slauderdale’s Reviews > Autobiography of a Female Slave > Status Update

Ann feels contempt for Yankee Schoolmarm, who extols her Abolition in private whilst publicly agreeing with everything her young white charges say re: POC and Abolitionists. Yet Ann positively swoons for Male Little Eva, 15-year-old angel child of vicious Mr. Peterkins. Granted, he's a kid and there's probably not much he can do, whereas Miss Bradley is at least an adult with some agency. It's still weird, though.

"Maybe I'm just weird in my old age, but this is enjoyable." This being 19th-century sensational, sentimental, punctuated with frequent outbursts of righteous indignation, castigation, lamentation, consolation, etc., in and around depictions of leering sadism and dialect, although the author also depicts white dialect, which doesn't always happen, with the social-climbing enslaver from Kentucky.

Maybe I'm just weird in my old age, but this is enjoyable. "Autobiography" is actually a novel by a white woman who inherited slaves and used the proceeds from the novel to legally manumit them: ie. she went the extra step with money and paperwork. It will be refreshing to read a book about antebellum POC that is really by a black writer, though. My next intended read is "Hagar's Daughter" by Pauline Hopkins.