Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South

Rating:
Summary: Slavery was an horrid event...
Review: Here's a book that grants the reader a degree of freedom to question where a number of the quotes came from. The voices of the children are still missing.

For thirty-five dollars it lacks merit. But for someone with little understanding of slavery its an interesting library read.

Rating:
Summary: a thought-provoking study of childhood under slavery
Review: This absorbing book both confirms established information (e.g., the prevalence of children among domestic workers) and challenges popular assumptions about slaves' lives (Schwartz suggests that antebellum planter families frequently ignored injunctions against teaching slaves to read and that many, perhaps most, slave children learned the alphabet and basic reading skills, even if few became competent readers). Schwartz draws on WPA narratives of former slaves, as well as the memoirs of former slaves and slaveowners, to construct a surprising vivid picture of young children's lives under slavery. Her writing is smooth and clear, though occasionally repetitive.