Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation

Rating:
Summary: Extremely Interesting but sometimes a Tearjerker!
Review: For several years I've been reading powerful thought-provoking slave narratives. This is probably the most moving due to accompanying tapes of slaves discussing their thoughts and conditions when they were slaves. This book and tapes should be used in every high school American and World history classes. I recommend this book to everyone above the age of twelve. If you want to begin educating your children earlier about American history, specifically slavery have them read K.J. McWilliams books; The Journal of Darien Duff, an Emancipated Slave, The Diary of a Slave Girl, Ruby Jo, and The Journal of Leroy Jones, a Fugitive Slave. They are based on slave narratives such as this one and include many interesting photos as well as additional information.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and Enlightening
Review: I am currently a high school student that read part of this for a Civil War class and let me say this is one powerful book. With people who were the slaves themselves tell you their stories, you learn alot about the antebellum period. I would recommend this book for any mature person due to the fact that some of these stories show the true horror of slavery.

Rating:
Summary: Excellently laid out and graphically told
Review: There can be no more powerful telling of the history of slavery in the United States than to read it and hear it from the slaves' own mouths. Their recollections are, for the most part, graphic and chilling, but the diversity of these life experiences are also rich with good stories, too....slaves bonding together, looking out for one another and at times outwitting their masters and overseers. While the general knowledge of salvery has been known to many Americans for years, it is the actual detailed accounts of day-to-day life that make this book come alive. I hadn't known, for instance, that slaves were required to have passes in order to travel off the plantations or that Christmas and New Year's were largely times of rejoicing for both slave families and their master's families. Yet for the rest of the year the hardships and conditions that most slaves witnessed was incredible....beatings often for no reason, no shoes or lack of other clothing during the winter cold and often not nearly enough food. The clarity with which these former slaves recall their life 80 years or more before is an indication of how etched in their young minds life had been. The accompanying audio cassettes were the main reason l bought the book and they simply added a human dimension to the whole story. l had only two small disappointments with the audio segment....l would rather have had none of the actors read the transcripts...(the actual slave voices are far more powerful) and l wish that photos of the slave speakers could have been provided.... while there were many photos of the former slaves in the book they were not the photos of the slaves who made the audio tapes. In a time where revisionist history seems to be the rage it is, in a strange way, rather comforting to hear these stories told by the people who lived them. How these men and women suffered under bondage and lived for so many years afterward to finally tell about it is a tribute to their spirit and courage.

Rating:
Summary: Very Powerful&Painful
Review: this is a Must for all to have.The Books&tapes show the RawNess and Emotions of Americas Worst NightMare that still Haunts Her.the Voices run Deep down your skin.until SLavery is Properly Discussed and Dealt with America will continue to be a Land of The Unknown.a Must Have Book.