Slave Narrative Research

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html

Even after reading chapters of Harriet Ann Jacob's book detailing the heartbreak and torture that were pervasive throughout her entire life, I feel so ill-equipped to offer any thoughts on the matter. What she experienced, both her parents dying unexpectedly, her kind old grandmother making many sacrifices to protect those who shared her blood, the broken promises of freedom, are all so horrific; It makes me ashamed for the whole of humanity.

I'm aghast that members of our species are capable of such inhuman and monstrous deeds against those who are no different than them save for the appearance of pigment in their skin. It makes me feel so very blessed to be born in this time instead of that of the Civil War era because I know that the only thing keeping me from being a cruel and ungrateful product of privileged and completely ignorant generations is a handful of luck. 

Harriet experienced an unholy amount of grief before she is even my age. I could not imagine losing a parent, much less two, when she already owns nothing but the skin she was born in.

She was also forced to grapple with incredibly difficult truths at a very young age. She is impressively astute and tells her story with admirable candor, which must have been exceedingly difficult to relive these horrific memories. She says, "She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies." Harriet is aware of the fact that slaves have been deprived of even a basic education by a system that dehumanizes those with darker skin. She sympathizes in a profound way with those who lose family members because she has felt the burden of a dead loved one.