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    Twelve Years a Slave (New edition)
    Twelve Years a Slave (New edition)
    Twelve Years a Slave (New edition)
    Ebook322 pages5 hours

    Twelve Years a Slave (New edition)

    By Solomon Northup, Sandra M. Grayson and Ber Anena

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    About this ebook

    With a new introduction, Northup's memoir reveals the living truth of slavery, poverty and racism in a world set apart from elite metropolitan lifestyles.

    The 1853 memoir and slave narrative by Solomon Northup as told to and written by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York, relates his tale, of being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He was in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before smuggling information to friends and family in New York, who in turn secured his release with the aid of the state. Northup's account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, and describes the cotton and sugar cultivation and slave treatment on major plantations in Louisiana.

    Foundations of Black Science Fiction. New forewords and fresh introductions give long-overdue perspectives on significant, early Black proto-sci-fi and speculative fiction authors who wrote with natural justice and civil rights in their hearts, their voices reaching forward to the writers of today. The series foreword is by Dr Sandra Grayson.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFlame Tree 451
    Release dateSep 17, 2024
    ISBN9781804179437
    Twelve Years a Slave (New edition)
    Author

    Solomon Northup

    Solomon Northup was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color.

    Read more from Solomon Northup

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    Reviews for Twelve Years a Slave (New edition)

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    • 5/5
      While this story is alarmingly violent and more horrible because it's a true story, it was easier, for me, reading it, than it was to watch the movie... Somehow, knowing I can put the book down when it becomes unbearably sad, scary, aggravating... that makes it easier for me.
    • 4/5
      "Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it."

      Solomon Northup was born a free man in the state of New York, married, had three children who along with his wife was creative enough to scrape together an income. When two men invite Solomon to travel with them to Washington with the promise of money, he quickly agrees to join them. Unfortunately, whilst there he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. Once crossing to the Southern States, he knew that nobody would believe he was a free man and those who did, would most likely kill him rather than set him free. So for twelve years he kept his mouth shut and played the role of Platt the slave on different plantations in Louisiana.

      Solomon/Platt had different owners, while some treated him with humanity, others were mere brutes and unnecessarily cruel who actually tried to kill him more than once. Solomon first works at a cotton plantation but is later hired out to sugar cane plantations where he is way more productive. He helped to build new houses and other buildings, he stands out for his cleverness and violin skills until he finally met someone whom he believed that he could truly trust and help him reclaim his freedom.

      This book was written back in 1853 shortly after his release from slavery but isn't just another testimony written by a slave, in this memoir we see the facts through the eyes of a free man that was forced into slavery. Solomon Northup was obviously an educated man, the prose is generally easy to read, but he can spend five pages detailing the various stages of cotton growing. However, on the slightly down side this story was written as a report and therefore has a certain lack of passion, meaning that there seemed to be a certain disconnect between the cruelty inflicted and the suffering felt. There are also quite a few religious references scattered throughout which along with the previous point can make it feel a little dry at times. However, this is still a powerful read and without doubt a must read for anyone who is interested in reading about slavery and a dark side of America's history. .

      "What difference is there in the colour of the soul."
    • 3/5
      Really good book in it's biographical retelling of Soloman Northups life and experience but I felt it lacked an emotional connection. In moments when the most horrendous wrong is being done I felt it purely because it was so wrong not as a result of the storytelling. The book is an academic recounting of salve life rather than a novel, which is fairness to the book and the writer is really what it was planned for.
    • 4/5
      Non-fiction that describes Solomon Northup’s experience as a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, where he remained from 1841 to 1853, working on plantations in Louisiana before being rescued through the efforts of friends and family. I was impressed by this account, especially since it was documented almost immediately upon his return to freedom when his memories were fresh. This powerful narrative vividly depicts life of a slave in the antebellum American South, including slave pens, sales, quarters, abuses, and the processes of picking cotton and harvesting sugar cane. Though he suffered severe misery, both physically and mentally, Solomon Northup never gave up hope of being released. This book shows the amazing resilience of the human spirit in the face of great adversity. It is surprisingly readable, considering it was published in 1853, with only a small amount of anachronistic language. I wish it had included more about how he re-adapted to his family and former life, but it is short and focused on his enslavement. Content warnings include extreme brutality, abuse, degradation, and racism. I found it a significant, still-relevant, first-hand indictment of slavery. This book is a piece of history. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      Powerful and horrific account of slavery, when the New York author- a free man, a husband and father, earning a living labouring and playing the violin, is kidnapped and sold into the sugar and cotton mills of Louisiana.
      He describes a succession of "owners" - from the reasonable to the psychopathic- a host of tragic stories of those other slaves he meets; and eventually, thanks to a sympathetic white visitor, the intervention of the law to restore his freedom...though the reader is well aware that no legislation could help his former fellow slaves.
      Makes the white reader stop and ponder - with shame and horror- just what was done by our ancestors;
    • 4/5
      Incredible story. I read this after seeing the movie, and I'm surprised to see that nearly all of the same elements are there, with perhaps a few minor tweaks combining some of Solomon's overseers/owners into fewer personalities, more suitable for film. About the only noticeable scene that's missing from the movie is Solomon's stopover in Washington during the return trip to sue Burch -- not the most painful of Solomon's experiences, but quite possibly the most frustrating.

      As for the book itself, Solomon's tale is highly readable still today. The narrative is fast paced, yet provides sufficient detail to give a good sense of the people who made up a significant part of Solomon's life for that rather long interstice of enslavement. I was also intrigued at Solomon's interjections and descriptions of the institution of slavery, which he described as a complex system full of masters and mistresses who are variously benevolent and baneful, pious and puerile, magnanimous and megalomaniacal. Solomon's commentary on the system is as nuanced as it is unforgiving, being critical without becoming too -- tract-y, for lack of a better word. At the end he even acknowledges that if there is any fault of his story, it is that he highlighted "too prominently the bright side of the picture," a sentiment which it would be much too understated to call unexpected at best.

      While not always a happy story, this is definitely a great one.

    • 4/5
      A personal account of slavery in the 1840s South.
    • 4/5
      A powerful, heart-breaking story that reveals a part of history not taught in school. Let all of us learn to overcome bigotry and cruelty through dignity and self-determination instead of accepting hatred. Once we accept the hatred and bigotry of others we condemn ourselves to allowing that to become our truth, to allowing ourselves to become haters, to allowing ourselves to be less than we can be.
    • 4/5
      A free black man in New York is kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana, where he remains for a dozen years before he is rescued. It pulls no punches when describing the horrors of slavery, but what really struck me is how hard Northup worked to see the best in everyone. He does put a little more detail into the act of farming cotton and the description of stocks than I found strictly necessary, but his purpose was to educate his contemporaries about the realities of slavery, setting the record straight. He goes to great pains to give evidence that his story is true, and while he does speak about the wrongness of slavery as an institution, he is reasonable rather than preachy. Fascinating story.
    • 5/5
      The story of Solomon Northup, and the dignity and humility in which he tells it, is harrowing, awe-inspiring and horrifying. I am most interested in his observations on how deep and inescapable the system of slavery was for those who perpetuated it. Of how, from a young age, that system was instructed and reinforced. Now, 150 years later, the deep roots of that cultural identity are still present and the ramifications felt. Yes, we've come a long way, but a stain as deep and large as slavery is not quickly washed clean.
    • 5/5
      I was way ahead on reading Battle Cry of Freedom for my Civil War reading group, so I decided to take a break and read something related. I'd been meaning to read this since seeing the heart-breaking movie, and as I'd found a nice copy at my favorite used bookstore last year, this seemed an obvious choice.

      I thought the movie did a fairly good job of keeping faithful to the book, so most of the horrors of this story were already familiar. So what impressed me most in this reading were Northup's remarkable insights into the people around him -- both the slaves who have known such treatment their entire lives, but also the slave owners. Some of his observations of the very real cost to their humanity by the brutalities they have inflicted and/or witnessed as members of the slave-holding class struck me. Northup wasn't just a man thrust into extraordinary circumstances -- he was clearly himself extraordinary, as a writer and observer, to be able to produce such an account.
    • 4/5
      This unforgettable memoir was the basis for the Academy Award-winning film 12 Years a Slave. This is the true story of Solomon Northup, who was born and raised as a freeman in New York. He lived the American dream, with a house and a loving family - a wife and two kids. Then one day he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in the deep south. These are the true accounts of his twelve hard years as a slave - many believe this memoir is even more graphic and disturbing than the film. His extraordinary journey proves the resiliency of hope and the human spirit despite the most grueling and formidable of circumstances.
    • 3/5
      2.5 stars

      In the mid-1800s, Solomon Northup was a free black man from New York. He was married and had three kids. He was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. This is his story.

      I think I made the mistake of listening to the audio. Even worse, my library had the choice of three different audio books, with three different narrators. I chose the narrator I recognized (though I've not listened to him narrate a book before): Louis Gossett, Jr. Unfortunately, the book rarely held my attention. It did some, and the parts I paid attention to were ok, but overall, I missed out on too much of the book to really “like” it.
    • 5/5
      This audio book brought Solomon’s voice through Louis Gossett Jr. as he read the book to me in my car. Mr. Gossett Jr. did a fantastic job bringing the emotion through making Solomon very real to me. This book was heart breaking, gut wrenching, and opened my eyes even further to another part of slavery. I have not watched the movie yet as I wanted to read the book first.
      First of all, the concept of slavery just boggles my mind to begin with, it always has. The fact that white people thought they had the right to own another human has always baffled me and even more after listening to this book. It showed that there were a lot of bullies back then as there still are today. The brutal lashings after being stripped down and secured to the ground, the sorrow of children being taken from their mother, I can’t imagine anyone going through it. To be ripped away from what you know and love and then beaten to almost your death, there are no words.
      I still can’t believe slavery was abolished in 1865. That wasn’t very long ago yet the youth of today don’t realize how recently it happened. It chills me to think that just a hundred years before I was born this was going on. This book should be part of the American History curriculum for every High School. I know Solomon will be with me for the rest of my life.
    • 5/5
      This is one of those books everyone should read. Northrup’s account of his kidnapping and twelve years of enslavement is made even more poignant by the matter-of-fact style of his narrative.
    • 5/5
      I've read around this book for years, and read bits of pieces of it here and there. I knew of it's importance as a slave narrative. After finally getting around to watch the film 12 Years a Slave a few weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and read the whole text.

      It was, quite simply: great. It reads with all the page-turning suspense of a novel. (The filmmakers adapted it very well, with just a few Hollywood embellishments, cuts, and telescoping here and there; they left much word-for-word.) Northup's voice here (through an amanuensis) is solid and real. He comes across as a caring and Christian soul. His plight is all the more poignant not just because we know all along he is a freeman by law, kidnapped and carried south, but because he explains his plight in gripping detail, with honest emotions, and in clear language. It is not the melodrama of Stowe and, because we know it is factual, it rings all the more true. Northup draw his characters carefully (and if you saw the movie, they do a good job, except Epps was apparently portly), with good detail, and with much emotional force. Patsey, Epps, Tidbeats, Ford, Bass. They all come alive in Northup's prose. Northup is careful to be kind to some southerners; he is no raving abolitionist; he even goes out of his way to forgive some slaveowners for "not knowing any better" because of the society they were raised in. It thus has the force of tugging the reader's heartstrings and brainstrings in a fashion more subtly and effectively than any screed in an abolitionist newspaper of the time.

      This Barnes & Noble edition is a beautifully constructed book: deckle-edge paper, easy-to-read font, etc. It has no index, a spare introduction, and a "suggested readings" so sparse as to be pointless. It has the frontispiece of "Solomon in his Plantation Suit," but no other images. It carries no map, which may have been helpful. Thus, 5 stars for the text and story; 4 stars for the presentation; thus 4.5 stars overall.
    • 4/5
      I read the book because I wanted to see the movie but after reading the book I don't think I could handle the movie. The subject of Slavery just upsets me so much! As far as this book Mr Northup did a great job in relating his experience.
    • 4/5
      Just....Excellent and Amazing!!
    • 5/5
      I enjoy reading books, especially autobiographies, from the 1800s--this one published in 1853 and was a bestseller at the time. The movie made from this book is nominated for several Oscars. It bothers me that we're so ignorant of our history that we have to "rediscover" books from just 150 years ago. This book is available for free since it's way past copyright, but you can buy an updated annotated version by some professors who researched the history. The version I listened to was read by Louis Gossett, Jr. which made it great. Solomon Northrup's story was supposedly used as the historical basis for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

      *spoilers below*

      Northrup was born a free black man and lived in New York where he owned property and made a good living for himself and his family. One day, some travelers offer to pay him for his services in playing the violin and convince him to travel to New York City, where he obtains legal proof of his freedom, and onward to Washington, D.C. where Northrup is kidnapped and cruelly sold into slavery, within sight of the Capitol; the irony of this is lost on no one.

      He is transported to New Orleans and recounts the sad tales of other slaves along his journey. For example, one woman was the slave mistress of a master who seemingly had loved her and promised to free her. When she thought that day had arrived, she was instead delivered to an auction with her children, and she is to be resold in New Orleans. She is desperate to keep her children with her and her new purchaser offers to buy her daughter, but her owner will not sell her because she is beautiful and will fetch a large sum from men for her use when she's older.

      Northrup is able to sneak a letter off of his slave transport, which reaches his family in New York (he later learned) but they are unable to do anything without more information on his whereabouts. This is the last letter he is able to send for the next 12 years as it was forbidden for slaves to get access to pen and paper, and illegal for a post office to mail a letter from a slave without his master's consent. It's a crime to kidnap and sell a free man, so his story could get many in trouble (and cause later masters to lose possession of him) for which he fears his own life. Northrup is given the name of Platt and lives by that name for 12 years, keeping his real story secret. This also hinders any chance of recovery by his family.

      He is purchased by a "good, Christian man" and Northrup remarks at the way slavery is seen by Christians in the North as anathema but in the South they see no problem with it; his first master actually is kind to his slaves and reads Scripture to them on Sundays-- Northrup enjoys working for him and endeavors to please him. Reading and thinking recently about the theology of work, the way a man can take pride in his own work no matter the situation is very instructive for me. Northrup observes that the better slaves are treated, the harder and more earnestly they work; but always, they long for freedom. They know there are places where there is no slavery and it's a heavenly dream to them.

      When the kind master falls on hard financial times, Northrup is mortgaged and then sold to a notoriously harsh carpenter who twice tries to kill him-- and Northrup responds by beating the man almost to death the first time, running away back to his original master the next. Northrup was able to escape only because he had learned to swim in the North, whereas it was forbidden for slaves to learn to swim in the South. He serves another master (Epps) for ten years, and Epps, like most masters, treat their slaves cruelly.

      He encounters everything from Indians to Cajuns to runaway slaves in Louisiana and engages in various occupations on a few plantations, being repeatedly resold or leased out. He develops a reputation everywhere he goes of being remarkable-- both for his beating of previous taskmaster, and to his intelligent work. He recounts the daily fears of working the plantation during cotton season; whippings in the fields for small mistakes, whippings at the gin for bringing in too much or too little cotton, the fear of being late, or of going hungry. He details the processes of cotton, corn, and sugar harvesting and processing. He recounts the fate of slave escapes and rebellions-- always ending badly. If you've seen Roots or really any PBS documentary discussing slave life, nothing in this book will shock you. There are a couple of grotesque scenes that vividly portray the depravity of men given license to do as they wish with other men-- one act which Northrup rightly describes as "demonic." What you glean from it is the perspective of a man who was always aware of what freedom was-- like a prisoner unjustly imprisoned with little hope of release.

      Some new details that stood out to me about slave life are that slaves were usually given 3-6 days off at Christmas, but worked the other 360 days. At Christmas, plantation owners would host a large feast for the slaves, and the slaves would have a lively dancing party that was looked forward to the whole year. They were also traditionally given a pass to go where they pleased for those days, and most slaves took time to visit loved ones on other plantations. Any work done in the Christmas season (and on Sundays year round) had to be compensated by law-- and that's how slaves were able to afford food and other necessities not provided. Solomon goes 12 years without sleeping on a bed, just floors with a blanket used for horses. Most slaveowning households had a tense relationship between the wife and the slaveowner's slave mistress. This plays out on several occasions in the book.

      In Why Nations Fail (my review), Acemoğlu and Robinson point out that the South lagged behind the North in terms of patents filed during the slave plantation period--there was little innovation. This is evident in that Solomon modifies tools and practices based on simple things he had seen in the North and these are huge innovations on the plantations that his masters praise him for. Unfortunately, it makes him too valuable to sell to the one abolitionist he encounters-- a man named Bass.

      Bass is a Canadian journeyman carpenter who finds work on the plantations. At one point he lectures Northrup's master on the equality of the races and how ungodly slavery is. Overhearing this, Northrup confides in Bass and Bass devotes his life to helping emancipate him, primarily by mailing letters to Northrup's acquaintances in the North. The Governor of New York is enlisted (by law) to begin the process of retrieving Northrup, and eventually an emissary is sent to find Northrup. It was providential that the emissary is directed to Bass just before he sets out on a long journey, and they are then able to find Northrup's plantation. Northrup's master and other authorities fight the extradition, but Northrup is freed and quickly returns to Washington, D.C. where his kidnapper is prosecuted-- and the case is dismissed for lack of evidence and due to witnesses who contradict Northrup. Northrup hopes his book's publication is some vindication, I believe.

      At last, Northrup returns home. Truly remarkable providence that he encountered Bass and that things worked themselves out as they did. Northrup ends the book by remarking that doubtless hundreds of other free men are enslaved in the South. One marvels that it would be another decade and hundreds of thousands of American lives lost before the institution would be ended.

      This is a 5 star book.
    • 5/5
      This is an extremely powerful and heart-wrenching book. If you're familiar with the movie, you know the story already. The book just has more to it, such as details of the workings of various plantation elements, how holidays were celebrated in slavery, and lots more really interesting stuff. His story is hugely impactful, and the details he gives are plentiful. It can be very disturbing at times, as it does contain a lot of violent scenes in depictions of how slaves were treated, but it is well worth reading, even if you have seen the movie already.
    • 4/5
      I read this book a few months ago and I was just so fascinated with it. It is a book that you do not want to put down. It reveals the harsh reality of what slaves had to put up with. It focuses on the life of Solomon Northup, a former slave who was once a free man but kidnapped into slavery for 12 long years. This book takes you through his enitre journey of being kidnapped until returning home. He is finally freed when he is able to write to family and friends and they come to prove who he is and that he is a free man. This book is for adult readers, in my opinion.
    • 4/5
      Although one cannot inherently trust everything in an autobiography, this was a compelling tale. I can only imagine how I would feel if I were ever kidnapped and forced into slavery but I certainly sympathize with the author in his plight.

      Some chapters of the book bordered on tedium; giving detailed accounts of a slave's existence but, I understood the author's need to give an account in such a way. And of course, the boring parts of the story were offset with all the drama and excitement of the whole story.
    • 5/5
      I received this free from Story Cartel in exchange for an honest review.

      Wow, what a narrative! Solomon Northup gave a first hand account of what it was really like to be a slave in Louisiana in the mid 1800's, prior to the Civil War. He was obviously very well educated, as his writing and vocabulary surpasses what is the "norm" today. I both listened to the audio book, narrated by Louis Gossett, Jr., and read the printed book. I loved the audio best, however. It made me sick to hear how badly slaves were usually treated, like pieces of furniture, less than dogs, and for no reason, and at the whim of their masters. Yes, slavery was a way of life in the south, but it was a horrible way of life for the slave. I now want to find out more about Solomon and his family, what happened after he regained his freedom, how long did he live, and what became of his family and descendants. It's so very interesting, and is don't know if there are any other true stories written about slavery by slaves. I highly recommend this book, and now want to re-watch the movie (which I saw before reading the book, when it first came out).
    • 5/5
      A compelling read. Have read the 'Enhanced Edition' by Dr. Sue Eakins and am so impressed by the detail of her research of this historical figure. Highly recommend.
    • 4/5
      A gripping real life account of Solomon Northup, kidnapped from Washington city in 1841 and transported into slavery in Louisiana, where he spent 12 years before being freed. It is a moving account of his sufferings, but there were others such as Patsy—a slave whose master could not control his carnal desire for her, and whose mistress then had him punish her for it—who had it worse, and I wanted to sweep her up into my arms and take her away from all that. It surprised me that Solomon felt the need to include an appendix with copies of the legal documentation that proved he was a free man. To me this seemed to conflict with his notion that slavery was a legal and moral abomination. Nevertheless, history doesn’t get any more real than this.
    • 5/5
      The story of a free black man, Solomon Northup of New York, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the deep south before the Civil War. He tells of how he was tricked into going South, the trials he faced laboring as a slave for 12 years, and how he finally regained his freedom.
    • 4/5
      This is a very powerful memoir of a free man who is sold into slavery in the South. It is a very moving telling of the horrors of slavery.
    • 5/5
      Solomon Northup, a free man all his life, was kidnapped and sold into slavery, being transported to the deep South of Louisiana's rural bayous. He recounts his twelve years of forced servitude, 10 years of which were under the cruel master Edwin Epps, and his eventual rescue.

      I confess I had never heard of Northup, his plight, or his book until the recent movie was released. I had no interest in viewing the movie as I felt it would be too intense - both with the violence and the emotion. However, when the book came up as a choice for my book club, I was happy to vote for it and am glad to have done so now that I've read it. While there is certainly detestable violence and other situations that evoke strong emotions, the book allowed some distance that I feel a movie would not.

      Northup writes his account in a manner I found very effective. Although he had every reason to be outraged by his lot in life, he managed to write in a very reasoned tone and factual way. He lays out the account with a great deal of circumspect, making sure to describe only those things he was absolutely certain of and to make note of when he was simply making a supposition. He generally asked - sometimes directly - the reader to make his or her own opinions based on what he was reporting. Northup also makes great allowances for many of the slave owners of his acquaintance, noting how the culture they grew up in allowed them to be otherwise good people who were blinded to how the institution of slavery was an inhumane system. He elegantly says:
      "It is not the fault of the slaveholder ... so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him. Taught from earliest childhood, by all that he sees and hears ... he will not be apt to change his opinions in maturer years. There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones - there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one."
      This kind of forgiveness shows just how kind and educated a person Northup was and makes it all the more potent when he describes someone like Epps as savage and brutal; we know that Solomon is not choosing his words lightly when he defines his master as such.

      As an outsider to the institution of slavery until he was forced into it and as a Northerner by birth, Northup spends some time describing various things about his life in Louisiana, including the climate, the planting and picking of cotton, etc. Given that this was written long before the days of Google, let alone easy travel, it is perfectly logically that he should describe such minutiae to people who would be unfamiliar with it. Some modern readers may find this level of detail off-putting, but I appreciated that he took the time to describe everything so that it gave a very clear picture. The book also contains appendices including legal documents regarding how Solomon was eventually rescued from slavery through a legislative act of New York State.

      All in all, this was a very interesting read about a sad and dark chapter of one man's life - and one country's history. I'd very much recommend this book to anyone interested in U.S. history in general or African-American history.
    • 4/5
      The name Solomon Northup meant nothing to me until I saw the film, Twelve Years a Slave.

      I don’t usually read a written work after seeing a film adaptation, but in this harrowing instance I made an exception.

      Why? Two reasons really. One, because having witnessed a director’s eye view of the story, I wanted to hear the voice of the man who had been kidnapped a free man and sold as a chattel into bondage. Two, Slavery is an age-old human outrage which is as much a vile horror in today’s world as it was during Solomon Northup’s day and across the world for millennia before that.

      Solomon’s account shines as the work of an educated and talented man, whose downfall begins when he trusts the wrong people. Believing he could supplement the household income - during the temporary absence of his family – by accepting a two week job, playing the violin; he is lured by two villains to Washington, where he is drugged. Regaining consciousness he finds himself manacled hand and foot in a dark cellar, and stripped of clothes and possessions.
      On protesting his status as a free man, Northup suffers a near fatal beating by two strangers, and learns that the men he trusted with the promise of work had tricked him and sold him into slavery.

      On leaving the confines of the cellar to be transported, with a small group of unfortunates, to the Southern cotton plantations, the author glimpses the distant outline of the White House, a sad irony not lost to him.

      I didn’t enjoy this book. It was far more detailed than the film, which I also didn’t enjoy. I felt both had an essential message however, and both gave testament that there are no depths below which the human animal will stoop when dealing with his fellow man.

    • 4/5
      Born a freeman in New York State in 1808, married with three children, Soloman was offered a short term job in Washington, DC to play his violin at a circus. However, he was drugged and shipped to Louisiana as a slave. For 12 years he worked on several plantations on the Red River recording names, places and conditions in his head all the while trying to find some way to communicate his whereabouts to his family and friends in New York.

      Eventually a Canadian working as a handyman in the area who had shown strong views about the injustice of slavery mailed a letter home for him which resulted in the Governor of New York sending an agent to Louisiana to free him.

      I had thought that this would be a difficult read because it was written in the 1850`s but I was pleasantly surprised to find Solomon was an excellent writer and his narrative flowed along quickly. As with any book that describes slavery or injustice to fellow humans such as the Holocaust, one wonders at man`s ability to mistreat his fellow human beings. In the case of slavery in the southern USA, it is how white religious men & woman justified it with the Bible that always rankles me.

    Book preview

    Twelve Years a Slave (New edition) - Solomon Northup

    9781804179437.jpg

    Twelve Years a Slave

    Solomon Northup

    flametreepublishing.com

    FLAME TREE 451

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    Series Foreword

    Although Black science fiction writers first emerged post-1960, the origins of Black science fiction are evident in the 1800s. From a contemporary perspective, some nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century literature by people of African descent can be viewed as speculative fiction, including Martin R. Delany’s Blake: or the Huts of America (1859), Sutton E. Griggs’ Imperium in Imperio (1899), Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood (1902–03), Edward Johnson’s Light Ahead for the Negro (1904) and W.E.B. Du Bois’ ‘The Comet’ (1920). These texts, and others like them, are part of a larger group of works that represent Black people’s quest to tell their own stories. Many Black writers believed, as Anna Julia Cooper stated in A Voice from the South (1892), that ‘what is needed, perhaps, to reverse the picture of the lordly man slaying the lion, is for the lion to turn painter.’ In addition to being artistic endeavors, their works are often calls to action and explore various means for Black people to achieve physical and psychological freedom.

    In his 1854 speech ‘Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent’, Martin R. Delany stated:

    We must make an issue, create an event, and establish for ourselves a position. This is essentially necessary for our effective elevation as a people, in shaping our national development, directing our destiny, and redeeming ourselves as a race.

    Delany had a multifaceted career that included work as an activist, abolitionist, and author. As a novelist, he used fiction as a means to achieve social change. This is an approach to art in which, as Mbye Cham explained in ‘Film Text and Context’ (1996), the role of the artist ’is not to make the revolution but to prepare its way through clarification, analysis and exposure, to provide people with a vision and a belief that a revolution is necessary, possible and desirable.’

    Through fiction, Blake: or the Huts of America (1859) explores the political and social landscape of the 1850s. In the novel, the Black characters make issues, create events and establish positions to gain physical and psychological freedom. Blake can be categorized as a science-fiction-style alternate history novel in that it is set in the historical past (1853), but some details contradict known facts of history. Delany’s pan-African vision and his multifaceted work in the United States, Africa, England and Canada make Blake significant to the formation of Black science fiction across nations.

    In Sutton Griggs’ Imperium in Imperio (1899) and Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood (1902–03), various means to transform society are expressed through the philosophies of secret Black governments – symbolized, respectively, by the Imperium in Imperio (an underground compact government that functions like a nation) and Kush (a rich and powerful ancient African nation). Edward Johnson’s Light Ahead for the Negro (1904) and W.E.B. Du Bois’ ‘The Comet’ (1920) explore the erasure of the ‘color line’, a phrase that refers to racial segregation in the United States after slavery was abolished. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903) Du Bois stated, ‘The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.’ Johnson stated that through his novel (in which the protagonist travels to the future) he was ‘trying to show how the Negro problem can be solved in peace and good will rather than by brutality.’

    The following works by Black writers from Lesotho, Cameroon and Nigeria can also be categorized as speculative fiction: Thomas Mfolo’s Chaka (1925), Jean-Louis Njemba Medou’s Nnanga Kon (1932), Muhammadu Bello Kagara’s Gandoki (1934) and Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa’s Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale (Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter’s Saga) (1938). Chaka is a fictional account of the heroic Zulu king Shaka. Although Chaka is set in the historical past (about 1787–1828), many details contradict historical facts; therefore, like Blake, Chaka can be classified as a science-fiction-style alternate history novel. Nnanga Kon is a first-contact novel based on the arrival of Adolphus Clemens Good, a white American missionary, in Bulu territory. His appearance earns him the name Nnanga Kon: ‘white ghost’ or ‘phantom albino’. Gandoki incorporates the Hausa oral tradition and focuses on the protagonist’s (Gandoki’s) fight against the British. Subsequently, jinns bring him to a new, imagined world. Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale recounts the supernatural adventures of Akara-ogun, ‘Compound-of-Spells’, a legendary hunter who has magical powers.

    Simultaneously works of art and political texts, Black proto-science fiction envisions societies in which people of African descent are active agents of positive change and complex individuals who direct their destinies. The artists use literature as a means to try and transform society, a methodology that reflects the interconnectedness of artistic and social phenomena.

    Patty Nicole Johnson

    A New Introduction: Twelve Years a Slave and the Still Turning Wheel of Racism in America

    Twelve Years a Slave, the 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup, is a historical expedition into America’s slavery era, but also functions as a mirror from which one can view the contemporary United States. The double-edged effect of the book springs from the powerfully narrated experience of the enslaved black man and the ways in which the country continues to grapple with the effects of that tainted era.

    In 1841 Solomon took a morning walk in his Saratoga Springs neighbourhood, his mind swirling with questions about where his next job might come from. Not long after, two white men approached him with a job offer. Solomon was adept at playing the violin and when the strangers, who claimed to be circus entertainers, made specific inquiries about his expertise, he assumed someone must have put in a good word for him.

    This was still an America split along strict racial lines. For a black man like Solomon, access to opportunities such as employment required jumping several racially systemic barriers. To be suddenly offered a job on a silver platter by two white strangers was therefore bound to elicit both excitement and suspicion.

    The captors presented a clever trap that appealed to Solomon’s most urgent need for income but ultimately flipped his life upside down.

    They …remarked that they had found much difficulty in procuring music for their entertainments, and that if I would accompany them as far as New-York, they would give me one dollar for each day’s services, and three dollars in addition for every night I played at their performances, besides sufficient to pay the expenses of my return from New-York to Saratoga. I at once accepted the tempting offer, both for the reward it promised and from a desire to visit the metropolis.

    The pay of one dollar a day is worth $34 today. That, plus Solomon’s remuneration for performances and expenses, was, as he put it, a truly ‘tempting offer’. However, not long after embarking on their excursion, Solomon learned that the men were not on a circus tour – nor were they interested in employing him as a violinist. He would also learn, years later, that his captors’ names were not Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton as they had claimed that morning in March. They were Alexander Merrill and Joseph Russell.

    In the interim, Merrill and Russell lured Solomon further out of his home state of New York to Washington where he woke up in a dark room, his legs chained. He had been sold. He was a slave and would remain so for 12 years. Solomon’s father Northup was an emancipated slave, and at this point the newly enslaved New Yorker must have wondered how – or whether – he would stop the wheel of family tragedy from any further spin.

    What remains remarkable about this incident is the ease with which the kidnap and sale of a human being – a fully grown free man, no less – were possible, and could be achieved without repercussions for the perpetrators. The audaciousness of it could only be explained by the backing of a legal and social system that upheld white supremacy and emphasized the polarity between black and white people in America.

    Allure vs History

    In 2013 I watched 12 Years a Slave, the Steve McQueen-directed drama, adapted for the screen by John Ridley. The film garnered widespread critical praise and recognition, including three Academy Awards. Importantly, the casting of Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o in the film as Patsey, and her eventual crowing as Best Supporting Actress, pulled the story of slavery out of its historical lair into the ears of many Africans, giving it a fresh awakening.

    Growing up in rural Uganda, slave trade featured significantly in my social studies and history classes. In primary school we were even taught a song about slavery and chorused brightly, including at playtime:

    Slave, slaves, slaves

    in America, working day, day, and night

    planting sugar, sugar, and tea

    when I was in America.

    Oh slaves slaves slaves…

    However, the significance of that song, and the general fact of slavery itself, felt remote – and perhaps also much bigger than our pre-teen minds could grasp. Importantly, the glamorous presentation of America and whiteness fed to us through various media made it easy for us on the one hand to dispel, or at least ignore, the stained history of the country, and on the other to devalue things black or African. It was the allure of America’s skyscrapers that we watched through slits of reed-wall video halls or read about in romance novels. It was the powerful economy run by a dollar currency (nothing compared to the Ugandan shillings we knew). It was the huge cities forever lit by a consistent electricity supply – nothing like the wick lamp that we reached for when darkness fell. It was the beautiful women and the handsome, successful white men. If a classmate had a relative in America, we trailed them like loyal dogs, carrying their school bags, offering them our snacks, drooling over their I love New York t-shirts and blue-eyed Barbies – just so we could get even juicer details about the white America we wished was ours. It was America, the most powerful nation in the world, the land of dreams – and no story about slavery or racism felt gripping enough to topple that.

    However, the bubble of a homogeneous America burst with age, higher education and exposure to critical literature and media, including Solomon’s Twelve Years a Slave and its subsequent film adaptation. For decades we had been looking at an elegant building that towered above everything else (often we still do) without scrutinizing the foundations of what we now know as the United States, nor considering whether, within its walls, ghosts of the past haunted its inhabitants.

    Enslaved, from Africa to America

    While slavery and its attendant racism always felt like a distant concept to a Ugandan like me, preoccupied with breaking the cycle of poverty and getting an education, history yoked my continent of Africa inextricably to America hundreds of years before. One account about the genesis of slavery in America espoused by historians such as Guy Cameron and Stephen Vermette notes that approximately the first 100 African slaves were shipped by Spanish explorers to present-day South Carolina or Georgia as early as 1526.

    In a paper titled ‘The Role of Extreme Cold in the Failure of the San Miguel de Gualdape Colony’, Cameron and Vermette supplied further context:

    In 1526 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon of Spain, with a large number of colonists and slaves, established the colony of San Miguel de Gualdape … It was the first colony founded on current U.S. soil; the African slaves were the first imported to the continent (and their uprising was the first slave rebellion in North America).

    A second, widely accepted narrative traces the arrival of the first black slaves in America to 1619. In an essay that went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, Nikole Hannah-Jones’s piece from the New York Times’ ‘The 1619 Project’ explains that in August of that year some 20 to 30 Africans were snatched up from Angola and shipped across the Atlantic on a Portuguese slave ship. In turn, the English pirates stole the Angolans from the Portuguese and resold them in Jamestown, Virginia.

    They were among the 12.5 million Africans who would be kidnapped from their homes and brought in chains across the Atlantic Ocean in the largest forced migration in human history until the Second World War. Almost two million did not survive the grueling journey, known as the Middle Passage.

    This passage comes from the introductory article titled ‘Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true’.

    By the time Solomon Northup was enslaved, the practice had existed for more than 200 years – and yet the end of its proliferation was not in sight. Slavery and racism were the engines that powered the American system and their consequences would be far-reaching in physical, psychological, economic and social terms.

    Yet, while facts and statistics are important, it is often the experiences of individuals that make us see the impact and big picture of slavery on everyday lives. Solomon had experienced life as a free man before being abruptly thrust into bondage. That must have felt like going blind after decades of knowing the joys of sight. As a black man in America, Solomon had the scales long tilted against him, but to find oneself in servitude portended a new level of suffering.

    That escalation of his life’s misfortunes was not lost on Solomon:

    Thus far the history of my life presents nothing whatever unusual – nothing but the common hopes, and loves, and labors of an obscure colored man, making his humble progress in the world. But now I had reached a turning point in my existence – reached the threshold of unutterable wrong, and sorrow, and despair. Now had I approached within the shadow of the cloud, into the thick darkness whereof I was soon to disappear, thenceforward to be hidden from the eyes of all my kindred, and shut out from the sweet light of liberty for many a weary year.

    While the film adaptation of the book stayed loyal to Solomon’s storyline, the memoir, by advantage of its medium, benefited from details that made the narrative more gripping. The rawness of it, the unassumingness of the narrative, the matter-of-factness of it, the reality of it, made for a fuller, deeper understanding of Solomon’s experience. Besides his own woes, Solomon relayed snippets of the experiences of his fellow slaves and their white masters about never-ending mistreatments; these in turn dupe the reader into thinking that it surely must be folklore from a mythical universe, and that if they happened, they now belong in the past – shameful, uncomfortable things that must not be spoken about, not even as a joke.

    Today, the full scope of the effects of slavery and racism is largely disregarded by white America and misunderstood or unknown by the young generation. Nevertheless, facts and figures show that the ideals of white racial supremacy that fuelled slavery from the mid-1500s have metamorphosed into persistent realities of twenty-first-century America.

    Perhaps a crucial point to acknowledge is that the hundreds of years of enslavement were never going to be fixed by signatures on paper. Importantly, the 158 years that have elapsed since the abolition of slavery in America were not themselves going to reset the country to a mode of equality, especially if the engine of supremacy still powers the country.

    Through slavery, the black race was cast as sub-human, placed at the same level as the animals that were sold alongside people in slave auctions. Today, Black America still fights to claim its place as equal and deserving of humane treatment, recognition and opportunities. Slavery may have been outlawed in 1865, but the twenty-first century continues to carry hallmarks of its manifestations and impacts.

    Black Bodies Up for Grabs

    In today’s America, the chances of watching a news item about the death of a black man, killed either through gun violence or police brutality, is high. It is not for lack of country-wide demonstrations or condemnations from the most influential people of the land. Black families know that they must give the talk to their young children about the danger that awaits them as soon as they step out of the door on to the unpredictable streets. Black boys and men learn how not to look, dress or walk suspiciously (whatever that even may mean); how to behave when pulled up by a cop; how to avoid dark alleys and the night if possible, and other manoeuvres for survival.

    While black women face a similar fate, of note is the sexual and other violence faced during arrest, when seeking help from the police or when protesting the killing or abuse of black men. In her book Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Women and Women of Color, Andrea J. Richie underscores the need to amplify incidents of such attacks in mainstream discourses. In a conversation with NPR’s Cheryl Corley, Richie asserts that ‘looking at issues of racial profiling, policing and mass incarceration through the lens of women’s experiences is a valid and essential standpoint’.

    A 2020 report by Al Jazeera notes that between 2014 and 2020 police in the United States killed some 7,680 people, of whom 25 per cent were black. Furthermore, in its 2022 research report titled ‘When the Shooting Stops: The Impact of Gun Violence on Survivors in America’, the organization Everytown for Gun Safety notes that trauma induced by gun violence continues even after the shooting has stopped. The impact is felt most severely by people of colour. The independent research and policy outfit states:

    Every year, more than 40,000 Americans are killed in acts of gun violence, and approximately 85,000 more are shot and wounded. That is the equivalent of over 110 people shot and killed each day in the United States, with more than 200 others shot and wounded. The crisis disproportionately impacts Blacks, Latinx, and other communities of color.

    Oddly, instead of the frequency of these killings spurring actions for an end to racial killings, White America seems to have become numbed by the grisliness of it all. On social media, videos of black people being killed will trend for a day or two before people return to their lives, only to wake up to the next murder.

    The internet has undoubtedly helped spread information about the persistence of racial killings in the United States. The videos and photos act as evidence and are necessary for accountability. However, the exposure of black bodies or those in the throes of death conversely speaks to another layer of the desecration of black people, amounting in fact to a second dying. One cannot just die and be buried in peace. The world must spectate to believe the violence – and yet even that has not been sufficient to stop the racial killings of black Americans.

    All the spectating brings to mind the racist lynching of black people prevalent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – an act that took various forms including hanging, burning, mutilating and dismembering. According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), some 4,743 lynchings were recorded in the U.S. between 1882 and 1968. Out of these, NAACP notes that:

    Black people were the primary victims of lynching: 3,446, or about 72 percent of the people lynched, were Black.

    Not only were they violent and public – but such lynchings of black people were also anticipated events, even a celebration. Some made it a picnic, complete with eats and drinks. Postcards of lynchings were sold and mailed to friends and family after the event. In Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, James Allen reproduced some 100 photographs from the lynching era. A nine-year-old who enjoyed watching the lynchings is quoted as telling his mother ‘I have seen a man hanged, now I wish I could see one burned’.

    In Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon narrates how he narrowly survived being lynched for striking his abusive master.

    Tibeats tied my wrists, drawing the rope around them with his utmost strength. Then he bound my ankles in the similar manner. In the meantime the other two had slipped a cord within my elbows, running it across my back, and tying it firmly. It was utterly impossible to move hand or foot. With a remaining piece of rope Tibeats made an awkward noose, and placed it about my neck. Now, then, inquired one of Tibeats’ companions, where shall we hang the nigger?

    Luckily for Solomon, Chapin, a higher up in the plantation, arrived just in time to save him with a few words:

    Whoever moves that slave another foot from where he stands is a dead man. In the first place, he does not deserve this treatment. It is a shame to murder him in this manner.

    Today, despite the fact that the police wear body cameras and despite the presence of smartphone cameras in almost every hand, a police officer, as one example, still felt emboldened to kneel on the neck of George Floyd until he died. Some of these violent and public killings benefit from long-running tropes that black people are innately inclined to violence and criminality; that they are therefore worthy of the disproportional force they receive during arrests; that they seldom feel brute force by the mere fact of their black skin.

    The Black Body as Commodity

    During his 12-year enslavement, Solomon narrates a scene where slaves were being auctioned. In that event the black body became a commodity, and the white man the buyer. In typical market behaviour, the buyers and those who came to feed their eyes and lust reached for the commodity, ostensibly to check its value. Stripped bare, men were checked for strength and how long they could withstand pain and hard labour. The same applied to women except they were groped, and their bodies sexually prodded by would-be buyers.

    In modern America, the commercialization of the black body continues in the media, sports and the entertainment industry, despite its eerie echo of slave auctions. The NFL drafting is perhaps the most audacious of the examples – an event in which players, clad only in their underwear, line up and march into a room full of ogling audiences and media. Their body parts are measured, as well as their height and weight, but what draws the most interest and the highest viewing figures is the sexualized portrayal of the players, delivered to an audience hungry for that content. Unsurprisingly, black players receive the most body scrutiny and commentary from the media, far exceeding discussion of their ability in the game.

    Many of the players have expressed their distaste of the drafting process. In his article, ‘The Erotic Gaze in the NFL Draft’, Thomas P. Oates referenced quarterback Mike Elkins who was quoted in a 1989 Sports Illustrated story as saying I felt like a prize bull at a country fair. His counterpart, Travis Stephens, gave a similar description: It was weird man, like a meat market.

    Despite these discomforts, the money machine that drives the sporting industry has no interest in stopping the sought-after event. In fact, in the 1989 Sports Illustrated article mentioned above, ‘Maximum Exposure’ by Jill Lieber, the NFL general manager is quoted as saying:

    It’s a livestock show and it’s dehumanizing, but it’s necessary … If we’re going to pay a kid a lot of money to play football, we have a right to find out as much as we can. If we’re going to buy ’em, we ought to see what we’re buying.

    The body scrutiny and commercialization, however, do not end with the ‘buying’ of the players. As Oates notes, ‘for draftees, it is only an introduction to a career-long experience of stripping for mostly white audiences in public and private’.

    At the centre of black body commodification and sexualization is the white gaze and surveillance. From Solomon’s account, we can deduce that his captors knew him – that he played the violin and was recently unemployed. Merrill and Russell could only have come to that place of knowledge by surveilling their target. In captivity, a more intent level of surveillance would follow Solomon and his fellow slaves, making an attempt to escape impossible. Surveillance, both then and now, happens for subjugation, profiling or even amusement. Solomon writes:

    There was not a day throughout the ten years I belonged to Epps that I did not consult with myself upon the prospect of escape. I laid many plans, which at the time I considered excellent ones, but one after the other they were all abandoned. No man who has never been placed in such a situation can comprehend the thousand obstacles thrown in the way of the flying slave. Every white man’s hand is raised against him – the patrollers are watching for him – the hounds are ready to follow his track.

    The first marker for surveillance in America’s racial dichotomy remains black skin – a colour that placed black people outside the ranks of what was considered human. This gaze and surveillance, therefore, either propel the black person to an arena where his subjugation takes place or marks and makes him disappear from places that matter.

    Today, surveillance by tech giants and governments continues to maintain the black–white divide, often with negative consequences. In her book Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, University of Texas professor Simone Brown argues that the proliferation of surveillance technologies dates as far back as the transatlantic slave trade. Through ‘racializing surveillance’, Brown explains that today’s technology is used for ‘social control’ that concretizes ‘boundaries, and bodies along racial lines’.

    Whose Truth?

    Despite evidence of the lingering impact of slavery and the racism that fuelled it, contemporary America is at a stage where the truth is facing an all-time assault. With the proliferation of social media, deniers are often quick to quip ‘must everything be about race?’ Some argue that slavery happened and ended hundreds of years ago, and so blaming it for today’s problems is ridiculous. This attitude makes it impossible to address the issues black people continue to face as a result of slavery and racism, but it also brings to the task the question: whose truth?

    In Twelve Years A Slave, Solomon makes several notes about the authenticity of his narrative – perhaps aware that what is considered ‘truth’ will often reside with the aggressor or the power wielder. It was not enough that he had lived in enslavement for 12 years. He had to prove that he was taken against his will and did

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