**This blog is a part of a series, as I read my way through 2017. To see my book list and/or recommend more, see this post.**
4. A Biography: Twelve Years a Slave - Solomon Northup
This was the first book I read for my 2017 reading challenge (the order having mostly to do with what I found first at the Harrison County Public Library, West Biloxi branch.) I have to take a moment to praise my library. While my branch is not especially large, it's close to home, and it has a fantastic inter-library loan program with all the other branches of the Harrison Co. system. The librarians are also great- helpful and always have something good to say about one of the books I've chosen.
So I started my journey with what might actually be the most difficult subject matter on the list. Twelve Years a Slave (now a movie, too) is the autobiographical tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man kidnapped and sold into slavery, where he remained for 12 years. First let me say I was very impressed with the readability and accessibility of the text. For a novel written by a black man living in the mid 1800s, the work is easy to understand and relate to, even for a white woman in the 21st century. The story is crafted so well that I often had to consciously remind myself that I was reading a biography rather than a work of fiction.
I suppose that's where the difficulty of the subject matter comes in. While the story would be a brutal work of fiction, much of the violence is nothing we aren't accustomed to seeing on prime time television. It's hard to hear of characters subjected to cruel, inhumane treatment, but it was much harder to force myself to keep in mind that the events of this book are things that actually happened to a singular man who really did live, and happened not too far from where I am sitting tonight.
When we're taught about slavery in school, it's mostly in context of human labor in the cotton fields and the civil war, leading up to the emancipation proclamation. I find that in the South, history teachers will often focus on the misconceptions about the role of slavery in the Civil War and in so doing, minimize or gloss over the facts of slavery's role in our past. So while I was never under the impression that slavery was actually a pleasant thing, the reality of it never quite hit home, I suppose.
This book certainly reframed that narrative for me.
I now picture a society that was bold enough to venture to another continent, lie, cheat, and kidnap actual human beings and bring them to America to be sold as property- hardly better than an animal. Northup describes his own ignorance as a free man, and his shock upon fully understanding the absolute lack of value a black life had in the South, save for its ability to work. He recalls standing on the auction block and being examined like an animal, with buyers inspecting his body, feeling his limbs, investigating his eyes and teeth for sign of defect.
He later describes the predicament of a female slave who is regularly raped by their master, and thus hated and punished continuously by the master's wife. On one occasion she is strung up naked and whipped and beaten nearly to death. And she's entirely powerless to change a single thing about her situation. Northup attempts to intervene on her behalf as often as possible, and she makes it clear to him that she feels his presence is the only thing that has kept her alive this long, but that she'd be better off dead anyway. To the whites, she is considered nothing more than property to be used and abused.
One thing I found incredibly striking was Northup's description of his first master, a pastor. He said the man was kind and generous, but a product of his environment who never considered that a human being should not be the property of another. It simply never occurred to him that life could or should be any different. As kindhearted and pious as he may have been (Northup only speaks well of him) he still participated in the systematic oppression of an entire race of people, depriving them of the inalienable rights of freedom and equality.
This is where the book became most personal for me. This sort of predicament terrifies me, to be quite honest, as I look at my own life and wonder what parts of my own culture have been so ingrained in me that I never think to question whether they are in fact wholly upright and Good. Do I allow injustice to continue around me, simply because I have never known anything else? Do I remain silent as a matter of culture or convenience when my voice as a daughter of God could be used to fight for "the least of these?" Oh, may it never be.
May I stand with the forgotten, lend my voice to the voiceless, fight for the helpless, and always seek to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God. Even, and especially, when it flies in the face of everything I've been taught by my culture, my government, and even my church.
4. A Biography: Twelve Years a Slave - Solomon Northup
This was the first book I read for my 2017 reading challenge (the order having mostly to do with what I found first at the Harrison County Public Library, West Biloxi branch.) I have to take a moment to praise my library. While my branch is not especially large, it's close to home, and it has a fantastic inter-library loan program with all the other branches of the Harrison Co. system. The librarians are also great- helpful and always have something good to say about one of the books I've chosen.
So I started my journey with what might actually be the most difficult subject matter on the list. Twelve Years a Slave (now a movie, too) is the autobiographical tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man kidnapped and sold into slavery, where he remained for 12 years. First let me say I was very impressed with the readability and accessibility of the text. For a novel written by a black man living in the mid 1800s, the work is easy to understand and relate to, even for a white woman in the 21st century. The story is crafted so well that I often had to consciously remind myself that I was reading a biography rather than a work of fiction.
I suppose that's where the difficulty of the subject matter comes in. While the story would be a brutal work of fiction, much of the violence is nothing we aren't accustomed to seeing on prime time television. It's hard to hear of characters subjected to cruel, inhumane treatment, but it was much harder to force myself to keep in mind that the events of this book are things that actually happened to a singular man who really did live, and happened not too far from where I am sitting tonight.
When we're taught about slavery in school, it's mostly in context of human labor in the cotton fields and the civil war, leading up to the emancipation proclamation. I find that in the South, history teachers will often focus on the misconceptions about the role of slavery in the Civil War and in so doing, minimize or gloss over the facts of slavery's role in our past. So while I was never under the impression that slavery was actually a pleasant thing, the reality of it never quite hit home, I suppose.
This book certainly reframed that narrative for me.
I now picture a society that was bold enough to venture to another continent, lie, cheat, and kidnap actual human beings and bring them to America to be sold as property- hardly better than an animal. Northup describes his own ignorance as a free man, and his shock upon fully understanding the absolute lack of value a black life had in the South, save for its ability to work. He recalls standing on the auction block and being examined like an animal, with buyers inspecting his body, feeling his limbs, investigating his eyes and teeth for sign of defect.
He later describes the predicament of a female slave who is regularly raped by their master, and thus hated and punished continuously by the master's wife. On one occasion she is strung up naked and whipped and beaten nearly to death. And she's entirely powerless to change a single thing about her situation. Northup attempts to intervene on her behalf as often as possible, and she makes it clear to him that she feels his presence is the only thing that has kept her alive this long, but that she'd be better off dead anyway. To the whites, she is considered nothing more than property to be used and abused.
One thing I found incredibly striking was Northup's description of his first master, a pastor. He said the man was kind and generous, but a product of his environment who never considered that a human being should not be the property of another. It simply never occurred to him that life could or should be any different. As kindhearted and pious as he may have been (Northup only speaks well of him) he still participated in the systematic oppression of an entire race of people, depriving them of the inalienable rights of freedom and equality.
This is where the book became most personal for me. This sort of predicament terrifies me, to be quite honest, as I look at my own life and wonder what parts of my own culture have been so ingrained in me that I never think to question whether they are in fact wholly upright and Good. Do I allow injustice to continue around me, simply because I have never known anything else? Do I remain silent as a matter of culture or convenience when my voice as a daughter of God could be used to fight for "the least of these?" Oh, may it never be.
May I stand with the forgotten, lend my voice to the voiceless, fight for the helpless, and always seek to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God. Even, and especially, when it flies in the face of everything I've been taught by my culture, my government, and even my church.
