Twelve Years a Slave in Around the Year in 52 Books

Feb 09, 2016 CrystalIsReading on StoryGraph rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-non-fiction, audio, memoir-bio-autobio, black

This book was mindblowing for me. I'd read a bit about slavery before. Reading one of Frederick Douglass's books this spring was very eye opening. But Solomon Northup's story made the horrors of slavery even more personal. This was a different setting--Louisiana plantations-- and a different background to the slave in question--a man stolen away from house and home and family. It is a horrifying story in almost every way. The stories he tells, about poor Patsy, and old Abram, about the slaves wh This book was mindblowing for me. I'd read a bit about slavery before. Reading one of Frederick Douglass's books this spring was very eye opening. But Solomon Northup's story made the horrors of slavery even more personal. This was a different setting--Louisiana plantations-- and a different background to the slave in question--a man stolen away from house and home and family. It is a horrifying story in almost every way. The stories he tells, about poor Patsy, and old Abram, about the slaves who died while in slavery with him...they were heart-breaking. The vile cruelty of so many of the owners was difficult to comprehend, much less bear to read. How could anyone bear to live through it?? Northup seemed to present a very straight-forward description of the conditions in which he lived, from praise of his first kind master to well-deserved disgust with his final master. From first to last that master proved to be a despicable person. The fact that so many of the worst slave owners claimed to be fellow Christians was all the more sickening for me. That the church of that time and place sanctioned such treatment of fellow humans is even more heart-breaking and shameful.
I said "in almost every way"...there are moments throughout the story that shine out, of self-less kindness and sacrifice. Of joy in small things. Of fascinating glimpses of history and culture, like the native tribe Northup encountered in his first slave home in the great pine woods. There are precious few of those moments, but that makes them shine all the brighter by comparison, I suppose. Even some of the moments of beauty were hauntingly sad, like how Northup's son (view spoiler).
This story, more than anything I've read, haunts me. I saw in the events that happened to "Platt" and the slaves around him, so much of what has contributed to the struggles within African-American communities today. Haunting echoes still reverberate today from this horrible time in our history. Everyone should read this book. Should understand, even a little bit, of what our actual history entailed. Of how human beings were treated. Maybe, just maybe, it would teach us to be kinder to each other, to consider our own attitudes and prejudices about race. About the fallibility of human interpretation of religious truths. About the effects of hundreds of years of inhumane treatment on an entire people. If you haven't read this, read it. Just be ready to have your heart broken over and over again. It's worth it, because it's important. ...more

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Mar 03, 2014 Trish rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, biography-autobiog

I will admit that I probably wouldn't have bothered to think twice about reading this if it hadn't been for all the buzz surrounding the movie. But I'm glad I decided to. It's a fascinating, and sometimes harrowing book. With the benefit of 160 years of hindsight, its strange to look back into a world which was the life of so many people. ...more

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Dec 11, 2014 Nancy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, classics

It is tragic to learn that this is a true story. Northup, a free man from New York, was kidnapped and sold into slavery, stripped of all his rights by simple virtue of the fact that he was black in the 1840s. The cruelty he faced, the inhumanity of the slave owners and of the system in general was just horrifying. I am mystified as to how human beings could ever have treated one another like that. Northup writes with intelligence and clarity and, considering that this book was written over 150 y ...more

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