Customer Reviews

Slavery Time When I Was Chillun

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The language made it tough to read but the message was very clear. Reading how those people actually felt as former slaves was very enlightening. They had been abused and oppressed for so many years and generations, they thought very little of themselves. As a black woman born and raised in Georgia, it explained a lot of the behavior still exhibited by the blacks and the whites of today. While these behaviors and attitudes are blatant in the south, they are prevalent in all areas of the USA.

Basically, the title says it all. I previously owned this book as a quality paperback; unfortunately, one of my students walked off with it and I had to replace it. The content -- first-person stories of life under slavery in the U.S., as recorded by writers working for the Writers Project in the 1930s -- is outstanding. However, aesthetics are important to me, too, and the cover on this hardbound copy (a tannish brown) is really ugly. I'm still looking for a high quality paperback to replace the one I lost.

I am the great grand daughter of a woman who was born in GA whose parents were slaves. She was born in the area of Cordele, GA. My great grand parents have a different view of slavery portrayed in the book. So much so that it was not long before the majority of that generation moved to Chicago.
But what is most unusual about this narrative is the swinging back and forth between dialect and American English by each single ex-slave. It makes me wonder if these words were said or added to the narrative.
"Others even attended plantation schools. 'Us had a white teacher, explains one slave,'and all he learned us slave children was just plain reading and writing."
Notice this educated person could not speak well. And then in the midst of the conversation after the word, 'us', perfect English is written down for the speech.
Someone should video record the ones who are near 100 so that the Jim Crow Narratives won't sound like this book. This book should be read with a grain of salt. And with discussion in a diverse group.
This reminds me of the refusal to believe in the Holocaust in Germany.