Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery [Hardcover]

Patricia Smith (Author), Charles Johnson (Author), WGBH Series Research Team (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1998

The companion volume to the public television series. This extraordinary examination of slavery in americanca features a four-part history by poet and performance artist Patricia Smith and a dozen fictional narratives by National Book Award-winning novelist Charles Johnson. Two-color with black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This extraordinary book--the accompanying volume to the PBS series--looks at the history of slavery in the United States with an honesty that reveals both horror and heroism in the common humanity of all Americans. Uncovering the indigenous history of African slavery and the involvement of Arab and European nations, it then traces the journey of enslaved Africans across the "Middle Passage" of the Atlantic to the Caribbean and America. Charles Johnson's spellbinding fictional narratives beautifully evoke the feeling of times and places, such as the Haitian revolution or the plantation slave society. In "The Transmission," two captives in the bottom of a slave ship try to preserve their heritage. "Oboto quietly sang to his brother--in a language their captors could not understand--how their people long ago had navigated the New World ... on and on like a tapestry, Oboto unfurled their past, rituals, and laws in songs and riddles..."

Poet/journalist Patricia Smith's historical anecdotes and references to legendary African American heroes (including Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass), juxtaposed with rare documents, letters, slave advertisements, slave-ship cargo diagrams, and paintings, provide evidence of the African American fight for freedom, from the black soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War to the Underground Railroad to the return to combat in the Civil War. When emancipation finally came, Smith writes, "the newly liberated slaves sang for themselves, for their new country, and for the thousands upon thousands of Africans ripped from the clutches of home." --Eugene Holley Jr.

From Publishers Weekly

Designed to complement a PBS series of the same name, this is much more than a companion book. A monumental research effort wed with fine writing has produced a work that can stand on its own. Studded with a dozen short stories by Johnson, the NBA-winning author of Middle Passage, and filled with arresting period illustrations, it is ultimately shaped by journalist/poet Smith's (Big Towns, Big Talk) beautiful narrative. There is plenty to praise, in particular the drawing together of several slave narratives and other accounts to flesh out the true picture of slave lives in this country. The ugly reality of the "triangle trade" and the initial confusion of newly enslaved Africans are fully realized, while the apparent hypocrisy and contradictory reasoning of the Founding Fathers is given a human face. The impact of the Caribbean experience, America's western expansion, and black abolitionism are also illuminated. Perhaps the most riveting moments begin early in the journey, at the point when slavery becomes synonymous with blackness in colonial America. Heartbreaking setbacks include the forced migration of slave communities deeper and deeper south, as well as the kidnapping and forced enslavement of free children from the streets of Philadelphia. The struggle of whites against slavery and the divisions within the abolitionist movement are discussed frankly, another in a list of refreshing surprises. While American society can be seen as the logical end of this dreadful institution, the story of all those who struggled to end it is indeed liberating. Although lavishly illustrated, this is not a coffee-table book. It deserves a curious and enlightened reader.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (November 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151003394
• ISBN-13: 978-0151003396
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #219,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS IS A "MUST" READING FOR ALL AFRICANS, January 5, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Los Angeles, Calif.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery (Hardcover)

I am a Nigerian born American, and have lived in the US for 40-years. This is the first book I have ever read from the SLAVES point of view. I have been married for 30-years to an American born African American, and this book, for the first time, explains to me why my 91-year old mother-in-law who lives with us could not watch the movie "Color Purple" or the PBS broadcast of Africans in America. I can now associate the Black American in the street as someone from my village in Nigeria. I am humbled by the humiliation and suffering which was perpetrated on my people for no other reason than the color of their skin. This book must be read by all recent African immigrtants to the US, all heads of African Governments, as well as all editors of African news organizations, in the hope that the respective African country shall adopt this book as a required reading in African schools. I make this recommendation because any history of slavery, whatsoever, as taught in the African schools today, was written in the last 100-years, with the point of view of the SLAVEMASTER. The respective modern day African country has no record of Slavery in America from 1450 to 1900. Worse yet, all the conditions that lead to tribal conflict and genocide exist today in many parts of Africa. Those who have no sense of history will repeat the mistakes of yester-years. This should be the beginning of a new dialogue among Africans and African Americans.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More content, less style, June 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery (Hardcover)

I have started reading Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith, and the WGBH Series Research Team, "African in American: America's Journey through Slavery" (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998), and so far I am shocked and disappointed. While the book has a lot of good information, it contains inconsistencies, fictional material not marked a such. The only citation thus far has been to quotes from primary sources; all other material, including a long quote from historian David Northrup, whom I have used in my research on slavery, is not cited. Perhaps this is because Johnson and Smith are fictional writers and journalist, not historians. The result is a well-written, engaging book that omits important facts, is inconsistent, and glosses over debated subjects with no evidence or citation.

For example, the authors state at one point that 20 million Africans were captured, then states the more recent and widely accepted figure of 10 to 12 million, and then states 20 million again. They also state that the Portuguese dominated the trade at one point, then the Spainish without explaining the change. What really got my goat was that first thing, they try to dismiss Africans enslaving Africans as benign, using broad statements, without any critical examiniation, no examples to back it up, and not a single citation! They admit that Whites did not originally get Africans slaves out of racism, and hint at some similarities between White and Black experiences in how they came to the Americas, but they needed to explore that more thoroughly and directly. More effort could have been put into the facts and the analysis, and less into creative writing and style.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good buy., September 7, 2004

By 

Rukiya Faizah - See all my reviews

This review is from: Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (Paperback)

I happen to have not only learned from this book but also enjoyed reading it. There's a lot of detail and even some inconsistencies but I've yet to come across a completely perfect representation of history. As far as inconsistencies noted by a fellow reviewer, there is no one official count of slaves...there are only estimates, and those estimates are also broken down into several sub-categories. You will find a variety of statistics on the slave trade but that should be expected by now...especially given the cruelty and inhuman conditions that existed. Who's to say how many slaves were killed that were never reported?

Point blank...this book is worth the money. It's a nice mix of fact that ties in your emotions with mini-storylines based on real occurrences.