Rather Be Reading

“I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched.”

I’d rather be reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs instead of going to the gym.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiography by a young mother and fugitive slave published in 1861 by L. Maria Child, who edited the book for its author, Harriet Ann Jacobs. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book documents Jacobs' life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her children.

What differs with this narrative from many other fiction or non-fiction accounts of slavery is that this book gives a look at how this dismal institution affected the enslaved but also others involved directly and indirectly. We know that slavery hardens and desensitizes white men, and makes their white wives bitter, jealous, and heartless, but how does it affect the children of the plantation home?

“They [white daughters] know that women slaves are subject to their father’s authority in all things; and in some ways they exercise the same authority over men slaves. I have seen myself the master of such a household whose head was bowed down in shame; for it was known in the neighborhood that his daughter had selected on of the meanest slaves on his plantation to the father of his first grandchild.”

Jacobs also took shared her accounts of Nat Turner’s rebellion on slaves and the plantations in the vicinity that heard of the uproar. Slave homes were destroyed in hopes of finding proof of corroboration with Turner, clothes and valuables were stolen, and slaves were lashed for no apparent reason other than the lack of evidence found by the white patrol bands. Women were forced to hide in the woods with their children all night to avoid the abuse.

But nothing was more chilling than where Jacobs lived seven years of her life to ensure her children’s freedom. She lived in an attic, Anne-Frank-style before Anne Frank was even born, on the plantation from which she ran. She survived scurrying rats, lack of fresh air or sunlight, and frostbitten winters along with heatstroke summer because she knew that her condition in an attic that provided no space to move her limbs was better than slavery.

“It seemed horrible to sit or lie in a cramped position day after day, without one gleam of light. Yet I would have chosen this, rather than my lot as a slave, though white people considered it an easy one…”

This autobiography stands as a testament to the strength of women, mothers, and slaves more than any account I’ve come across so far. Harriet Jacobs is cunning, strong-willed, and unwavering in her sense of justice. Many times, in her narrative she called out the men and women of the North who turned a blind-eye to the injustices and devastation of slavery. She thanked those who helped her hide and escape, although most of these people owned slaves at the time; she felt that that was despicable whether they helped her or not. But more than anything, she gave an uninhibited version of what life was for female slaves when their stories were not being heard. It holds an important spot in the African-American literary canon and an important spot on my bookshelf as well.