, but I hadn’t yet said the final goodbye that I knew was about to happen. All day I had been feeling intense grief and resisting the urge to let it out, not wanting to wail in front of Doods. More than the shame I felt for the way my family had treated Lola, more than my anxiety about how her relatives in Mayantoc would treat me, I felt the terrible heaviness of losing her, as if she had died only the day before.

Doods veered northwest on the Romulo Highway, then took a sharp left at Camiling, the town Mom and Lieutenant Tom came from. Two lanes became one, then gravel turned to dirt. The path ran along the Camiling River, clusters of bamboo houses off to the side, green hills ahead. The homestretch.

I gave the eulogy at Mom’s funeral, and everything I said was true. That she was brave and spirited. That she’d drawn some short straws, but had done the best she could. That she was radiant when she was happy. That she adored her children, and gave us a real home—in Salem, Oregon—that through the ’80s and ’90s became the permanent base we’d never had before. That I wished we could thank her one more time. That we all loved her.

I didn’t talk about Lola. Just as I had selectively blocked Lola out of my mind when I was with Mom during her last years. Loving my mother required that kind of mental surgery. It was the only way we could be mother and son—which I wanted, especially after her health started to decline, in the mid‑’90s. Diabetes. Breast cancer. Acute myelogenous leukemia, a fast-growing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. She went from robust to frail seemingly overnight.

After the big fight, I mostly avoided going home, and at age 23 I moved to Seattle. When I did visit I saw a change. Mom was still Mom, but not as relentlessly. She got Lola a fine set of dentures and let her have her own bedroom. She cooperated when my siblings and I set out to change Lola’s TNT status. Ronald Reagan’s landmark immigration bill of 1986 made millions of illegal immigrants eligible for amnesty. It was a long process, but Lola became a citizen in October 1998, four months after my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. Mom lived another year.

During that time, she and Ivan took trips to Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast, and sometimes brought Lola along. Lola loved the ocean. On the other side were the islands she dreamed of returning to. And Lola was never happier than when Mom relaxed around her. An afternoon at the coast or just 15 minutes in the kitchen reminiscing about the old days in the province, and Lola would seem to forget years of torment.

I couldn’t forget so easily. But I did come to see Mom in a different light. Before she died, she gave me her journals, two steamer trunks’ full. Leafing through them as she slept a few feet away, I glimpsed slices of her life that I’d refused to see for years. She’d gone to medical school when not many women did. She’d come to America and fought for respect as both a woman and an immigrant physician. She’d worked for two decades at Fairview Training Center, in Salem, a state institution for the developmentally disabled. The irony: She tended to underdogs most of her professional life. They worshipped her. Female colleagues became close friends. They did silly, girly things together—shoe shopping, throwing dress-up parties at one another’s homes, exchanging gag gifts like penis-shaped soaps and calendars of half-naked men, all while laughing hysterically. Looking through their party pictures reminded me that Mom had a life and an identity apart from the family and Lola. Of course.

Mom wrote in great detail about each of her kids, and how she felt about us on a given day—proud or loving or resentful. And she devoted volumes to her husbands, trying to grasp them as complex characters in her story. We were all persons of consequence. Lola was incidental. When she was mentioned at all, she was a bit character in someone else’s story. “Lola walked my beloved Alex to his new school this morning. I hope he makes new friends quickly so he doesn’t feel so sad about moving again …” There might be two more pages about me, and no other mention of Lola.

The day before Mom died, a Catholic priest came to the house to perform last rites. Lola sat next to my mother’s bed, holding a cup with a straw, poised to raise it to Mom’s mouth. She had become extra attentive to my mother, and extra kind. She could have taken advantage of Mom in her feebleness, even exacted revenge, but she did the opposite.

The priest asked Mom whether there was anything she wanted to forgive or be forgiven for. She scanned the room with heavy-lidded eyes, said nothing. Then, without looking at Lola, she reached over and placed an open hand on her head. She didn’t say a word.

Lola was 75 when she came to stay with me. I was married with two young daughters, living in a cozy house on a wooded lot. From the second story, we could see Puget Sound. We gave Lola a bedroom and license to do whatever she wanted: sleep in, watch soaps, do nothing all day. She could relax—and be free—for the first time in her life. I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.

I’d forgotten about all the things Lola did that drove me a little crazy. She was always telling me to put on a sweater so I wouldn’t catch a cold (I was in my 40s). She groused incessantly about Dad and Ivan: My father was lazy, Ivan was a leech. I learned to tune her out. Harder to ignore was her fanatical thriftiness. She threw nothing out. And she used to go through the trash to make sure that the rest of us hadn’t thrown out anything useful. She washed and reused paper towels again and again until they disintegrated in her hands. (No one else would go near them.) The kitchen became glutted with grocery bags, yogurt containers, and pickle jars, and parts of our house turned into storage for—there’s no other word for it—garbage.

She cooked breakfast even though none of us ate more than a banana or a granola bar in the morning, usually while we were running out the door. She made our beds and did our laundry. She cleaned the house. I found myself saying to her, nicely at first, “Lola, you don’t have to do that.” “Lola, we’ll do it ourselves.” “Lola, that’s the girls’ job.” Okay, she’d say, but keep right on doing it.

It irritated me to catch her eating meals standing in the kitchen, or see her tense up and start cleaning when I walked into the room. One day, after several months, I sat her down.

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“I’m not Dad. You’re not a slave here,” I said, and went through a long list of slavelike things she’d been doing. When I realized she was startled, I took a deep breath and cupped her face, that elfin face now looking at me searchingly. I kissed her forehead. “This is your house now,” I said. “You’re not here to serve us. You can relax, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. And went back to cleaning.

She didn’t know any other way to be. I realized I had to take my own advice and relax. If she wanted to make dinner, let her. Thank her and do the dishes. I had to remind myself constantly: Let her be .

One night I came home to find her sitting on the couch doing a word puzzle, her feet up, the TV on. Next to her, a cup of tea. She glanced at me, smiled sheepishly with those perfect white dentures, and went back to the puzzle. Progress , I thought.

She planted a garden in the backyard—roses and tulips and every kind of orchid—and spent whole afternoons tending it. She took walks around the neighborhood. At about 80, her arthritis got bad and she began walking with a cane. In the kitchen she went from being a fry cook to a kind of artisanal chef who created only when the spirit moved her. She made lavish meals and grinned with pleasure as we devoured them.

Passing the door of Lola’s bedroom, I’d often hear her listening to a cassette of Filipino folk songs. The same tape over and over. I knew she’d been sending almost all her money—my wife and I gave her $200 a week—to relatives back home. One afternoon, I found her sitting on the back deck gazing at a snapshot someone had sent of her village.

“You want to go home, Lola?”

She turned the photograph over and traced her finger across the inscription, then flipped it back and seemed to study a single detail.

“Yes,” she said.

Just after her 83rd birthday, I paid her airfare to go home. I’d follow a month later to bring her back to the U.S.—if she wanted to return. The unspoken purpose of her trip was to see whether the place she had spent so many years longing for could still feel like home.

She found her answer.

“Everything was not the same,” she told me as we walked around Mayantoc. The old farms were gone. Her house was gone. Her parents and most of her siblings were gone. Childhood friends, the ones still alive, were like strangers. It was nice to see them, but … everything was not the same. She’d still like to spend her last years here, she said, but she wasn’t ready yet.

“You’re ready to go back to your garden,” I said.

“Yes. Let’s go home.”

Lola was as devoted to my daughters as she’d been to my siblings and me when we were young. After school, she’d listen to their stories and make them something to eat. And unlike my wife and me (especially me), Lola enjoyed every minute of every school event and performance. She couldn’t get enough of them. She sat up front, kept the programs as mementos.

It was so easy to make Lola happy. We took her on family vacations, but she was as excited to go to the farmer’s market down the hill. She became a wide-eyed kid on a field trip: “Look at those zucchinis!” The first thing she did every morning was open all the blinds in the house, and at each window she’d pause to look outside.

And she taught herself to read. It was remarkable. Over the years, she’d somehow learned to sound out letters. She did those puzzles where you find and circle words within a block of letters. Her room had stacks of word-puzzle booklets, thousands of words circled in pencil. Every day she watched the news and listened for words she recognized. She triangulated them with words in the newspaper, and figured out the meanings. She came to read the paper every day, front to back. Dad used to say she was simple. I wondered what she could have been if, instead of working the rice fields at age 8, she had learned to read and write.

During the 12 years she lived in our house, I asked her questions about herself, trying to piece together her life story, a habit she found curious. To my inquiries she would often respond first with “Why?” Why did I want to know about her childhood? About how she met Lieutenant Tom?

I tried to get my sister Ling to ask Lola about her love life, thinking Lola would be more comfortable with her. Ling cackled, which was her way of saying I was on my own. One day, while Lola and I were putting away groceries, I just blurted it out: “Lola, have you ever been romantic with anyone?” She smiled, and then she told me the story of the only time she’d come close. She was about 15, and there was a handsome boy named Pedro from a nearby farm. For several months they harvested rice together side by side. One time, she dropped her bolo —a cutting implement—and he quickly picked it up and handed it back to her. “I liked him,” she said.

“Then he moved away,” she said.

“That’s all.”

“Lola, have you ever had sex?,” I heard myself saying.

“No,” she said.

She wasn’t accustomed to being asked personal questions. “ Katulong lang ako ,” she’d say. I’m only a servant. She often gave one- or two-word answers, and teasing out even the simplest story was a game of 20 questions that could last days or weeks.

Some of what I learned: She was mad at Mom for being so cruel all those years, but she nevertheless missed her. Sometimes, when Lola was young, she’d felt so lonely that all she could do was cry. I knew there were years when she’d dreamed of being with a man. I saw it in the way she wrapped herself around one large pillow at night. But what she told me in her old age was that living with Mom’s husbands made her think being alone wasn’t so bad. She didn’t miss those two at all. Maybe her life would have been better if she’d stayed in Mayantoc, gotten married, and had a family like her siblings. But maybe it would have been worse. Two younger sisters, Francisca and Zepriana, got sick and died. A brother, Claudio, was killed. What’s the point of wondering about it now? she asked. Bahala na was her guiding principle. Come what may . What came her way was another kind of family. In that family, she had eight children: Mom, my four siblings and me, and now my two daughters. The eight of us, she said, made her life worth living.

None of us was prepared for her to die so suddenly.

Her heart attack started in the kitchen while she was making dinner and I was running an errand. When I returned she was in the middle of it. A couple of hours later at the hospital, before I could grasp what was happening, she was gone—10:56 p.m. All the kids and grandkids noted, but were unsure how to take, that she died on November 7, the same day as Mom. Twelve years apart.

Lola made it to 86. I can still see her on the gurney. I remember looking at the medics standing above this brown woman no bigger than a child and thinking that they had no idea of the life she had lived. She’d had none of the self-serving ambition that drives most of us, and her willingness to give up everything for the people around her won her our love and utter loyalty. She’s become a hallowed figure in my extended family.

Going through her boxes in the attic took me months. I found recipes she had cut out of magazines in the 1970s for when she would someday learn to read. Photo albums with pictures of my mom. Awards my siblings and I had won from grade school on, most of which we had thrown away and she had “saved.” I almost lost it one night when at the bottom of a box I found a stack of yellowed newspaper articles I’d written and long ago forgotten about. She couldn’t read back then, but she’d kept them anyway.

Doods’s truck pulled up to a small concrete house in the middle of a cluster of homes mostly made of bamboo and plank wood. Surrounding the pod of houses: rice fields, green and seemingly endless. Before I even got out of the truck, people started coming outside.

Doods reclined his seat to take a nap. I hung my tote bag on my shoulder, took a breath, and opened the door.

“This way,” a soft voice said, and I was led up a short walkway to the concrete house. Following close behind was a line of about 20 people, young and old, but mostly old. Once we were all inside, they sat down on chairs and benches arranged along the walls, leaving the middle of the room empty except for me. I remained standing, waiting to meet my host. It was a small room, and dark. People glanced at me expectantly.

“Where is Lola?” A voice from another room. The next moment, a middle-aged woman in a housedress sauntered in with a smile. Ebia, Lola’s niece. This was her house. She gave me a hug and said again, “Where is Lola?”

I slid the tote bag from my shoulder and handed it to her. She looked into my face, still smiling, gently grasped the bag, and walked over to a wooden bench and sat down. She reached inside and pulled out the box and looked at every side. “Where is Lola?” she said softly. People in these parts don’t often get their loved ones cremated. I don’t think she knew what to expect. She set the box on her lap and bent over so her forehead rested on top of it, and at first I thought she was laughing (out of joy) but I quickly realized she was crying. Her shoulders began to heave, and then she was wailing—a deep, mournful, animal howl, like I once heard coming from Lola.

I hadn’t come sooner to deliver Lola’s ashes in part because I wasn’t sure anyone here cared that much about her. I hadn’t expected this kind of grief. Before I could comfort Ebia, a woman walked in from the kitchen and wrapped her arms around her, and then she began wailing. The next thing I knew, the room erupted with sound. The old people—one of them blind, several with no teeth—were all crying and not holding anything back. It lasted about 10 minutes. I was so fascinated that I barely noticed the tears running down my own face. The sobs died down, and then it was quiet again.

Ebia sniffled and said it was time to eat. Everybody started filing into the kitchen, puffy-eyed but suddenly lighter and ready to tell stories. I glanced at the empty tote bag on the bench, and knew it was right to bring Lola back to the place where she’d been born.

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American Literary History

White Slave Fiction, So-Called

Laura R. Fisher
Oxford University Press
Volume 33, Number 1, Spring 2021
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In the early twentieth century, the widespread belief that young white women were at risk of being captured and forced into sex work led to significant legislative victories, and this crisis also shaped US literature in surprising ways. When writing about so-called white slavery crossed over from the spheres of journalism, social reform, and the law into fiction, authors devised a suite of quasi-empirical literary techniques that turned the dubious facts of white slavery into the stuff of popular art. Novelists drew heavily on juridical and social scientific evidence to lend authority and specificity to stories that they insisted (counterfactually) were gravely true. White slavery fiction marries empiricism with sensationalism, data with melodrama, cold statistics with exaggeration and falsehood. This essay examines the literary empiricism of Reginald Wright Kauffman's 1910 novel The House of Bondage and the amateur literary criticism of progressive anti-vice reformers to examine a tradition of mutual borrowing between nonfictional genres such as the report, tract, and newsletter and modern US fiction. An analogy between slavery and forced sex work was pivotal to the social critique that white slavery novels existed to forward. Yet the genre's catalyzing metaphor circulated a radically dehistoricized, racist conception of enslavement for a twentieth-century white readership, drawing its figurative vocabulary and sense of political urgency from chattel slavery while eliminating any concern with Black men, women, or children.

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Lesson plans

Learning About Slavery With Primary Sources

In this lesson, students will use primary sources from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture to better understand the history of slavery in the United States.

By Nicole Daniels

Find all our Lessons of the Day here.

Lesson Overview

Featured Article: “ A Brief History of Slavery That You Didn’t Learn in School ”

In August 2019, The New York Times Magazine published The 1619 Project , an ongoing initiative that aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

In this lesson, you will read an essay that uses primary sources as a point of entry to making sense of the history of slavery in the United States. The primary sources were selected by Mary Elliott, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The featured article was written by both Ms. Elliott and Jazmine Hughes, a New York Times writer and editor.

Note : If you are looking for more teaching resources related to The 1619 Project, The New York Times Magazine partnered with the Pulitzer Center to create a free curriculum that includes a reading guide, extension activities and other curricular resources.

The article uses primary sources to tell the story of slavery from 1619 to 1865. To begin thinking critically about primary sources, look at the cover image for the article, which uses this broadside from the museum’s collection . As you look closely at the image, make some observations about what you notice, wonder and feel. You can share in small groups or in a larger class discussion, “I notice…,” “I wonder …” and “I feel …” Or, you can create a chart with three columns to record your observations and reactions.

Then, if you would like to further investigate the broadside from a historical lens, you can use a document analysis worksheet from the National Archives. There are two worksheet options for written documents: one for secondary students and one for younger students and English-language learners .

If you would like more background, take some time to read the two-paragraph introduction to the article, either to yourself or aloud as a class.

Why do you think Ms. Elliott and Ms. Hughes chose to start their exploration of primary sources with these words? What drew you into the text? How did their use of language and imagery affect your reading experience?

According to the authors, why was the moment in August 1619 significant? How was the arrival of “20 and odd Negroes” different from the earlier presence of people of African descent in North America?

Questions for Writing and Discussion

Note to Teachers: Given the length and structure of the featured article , we have created questions for each of its three sections. Depending on how much time you are able to dedicate to this lesson, it may be most effective to have students work in small groups, with each group focusing on one section and then sharing their findings with the class.

No. 1: Slavery, Power and the Human Cost, 1455-1775

What is the connection between the Roman Catholic Church, colonialism and slavery?

How does the painting “Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam” illustrate the relationship between the slave trade and wealth and power? Use both the authors’ text and the image to explain the connection.

In what ways was race encoded into law? Use historical examples from the text to support your answer.

What acts of resistance did you find most powerful to read about? What role did memory play in the lives of enslaved people? Do you think the act of preserving memories was a form of resistance? Explain.

No. 2: The Limits of Freedom, 1776-1808

The text of this section begins with the following lines:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” So begins the Declaration of Independence, the document that eventually led to the creation of the United States. But the words point to the paradox the nation was built on.

How would you describe that paradox in your own words, citing laws and beliefs from that period?

In what ways did enslaved people fight for their freedom?

What role did religion and churches have in resistance, advocacy and community?

What was the connection between westward expansion and the trans-Atlantic slave trade? How did the country respond to the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, which took effect in 1808?

No. 3: A Slave Nation Fights for Freedom, 1809-1865

Why do you think Ms. Elliott chose to feature the portraits of Rhoda Phillips and Sgt. Jacob Johns? What do their stories illustrate about emancipation and the fight for freedom?

How were enslaved women and their children central to slavery? The article states, “there was no alliance of sisterhood among slave mistresses and the black mothers and daughters they claimed as property.” Why do you think the authors chose to emphasize that point?

In the wake of slave revolts, such as Nat Turner’s rebellion, white people became more fearful of slave uprisings and resistance. What new forms of surveillance did fearful white people instill? What was the Fugitive Slave Act? How did it expand the surveillance of slaves?

What does Joseph Trammell’s method for storing his freedom papers illustrate about the nature of freedom for free black people?

Going Further

In the featured article, Ms. Elliott selected 13 artifacts from the museum’s collection to tell the story of slavery. Based on what you have read and heard presented by your classmates, what artifacts would you choose to tell the story of slavery?

Take on the role of curator and choose three artifacts from the article that you believe are key to telling the story of slavery in the United States.

If you were to summarize slavery in the United States, what would be the three most important points for someone to walk away with? Do any objects from the article correspond to those points?

What objects do you find most visually compelling in the article? Are there objects that you think relate to one another naturally or that help to weave a narrative together?

Once you have selected three artifacts, decide how to present them — for example, digitally, on paper or as a gallery exhibit. Can you enhance your narrative by arranging your artifacts in a specific way? What happens if certain artifacts are placed close to one another or far apart? What about lower or higher on a wall?

Then, write a paragraph of no more than 200 words to accompany your three images. Use the text from the article as inspiration and try to find ways to draw the reader in by making meaningful links between your selected artifacts.

If you are in classroom, take a gallery walk to see your classmates’ work. What is similar or different in your interpretations and curatorial choices?

If you have additional time, browse the museum’s digital slavery collection and choose one additional source to add to your curation. You may want to pick an image that enhances one of the artifacts you already selected. Or you may want to select something that sheds light on a different element of slavery discussed in the article.

Nicole Daniels joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2019 after working in museum education, curriculum writing and bilingual education. More about Nicole Daniels

271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples

✨ tips for an essay, research paper or speech about slavery, 🏆 best slavery titles for essay, 🥇 most interesting slave trade essay topics, ⭐ good titles for slavery essays, 💡 slavery writing prompts, 🔎 simple & easy slavery titles, ✍️ slavery essay topics for college, ❓ research questions about slavery.

Writing an essay on slavery may be challenging as the topic brings up negative emotions to many people.

This issue is related to differences between social positions and their negative effects. In addition, slavery reveals racial disparities in society and damages race relations in many cultures.

Good slavery essays discuss the aspects and problems that are important and relevant today. Choose slavery essay topics that raise significant problems that remain acute in modern society. Slavery essay titles and topics may include:

The problem of human trafficking in today’s world
Why is it hard to stop child trafficking in today’s world?
The aspects of plantation life for slaves
The development of American slavery
Was slavery inevitable?
Differences and similarities between slavery in the US and serfdom in Russia
The ineffectiveness of peaceful means against slavery
Destructive aspects of slavery
The link between slavery and racism
The differences between the impact of slavery on women and men of color

Once you select the issue you want to discuss, you can start working on your paper. Here are some tips and secrets for creating a powerful essay:

Remember that appropriate essay titles are important to get the readers’ interest. Do not make the title too long but state the main point of your essay.
Start with developing a structure for your essay. Remember that your paper should be organized clearly. You may want to make separate paragraphs or sections for the most important topics.
Include an introductory paragraph, in which you can briefly discuss the problem and outline what information the paper will present.
Remember to include a concluding paragraph too, in which you will state the main points of your work. Add recommendations, if necessary.
Do preliminary research even if you feel that you know much about the topic already. You can find useful information in historical books, peer-reviewed journals, and trusted online sources. Note: Ask your professor about the types of sources you are allowed to use.
Do not rely on outside sources solely. Your essay should incorporate your knowledge and reflections on slavery and existing evidence. Try to add comments to the citations you use.
Remember that a truly powerful essay should be engaging and easy-to-understand. You can tell your readers about different examples of slavery to make sure that they understand what the issue is about. Keep the readers interested by asking them questions and allowing them to reflect on the problem.
Your slavery essay prompts should be clearly stated in the paper. Do not make the audience guess what the main point of the essay is.
Although the content is important, you should also make sure that you use correct grammar and sentence structures. Grammatical mistakes may make your paper look unprofessional or unreliable.
If you are writing an argumentative essay, do not forget to include refutation and discuss opposing views on the issue.
Check out slavery essay examples online to see how you can structure your paper and organize the information. In addition, this step can help you to avoid possible mistakes and analyze the relevance of the issue you want to discuss.

Do not forget to check our free samples and get the best ideas for your essay!

Slavery in To Kill a Mockingbird Novel The introduction of Tom by the author is a plot device to represent the plight of the slaves in the state.
Sethe’s Slavery in “Beloved” by Toni Morrison In spite of the fact that the events depicted in Beloved take place after the end of the American Civil War, Sethe, as the main character of the novel and a former slave, continues to […]
Analysis of Themes of Slavery in Literature The paper will be concentrated on the analysis of the works ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’ by Olaudah Equiano, ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass’ by Frederick Douglass, and ‘Incidents […]
Slavery in the Roman Empire The elite were the rich people, and majority of the population that comprised of the common farmers, artisans, and merchants known as the plebeians occupied the low status.
Metaphoric Theme of Slavery in “Indiana” by George Sand In her novel about love and marriage, Sand raises a variety of central themes of that time society, including the line of slavery both from the protagonist’s perspective and the French colonial slavery.
Freedom in Antebellum America: Civil War and Abolishment of Slavery The American Civil War, which led to the abolishment of slavery, was one of the most important events in the history of the United States.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Slavery It is said that “the book is a very inadequate representation of slavery; and it is so, necessarily, for this reason, – that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purposes […]
Chapters 4-6 of ”From Slavery to Freedom” by Franklin & Higginbotham At the same time, the portion of American-born slaves was on the increase and contributed to the multiracial nature of the population.
How “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” Addresses Slavery The insensitivity in this mistreatment and dehumanization of Black people is pervasive to the extent that Jim considers himself “property” and was proud to be worth a fortune if anyone was to sell him. To […]
John Brown and His Beliefs About Slavery John Brown was a martyr, his last effort to end slavery when he raided Harper’s Ferry helped to shape the nation and change the history of slavery in America.
Did Morality or Economics Dominate the Debates Over Slavery in the 1850s? Labour and economy remained intertwined in that; the former was a factor that determined the state of the latter. Scholars single out economical differences between the two states as the cause of the slavery in […]
Slavery Experience by Abdul Rahman ibn Ibrahim Sori Abdul Rahman continued talking about his family and status, but his royal priorities were not enough to confirm his identity and return to his family.
Impact of Revolution on Slavery and Women Freed slaves and other opponents of the slave trade in the north agitated for release and freedom of slaves in the south.
“American Slavery, 1619-1817” by Peter Kolchin The concluding chapter details of the demise of slavery on the onset of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The period of American Revolution was a “watershed “in transforming the vision that portrayed slavery was justifiable […]
“Slavery Isn’t the Issue” by Juan Williams Review The author claims that the reparation argument is flawed as affirmative action has ensured that a record number of black Americans move up the economic and social ladder.
Protest Against Slavery in ”Pudd’nhead Wilson” by Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson is the ironic tale of a man who is born a slave but brought up as the heir to wealthy estate, thanks to a switch made while the babies were still in the […]
Social Psychology of Modern Slavery The social psychology of modern slavery holds the opinion that slavery still exists today, contrary to the belief of many people that slavery does not exist in the modern world.
Economic Impact of Slavery Growth in Southern Colonies 1 The need to occupy southern colonies came as a result of the successes that were recorded in the north, especially after the establishment of cash crop farming. The setting up of the plantations in […]
Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox Jefferson believed that the landless laborers posed a threat to the nation because they were not independent. He believed that if Englishmen ruled over the world, they would be able to extend the effects of […]
The Evolution of American Slavery Overall, it is possible for us to advance a thesis that the origins of black slavery should be sought in the economic development of American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and especially the […]
Masters and Slaves: ”Up From Slavery” by Washington Booker Instead of criticizing the opposition between the black and the white, Booker emphasizes the interpersonal relationships between the masters and their slaves, emphasizing the devotion of the latter to the white population.
Concept of Slavery Rousseau’s Analysis Rights and slavery are presented by the thinker as two contrary notions; Rousseau strived to provide the analysis of rights in their moral, spiritual sense; the involvement into dependence from the rulers means the involvement […]
“Slavery and the Making of America” Documentary According to the film Slavery and the Making of America, slavery had a profound effect on the historical development of American colonies into one country.
Slavery and Identity: “The Known World” by Edward Jones Moses is used to this kind of life and described by one of the other characters as “world-stupid,” meaning he does not know how to live in the outside world. He has a strong connection […]
The “Slavery by Another Name” Documentary The documentary highlights how the laws and policies of that time enabled the exploitation of Black people and how the legacy of slavery continued to shape the racial dynamics of the country.
Human Trafficking: Slavery Issues These are the words to describe the experiences of victims of human trafficking. One of the best places to intercept human trafficking into the US is at the border.
The Slavery Experience: Erra Adams Erra Adams indicates that he was the oldest of the children and his task was to plow the land. The formerly enslaved person noted that the death of the master was a real grief for […]
Abraham Lincoln: The End of Slavery Lincoln actively challenged the expansion of slavery because he believed the United States would stay true to the Declaration of Independence. It is worth considering the fact that Lincoln was not the only advocate for […]
Recreation of Slavery in “Sweat” Book by Hurston Perhaps the best-portrayed theme and the most controversial one is the recreation of slavery on the part of Afro-Americans who have just been freed of it.
California’s Issues With Slavery However, the report and the book indicate this point and emphasize that the concept of free land was made in favor of white people but not in the interests of African Americans.
Sexual Slavery and Human Smuggling They were the only people in the house, and it appeared that her parents were not home. The social worker’s job in Tiffani’s life is to look into her past, from her childhood through her […]
Were the Black Codes Another Form of Slavery? Slavery in the United States has been a part of the nation’s history for hundreds of years, and yet it did not end abruptly.
How Slavery Makes Sense From Various Perspectives Given that there is a historical precedent for the “peculiar institution,” it would be erroneous to dismiss slavery as something that is new. Thus, the institution of slavery is found even in the Bible, and […]
Slavery in The Fires of Jubilee by Stephen Oates Apart from the story being arranged in chapters, the layout and approach suggest that the author has described the area of events narrated and then given the narration.
Modern Slavery in Global Value Chains: Case Study The main reason for accusations of forced labor is that most of the factories Nike owns are in Vietnam, and they provide the lowest possible wages.
Differences of Slavery: Oklahoma Writers’ Project vs. The Textbook Today, many sources discuss the characteristics of slavery, its causes, and the outcomes and describe the conditions under which the Civil War began. In the accounts and the textbook, different opportunities for slaves are given […]
Autobiography & Slavery Life of Frederick Douglass This essay discusses the slavery life of Frederick Douglass as written in his autobiography, and it highlights how he resisted slavery, the nature of his rebellion, and the view he together with Brinkley had about […]
The American Civil War: Pro- & Anti-Slavery Forces The pro-slavery forces argued that slavery was the right thing to do, promoting abolitionists and the anti-slavery forces as terrible villains because they wanted to abolish slavery.
Slavery: Historical Background and Modern Perspective Despite the seemingly short period of contract slavery, people did not have the right to marry without the owner’s permission while the contract term was in effect.
Irish Immigrants and Abolition of Slavery in the US The selected historical events are Irish immigration to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s and the movement for slavery abolition, which existed in the country at the same time.
Irish Immigration to America and the Slavery Despite the fact that the Irish encountered a great number of obstacles, the immigration of Irish people to the United States was advantageous not only to the immigrants but also to the United States.
Irish Immigrants and the Abolition of Slavery Irish people, though not as deprived of rights as the enslaved Africans, also endured much suffering and fought slavery to the best of their ability.
North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 – 1860 The book North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 1860 by Leon Litwack is an illustration of how African Americans were treated in the northern states just before the start of The […]
Modern Slavery and Its Emergence The author turns to the examples of three European countries and, through the analysis, reveals the piece of the effects of the slave trade and the modernization of its forms.
Moral Aspect of Slavery from a Northern and Southern Perspective Pro-slavery, non-expansionist, and abolitionist perspectives on the moral foundations of slavery identify both differences between the North and south of the US and the gradual evolution of the nation’s view of African people.
Thomas Jefferson on Slavery and Declaration of Independence Additionally, with the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson set the foundation for the abolition of slavery in the future. Thus, the claim that Jefferson’s participation in slavery invalidates his writing of the Declaration of Independence is […]
Slavery and Indentured Servitude Slavery practices were perceived to extend in Boston, which is believed to be the first place where someone tried to force enslaved people to have children to earn money. To summarize, the practice of slavery […]
Indentured Servitude and Slavery The slave population in the North progressively fell throughout the 1760s and 1770s with slaves in Philadelphia reducing to approximately 700 in 1775.
Critical Response: The Origin of Negro Slavery Considering that individuals of all races were involved in slavery in the New World, racism emerged as a consequence of forced labor and was not originally connected to the targeted discrimination of African Americans.
Analysis of Slavery in United States The main points highlighted in the lecture are focused on the socio-economic differences between the two systems, the actual life of slaves, and methods of blacks’ rebellion.
Review of Slavery Topic in “Never Caught” Thus, the former’s relationship to this institution was guided by humanity towards the slaves and the development of legal methods of improving their lives that did not exist in the latter case.
Prohibiting Slavery in the United States In other words, the original ideas incorporated the considerations of sexual immorality due to the abuse of the affected persons and the practice of breeding people for sale. The contributions to the discussion were also […]
Discussion of Slavery in Focus For this reason, the audience that reads about cases of slavery in some of the third-world countries has the feeling of encountering the past something that, in readers’ understanding, is already a history.
New Slavery in “Disposable People” by Kevin Bales The immense increase of the population after World War II and the influence of development and globalization of the world’s economy on traditional families in developing countries have led to the increment in the gap […]
Analysis of Documents on Greek Slavery The passages will be examined and evaluated better understand the social and cultural history of the period and learn more about the social order in Ancient Greece. It can be asserted that the issue of […]
Discussion of Justification of Slavery As a result, such perceptions gave rise to the argument that the latter people are inferior to Europeans and, thus, should be in a position of servitude.
The Industrial Revolution, Slavery, and Free Labor The purpose of this paper is to describe the Industrial Revolution and the new forms of economic activity it created, including mass production and mass consumption, as well as discuss its connection to slavery.
Expansion of Freedom and Slavery in British America The settlement in the city of New Plymouth was founded by the second, and it laid the foundation for the colonies of New England.
Should the U.S. Government Pay Reparations for Slavery Coates tries to get the attention of his audience by explaining to them the importance of understanding the benefits of the impact the slaves faced during the regime of white supremacy.
Antebellum Slavery’s Role in Shaping the History and Legacy of American Society The novel tells the story of two different times, the 1970s and 1815s, and shows other conditions of the heroes’ existence due to gender and racial characteristics.
Alexander Stephens on Slavery and Confederate Constitution The speaker remarks that the persistent lack of consensus over the subordination and slavery of the “Negro” between the South and North was the immediate reason why the Confederates decided to secede and establish their […]
Origins of Modern Racism and Ancient Slavery The diversity of African kingdoms and the empires were engaged in the slave trade for hundreds of years prior to the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade. The working and living condition of slaves were […]
Isaac Burt: Modern-Day Slavery in the US Therefore, the author begins with the critical review of data on the notion of human trafficking, including sex and labor trafficking forms, which often use immigrants and women as vulnerable populations.
How Violent Was the Slavery? Ask African American Women The book significantly impacted American literature due to the writer’s roots and the problems of slavery addressed in a detailed manner.
The Role of Slavery for the American Society: Lesson Plan Understand how the development of slavery could influence the social and economic life of the Southern states and the role of the plantation system in the process.
Colonialism and the End of Internal Slavery The Atlantic slave trade was considered among the main pillars of the economy in the western region between the 16th and 19th centuries.
The History of American Revolution and Slavery At the same time, the elites became wary of indentured servants’ claim to the land. The American colonies were dissatisfied with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 it limited their ability to invade new territories and […]
The Expansion of Slavery: Review Their purpose was to track and catch runaway slaves and return them to their masters. The work of slaves was primarily agricultural.
Abolitionist Movement: Attitudes to Slavery Reflected in the Media One of the reasons confirming the inadmissibility of slavery and the unfairness of the attitude towards this phenomenon is the unjustification of torture and violence.
Slavery and Social Death by Orlando Patterson As a result, relatively same practices of social death were applied to indigenous American people, which proves Patterson’s point of view that this attitude was characteristic not only for the African slave trade.
Antebellum Culture and Slavery: A Period of History in the South of the United States The antebellum era, also known as the antebellum south, is a period of history in the south of the United States before the American Civil War in the late 18th century.
Slavery and Society Destruction Seduced by the possibility of quick enrichment, the users of slave labor of both the past and the present, betrayed their humanity due to power and money.
Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery and the Rise of the Modern Capitalist World System The reading provides an extensive background of the historical rise and fall of the African nations. The reading gives a detailed account of the Civil War and the color line within its context.
Modern Slavery: Definition and Types Modern slavery is a predatory practice that is being utilized by businesses and organizations, some seemingly legitimate, worldwide through the exploitative and forced labour of victims and needs to be addressed at the policy and […]
Slavery in “Disposable People” Book by Kevin Bales The key point of his book is that the phenomenon of slavery is impossible to be eradicated. He has studied the current economic and political situations of the countries presented in his book that help […]
Late Slavery and Emancipation in the Greater Caribbean The epoch of slavery defined the darkest history in the evolution of the civilization of humanity; the results of slavery continue permeating the psychology of very “far” descendants of the slaves themselves.
Transatlantic Slave Trade and Colonial Chesapeake Slavery Most of the West African slaves worked across the Chesapeake plantation. This paper will explore the various conditions and adaptations that the African slaves acquired while working in the Chesapeake plantation.
Slavery and Secession in Georgia The representatives of the State of Georgia were worried because of the constant assaults concerning the institution of slavery, which have created the risk of danger to the State.
Slavery of African in America: Reasons and Purposes Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, the African slaves were shipped to Europe and Eastern Atlantics, but later the colonies started demanding workers and the trade shifted to the Americas.
Slavery in Charleston, South Carolina Prior to the Year 1865 Charleston is a city in South Carolina and one of the largest cities in the United States. It speaks about the life and origin of the slaves and also highlights some of their experiences; their […]
Verisimilitude of Equiano’s Narrative and Understanding of Slavery The main argument in the answer to Lovejoy was that the records could clarify the author’s true age, which is the key to the dismissal of the idea that Equiano is a native African.
The Case for Reparations: Slavery and Segregation Consequences in the US Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his essay The Case for Reparations, examines the consequences of slavery and segregation in the United States and argues the importance of reparations for black Americans, both in a financial and moral […]
Critique of Colin Thies’ “Commercial Slavery” The goal of the article was to evaluate the economic and political situation of the African slave trade and avoid other aspects according to which people were considered as oppressed and enslaved.
Fredrick Douglas Characters. Impact of Slavery The institution of slavery drove and shaped the enslaved people to respond and behave in different ways in that Fredrick Bailey was forced to flee away from slavery and later changed his name to Fredrick […]
Litwack’s Arguments on the Aftermath of Slavery This paper seeks to delve into a technical theme addressed by Leon on what kind of freedom was adopted by the ex-slaves prior to the passage of the 13th U.S.constitutional amendment of 1865 that saw […]
Slavery, Civil War, and Abolitionist Movement in 1850-1865 They knew they were free only they had to show the colonists that they were aware of that.[1] The slaves were determined and in the unfreed state they still were in rebellion and protested all […]
Slavery History in North America in the Middle 1830s I was born in a small village in Georgia, in the middle 1830s, a time when the United States was going through a lot of slave trade activities, and to many, the trade was accommodated […]
The Major Developments in Slavery During 1800-1877 Several states in the South, in 1877 beginning with Georgia, took gain of this by issuing a succession of laws and a tax was put on voting.
Slavery in America: Causes and Effects Slavery in America was a period in which people were caught and taken to do manual work in America from various parts of the world as a result of colonization.
Slavery as an Institution in America This paper will look at the factors that enhanced the expansion of slavery as an institution in America during this period and further highlight the views held by the southern on slavery about its social […]
The Literature From Slavery to Freedom Its main theme is slavery but it also exhibits other themes like the fight by Afro-Americans for freedom, the search for the identity of black Americans and the appreciation of the uniqueness of African American […]
Slavery in New Orleans and Charleston This paper is going to establish this claim by making a comparison of the lives of the slaves who lived in the urban areas such as the New Orleans and Charleston with those slaves that […]
How Slavery Has Affected the Lives and Families of the African Americans? This paper will focus on how slavery in the earlier years has affected the lives and families of the African Americans in the year 2009.
Du Bois’ “The Soul of Black Folk” and T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” Du Bois in the work “The Soul of Black Folk” asks the question, why black people are considered to be different, why they are treated differently as they are the same members of the society, […]
Slavery as One of the Biggest Mistakes And the last important thing which caused forming the institution of slavery for such a long period in the judgment of Winthrop D.
Colonial Economy of America: Poverty, Slavery and Rich Plantations This topic deals with life in the colonial economy of America and the approach of white people towards black people. Mainly through natural production, the people became wealthy and they led a typical way of […]
African Slavery and European Plantation Systems: 1525-1700 However, with the discovery of sugar production at the end of the 15th Century to the Atlantic Islands and the opening up of the New World in the European conquests, the Portuguese discovered new ways […]
The Theme of Slavery in Aristotle’s “Politics” He notes that the fundamental part of an association is the household that is comprised of three different kinds of relationships: master to slave, husband to wife, and parents to their children.
“Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades” by Patrick Manning The author’s approach of examining the slavery issue from the lens of economic history and the involvement of normal Africans living in Africa is then examined.
Slavery and Democracy in 19th Century America In the 19th century when white folks are busy building a nation and taking part in the more significant aspects of creating a new future for their children, Negro slaves were still doing a backbreaking […]
Abraham Lincoln`s Role in the Abolishment of Slavery in America In this speech, Lincoln emphasized the need for the law governing slavery to prevail and pointed out the importance of the independence of individual states in administering laws that governed slavery without the interference of […]
Cotton, Slavery, and Old South The early nineteenth century was a time that was as significant for the south as it was for the north. If the south was to be divided into the upper south and the lower south, […]
Slavery in Latin America and North America In the French and British Caribbean colonies, slaves were also imported in great numbers and majority of the inhabitants were slaves.
Betty Wood: The Origins of American Slavery Economic analyses and participation of the slave labor force in economic development are used to analyze the impact and role of slave labor in the development of the American economy.
“American Slavery an American Freedom” by Edmund S. Morgan The book witnesses the close alliance between the establishment of freedom rights in Virginia and the rise of slavery movement which is considered to be the greatest contradiction in American history.
Lincoln and African Americans’ Role in the Abolition of Slavery This paper seeks to compare and contrast the role of Abraham Lincoln and the African Americans in bringing slavery to an end in the US.
Western Expansion and Its Influence on Social Reforms and Slavery The western expansion refers to the process whereby the Americans moved away from their original 13 colonies in the 1800s, towards the west which was encouraged by explorers like Lewis and Clarke.
How Important Was Slave Resistance as a Cause of Abolition of Slavery? This was particularly evident throughout the history of slaves in the Americas, and across the historical geography of slavery, from the time the slaves were seized from Africa through to the life they were subjected […]
“Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington Each morning it was the duty of the overseer to assign the daily work for the slaves and, when the task was completed, to inspect the fields to see that the work had been done […]
U.S. in the Fight Against a Modern Form of Slavery Since the United States of America is the most powerful nation in the world it must spearhead the drive to eradicate this new form of slavery within the U.S.and even outside its borders.
The Profitability of Slavery for the Slave Master What is missing from this story is the fact that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, North American colonies had to buy African slaves on a world market at prices which reflected the high profitability […]
Slavery in the United States There was a sharp increase in the number of slaves during the 18th century, and by the mid of the century, 200,000 of them were working in the American colonies.
Sociology, Race & Law. Cuban Form of Slavery Today Castro was benefiting alone from the sweat of many Cubans who worked abroad and in Cuba thinking that they could better their livelihood.
African American Women’s Gender Relations and Experience Under Slavery When the New England Confederation was formed in 1643 to promote matters of common concern for the New England Colonies, one provision of the compact was for the rendition of bondservants.
How African Men and Women Experienced Slavery? The book Ar’ not I a Woman, the author portrays that life of a woman in plantation was more difficult that life of a man because of different duties and responsibilities assigned to a woman-slave.
Abraham Lincoln and Free Slavery Moreover, he made reference to the fact that the union was older than the constitution and referred to the spirit of the Articles of the Constitution 1774 and Articles of Confederation of 1788.
Origins, Operations, and Effects of Black Slavery in US However, the impact that the enslavement of the vast numbers of Africans brought to America was phenomenal. This was a major effect of the slave trade.
Gender Politics: Military Sexual Slavery In this essay, it will be shown that military power and sexual slavery are interconnected, how the human rights of women are violated by the military, and how gender is related to a war crime.
African Americans Struggle Against Slavery The following paragraphs will explain in detail the two articles on slavery and the African American’s struggle to break away from the heavy and long bonds of slavery. The website tells me that Dredd Scott […]
Slavery in the World The first independent state in the western hemisphere, the United States of America, was formed as a result of the revolutionary war of North American colonies of England for Independence in 1775-1783.
Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Rome The revolt of slaves under the direction of Spartacus 73-71 BC is considered the most significant event of the period of crisis of the Roman republican regime in the first century DC and is estimated […]
Issue of Slavery in “The Known World” by E. P. Jones The slaves were remained in the custody of the white masters received the same treatment as that of bondage slaves. The book is a beautiful representation of pre-war life in Virginia and how the widespread […]
Olaudah Equiano as a Fighter Against Slavery Equiano’s Narrative demonstrates a conscious effort to ascribe spiritual enlightenment to the political arena and hence ascertain the importance of the relationship between spiritual intervention, the amysterious ways of Providence’ and parliamentary decisions concerning the […]
Lincoln as a Fighter Against Slavery It is while a leader of the party he made her first moves to fight slavery in the Illinois house where he argued that slavery was a social evil and ought to be dealt away […]
Slavery in Early America Review However, the local population was dwindling with the influx of disease and abuse and this, combined with Spain abolishing the enslavement of natives in the Americas in the mid-1500s, necessitated a need to acquire Africans […]
Slavery Without the Civil War: Hypothesis The demand for slaves and the positive effect of this in the slaveholders’ profitability as well as the fact that both slaveholders and the slaves need one another to survive saw to it that the […]
Slavery: Central Paradox of American History Since the rise of United States as a nation, historians have long thought of the emergence of slavery and freedom in our society as a great contradiction. As the central paradox, slavery needed to emerge […]
Brief History of Slavery in the United States In his article regarding the true sentiments of the slaves, Genovese suggests the reasons why the slaves were perceived as lazy was as the result of their more natural, rural lifestyle.”The setting remained rural, and […]
Virginia After the Boom: Slavery and “The Losers” New labor force that came to Virginia “threatened the independence of the small freeman and worsened the lot of the servant”.
Antebellum Slavery in Mark Twain’s World Twain’s depiction of Jim and his relationship with Huck was somewhat flawed in order to obey the needs of the story, and also by Twains’ interest in slave autobiographies and also in blackface minstrelsy.
Slavery in New York City: Impact and Significance Blacks’ significance in the development of the city’s most critical systems, such as labor, race, and class divisions, makes it possible to conclude that the influence of slavery in New York was substantial. The effect […]
Slavery In The United Stated Society In the above discussion, there is a short story of slavery in the USA. By abolishing slavery in the USA is the sign of democracy and human dignity.
Black American Authors on Slavery Analysis The work is centered on the same theme that the Narrative the author tells the reader of her experiences as a slave and the way she managed to escape from it.
Slavery Still Exists in American Prisons An examination of the history of the penal system as it existed in the State of Texas proves to be the best illustration of the comparisons between the penal system and the system of slavery.
Ghana: The Consequences of Colonial Rule and Slavery One of the reasons for this dependency is that the country had been the foothold for the slave trade for about four centuries.
Harriet Jacobs’s Account of Slavery Atrocities She wrote that she wanted the women living in the North to understand the conditions in which slaves lived in the Souths, and the sufferings that enslaved women had to undergo.
Anti Slavery and Abolitionism Both gradual emancipation and conditional emancipation were not allowed, but free blacks from the North and evangelicals revealed their opposition in the form of the movement that required the development of social reform.
Sexual Slavery in “The Apology” Film by Hsiung The documentary being discussed focuses on the experiences of three women, the survivors of military sexual slavery in China, South Korea, and the Republic of the Philippines.
Slavery Resistance from Historical Perspective The lack of rights and power to struggle resulted in the emergence of particular forms of resistance that preconditioned the radical shifts in peoples mentalities and the creation of the tolerant society we can observe […]
Slavery Abolition and Newfound Freedom in the US One of the biggest achievements of Reconstruction was the acquisition of the right to vote by Black People. Still, Black Americans were no longer forced to tolerate inhumane living conditions, the lack of self-autonomy, and […]
Slavery Elements in Mississippi Black Code These are the limitation of the freedom of marriage, the limitation of the freedom of work, and the limitation of the freedom of weapon.
History: Slavery in Southern States The strategy of pacification was especially prevalent during that time because wealthy slaveowners wanted to keep possible protests under control and prevent the rest of the white population from supporting the abolition of slavery in […]
Slavery in “Abolition Speech” by William Wilberforce The following article is devoted to the description of the problem of slavery and the slave trade in Africa. The author also underlines the incompetency of the committee, which is in charge of the question […]
Slavery History: Letters Analysis The letters analyzed in this paper give a piece of the picture that was observed during the 1600s and the 1700s when slaves from different parts of the world had to serve their masters under […]
Slavery: History and Influence The slaves were meant to provide labor for the masters and generate wealth. During the day, they would sneak to breastfeed the newborns.
Reformer and Slavery: William Lloyd Garrison The newspaper was published until the end of the civil war and the abolition of slavery by the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Slavery Role in the American Literature Stowe has claimed that the anti slavery groups questioned the morality of the white Christians who were at the fore front in the oppression of the Black people.
Slavery as a Cause of the American Civil War On the other hand, one is to keep in mind that many historians are of the opinion that the reasons for the war are not so easy to explain.
Thomas Jefferson on Civil Rights, Slavery, Racism When I authored the declaration of independence of the United States of America, I was having a democratic perspective of the American people on my mind.
Slavery, American Civil War, and Reconstruction Indian removal from the Southeast in the late 19th century was as a result of the rapid expansion of the United States into the south.
Slavery in the Ancient World and the US Appearance age and attitude of the slaves acted as the determinants to the wage that they were to be paid for their services.
Slavery in “Flight to Canada” Novel by Ishmael Reed In his novel Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed blurs the boundaries between the prose and poetry as well as the past and the present to express his satirical criticism of the legacy of slavery even […]
Slavery and the Southern Society’s Development The fact that quite a huge number of white people moved to the “Deep South” where cotton planting was among the most lucrative forms of income-generating activities, just goes to show that the whites relied […]
Paternalistic Ethos During American Slavery Era The slave owner gains directly from the welfare of the slaves and the slaves gained directly from offering their services to the slave owner.
The Book About Slavery by Hinton Rowan Helper He claimed further that those who supported abolitionism and freedom were the friends of the south while slaveholders and slave-breeders were the real enemies of the south.
Slavery in the USA and Its Impact on Americans The following paper will present a discussion of slavery in the USA and an explanation of the tremendous impact it made on the lives of all Americans.
Voices From the Epoch of Slavery In this regard, one may claim that the era of enslavement was also represented by such activities as singing, dancing, and churchgoing, all of which were organized by masters for their Negroes and show a […]
“Slavery by Another Name” Documentary To assure the existence of the social and historical support, the movie is presented in the form of the documentary and can be viewed by an extended audience to spread awareness about the drawbacks of […]
Cultural Consequences of the US Slavery: 1620-1870 3 In the same way that the African had adopted the new language and devised their own language, the Whites began to be influenced by their style of talking and their speech began to be […]
The American Anti-Slavery Society The goal of the society has not changed since then, and we strive for the complete abolition of slavery in this country of blessed.
Modern Slavery in Thailand and Mauritania
Frederick Douglass as an Anti-Slavery Activist
George Whitfield’s Views on Slavery in the US
Internal Colonization and Slavery in British Empire
Globalization and Slavery: Multidisciplinary View
Slavery in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
Slavery in “A Brief History of the Caribbean”
Slavery in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Slavery Phenomenon and Its Causes in the USA
Women Trafficking and Slavery: Trends and Solutions
Human Trafficking and Modern-day Slavery
Slavery Arguments and American Civil War
Ethical Problems With Non-Human Slavery and Abuse
Racism in USA: Virginia Laws on Slavery
Sojourner Truth: Slavery Abolitionist and Women’s Suffrage
Slavery in Islamic Civilisation
Religious Studies of the Slavery Problem
Slavery and the Abolition of Slave Trade
Slavery and the Civil War Relationship
Abraham Lincoln Against Slavery
Blacks Role in Abolishing Slavery
The Poetry on the Topic of Slavery
John Brown and Thomas Cobb Role in Ending Slavery
Impacts of Slavery and Slave Trade in Africa
Slavery in the Southern Colonies
Christianity, Slavery and Colonialism Paradox
Slavery and the Civil War
Literary Works’ Views on Slavery in the United States
Analysis of Slavery in American History in “Beloved“ by Tony Morrison
History of Abolishing Slavery
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
Sex Slavery in India
The Period of Slavery in the “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs
Slavery in America: “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
Abolition of Slavery in Brazil
Slavery Effects on Enslaved People and Slave Owners
The Problem of Slavery in Africa
Racial Slavery in America
“Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery”: Campaign Critique
Colonial Portuguese Brazil: Sugar and Slavery
Aristotle on Human Nature, State, and Slavery
Reform-Women’s Rights and Slavery
Human Trafficking in the United States: A Modern Day Slavery
Oronooko by Aphra Behn and the Why there is no Justification for Slavery
Rise and Fall of Slavery
History of Slavery Constitution in US
Propaganda in Pro-slavery Arguments and Douglass’s Narrative
Testament Against Slavery: ”Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
Comparing and Contrasting three Versions of Slavery
How Did the French Revolution Impacted the Issue of Slavery and the History of Santo Domingo?
Why slavery is wrong
Slavery and Racism: Black Brazilians v. Black Americans
History of the African-Americans Religion During the Time of Slavery
The Emergence of a Law of Slavery in Mississippi
The Effects of Slavery on the American Society
The Ideas of Freedom and Slavery in Relation to the American Revolution
Up from Slavery, Down to the Ground: Sailing Amistad. A
Slavery in the British Colonies: Chesapeake and New England
Slavery and the Old South
African American Culture: A History of Slavery
Slavery and the Underground Railroad
Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay
The Southern Argument for Slavery
No Reparations for Blacks for the Injustice of Slavery
Slavery: The Stronghold of the Brazil Economy
Slavery, Racism, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Slavery, the Civil War & Reconstruction
Slavery in American History
The Slavery in America
Beloved by Toni Morrison: History of Slavery and Racial Segregation in America
“Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America” by Morgan Kenneth
African Americans: The Legacy of Slavery in the U.S.
Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During WWII and US Occupation in Japan
A New Dawn: The Abolishment of Slavery in the USA
How Slavery Applies to Africans Within the Islamic World?
Where Did Slavery Start First in the World?
How Did Slaves Respond to Slavery?
How the Germans Influenced Modern Day Slavery?
How Did Slavery Change From the Arrival of the First Enslaved People in the 1600s to the Abolition of Slavery in the 1860s?
How Did Slavery Encourage Both Economic Backwardness and Westward Expansion?
Why Did Colonial Virginians Replace Servitude With Slavery?
Did Slavery Create More Benefits or Problems for the Nation?
What Was Slavery Like and How Is It Today?
When and How Did Slavery Begin?
What Were the Positive and Negative Effects of Slavery on the Americas?
Is There a Difference Between Human Trafficking and Slavery?
How Did Slavery Shape Modern Society and the Colonial Nations?
How Did Economic, Geographic, and Social Factors Encourage the Growth of Slavery?
How Did Colonization Along the Atlantic Contribute to Slavery?
What Degree Did Slavery Play in the Civil War?
Modern Day Slavery: What Drives Human Trafficking?
How Did Slavery Start in Africa?
How Did Slavery Affect the Spirit of the Enslaved and the Enslavers?
What Did the Haitian Revolution Do to End Racial Slavery?
How Were African Americans Treated During the Slavery Period?
What Created Slavery?
How Important Was Slavery Before 1850? Was It a Marginal Institution, Peripheral to the Development of American Society?
How Did African American Slavery Help Shape America?
When Did Slavery Start in America?
How Can the World Allow Slavery to Continue Today?
What Were the Differences Between Indentured Servitude and Slavery?
In What Industries Is Slavery Most Prevalent?
How Was Slavery Abolished?
Did the Atlantic Plantation Complex Create Slavery?
African American History Essay Ideas
Frederick Douglass Essay Ideas
Colonialism Essay Ideas
Fascism Questions
Human Rights Essay Ideas
Freedom Topics
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"271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples." IvyPanda , 29 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/slavery-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples'. 29 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/slavery-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/slavery-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/slavery-essay-examples/.

IMAGES

Slave Narrative Sarah Garner (500 Words)
Frederick Douglass, Non-Fiction Analysis to use for ANY Novel with Slavery Theme
Read a Great Informative «Narratives of a Slave» Essay for Free at Marvelous-Essays.com
Slave Narrative
Essay On Slave Narratives
Fugitive Slave Acts

VIDEO

Women's Experience Under Slavery: Crash Course Black American History #11
The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you
Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Fo... Part 2/2
Jerald Walker
Slave Narrative English 231
Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Fo... Part 1/2

COMMENTS

How to Read a Slave Narrative
In 1845 the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself became an antebellum international best seller. A fugitive from Maryland slavery, Douglass spent four years honing his skills as an abolitionist lecturer before setting about the task of writing his autobiography. The genius of Douglass's Narrative ...
About this Collection
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the ...
The 1619 Project
On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully. The 1619 ProjectThe 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that ...
PDF Expository Writing 20 Slave Narratives
Office: 1 Bow St MW 10-11; 11-12 (Sever 212) [email protected]. Expository Writing 20 -Slave Narratives. Written from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century in the United States, slave narratives represented the story from slavery to freedom, the escape from the South to the North, and the intellectual journey towards ...
Slave narrative
slave narrative, an account of the life, or a major portion of the life, of a fugitive or former slave, either written or orally related by the slave personally.Slave narratives comprise one of the most influential traditions in American literature, shaping the form and themes of some of the most celebrated and controversial writing, both in fiction and in autobiography, in the history of the ...
Writing About Slavery in Historical Fiction
Writing Slavery in Historical Fiction. 1. Don't sanitize the truth. Nobody likes writing about slavery. But the ugliness of slavery—and the discomfort you feel in dialogue with its historical legacy—are all the more reason to look at it unflinchingly. Take these two steps to avoid sanitizing slavery in your writing.
Slave Narratives from Slavery to the Great Depression
Slave Narratives During Slavery and After The Slave Narrative Collection represents the culmination of a literary tradition that extends back to the eighteenth century, when the earliest American slave narratives began to appear. The greatest vogue of this genre occurred during the three decades of sectional controversy that preceded the Civil War. The avowed intention of the antebellum ...
ENGL405: Essay on the Slave Narrative
Read this introductory essay on the slave narrative as a literary genre. ... Much of the focus of the narrative, then, is on authenticating his life story, as he provides names and locales and, as often as possible, dates to corroborate his account. The work was immediately quite popular, with seven American and nine British editions appearing ...
Autobiography: Slave Narratives
The Slave's Narrative. New York, 1985. A collection of essays and reviews about slave narratives, including a selection of those written at the time of the original publication of various narratives. Modern essays on the slave narrative include historical analysis and literary criticism and focus on a range of specific texts.
The Value of the Federal Writers' Project Slave Narratives
These stories were the result of the Federal Writers' Project —a New Deal program that was tasked with collecting the oral histories of thousands of Americans. From 1936 to 1938, interviewers ...
Slave narrative
The slave narrative is a type of literary genre involving the (written) autobiographical accounts of enslaved persons, particularly Africans enslaved in the Americas, though many other examples exist.Over six thousand such narratives are estimated to exist; about 150 narratives were published as separate books or pamphlets. In the United States during the Great Depression (1930s), more than ...
The Slave Narrative Tradition in African American Literature
Critical Essays The Slave Narrative Tradition in African American Literature. The slave narrative is a form of autobiography with a unique structure and distinctive themes that traces the narrator's path from slavery to freedom. Although traditional slave narratives such as Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass ...
(PDF) The freedom to remember: narrative, slavery, and gender in
Slavery, and Gender in Contemporary Black Women's Fiction 2002 and the editor of Within the Narrative, Slavery, and Gender in Contemporary Black Women's. one of the first narratives to focus exclusively on enslaved black women's. narrative into fiction, Walker participates in the creation of alternative 11 A. Mitchell, The Freedom to Remember ...
Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction
Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction. 1. In my eighth-grade U.S. History class, each student read a novel written by an African-American writer, about African-Americans. There were a few books to choose from, but the only ones I remember are Native Son by Richard Wright and Roots by Alex Haley .
The Narrative Matters: Guidelines on Writing about Slavery
Referring to the controversial cover of A Birthday Cake for George Washington depicting a smiling black cook and his daughter baking a cake for the president, the article's author posits that keeping the narrative about chattel slavery honest is constant work. In addition, it's not just representations in popular media and creative mediums ...
Slavery fiction in Britain
Abstract. This article analyses significant examples of slavery fiction published in Britain by writers who have family links to Africa and the Caribbean. As children of immigrants who had come to Britain after World War II, Caryl Phillips, David Dabydeen, Fred D'Aguiar, Andrea Levy and Bernardine Evaristo shared the uncertainties of coming ...
The late Alex Tizon and "My Family's Slave": his first memory, and his
The Atlantic has built an archive of commentary, and is pursuing several follow-up stories on human trafficking and cultural slavery. And on Wednesday, the Gates Foundation is hosting a public discussion prompted by the story. It is the saddest of ironies that Tizon didn't live to see the publication of Lola's story.
Kindred Sample Essay Outlines
Sample Essay Outlines. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uses the science fiction plot device of time travel to explore how the history of the enslavement of blacks by whites in the United States is ...
A Story of Slavery in Modern America
Lola Pulido (shown on the left at age 18) came from a poor family in a rural part of the Philippines. The author's grandfather "gave" her to his daughter as a gift. One day during the war ...
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by herself is an autobiography by Harriet Jacobs, a mother and fugitive slave, published in 1861 by L. Maria Child, who edited the book for its author.Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book documents Jacobs's life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her children.
Project MUSE
White slavery fiction marries empiricism with sensationalism, data with melodrama, cold statistics with exaggeration and falsehood. This essay examines the literary empiricism of Reginald Wright Kauffman's 1910 novel The House of Bondage and the amateur literary criticism of progressive anti-vice reformers to examine a tradition of mutual ...
Learning About Slavery With Primary Sources
Part I. The article uses primary sources to tell the story of slavery from 1619 to 1865. To begin thinking critically about primary sources, look at the cover image for the article, which uses ...
271 Ideas, Essay Examples, and Topics on Slavery
Metaphoric Theme of Slavery in "Indiana" by George Sand. In her novel about love and marriage, Sand raises a variety of central themes of that time society, including the line of slavery both from the protagonist's perspective and the French colonial slavery. How "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" Addresses Slavery.
A Book Explores the Evil of New World Slavery
Irreparable Evil: An Essay in Moral and Reparatory History by David Scott, Ruth and William Lubic Professor in the Department of Anthropology, explores the legacy of slavery and its moral and political implications, offering a nuanced intervention into debates over reparations. Scott reconsiders the story of New World slavery in a series of ...