The Blind African Slave: Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) [Paperback]

Jeffrey Brace (Author), Kari J. Winter (Editor), Benjamin F. Prentiss Esq. (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography | Publication Date: January 10, 2005

The Blind African Slave recounts the life of Jeffrey Brace (né Boyrereau Brinch), who was born in West Africa around 1742. Captured by slave traders at the age of sixteen, Brace was transported to Barbados, where he experienced the shock and trauma of slave-breaking and was sold to a New England ship captain. After fighting as an enslaved sailor for two years in the Seven Years War, Brace was taken to New Haven, Connecticut, and sold into slavery. After several years in New England, Brace enlisted in the Continental Army in hopes of winning his manumission. After five years of military service, he was honorably discharged and was freed from slavery. As a free man, he chose in 1784 to move to Vermont, the first state to make slavery illegal. There, he met and married an African woman, bought a farm, and raised a family. Although literate, he was blind when he decided to publish his life story, which he narrated to a white antislavery lawyer, Benjamin Prentiss, who published it in 1810. Upon his death in 1827, Brace was a well-respected abolitionist. In this first new edition since 1810, Kari J. Winter provides a historical introduction, annotations, and original documents that verify and supplement our knowledge of Brace's life and times.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A unique narrative. . . . Winter should be congratulated for reconstructing Brace’s life, the circumstances of the publication of The Blind African Slave, and the strange career of Benjamin F. Prentiss."—Ira Berlin, author of Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves

"Kari Winter’s research rescues Brace from historical anonymity and places The Blind African Slave into the canon of early African American autobiography."—William L. Andrews, general editor

“[The Blind African Slave] will certainly be important to specialists in the field of transatlantic Black studies."—Vincent Carretta, editor of The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings by Olaudah Equiano

"The memoir, [first] published in 1810, is unusual among slave narratives because of the sweeping time period and geography it covers, including a rare look at slavery in New England."—Stephen Watson, The Buffalo News

From the Publisher

Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (January 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299201449
• ISBN-13: 978-0299201449
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #381,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars life and travails of an early slave in the North, March 28, 2005

By 

Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Blind African Slave: Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) (Paperback)

The biography of the slave captured in Africa in the 1700s begins with his capture and goes on to cover "his adventures in the British navy, travels, sufferings, sales, abuses, education, service in the American war [of Independence], emancipation, conversion to the christian religion, knowledge of the Scriptures, memory, and blindness." Prentiss, who wrote down the slave's story, was a Northern abolitionist. It's impossible to say how the slave Brace's story is colored by this. In the Introduction, Winter points to some known omissions. Brace's Christian faith and knowledge of the Bible seem to begin too early in his story; and with long passages from the Bible liberally and somewhat arbitrarily inserted in the text, intrude to a questionable, and certainly unnecessary, degree. Prentiss was attracted to Brace's life story because of how it could promote his abolitionist views rooted in his Christian faith. Brace was a decent person caught up in events far beyond his understanding or concern. He enlisted to fight in the Revolutionary War mainly to gain his freedom. After being freed for his service, he moved from Connecticut, where he was owned by a cruel slavemaster, to Vermont, where he continued to bear physical and financial difficulties. The facts of Brace's colorful, moving tale can be readily sifted out from Prentiss's extraneous matter--leaving a rare, memorable biography of a slave in the North, whose circumstances and options were considerably different from slaves in the South. The circumstances of Brace's capture in Africa and his time in Vermont in the last years of his life are of particular interest.