Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Frederick Douglass)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Frederick Douglass
Open Road Media
Nonfiction, Autobiography
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Written in 1845, this is a true account of slavery by Frederick Douglass, a half-black man born into bondage on American soil who would go on to become one of the great voices of his generation in the cause of abolition.

REVIEW: This is one of those books I know I should have read as an American, but hadn't gotten around to yet. The preface made me wary; written by a supporter of Douglass, its over-the-top rallying cry hinted at a sledgehammer-subtle writing style, as did a follow-up letter. Fortunately, when Douglass himself takes up the story, his writing is much cleaner and more relatable, almost modern in comparison with its lack of excess or flowery tangents - a simple style that magnifies the stark horrors of his life.
This is an unflinching look at a dark chapter of American history, when a patchwork of state laws allowed some to own other humans, and others to freely capture and sell escaped slaves back to their masters despite slavery ostensibly being illegal within their borders. Frederick Douglass was a slave in northern territories, which were generally considered "good" places to be enslaved compared to the South; this narrative lays bare the rank hypocrisy of ever referring to slavery or slaveholders as "good" in any context. The institution beat down the slave and corrupted the slaveholder, rendering both poorer and meaner in spirit, a process involving both physical and psychological bindings. He himself watched a formerly good woman with no slave-owning history degenerate into a nasty, spiteful wielder of the whip when presented with the opportunity... and saw how religious "salvation" almost invariably led to a worsening of the lot of the saved man's slaves, with whippings bookended by Bible quotes justifying the brutality. (Indeed, in an appendix, Douglass addresses directly how too many American churches had twisted their faith backwards, upside down, and inside out to accommodate the horrific practice until it scarcely resembled its roots or the teachings of the man for whom the church had been named - a warped religion that continues to plague the nation by offering Biblical justification for all manner of evils.)
Taken all together, it's both a frank condemnation of the institution of slavery and a remarkably relevant look at how wrongs do not become right just because they are legal or condoned by religious leaders, not to mention how humans persist in dehumanizing other humans - dehumanizing themselves in the process.

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