Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Black Plague > Item 86
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Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery
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by Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith, and WGBH Research Team
Sales Rank: 137514
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List Price: $17.00
$11.56
At Amazon
on 8-5-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 512 pages
Published by: Harvest Books November 11, 1999
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0156008548
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0156008549
Book Dimensions:
8.9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
Weighs: 1.4 pounds
Product Review
This extraordinary book--the accompanying volume to the PBS series--looks at the history of Slavery in the United States with an honesty that reveals both horror and heroism in the common humanity of all Americans. Uncovering the indigenous history of African Slavery and the involvement of Arab and European nations, it then traces the journey of enslaved Africans across the "Middle Passage" of the Atlantic to the Caribbean and America. Charles Johnson's spellbinding fictional narratives gorgeously evoke the feeling of times and places, such as the Haitian revolution or the plantation slave society. In "The Transmission," two captives in the bottom of a slave ship try to preserve their heritage. "Oboto quietly sang to his brother--in a language their captors could not understand--how their people long ago had navigated the New World on and on like a tapestry, Oboto unfurled their past, rituals, and laws in songs and riddles"
Poet/journalist Patricia Smith's historical anecdotes and references to legendary African American heroes (including Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass), juxtaposed with rare documents, letters, slave advertisements, slave-ship cargo diagrams, and paintings, provide evidence of the African American fight for freedom, from the black soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War to the Underground Railroad to the return to combat in the Civil War. When emancipation finally came, Smith writes, "the newly liberated slaves sang for themselves, for their new country, and for the thousands upon thousands of Africans ripped from the clutches of home." --Eugene Holley Jr.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Designed to complement a PBS series of the same name, this is much more than a companion book. A monumental research effort wed with fine writing has produced a work that can stand on its own. Studded with a dozen short stories by Johnson, the NBA-winning author of Middle Passage, and filled with arresting period illustrations, it is ultimately shaped by journalist/poet Smith's (Big Towns, Big Talk) gorgeous narrative. There is plenty to praise, in particular the drawing together of several slave narratives and other accounts to flesh out the true picture of slave lives in this country. The ugly reality of the "triangle trade" and the initial confusion of newly enslaved Africans are fully realized, while the apparent hypocrisy and contradictory reasoning of the Founding Fathers is given a human face. The impact of the Caribbean experience, America's western expansion, and black abolitionism are also illuminated. Perhaps the most riveting moments begin early in the journey, at the point when Slavery becomes synonymous with blackness in colonial America. Heartbreaking setbacks include the forced migration of slave communities deeper and deeper south, as well as the kidnapping and forced enslavement of free children from the streets of Philadelphia. The struggle of whites against Slavery and the divisions within the abolitionist movement are discussed frankly, another in a list of refreshing surprises. While American society can be seen as the logical end of this dreadful institution, the story of all those who struggled to end it is indeed liberating. Although lavishly illustrated, this is not a coffee-table book. It deserves a curious and enlightened reader.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
I just finished reading this book and I was amazed, angered, heart-broken, and thrilled through it all. I was amazed how one group of people managed to survived all the indignities heaped upon them by their "masters" and still managed to know that this peculiar condition (slavery) was wrong. I was angered how one group of people misused the bible & God's word, proposed baseless scientific theories, and rationalized their way to exploit the millions of Africans and later black American born slaves to enrich their lives. I was heart-broken to read of all the injustices done to these slaves, the break-up of families, the rapes, the lynching, and the treatment of them as less than animals. I was thrilled that throughout this book, there arose individuals, from both sides of the racial divide that knew slavery was wrong to their very core. How they strove in their own ways, be it through violence, be it through the pulpit or be it through risking their own lives in trying to rid this fledging nation from such an amoral situation. This book opened my eyes to how the founding fathers failed to grasp how to handle this slave issue and how it is the basis for the social ills we face in this day and age. This is a must read for all Americans to see how through our fight for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" we trampled upon those same ideas for another group of people whose only difference was the color of their skin. This book should make you pause for a moment to ponder the question, what if things were differently. If the vile treatment done to those individual so long was done humanely or never done at all, how much different would our nation be today. Or, if this peculiar condition was allowed to exist through the years even to this day, would our nation be held in the high esteem it is today? This book has reinforced me to view each person I meet on their own individual merits and not judge them by their color, as was done to my ancestors so long ago.
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Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery
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Price: $11.56
Updated on 8-5-2008.
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