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Voices from Slavery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives (African American)

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Unlike historians interpreting the lives and conditions of American slaves, those in bondage tell their own stories and allow readers to judge for themselves the South's "Peculiar Institution."

This book interviews slaves who lived on plantations throughout the slave-holding states. Subjects discussed range from living conditions, to relationships, to emancipation. How did slaves see their owners? What was their reaction when Federal soldiers marched onto their plantations and announced they were free? Once the shackles of slavery were thrown off, what did the former slaves do?

Not in any other work will someone find a more compact and sweeping first-hand account of life as a slave in the years leading up to, into, and beyond the American Civil War.

Norman Yetman has done every researcher of African American history a great service by his splendid compilation in "Voice from Slavery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives." Yetman used a precise formula for inclusion and/or exclusion in order to compile these 100 narratives out of more than 3000 interviews performed by the WPA in the 1930s. They are clearly representative of the entire 3000, while at the same time of greater length and providing more detail than the 2900 others.

Here the reader hears first-hand the voices of the ex-enslaved African American--telling his or her story with startling imagery and amazing detail. This is a one-of-a-kind collection well worth buying, reading, and re-reading.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction." He has also authored "Soul Physicians," "Spiritual Friends," and the forthcoming "Sacred Friendships: Listening to the Voices of Women Soul Care-Givers and Spiritual Directors."

Importantly, this is an "easy" read. Since it is a compilation of stories told by people who had been slaves, it is not full of theory or the writing of historians demonstrating their ability to use obscure words. It is obviously all the more powerful and interesting as a result. If you know people and how to read between the lines, you walk away from this book with an understanding of just how complex slavery was and how different the treatment of slaves based simply on who was the slave owner. The author tried to balance selections, but I am suspicious of how balanced these accounts can be since I assume the slaves treated the worst were less likely to survive into their 80s and 90s, the ages of slaves interviewed. Nevertheless, it seems like a full range of individual experience is shown even if possibly not in proportion. I have seen filmed interviews and read the stories of concentration camp survivors. To me, the tales told in this book comes the closest to that learning experience in terms of understanding what slavery was like for the slaves.

This book is probably one of the best I've read.

To learn about slavery from those who went through it is incredibly worthwile because it ensures we do not make the mistakes of the past.

The narratives are so powerful they bring you back to that time. For some of the people interviewed in this book being a slave wasn't as horrible as it was for others, but all of the narratives in this book have a common thread--freedom. They did not take their newfound freedom for granted; as we do now.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the foundaton of this country. It is a validaton of the ravages of slavery from the voices of those who were born into it. It demonstrates how far African Americans have come through faith, education and family after the systematic attempt to destroy the human spirit of many of those responsible for building this nation.

It is an outstanding work of the WPA and one of its projects. These narratives are, along with many more, in the United States National Archives. However, Norman Yetman includes more than fifty important additonal pages of introduction, background information and other important details that make this collection invaluable.

The powerful photographs take you into some of the lives of other slaves, allowing them to speak visually.

I found this book to be eye-opening. Very informative. You really find out what slavery was like out of the mouths of those who were,or knew,slaves. I was intrigued at the accounts. The bad and the good of an era long gone--thankfully.

I have purchessed these book,s. And they are wonderful reading.
Anyone wanting to know about slavery from the mouth of the slave this is it. You feel every word you read. It put,s you right there in time.
Julia Jones upperdeerfield N.J. Black History Month!!!

I could not stop reading narrative after narrative of personal slave stories. Makes you realize the misconceptions of those days as exaggerated by some book writers and yet shows you how people were either good or selfish. My eyes are open and I see a different, even benevolent result of the days of slavery. I love this book.

First of all, I have been teaching "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in the high school classroom for thirty years. For about the last twenty years, I have also used Julius Lester's book "To Be a Slave" to provide the students with a clearer understanding of slavery as it existed in the last couple decades leading up to the Civil War.

Lester's book generously uses excerpts from many of the Federal Writers' Project interviews of former slaves that were conducted in the 1930's. About six years ago, I decided to seek out some of these interviews. "Voices from Slavery" compiles 100 of these narratives and presents them in alphabetical order. [I also use the collection "When I Was a Slave," which has only 34 narratives and twelve of those are also included here.]

Both of these collections provide the ex-slave's name, where the interview took place, who conducted the interview, and the age at which the ex-slave was interviewed. The main difference, of course, is that "Voices from Slavery" offers nearly three times as many narratives.

Each entry is a mini-biography filled with specific details of the ex-slaves' lives. While "To Be a Slave" did an excellent job of providing an overview of the slave experience, the slave narratives contained in this collection gives a more in-depth look at each individual--even though each narrative is relatively short. Some are very short; Frank Bell's is barely two pages. Most are about four pages, and none are longer than seven pages. And yet in those few pages you hear the authentic voices of ex-slaves who better than anyone else are able to tell their stories.

I use this collection to assign each student one of the narratives and at the conclusion of reading "To Be a Slave," I ask them to provide a dramatic reading for the rest of the class. While there are similarities among these narratives, each is a unique experience and adds to the better understanding of the impact slavery continues to have after almost a century and a half since the end of the Civil War.

If you have any interest at all of this part of our nation's past, "Voices From Slavery" will be a real eye-opener. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This book is filled with the interviews done during the 1930s, the Roosevelt Era, of the last of the surviving slaves and their memories of being slaves, but more importantly of being freed from slavery. Some are humorous, some brutal, and some make you want to hang your head and weep for the sheer magnitutde of the inhumanity of their life experience, all due to the fact that they were born with dark skin. Again I highly recommend any who love history and learning the past to read these stories. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486409120/ref=cm_cr_rev_prod_title