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In Song Yet Sung by James McBride there are many similarities to what has happened in real life and what happens in the book. First of all this book shows how different people treat their slaves and how it related to real life slave owners. Song Yet Sung also talks about Patty Cannon a real person who lived at the time of slavery that stole and sold slaves. Finally it talks about slave trade especially with Patty Cannon who often talks of the worth of the slaves by gender and body size. This book very strongly pertains to what has happened with the slaves in. Every slave owner treated their slaves differently. Like in Kathleen's case she treated her slaves and great kindness and thought of them as family.”Amber, She said,can I speak to …show more content…
you a moment. Surely ma’am,he said easily grinning”(McBride 108) . This quote shows how when Kathleen thinks one her her slaves is lying, she gives them a chance to explain themselves like family. In other cases like Patty’s she thought of them as property. Every slave owner was different. In Liz’s case her former slave owner Captain Spocott made her an inside slave and raped her. Slaves owners used their slaves for many different reasons. Some used their slaves as caretakers for their children and other family members, sexual toys, workers, or property. Many famous people of that time owned slaves.
In fact twelve of the forty three presidents were slave owners. George Washington owned many slaves in his time people asked around on how he has treated his slaves.“it was the sense of all his [Washington's] neighbors that he treated [his slaves] with more severity than any other man." Conversely, a foreign visitor traveling in America once recorded that George Washington dealt with his slaves "far more humanely than do his fellow citizens of Virginia”. So even the first president owned slaves and treated them as humans thought with …show more content…
harshness. In Song Yet Sung by James McBride. There is not only similarities with how the slaves were treated but with other things as well. In Song Yet Sung Patty Cannon stole and sold slaves. Much like the real Patty Cannon did in real life. Though this book is fictional McBride brought in elements from what happened in real life like Patty Cannon. It is said that Patty Cannon would murder anybody who got in her way. Just like in the book Patty Canon lived in a tavern owned by Joe Johnson, her daughters husband. It is often said that Patty’s taven laid on the borders of two states Maryland and Delaware. This also happened in the book. Runaway slaves commonly made Delaware their destination before they made their way to the free states. This was perfect for Patty she could take them and sell them farther South. “Patty Cannon of Caroline County, the trader of souls,who was so devilish that she and her son in law,Joe Johnson built there tavern on the border of three different counties (McBride 20). This quote really just explains to you exactly what Patty Cannon is like. In the end Patty Cannon ended up killing herself to avoid public execution. Other than Patty Cannon and the treatment of the slaves there is one last topic slave trade.
In Song Yet Sung by James McBride two character talk about trading their slaves. When Amber first starts acting peculiar Kathleen gets suspicious that he might run. She starts thinking about selling Amber.”He smells freedom, she thought. He smells it over my head”(McBride 106). But after talking to Amber she trusts him like family. Patty Cannon unlike Kathleen never thought about selling her slaves she just did the bigger they were the more money she earned. By the end of the book people stop Patty from killing people by saying the price of the person she’s trying to kill. The woman didn’t sell for nearly as much as the men. Even with the men the young they were the better but if they were too young they wouldn’t sell for as
much. In Song Yet Sung by James McBride there are many similarities to what has happened in real life and what has happened in the book. This book shows the true evil of Patty Cannon. The difference of the treatment between different slave owners. And slave trade. Song Yet Sung often shows the similarities between different types of people, how they treat their slaves, and what they will do to get what they want.
The black women’s interaction with her oppressive environment during Revolutionary period or the antebellum America was the only way of her survival. Playing her role, and being part of her community that is not always pleasant takes a lot of courage, and optimism for better tomorrow. The autonomy of a slave women still existed even if most of her natural rights were taken. As opposed to her counterparts
The book The Classic Slave Narratives is a collection of narratives that includes the historical enslavement experiences in the lives of the former slaves Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano. They all find ways to advocate for themselves to protect them from some of the horrors of slavery, such as sexual abuse, verbal abuse, imprisonment, beatings, torturing, killings and the nonexistence of civil rights as Americans or rights as human beings. Also, their keen wit and intelligence leads them to their freedom from slavery, and their fight for freedom and justice for all oppressed people.
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like.
In all, Tademy does a great job in transporting her readers back to the 1800s in rural Louisiana. This book is a profound alternative to just another slave narrative. Instead of history it offers ‘herstory’. This story offers insight to the issues of slavery through a women’s perspective, something that not so many books offer. Not only does it give readers just one account or perspective of slavery but it gives readers a take on slavery through generation after generation. From the early days of slavery through the Civil War, a narrative of familial strength, pride, and culture are captured in these lines.
Celia, a Slave, a book by author Melton McLaurin, shows the typical relationship between a slave woman and her master in America during the 1850s. The story is the perfect example of how relationships between slave and their masters and other non-blacks within the community. This is shown through Celia’s murder of her slave owner, Robert Newsom. It was also shown through the community’s reaction that was involved in unraveling her court case. The Celia personal story illustrated how slave women was treated by their slave owners and how the laws wasn’t effective at protecting slave during the 1850s. Celia’s story help shed light on woman injustices, unconstitutional rights and most importantly racial issues/discrimination.
The killings made by the slaves are saddening, too. Mutilating the whites and leaving their bodies lying is inhumane. It is such a shocking story. This book was meant to teach the reader on the inhumanity of slavery. It also gives us the image of what happened during the past years when slavery was practised.
We typically think of slaves as a mistreated African American. Thats not all they were, they sang, they read, they were a huge part of our history we don't even acknowledge. They contributed a lot to our music, you could say they were the roots of jazz and blues. Slaves sang almost every moment of their life, there is many different categories of their music, but one of the most interesting is field hollers. Field hollers contain a lot of information on the slave(s). This means emotion is strong in these songs. You can find three main subjects in their tunes, those three are; sad, happy, informative, or passing time.
McBride’s idea of limitation is prominent during the time of slavery for African Americans, as these same limitations are present during the twenty first century. The power of limitations that African American Women faced during the time of slavery hindered their ability to gain freedom, as freedom for slaves was the ultimate American Dream. James McBride exemplifies this in the novel Song Yet Sung as the first character that we meet is Liz, whom happens to be African American Women. When McBride first introduced Liz to the audience, she was running away from her master as she was chasing the American dream known as freedom.
After reading the slavery accounts of Olaudah Equiano 's "The Life of Olaudah Equiano" and Harriet Jacobs ' "Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl", you gain knowledge of what slaves endured during their times of slavery. To build their audience aware of what life of a slave was like, both authors gives their interpretation from two different perspectives and by two different eras of slavery.
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
We discussed the details and differences between the types of slavery mentioned in the book, and they became just as confused and angry as I was.... ... middle of paper ... ... This book is also one of the first non-fiction books that I’ve had to write a reaction to.
The history of slavery in America is one that has reminders of the institution and its oppressive state of African Americans in modern times. The slaveholders and the slaves were intertwined in a cruel system of oppression that did not yield to either side. The white slaveholders along with their black slaves became codependent amongst each other due to societal pressures and the consequences that would follow if slaves were emancipated with race relations at a high level of danger. This codependency between the oppressed and the oppressor has survived throughout time and is prevalent in many racial relationships. The relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor can clearly be seen in Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred. In this novel, the protagonist Dana Franklin, a black woman, time travels between her present day 1977 and the antebellum era of 19th century Maryland. Throughout her journeys back to the past, Dana comes in contact with her white ancestor, Rufus Weylin, a white slave owner and Dana ultimately saves his life and intermingles with the people of the time. Butler’s story of Dana and her relationship with Rufus and other whites as she travels between the past and the present reveals how slaveholders and slaves depended on and influenced one other throughout the slaves bondage. Ultimately, the institution of slavery reveals how the oppressed and the oppressor are co-dependent; they need each other in order to survive.
"We are told by his biographers, and apologists, that he hated slavery with a passion. But since he participated fully in the plantation slavery system, buying and selling slaves on occasion, and because he could not bring himself to free his own slaves, who often numbered upward of 200-250 on his plantations, one has to either question the verity of this passion or speculate that it was merely the abstract idea of slavery that he hated." (Smedley 189) Thomas Jefferson was always aware of the fact that slavery would soon one day be abolished but he made no efforts during his lifetime to accelerate the process. Jefferson was a wealthy plantation owner and politician that would speak out about slavery on a regular basis but would still employ slaves for his own use.
Harper speaks about the families that would be separated in slave auctions, she writes “And mothers stood with streaming eyes, And saw their dearest children sold” which we are able to see that families were always separated and sometimes they will never see each other again, which brought pain upon them. Harper describes these scenes with lots of emotions, which helps the reader be able to imagine how the enslaved people felt. She uses the words such as “Sobs of despair” and “wretchedness” to get us to get understand better. She uses lots of figurative language and her poem overall is emotional
In conclusion, women were considered property and slave holders treated them as they pleased. We come to understand that there was no law that gave protection to female slaves. Harriet Jacob’s narrative shows the true face of how slaveholders treated young female slave. The female slaves were sexually exploited which damaged them physically and psychologically. Furthermore it details how the slave holder violated the most sacred commandment of nature by corrupting the self respect and virtue of the female slave. Harriet Jacob writes this narrative not to ask for pity or to be sympathized but rather to show the white people to be aware of how female slaves constantly faced sexual exploitation which damaged their body and soul.