Book Review: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl / Harriet Jacobs

Happy February. Did you know that it is Black History Month? "Every month should be Black History Month", you say? I agree. But I still wanted to take the time to read something about Black history this month and selected this book. 

So what is spectacular about this book? I found it enlightening and a bit brain twisting. Wikipedia tells me that this book was originally published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Bent. Here Harriet (Linda in the story) shares her story of living in slavery. By some standards she was lucky. Jacobs reports, 

"I was never cruelly overworked; I was never lacerated with the whip from head to foot; I was never so beaten and bruised that I could not turn from one side to the other; I never had my heel-strings cut to prevent my running away; I was never chained to a log and forced to drag it about, while I toiled in the fields from morning till night; I was never branded with hot iron, or torn by bloodhounds. But though my life in slavery was comparatively devoid of hardships, God pity the woman who is compelled to lead such a life!"

BUT - she served a lecherous master who would not free her. She was afraid of what he would do with her and her children. She was afraid of what happened to slave girls at a certain age because they offered their masters value in their ability to produce more slave children. She was afraid to be around him. She was afraid that she would lose her children. She was so afraid  of remaining with her master that she escaped slavery to hide for many years. But I don't want to share more. Read this book. The light it sheds on being both slave and female is mind boggling. 

You can read this book via the Project Gutenberg site: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl