When I Was a Slave: Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection (Dover Thrift Editions),   ISBN:9780486420707

Customer Rating: 

" Listening" to them tell their stories reminds you that this might have been/was the life of your ancestors. You admire the strength and resilience of those held in bondage.

Customer Rating: 

I call these accounts from the mouths of Slaves amazing because it's amazing
that this race of people survived under such inhumane conditions. If you want
to get the real deal and not some watered down made for tv version this book
will be for you.

Customer Rating: 

This book is absolutely priceless. The reader will get a first hand account of slavery from those who experienced it, in their precise, unaltered language from a bygone era.

Some of the former slaves were treated well by their owners, while many provide graphic details of dreadful human suffering and cruelty at the hands of their ruthless owners. Families were sold apart at auction, never to see each other again. Children fed at a "trough" as if they were beasts. Men kept in chains to prevent them from escaping the horrors of slavery. Men fathering children with their female slaves, and then selling their own children off into slavery.

Each autobiography is only a few pages in length. Thus, it is an easy book to read, put down, and then revisit as time allows. This book should be required reading for all students of history. I strongly recommend this excellent, vivid description of American slavery.

Customer Rating: 

If you have never read any of the slave narratives, get this book as a start. The slave narratives written down in the 30s are amazing in the insight they give the reader. This is a reasonable selection. (There are many, many, more.)

Customer Rating: 

Thanks to this book, I look at my people, Black people, in a deeper dimension. A lot of what we do today, whether food or clothes, comes from what was forced upon us in slavery. Black slave families torn apart, is the reason why TODAY, we Black people are family.