Even though I’d originally planned to write four posts about slavery this year (here are the first, second, and third), I’ve found an abundance of reading selections, so I’m sneaking in a half-step for this project.

For many readers, the contemporary author who comes to mind first, on the subject of slavery, is Toni Morrison.

“So it’s like this big sort of absence,” she explains. In The Last Interview, edited by Nikki Giovanni.

”Not in the history but certainly in the art, of what was actually really going on. You know, when you read slave narratives, as I did, and you can hear the gaps and misinformation there in talking to somebody. ‘It was terrible, it was terrible. But my master, he was fine!’ They don’t want to be penalized, you know?”

This fit with a longtime resident of my stack in 2021: Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition (2021)—a collection edited by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

There are complete articles as well as excerpts from primary sources; all of them were new to me, with two exceptions: Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s excerpt from “A Plea for Emigration, or Notes of Caanda West” (1852) and Benjamin Drew’s story which was reprinted in A North-Side View of Slavery, The Refugee; or, The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, Related by Themselves (1856).

Some pieces I selected out of simple curiosity, like The Anti-Slavery Alphabet (1847), a children’s book by Hannah and Mary Townsend (yes, for real) but mostly I selected pieces to complement my reading of Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (2014).

How did Baptist’s book land on my TBR? I think it was a recommendation by Ibram X. Kendi. Its scope and the blend of content brought Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Sons to mind. Wilkerson’s book, though, read much more quickly for me. Both authors write in an accessible style and structure their narrative to include charts alongside personal reminiscences, photographs and succinct summaries of complex subjects. Both make each letter in the word t-h-r-o-u-g-h feel distinct.

Both books, however, feel readable too, in a way that the thickness of their spines and endnote sections belie. For me, however, even some of the basics are unclear prior to the 20th century. (I can never properly place Kentucky in my mind, for instance, and the American presidents prior to the World Wars are a blur, all vaguely historical and their political slant a mystery.)

Baptist’s insistence on the significance of the personal reminiscences, collected in the 1930s (which some historians eschew) suits me fine though, and these elements undoubtedly maintained my interest throughout. The degree of my engagement waxed and waned, but whenever I considered whether to finish, I carried on.

So, I did not absorb as much of this history as I did from Wilkinson’s book. Nonetheless, maybe a dozen pages at a time—every few days, for weeks—despite the consistent sense that I wasn’t taking it all in, I still felt like I was learning. (In contrast, I read Wilkinson very quickly, but perhaps that was simply a matter of good timing.)

Often I would reread a paragraph in Baptist’s book, not only because I was conscious of having missed a few details, but because I wanted to feel them all land. There are aspects of individuals’ experiences here which truly brought home some ordinary aspects of plantation existence.

Perhaps more than anything, what the book provided me with was context (albeit context that I couldn’t always fully appreciate). Take this passage, from “Feet”, for instance—the book begins with “The Heart” and ends with “The Corpse”:

“In the meantime, the men were the propellant for the coffle-chain, which was more than a tool, more than mere metal. It was a machine. Its iron links and bands forced the black people inside them to do exactly what entrepreneurial enslavers, and investors far distant from slavery’s frontier, needed them to do in order to turn a $300 Maryland or Virginia purchase into a $600 Georgia sale.”

(Ah, see, Virginia—that’s another state I could never properly place, but I think I have that one now. Thanks to the 2020 election map, I’ve got Georgia settled, too.)

If you’ve read Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, you will know why this passage resonated so strongly for me (and if you haven’t, at least you can now watch the series). That’s the kind of Aha feeling that I had through much of Baptist’s book. Some of the gaps in my knowledge were made smaller.

And as for more firmly rooting Kentucky in my mind, Karolyn Smardz Frost’s Steal Away Home (2017) and Brad Asher’s Cecelia and Fanny (2011) provided tissue around the bare bones of my geographical understanding. (Thanks to Naomi, for reminding me about Frost’s book earlier this year.)

Both books explore the complex relationships that Asher describes here: “Because slavery was not just about the master and the slave but about the master’s family and the slave’s family, the chains of bondage always consisted of more than just a single strand.”

Cecelia was bought and “given” to Fanny when both were girls; when Fanny was fifteen, she travelled with the family to the border between New York State and Niagara Falls, and she fled across the river to escape enslavement and live more freely.

In later years, however, the women exchanged letters, because Fanny sought to gain her mother’s freedom as well; Cecilia’s family continued to own and house enslaved people (but not Fanny’s mother) and had some information about how various enslaved families had been fractured and re-dispersed.

Asher’s style is more formal but he also includes details from different sources that humanize the key figures, which balances the academic tone. Frost’s chapters begin with epigraphs, which further situate Cecelia’s story in an historical context, and there are lengthier excerpts from primary sources within the text too; perhaps it only feels less formal, with the wider margins, larger font, and remarkably substantial endnotes to segregate some of the content and allow the narrative to flow more easily.

As a Toronto resident, I appreciated Frost’s additional focus on the time that Cecilia (with husband and daughter) spent living in a familiar neighbourhood of the city, but the bulk of the story is preoccupied with how she travels across the border, moving from south to north and back again, delicately balancing her personal freedom with her desire to protect her mother’s interests, in a time of rapidly shifting legalities.

Speaking of connections between books, one of the aspects of Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old Man (1997; Trans. Linda Coverdale) that excited me was the fact that he includes a character from one of Edouard Glissant’s novels in his narrative.

This novel was recommended by Andrew, who commented on its lyrical and intricate construction. It’s the kind of novel you can read in a couple of hours; also, you could sit with the endnotes and supplementary materials for another couple of days.

In particular, the richness of the relationship between Creole and Kreyol, the relationship between French and French Creole—so much to think about. Or, not. “My eyes on alert watched in every direction. I ran to shelter beneath a different pied-bois to better cover the surrounding area. Peace. Shade, sunniess, leafiness. Nothing else. So then I listened. Ears pricked up.”

The story is structured around a chase, so you don’t have to think about language or culture, enslavement or exploitation—you can simply follow Slave Old Man’s route across the page. You can marvel at the fact that the story you believed you were reading doesn’t travel a familiar path.

My bookmark is well past the halfway point in Alex Haley’s Roots this week (read in company with Liz and Bill for the upcoming Club hosted by Karen and Simon) and that’s proving to not only be a great fit with this project but a terrific reading experience.

Do you have a reading memory of the first book you read about slavery?