Twelve Years a Slave
- Mar 8, 2020
- 1 min read
★★★★☆
Perhaps the only thing worse than being born into bondage to forever spend one’s life a slave is to have been born free and then kidnapped and sold into slavery. Such is the harrowing tale of Solomon Northup, who, as the book’s title accurately states, spent 12 years as a slave in and around Bayou Boeuf, Louisiana, nearly 1,600 miles from his home, his wife, and his three children in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Bursting with drama, heartbreak, unimaginable hardship, and unspeakable suffering, Twelve Years a Slave is a powerful companion to Frederick Douglass’s more eloquent, measured, and politically-minded Narrative. While Northup lacks Douglass’s command of the written word and shies away from the latter’s pointed observations and critiques of the institutions of slavery and Christianity, he has nevertheless crafted an irresistible story with page-turning immediacy.
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