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326 pages, Hardcover
First published June 13, 2023
A year earlier, while [a police constable] had been patrolling in the city, he had been called to the slave pen on Duke Street [in Alexandria, Virginia]. Someone had heard children screaming. A young enslaved woman in her twenties, who had been granted the freedom to live with autonomy until she had recently been sold, had decided that she could not bear for her children to return to a life of slavery. She had already strangled her two youngest children in the pen and was attempting to murder her two older children, beating their faces and heads with bricks “by which they were horribly mangled.” (Kindle location 2050)More frequently, however, there is no information, dramatic or otherwise, at which time the author must fill in the blanks with unfounded, if very reasonable, speculation. This results in the frequent appearance of phrases like “We do not know whether…”, “No one knows whether…”, “And there is no description of…”, “It is unclear whether …”, and so on.
Louise and Anna would soon learn from their elders that a Black child’s value was not measured by her infectious laugh or her curiosity but her utility. (location 965)or
But for Anna, who was imprisoned on board the Katherine Jackson, the twisting tributary must have seemed like a river of tears. (location 2114)I once read – I think it was also in the New York Times – that African-Americans docents leading white Americans through historically preserved Southern plantations sometimes had to endure knuckleheaded outrage because they (the docents) did not give sufficient space to the alleged existence of slaves who felt childlike satisfaction at the treatment they received from their benevolent masters. With opinions like this walking around apparently unmolested and unchallenged, it’s easy to understand why the author is outraged at the treatment of enslaved people, both described in this book and more generally, and wants to write about it. However, I think that this book, as written, won’t convince anybody who doesn’t agree already.