Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Slave History
Review: This book is hard to put down, and hard to pick up. Dramatic recall of her life as a slave and her escape. I love this book and recommend it to anyone wanting to know the truth about life as a female slave.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent piece of literature
Review: This book is the memoir of an ex-slave woman published in 1861. The author is a gifted story-teller and evokes feeling very well. The author was inspired by religous conviction and great personal confidence. This book is too genuine to think that someone else wrote it for her, such as her white editor. It would have turned it into just another political phamphlet from the civil war era if that were the case. She had a great deal of intelligence and obvious natural ability to write despite her lack of formal education. She goes through her nonage at the mercy of a lecherous master, Dr. Flint, whom she successfully avoids against being raped yet is subjected to constant verbal and sometimes physical abuse. She managed to escape and hide in her Grandmother's house in some sort of extremely small space where she had to remain almost all the time for seven years. She escapes to the North eventually and joins her two children, products of a relationship with a white man, a future congressman, of her town as she was trying to get away from her master. She falls into the hands of various abolitionst-inclined aristocrats who help protect her, particularly after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, until one of her white benefactors was able to negotiate with Dr. Flint's son-in-law, Dr. Flint being dead by this time, to "buy" her freedom. Having to have her freedom bought was very distasteful to her for she had long fully reasoned herself a human being and not a cow. It is good to read books like this that remind you just how horrible slavery was. Hardly a system where happy and content slaves worked for benevolent philospher aristocratic gentleman. It was a system which subjected slaves without protection of the law to the short term profit and personal whims of the white elite. To put it mildly. Blacks were treated worse than animals with all the whipping and constant mental degredation and the breaking up of slave families at a whim. The author asserts after visiting England as a nanny for one of her benefactors and observing the life of some of the dirt poor in rural England that the poorest of them lived better than the most pampered slave in America.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful narrative
Review: This is the autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, who was born into slavery. In her youth, she had a good master and mistress and was treated well and taught to read. But when her mistress died, she was passed on to the daughter as an inheritance and the daughter married an older man who was as evil as most of the other slave holders. She witnessed his cruelty first-hand, and when she reached puberty, he decided to "have" her and sire a new "stock" of slaves through her. She avoided his advances. Having been taught Christianity and moral values, she did not want to spoil herself. Finally, to avoid him, she allowed herself to be impregnated by a kindly neighboring slave holder who at least treated her decent. Her master, enraged, became obsessed with controlling her. He refused to sell her or her children to anyone for any price, as he knew that her friends would gladly purchase her for the purpose of freeing her. Finally, she ran away, but couldn't escape the slave hunters in the area, so she hid in the attic space of her grandmother's shed, a dark hole only 6 feet long and 3 feet high at the pitch, and stayed there for six years awaiting her chance to escape. This book is a fascinating, first-hand look at what it was like to be a slave. It also brought home to me the fact that even though we have come a long way as a society, this kind of evil still exists. We no longer have slavery, but we certainly have an over-abundance of people who want to control and abuse and denigrate. The same attitudes that existed with the slave holders still exist today. People who think that they are superior to someone else for whatever reason--race, religion, financial circumstance, background, clothing, education--you name it, someone is bigoted against it. And the evil of trying to control each other is just as bad. We have a proliferation of people who rape, beat, abuse, and molest people who are weaker than they are. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Although I was aware of the kinds of things that happened in slavery, this book presented someone's first-hand experience with it, and I cheered our heroine on as she plotted and planned to acquire her freedom.
Rating:
Summary: slavery: the reality
Review: This is the book that brought home a dimension of slavery to me that I had never understood: the psychological repercussions of someone presuming that they can own someone else. Perhaps it had to be written by a woman, who was regarded as the sexual property of a horrible man. The story of how she escapes and frustrates her "owner" is indeed enthralling, a triumph of human will in the worst adversity. She hid under the slanted roof of her mothers house for years, permanently injuring her back and watching he children grow up from afar. It is such a moving story that I imagined turning it into a play, with the narrator reminising of her life while hidden in that cramped space. As this is a memoire, the characters in it are very very real, all too human and without the black-and-white quality of too many novels on this bizarre twist of American history. While the writing style is so superb that it had to have been edited by an expert writer, the story and voice are so vivid that it must be real. I have given this book to literally dozens of friends, and almost to a one they have marvelled at the depth of the story. This is the best and most complete account of an aberration in American history of which we all must bear some sense of responsibilty. Get this: it cannot disappoint.
Rating:
Summary: Get ready to cry!
Review: This is the most touching story I have ever read, I cried more than once. It brings to life what slaves went through in the south, and the terrible injustice dumped on the African because of color. I read this book to get an idea what slavery would be like in its heyday, well this book gave it to me. The surprise was I became touched deeply by the suffering of this magnificent woman. Should be required reading in schools so our children can understand what our country did to its own Citizens.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful insight into the institution of slavery
Review: This is without doubt one of the best autobiographies I've ever read. On a very touchy but ever pertinent subject, Harriet Ann Thomas' story of her life as a slave is a remarkable document of antebellum life in the US, both south and north. Unlike the patent attempt to play with the readers' emotions of fictional works like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself, is almost a graceful understatement. At the time it was apparently believed to be a work of fiction, but it lacks the florid style of the Nineteenth Century narrative.
I had expected to have problems reading the book. For one thing, I expected either a convoluted prose style or an offensive parody of slave dialect. I also anticipated a graphic description of the violence perpetrated on individuals considered chattel by their owners. Instead I found the work to have been clearly written. It is remarkable for the literacy of its author-Ms Thomas was taught to read and write by the first owner of her family-and the care with which it's editor, L. Maria Child, took to preserve the author's intentions. Dialect was introduced only where it furthered the narrative and where the individual was likely to have spoken in the manner described. Violence is described but not so graphically as to entirely put off the reader.
Instead of the sensationalism that might have been used to promote her cause, the author provides insight into the emotional losses, personal deprivations, and incredible uncertainty in the lives of the individuals enduring slavery. She emphasizes her point by demonstrating her willingness to undergo a seemingly unending imprisonment in an attic with only a tiny peep hole out onto the world rather than continue as a slave. The great sacrifices and risks that others assumed in order for her and others like her to escape to freedom in the north underscores the extent to which the vicissitudes of the institution created a network among those opposed to it and those oppressed by it. Most poignant is her description of New Years as being a time of great tribulation for the slave. Unlike the white members of southern society who looked forward to the new year with festivity and expectation, the slave family looked upon it as a tragedy waiting to happen. Rentals and sales of individuals on that day tore families apart, husbands from wives, children from parents, often never to be reunited or even heard of again, and no slave or slave family could ever feel they were entirely safe. Sadder still were those cases of slaves who had been promised their freedom by kinder owners, only to have these promises abrogated by the heirs or to discover that no actual paperwork had been put into motion prior to the death of the individual.
Ms Thomas also makes a strong case for the damage that slavery caused to white society as well. Just by relating her own experiences and those of people around her, she recreates the anger felt by white wives who discovered that their husbands had had children by slave women, the blunted feelings of white men who, no matter what their feelings for those children, were caught up in a society that punished them for "recognizing" any children by black mistresses, the poverty and anger of the average white wage earner caught in an economy where he had to compete with poorly maintained, unpaid labor in order to make a living, and so on. In short Ms Thomas makes it abundantly apparent that the institution of slavery dehumanized both the enslaver and the enslaved.
One thing especially of note is the author's observation that the north was hardly better. She was free, perhaps, but only free to be second class. While recognizing that slavery was incompatible with the institution of democracy, northerners were still, with rare exception, prejudiced against individuals of non-white background. I think a case could easily be made that it is the more silent prejudice of the north that has perpetuated the inequities that still plague the lives of non-white Americans today.
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Summary: This book has affected me for my entire life!
Review: Throughout my education, this book has been assigned -- from elementary school to college. I have read this book over and over and never cease to find details that astound me. There is an amazing depth to this woman, and the subtle craft of her writing reveal it in full force. You may find a comparison between this work and Frederick Douglass' autobiography worthwhile. They are both abolitionists, but they attack that "demon slavery" in very different ways. And personally, I have always preferred Jacob's style of sentiment. She hits you where it hurts the most: in the heart.
Rating:
Summary: simple and straightforward
Review: What I particularly like about this book is how easy it is to read through. The southern vernacular dialect is sparse and not used by Harriet/Linda in the book. Further, the retelling of the horrors of slavery are not overdramatized -- it's not necessary to get the reader's attention. The everyday nature of these attocities are evident in the straightforward reporting of the events.
The dynamics of the household are fascinating when you read of the jealous mistresses who are infuriated at their husbands' infidelities under their roofs and how they mistreat the slave women who are subjected to their husband's unwelcomed advances.
Harriet's Grandmother is a remarkable woman of her day -- she became free and through hard work bought many of her own family members. She was a highly respected member of the community lending money to whites and blacks alike.
Survival and freedom for herself and her children is Harriet's objective and her unyielding determination is inspiring.
This story tells how difficult it was to be a woman in the south and particularly an attractive woman in slavery
Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking and eye-opening
Review: When my history professor told us that we'd be reading this book and writing a paper over it I was less than excited. I thought it was going to be just another boring History text. To my surpise and delight I was hooked after only a few pages. This true story of Harriet Jacobs, a 19th century slave, is absolutely mind-blowing. Ms. Jacobs spent 7 years of her life living in what was literally a wooden box in the rafters of her grandmother's shed. She was waiting for the perfect moment to escape to the North and bring her children out of slavery. From her perch in the shed she could look out onto the street and watch her children play and hear them talk about how much they missed their mother and wished to see her again (they had no idea she was in hiding). Jacobs even went so far as to send letters to her vicious master to make him believe that she was really in the Northern states. Sure everyone learns about slavery in school, but we only get the narrow and highly shortened version of what it was to live in slavery. This book is an emotional account of slavery in all its brutality and what it was like to live in fear every moment of every day. Jacobs is a perfect portrait of an unbreakable spirit.
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