Read by Louis Gosset, Jr.
In this harrowing 1841 memoir, Solomon Northrup, a free man
of color from New York State, is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the swamps
of Louisiana. The memoir, published in 1853, was groundbreaking in its day; it
played a huge role in opening northern whites’ eyes to the brutalizing effect
of the “peculiar institution” and significantly changed public opinion in favor
of abolition.
I never saw the movie—very deliberately, because I didn’t
feel like I could stand to be immersed in the story that way. But I finally
decided I did need to know the story, so I decided listening to the audiobook
was the way to go.
It’s a deeply painful story, even knowing in advance that it
has a “happy ending”—as if having twelve years of your life stolen can ever
have a truly happy ending. Knowing the sort of life enslaved people must have
led is one thing; reading a first-hand account is something else entirely. Mr.
Northrup endured having absolutely everything, even his name, taken away, and
was treated with a brutality that would be hard to believe if we didn’t know
better. His keen observation of people and of how things were done is put to
eloquent use in his memoir. Every American should read this book.
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