To Be a Slave

I can't believe this book was published in 1968, won the Newbery in 1969, and none of my teachers in grade 7 and 8 recommended it. It could be such a foundational book for a young teenager. We needed this book.

It's a moving account of slavery collected from the words of people who lived it. The oral histories recorded by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s include stories that go back to people who remembered life in Africa before they were kidnapped and sold, usually at secondhand but still incredibly vivid. So To Be a Slave is not just history, it's a collection of primary documents. Young people in school could gain an introduction to historiography.

Julius Lester closes with a chapter on life after Emancipation. It didn't get show more better, for many if not most African Americans. That really drives home how much needed to be done in desegregation and civil rights activism in the 1960s and how much is left to be done today. show less

Very good compilation of memories of actual slaves, StoryCorp style organized with Lester's own skilled narration. Much of it was not new to me, but would be to an audience of 7th-12th grade students. It's like Roots for people who can't handle Roots (me). It didn't make me sick or cry like Paulsen's Night John or Roots, but I did learn about the actual origins of American slavery a bit better. The first few chapters and the last chapter had the newest information (for me). There was a bit of baby murder to traumatize and upset, but no rape/breeding in this collection (why, I don't know). In all, I think it's appropriate for middle school.

To be a slave. To be owned by another person, as a car, house, or a table is owned. To live as a piece of property that could be sold...

This book is about how it felt. The words of black men and women who had themselves been slaves are here, accompanied by Julius Lester's historical commentary and Tom Feelings's powerful and muted paintings.

Lester spent long weeks researching documents in the Library of Congress, assimilating first-person accounts of runaway slaves, former slaves and descendents of slaves in order to reconstruct a shameless timeline of slavery in America. Each quotation is followed by a literary acknowledgment of one of his three main sources. Interspersed among the abundant personal recollections by long-desceased show more informants, the author adds his own historical introspection and insight in italics.

"To Be A Slave" is such a powerful read. This book will give the reader a first hand experience of what it was like to be a slave. What makes this book so good is that it's the words of the slave. It's their stories and their words. The reader will learn how they were beaten and how their families were split up...sometimes for life.

Presented in chronological order, this book is a veritable patchwork quilt of memories and excruciating experiences -- a wholesale attempt to brainwash an entire race into calm acceptance of belief in racial inferiority and a mindset of docile, servile obedience. These testimonies include some that are humorous or poignant, as well as painfully disgusting. Bravo to the slaves who secretly refused to accept white man's judgment regarding their ability and innate humanity. Adopting various methods of resistance -- both subtle and openly defiant -- these proud people transmitted their memories of living free in story telling format, passing down their African traditions to generations who were born into America's most shameful institution.

Book Details:

Title To Be A Slave
Author Julius Lester
Reviewed By Purplycookie show less

Interesting, informative and very sad. Where Booker T. Washington had a hopeful outlook for the future, this author seems mired in the bitterness of the past, and who can blame him? Washington was a part of slavery and overcame it, Lester is writing in the 1960's, some of the most trying modern times for race relations.

Lester has edited together many interviews of those who lived through slavery. He inserts much of his voice into the book, telling us how to interpret what we read and how to feel about it. I don't know, but I suspect he was very selective over which stories to include, ending with a bitter hopeless rant. To what end? I understand the desperation, but I continue to have hope. A fool's hope maybe, but it is mine.

If you are looking for primary sources on slavery, look no further. Author Julius Lester provides context for what is basically a compilation of quotations by and about slaves. Some of these are incredibly harsh, with explicit language intact. In the introduction, Lester makes an argument that younger children can handle this harsh reality and that it does in fact make them into more compassionate people who will value truth over lies. This may be too much for children under the age of 12, but it's an indispensable resource for exposing young adults to the realities of this country's past.

By chance, I read this right before the movie "Twelve Years a Slave" is due out and so I noticed that book heavily quotes Solomon Northup, on whose show more autobiography the movie is based. show less

Read for the Newbery Club in Children's Books: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/21440520-the-newbery-honor-books-from-1969-...

Short book, but lots in it. Too much to read in one sitting... I keep getting up and doing something else, processing.

One thing I was never taught was about the different ways that the Negro people resisted slavery. Lester gives us two chapters on it. Very enlightening.

And then there's the last chapter, about the times after Emancipation, when it was/is still really tough to be Black in a White-dominated society.

Art, introduction, and bibliography also make this a special book. It really should be more widely read. And if it makes a child uncomfortable, well, just imagine the difference between just reading show more about it, and actually living it. Recommended for ages 8-108.

Available free to read on openlibrary.org show less

Julius Lester's compilation of slave narratives tell the story of slavery from capture, to the auction block, to life on the plantation, slave resistance in its many forms, and life after emancipation. Lester's narration is as powerful as the first person narratives he selected to share. The words are haunting. The history is important. The book it timeless.