Middle Passage Review

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(More customer reviews)This book was mandatory for my African American Literature course and I am glad that it was. It is impossible for anyone to imagine today what it would have been like for Africans to be taken from the comfort of their homes to be slaves in America. The only thing we could compare it to is being abducted by aliens if you really think about it. They were overtaken by people who looked very different than they did and who spoke an unknown language. They were put into giant ships of the likes they had never seen and many times, they were branded and always chained below decks. Many thought they were being taken to a foreign land to be eaten and often times the slavers would put slaves in groups with different tribes so that they could not communicate or comfort eachother due to a language barrier. They knew nothing of the world around them as people do today. The concept is, in truth, almost impossible to imagine.
Johnson studied about Middle Passage for something like seventeen years before writing this book, not to mention another six years studying maritime science. To be sure, there are a lot of fantastical occurrences within the book but that is why it is called fiction. I believe he does a phenomenal job with the character of Rutherford Calhoun...he's a liar, gambler, womanizer, and thief but there is something about him that puts the reader on his side. You will find yourself rooting for him all the way through the book.
The novel itself is indeed very graphic in description and includes things such as cannibalism so, if you have a weak stomach, BEWARE. The best things about this novel are its extremely dark humor,its fast pace, and its irony. As an avid reader, there is nothing I appreciate more than someone who can take a horrific experience and make it simultaneously poignant and funny. Not only is this a way of putting a face on the early days of slavery but it is a highly entertaining piece of fiction. I would recommend it to anyone looking for adventure on the high seas!

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Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives Review

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(More customer reviews)"...Oh freedom, Oh freedom, Oh freedom over me. And before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free"
__Old Negro Spiritual
The words of the spiritual above must not have been uttered to these beautiful human beings who have graciously allowed interviewers from the 1930's Governments Works Progress Administration to chronicle their life stories. For if the words above had been uttered, the slave experience, from an intimate and painful point of view, would never have received the credence they due. Tales of slavery are still passed down from generation to generation, and traditions still are followed but to see a book like Unchained Memories is special. Quite simply, this is a beautiful book. I'm so thrilled to have been given the opportunity to read it and experience it and learn from it. I can treat the book as a textbook, a factual accounting of the lives of former slaves who have wonderful stories that they don't mind sharing with the world. For that reason alone, this book has earned a permanent place on my coffee table, for all who enter into my house to experience. Something about the actual words of former slaves bound in book form validates an agonizing time in American History.
Unchained Memories is well researched and magnificently laid out. At the beginning of every chapter is an introductory text that accounts for the tenure of the time, followed by a poignant quote and then brief narratives begin. My one regret is that the narratives are so short, when biographers obviously spent a great deal of time with these people. I am grateful that there is an extensive bibliography at the back so that I can, at some point, go and read the entire account by the former slave. Oh where will I find the time? If you read this book, I would highly suggest that you get a copy of the HBO documentary of the same name and watch it as well. There is nothing like "hearing" the words spoken by African American actors of today in the vernacular of the time.
I'm glad that Unchained Memories was published, and quite fittingly made its debut during Black History Month. These former slaves are the reason why Black History Month is perpetuated now and a fitting tribute for remembering from whence we as a nation have come.

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