Bridget’s answer to “I have not finished the book, but wonder if a large segment of people would feel excluded reading a…” > Likes and Comments
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That is what made me uncomfortable about this book. Yes, some of it is an historical account, but the relationship between Eliza and Ben is pure fiction so a white author knowingly created this fiction to have us further sympathize with a slaveowner. I do not appreciate the manipulation of sympathy and emotion, to make the reader feel more aligned with this person. Yes, she did things that benefited the South and advanced the United States but to say she wholly kind and sympathetic to her slaves (even going so far as to create a fiction where she was best friends with a black slave as a child then held romantic feelings for him as an adult) is manipulative, slave apologist literature.
I read this book as a story about Eliza and her work -- not about the people enslaved on that plantation, because you are right, a white person cannot tell that story. Whether or not that story is worth telling is up to each reader (I see a mix of opinions on that.) That aside... the way I read it, Ben knew to stay way the hell away from her, even if she didn't know... I feel the author conveyed Eliza's ignorance on that point, no?
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Jessie
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Nov 12, 2020 09:28AM
That is what made me uncomfortable about this book. Yes, some of it is an historical account, but the relationship between Eliza and Ben is pure fiction so a white author knowingly created this fiction to have us further sympathize with a slaveowner. I do not appreciate the manipulation of sympathy and emotion, to make the reader feel more aligned with this person. Yes, she did things that benefited the South and advanced the United States but to say she wholly kind and sympathetic to her slaves (even going so far as to create a fiction where she was best friends with a black slave as a child then held romantic feelings for him as an adult) is manipulative, slave apologist literature.
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I read this book as a story about Eliza and her work -- not about the people enslaved on that plantation, because you are right, a white person cannot tell that story. Whether or not that story is worth telling is up to each reader (I see a mix of opinions on that.) That aside... the way I read it, Ben knew to stay way the hell away from her, even if she didn't know... I feel the author conveyed Eliza's ignorance on that point, no?
