Book Description

It is quite appropriate for Dr. Waters to examine voice in these three important narratives on the African-American experience in slavery, By analyzing how Equiano, Douglass, and Northrup used language, symbolism, experiences and events in their lives as slaves to describe, critique, and attack slavery, Dr. Waters provides us with the subtextual meaning of the narratives. The most important contribution is that it provides scholars and studnets with a new way to analyze and understand American slave narratives. One of the most fascinating phenomena of American history is how the slave experience of Africans in America has been documented to balance the myth of the Old South with the brutal realities of racial oppression. Indeed, the United States is quite unique in having a body of narratives by former slaves to balance and challenge the myths and lies of the master or slaveholding class about the nature of American slavery. In the Atlantic World, at least, no other people who were formerly enslaved have written and produced as extensive a body of literature to document, expose, and chronicle their experience in slavery. Thus, these narratives are very valuable because they e