Thirty Years a Slave
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- 3,49 €
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- 3,49 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Louis Hughes was born into slavery in Virginia in 1832. Over the thirty years he was a slave he secretly learned to read and write, and then published this incredibly detailed autobiography about his experiences of slavery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Born to a white man and a "negress" and brought up in a beautiful river valley near Charlottesville, Va., Hughes was bought and sold twice by the time he was 11 years old. In this absorbing account, first published in 1897, Hughes describes mundane yet evocative pieces of everyday life (such as drying sweet potatoes to use as a substitute for coffee during the Civil War) and astonishing events like his numerous attempts to escape bondage and his subsequent recapture. He writes with subtlety about his "masters' " hypocrisy, as when "Madam" would smack him during meals: "Truly it was a monstrous domestic institution that not only tolerated, but fostered such an exhibition of table manners by a would-be fine lady such vulgar spite and cruelty!" Reflective moments like this make the re-publication of this memoir very welcome.