Early African-American Classics

I'm now reading through this book for the third time, and the stories impress me more and more with every read. These are true accounts of the basest villains and the most courageous heroes, caught in the web of the American South's "peculiar institution" of slavery. If only public schools could make American history so engaging.These tales can be appreciated on a number of levels; for one, they really put my own troubles in perspective, for in comparison to what some of these people went through, my own complaints seem petty and ungrateful. For another, they give fascinating insights into the depths of human depravity and despair, and the heights of courage and strength in the face of adversity. And, of course, it's a tremendously fruitful history lesson, told firsthand by those who lived through it.It is impossible to know how accurate these accounts are - and there *is* a whiff of hyperbole in Harriet Jacobs' otherwise excellent account - but if only half of these assertions are true, it is clear that slavery was a monstrous institution indeed. Reading of these struggles lights a righteous fire in my heart; it makes me want to go back in time and fight alongside these persecuted people, and bring justice to those who committed terrible crimes against them in the name of God and country. You'll never think of this period in American history the same after reading this book.

It seemed a good selection (though the two first pieces seem to address the same thing and are similar in content, if not in tone). I was a little bothered by what seemed to me an excessive sentimentality in the "Slave Girl" narrative and the "Biography of Ex-Colored Man", but I would be the first to say that the reading was educational.