To Be a Slave by Julius Lester

To Be a Slave Reviews

• 
  Jason Koivu

  This is a children's book. This is a Newbery Medal runner-up. This is essential reading.
  
  I was ready to move beyond the biographies of Frederick Douglass and others to search for more depth into the day to day existence of the American slave, and yes, in this book for children, I found it.
  
  To Be A Slave delves into the archives of ex-slaves' accounts, occasionally dry memories of daily life transcribed word for word. It details their capture in Africa and those horrible, confined passages across the Atlantic that they were lucky to survive, only to subsequently land in bondage.
  
  This book offers an insight into slave culture, giving a glimpse into a field slave's monotonous toil on a plantation or a house slave's tenuous existence under the direct gaze of the master's wife. Coping mechanisms are elucidated. Feelings are occasionally bared.
  
  To Be A Slave is not unedited, however. It picks wisely and mostly avoids event-summary as transcribed from the oral accounts of the mostly illiterate slaves. Not every memory is gripping and some lead to unsatisfactory meanderings on the mundane, or perhaps truth is avoided as it might've been too fresh at the time, too close to the heart to relate to a stranger.
  
  
• 
  Erica Freeman

  I read this when I was in 6th grade, maybe earlier...and read it several time afterwards.
  
  This book terrified me, disgusted me, haunted me.
  
  To read the words of people who'd actually been slaves...not of their grandparents...or great-grandparents...but the words of slaves themselves made a huge impact on me.
  
  To read of the degradation and horror of slavery was incredibly difficult, especially thinking of my own "ancestors" (as if they were that far removed from me) suffering that way was so painful, I remember crying.
  
  As valuable as the narratives are of survivors such as Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglas, being able to read the testimonies of multiple slaves in one book did a lot to demonstrate that an entire population of people were enslaved and future generations have had to survive the aftermath.
• 
  Sydney

  This comes highly recommended. It was a VERY interesting read, that I can't do justice by trying to explain.
• 
  Sheena at Hot Eats and Cool Reads

  Let me start off by saying, this is a great historical children's book, and it should be required reading in schools across America. Where I grew up, we didn't learn much about slavery, the civil rights movement, or any African American history for that matter. This is such an important part of our history.
  
  I loved that the book has different chapters based on each time frame throughout slavery, including how they made it to the slave ship, their horrible journey to America, plantation life and then the emancipation. Each section has stories from different sources and slaves. It really explains how life was for them, and the things they had to experience. Excellent book overall!
  
  
  http://sheenathebookgeek.blogspot.com...
• 
  Taylor Mayes

  i had to read this for school. It was truly painful to read, but then again, i think that was the point.
• 
  Alison

  To Be A Slave, by Julius Lester, was one of the most moving books I have ever read provided with many detailed, first hand accounts of slaves captured in Africa by the English and Europeans and then taken to the new colonies in America. Full of greed, anger, frustration, sadness, horror, and pain, this book will set even the toughest heart aching for those slaves who went through so much sorrow. What I thought really made this book so amazing that I would recommend anyone to read, was the author gathered so many first hand accounts of slaves, songs that were made and sung by them, detailed drawn pictures, and a perfect account of how EVERYTHING was in that time. Lester gives us detailed and vivid descriptions of the exact food a slave would eat, what they wore, how the celebrated Christmas, went to a white man's church on Sunday telling them how God places the white men above the blacks and they were to serve them, what the family did when separated at the auction block so soon after a new child was born and sold, and how slaves escaped slavery with many being recaptured. To Be A Slave is not a novel, rather it's a concoction of many the slaves lives and how they lived through coming from Africa, moving to working on plantations, and going through the Emancipation. I do want to forewarn you of gruesome events taking place because this book focus' on ALL of slavery, especially the stories that are not wanted to be heard. Though almost all slaves hated slavery and the whites for containing them, some felt slavery was life-helping and they lived their lives trying to please them rather than go against them. For me, three stories stick out the most in this book: Going to work in the plantations, mothers who had babies were to put them in a trough (similar to those where water was placed for horses) far from the plantations so the mothers could not hear their babies cries and go comfort them. One day, it began to heavily rain and the mothers were not allowed to reach their children until after their work was done. Running to the troughs, the mothers found all of their babies drowned and the slave owner didn't even pay them a penny for their loss. Another story is when, at the auction block, slaves were lined up like cattle and though starved for many days, the slave sellers would rub meat on the slaves teeth to make it appear they were eating healthy as well as dressing up fancy to make a good presentation while being observed and later bought. Families were torn apart at the auction block. A husband and wife were separated and their child too bought by a different slave owner. The mother ran to the slave owner and begged to buy her as well. All the slave owner did was smile and kicked her, laughing as he did so and walked away with his new slave boy. Lastly, a slave owner trying to move his slaves to a neighboring state so as to keep them from being set free, rode upon his horse chewing on some food while over 30 of his slaves, the women tied together with rope and the men latched like oxen in metal cuffs around their necks and arms, strode behind him. A mother with her calves distorted and body heavily weakened, knelt in the road as she could go no farther. The man didn't hesitate and immediately shot her in front of her son because he didn't want to be held back. The slave owner left her there, in the middle of the road and continued his progression. Sadly, this book is so very real you'll feel the pain and hurt within the first page but it's so informative and written in a way that captivates the reader. So pick up the book and begin the story of the slaves.
• 
  Kirsten

  This was such a powerful book which I believe has been greatly overlooked. It combines the Slave Narratives into solid, well thought out chapters. It makes the book feel less like information and more like a story. I enjoyed most of it - towards the middle, the pace of the book slipped a little. It picked up at the end, and I found the last narrative to be gut-wrenching. It was completely fascinating to see this time period from the slave's point of view, unedited. Not to say I haven't read about the slaves, it's just always been from someone who took their points of view, combined it with research, and then gave the information. This was completely raw and bare, and I quite enjoyed. Highly recommend for anyone willing to explore this dark time.
• 
  Jeff

  A raw, honest look at the experiences of ex-slaves, in their own words, as told in interviews as part of the Federal Writer’s Project in the 1930s.
  
  The book covers Africa, the crossing, the Civil War, and emancipation, all while questioning common beliefs and teachings. A valuable collection, even if a few of the author’s own statements are dubious.
  
  Written for the young reader, it is mostly PG.
  
• 
  Kaylee

  Slavery differed from country to country. But it was in The United States that a system of slavery evolved that was more cruel and total than almost any other system of slavery devised by one group of men against another. No other country where blacks were enslaved destroyed African culture to the extent that it was destroyed here. Today there still exist, in South America and the Caribbean Islands, African religions, music, and language, which came over on the slave ships. Only fragments of Africa remain among the blacks of the United States. The slavery instituted by the founders of America has few comparisons for its far-reaching cruelty.
  
  This is a difficult topic, and I feel like I can't say much about it, other than "go read the book." I feel like this is one of the best books on this subject. Other slave narratives that I've read are accounts of one person's life (which are also very valuable!) but this book is a collection of narratives from many different people: ex-slaves and their children, those who were captured in Africa and those who were born into slavery, and all the different shapes their lives took during and after slavery... so it shows a broader view of the combined experiences of many people. And I feel like this broader view shows the true scale of this era of inhumanity more than facts and figures ever could, and more than I've gotten from reading auto/biographies one at a time. "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
  
  It's a short but powerful book. If you can get it, I recommend the audiobook to get the full impact of the songs. There's just something about hearing them sung... Otherwise, the printed book can be borrowed from OpenLibrary:
  https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24650...
  
  (On a personal note, I haven't been well enough to read much, and the few times when I did read something, I didn't had the energy to write a review. I'm not feeling any better, but for this one I felt like I needed to write something. It's a book that should be read.)
• 
  Kristin Tabb

  (Teaching notes for later reference: High priority read for American Lit. High school only. Send out note to parents due to language. Include oral storying/community theme. Incorporate discussions of dehumanization then and now. Make sure to order the thirty year anniversary edition and have students read the moving intro by Lester and respond to the first two pages esp.)
• 
  Robyn Severe

  There should be nothing but stark reality surrounding this subject, so none of us delude ourselves into thinking the slavery was just part of the romance of the south as in Gone With the Wind. The life of a slave, told by slaves.
• 
  Dee Dee G

  This was one heck of a book and should be required reading.
• 
  Audra

  This was written for young adults so that they could understand the horrors of slavery without subjecting them to the totality of it that they may be too young to read about. However, these excerpts taken from various books that recorded the words and feelings of the enslaved is very powerful. This is not fiction, but actual interviews of the enslaved. They shared how they were dehumanized, terrorized, and brutalized and the animalistic conditions they were forced to live in.
  
  Everyone should read this book. Everyone should have their children read this book. Slavery should NEVER be forgotten for the country we call America today is the most powerful country in the world because Africans and Black Americans built it. Our blood was spilled for it. Our culture was ripped from us for it. Our families were torn apart for it. Any other race can point to a very specific place in their home country and even go back and visit relatives there now that come from the same lineage of ancestors. Black people can never trace their family back beyond a bill of sale. Never. We can never "go back to Africa" and go to a specific country within that great content and say "you are my family." We were robbed of that.
  
  If you read this book, you will understand from the words of the enslaved that slavery never truly ended. After it came sharecropping (another form of slavery), the white terrorist group called the Ku Klux Klan, then segregation and laws designed to keep black people from being able to be productive citizens, then Jim Crow, then the Civil Rights. Black people weren't legally truly free until 1970--the year I was born. Think on that.
  
  Today black people are still murdered by the police in numbers that are comparable to the Jim Crow era. We are still discriminated against in stores, banks, schools, neighborhoods. We are still policed as if we are slaves. We cannot go about our daily lives without our defenses up because at any moment we may be harassed simply because of the color of our skin.
  
  No, we should never forget slavery because it has never ended. This book is important to understanding how society operates today for if you read carefully and listen closely you can see it still exists, just in a different form.
• 
  Cheryl

  Read for the Newbery Club in Children's Books:
  https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
  
  Short book, but lots in it. Too much to read in one sitting... I keep getting up and doing something else, processing.
  
  One thing I was never taught was about the different ways that the Negro people resisted slavery. Lester gives us two chapters on it. Very enlightening.
  
  And then there's the last chapter, about the times after Emancipation, when it was/is still really tough to be Black in a White-dominated society.
  
  Art, introduction, and bibliography also make this a special book. It really should be more widely read. And if it makes a child uncomfortable, well, just imagine the difference between just reading about it, and actually living it. Recommended for ages 8-108.
  
  Available free to read on openlibrary.org
• 
  Suzanne

  To Be a Slave is an overview of the lives of enslaved and formerly-enslaved Black people in the United States, from the first arrivals until the 1930's, when the Federal Writers' Project collected first-person accounts of more than 2,300 formerly enslaved individuals. Julius Lester organized the book into themed chapters and filled them with FWP quotes and others taken down by abolitionists in the 1800's. Because the book contains so many direct quotes, the audiobook format worked especially well. Three different narrators were able to take on many different voices and even songs. This book packs a lot of horror into a short amount of time and doesn't end on a happy note just for the sake of doing so.
  
• 
  Anne

  This book was written to introduce children to the concept of the slavery in the US. It intersperses excerpts from slave accounts and interviews with explanatory remarks by Lester as well as black and white drawings by Feelings. I felt it did a good job of explaining and showing without showing too much of the real horror that slaves suffered. My intent in reading it was to determine if it is appropriate for my 11year old grand-nephew, and I feel it definitely is.
• 
  Sonia

  This is geared to young adults which made it incredibly accessible. It is an overview of slavery with some carefully chosen narratives. Sad thing is this wasn't even that long ago. Lester describes slavery in the US being, 'more cruel and total' in the way it obliterated and destroyed African culture. We still see that played out today in the way assimilation is touted as being American and patriotic.
• 
  Dewin Anguas Barnette

  A must read for every American. Though it is published as a book for young readers, it is for everyone. It is a perfect overview, yet full of details, of just what the title states. No one should have an opinion on race relations in this country without first having read this book.
• 
  Monique

  
  “Don’t you want to know our family history?”
  He laughed dryly. “I don’t need to pay anybody to tell me about where we came from. Our family tree ends in a bill of sale. Lester is the name of the family that owned us.”
  His words were the defining moment of my life…..I was overwhelmed by a sense of loss…….I did not even know my real name (Pg. 3,4)
  
  Well wanted to finish my Black History reading with a classic I have never read…..and heads up this is a long review because wow I am seriously a fan of Julius Lester and his writing and OMG sadly enough I found he just passed away in January of 2018 at the age of 78….Born in 1939 Lester was a child born in the last decade of people born under slavery and freed by the Emancipation proclamation. His grandparents and great grandparents remembered slavery and in his awesome 1997 preface to his book he says it was his life mission to write this book. He aimed to have readers experience slaves as human beings.
  “To be a slave was to be a human being under conditions in which that humanity was denied. They were not slaves. They were people. Their condition was slavery.” (Pg. 8)
  The book compiles stories and factual events in an easy to read format that children can read and understand..It begins with Africans being led to America as a cheap, inexhaustible work force that would reproduce and be worked for life even before the Pilgrims and the Mayflower. He recalls a story from his grandmother on how she was taken on a boat chasing precious red scraps that she had never seen before though the book also talks of alliances made with chiefs of African tribes that would capture enemy tribes for slave traders. It is estimated that about 50 million Africans were transported from their homes with only the youngest, strongest and most capable surviving the inhumane, vile treatment under the ships where they could barely move or lay without rolling on another person.
  Heartbreaking snippets of interviews from former slaves tug your heart—
  “I was here in slavery days.I was here. When I come here, colored people didn’t have their ages. The boss man had it.” (Pg. 30)
  The book goes into many details from Solomon Northrup’s narrative Twelve Years a Slave—the working conditions of picking cotton from sunup to sundown and the living conditions they went home to which were hardly comfortable. I again recoiled in horror to read of how discipline was given for minor offenses like 25 lashes for a dry leaf or branch in the cotton, delivering less than the required 200 pounds for adults; 50 lashes for any other offense and 100 lashes for severe offenses like being caught not working in the cotton fields.
  The introduction to Chapter 4: Resistance to Slavery was intriguing and began with discussing the two ways to enslave a person-by force and by brainwashing them..by either keeping people the way of the whip, threats and constant fear tactics and the other was the subconscious subtle destroying of a slave’s mind replacing it with that of his master’s therefore mentally enslaving themselves---and both ways of slavery were employed by the South. Stripping a slave of his identity and introducing them to religion were common ways to alter the minds of slaves and keep them placated with the institution denying them freedom. Lester goes into one of the main ways to control lacks which was instilling in them the idea that blacks were inferior to whites.
  “The slave owner profaned the Portuguese word for black, Negro and made it “nigger” It was a brutal, violent word that stung the soul of the slave more than the whip did his back.” (Pg. 85)
  The book does touch on how blacks took the word to be affection so that as much as possible the word is robbed of its ability to spiritually maim them..Whites and slaveowners truly believed the Negro was incapable of being their equal and blacks not knowing the language, having been forcibly removed from all they know and demeaned as inhuman creatures were unable to prove themselves and their talents. It was different for those born in Africa—those who had a memory of more and of their history..They were surly and revengeful with no love for white people that clung to the idea of freedom and return in the afterlife..Those slaves born in America only had the dreams and borrowed ideas of present and future happiness..they were truly susceptible to the idea of whites being all powerful and better than them. A huge portion of that was dividing and rewarding the most obedient of slaves by making them house slaves which they thought was a great honor. The distance between the house and field slaves bred resentment and turned the slaves against each other..the house slaves thought they were better because they were better dressed and well fed and the field slaves resented the shabby ways they were treated—it taught them to remain apart and not unite as those in the same awful position of being owned by others.
  I also appreciated the excerpts from slave Josiah’s narrative as he was the model for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom novel as the model slave and what a black person is called for being too submissive, dependent and obedient to whites. In Josiah’s story he recounts how he was charged to move his master’s slaves from one state to another while crossing states meant a chance for freedom, Josiah’s sense of duty and obligation to his master would not let him run. He passed up the opportunity to bring the slaves safely to another slaveowner because he valued the opinion and favor of his master more than his freedom or the freedom of his fellow slaves. He was deeply moral and wanted freedom too, but he wanted to buy his way –he had truly accepted the slave owner’s ideas that equated running away with stealing himself and later wrote he regretted delivering others back to bondage. He did go on to steal himself and run away to freedom in Canada and then returning to the South to lead 118 other slaves to Canada also.
  Aside from running away slaves, ,especially the horribly overworked field slaves would devise other ways to improve their life and used the whites’ quickness to believe their inferiority by playing into the dumb, ignorant role. Their ingeniousness allowed them to get away with less work by appearing slow as they realized they would be slaves and treated the same if they had a good crop or a bad one so they sabotaged and found their pleasure where they could.
  At last the bloody Civil war ends and slaves are free and left to themselves to decide what that means..even though Negroes could now vote in order to truly have freedom and power it would require Blacks to be economically independent from a white South that while built on black slavery now thoroughly resented the new reality of black freedom. Easily distinguishable because of the skin color hate groups were formed to ruin what little pleasures free slaves did have—the most famous the Klu Klux Klan started by Nathan Bedford Forrest who was a former slave trader and Confederate general.
  Freedom was short and complicated for Blacks and new laws made things difficult for us to get ahead renaming slavery to segregation. As one narrative notes slavery was bad but freedom of the kind we got without anything to live on was also bad..You wonder as another observer notes if it would be better if blacks and whites were separated with blacks inhabiting the West and whites the East with our own laws…deep thinking and another what if about if Lincoln survived..and then when you really get into the book and can’t stop reading the last bitter yet searing truth of Thomas Hall’s slave narrative---“the white folks have been and are now and always will be against the Negro”…wow deep…a must read for everyone---very powerful.
  
• 
  Sandie

  My son (5th grade) read this book for a non-fiction history book report this year and it looked a bit interesting so I thought I would give it a try. My son didn't find it very interesting. I had a hard time getting into this book, it took me a long while to finish it. The words from the slaves themselves I had no problem with. Lester did a good job compliling everything, though I would love to know why he chose the final words that he did for this book. As I said, I found the words of the men and women who were slaves to be very interesting and heart breaking. I just had a hard time getting through this book. I shed a lot of tears throughout this book.
  I never once in my whole life thought about what would happen to these people once they were freed, and this book was a big eye opener in regard to that.
  I know a lot of people have really enjoyed this book but I just found it to be difficult. I don't want to say not interesting, cause when the former slaves spoke, I was riveted. I think this book is great for probably 4th grade on up to adult. But I think it was geared for children and because of that I wish that the writing in between had been more interesting so as to catch a kids attention. I think if a kid is going to learn about slavery, this book is it, the one they should read, because it gives the facts but it gives the true feelings of the people persecuted in this time in history.
  
  
• 
  Crystal

  This small book packs a big punch. In letting past survivors and family of survivors of slavery speak for themselves in words recorded years ago, and finally curated into a cohesive history of slavery by Lester, a powerful point is made. You can think you know about slavery. Disapprove of slavery. Know just how horrible it is. And then you read these accounts, from the victims yourself, and it blows your mind. Well, it blew mine anyway. It helped me put a lot of current events and issues, as well as past ones, in a different context, to understand more the history that lays behind both past and present events. I hesitate to say "lifechanging" about a book I read in a day, but, well, I read it in a day. I couldn't put it down. It horrified and grieved me, made me wonder how, as a Caucasian and a Christian and an American, I can reconcile these facts, how I can work to make a different now, for what my ancestors didn't do (at least to my knowledge. they were not in an area or culture known for slavery, and I hope my family tree has escaped the direct taint of it.). How could we ever live in a world where this was OK? Where it was lauded by the religious and defended by the law? and what violations of the rights of people are happening now, that future generations might wonder why WE didn't stop those?
  Read this book if you haven't yet. Just do it.
• 
  Kiersten

  I picked this book up at the suggestion of Sue Monk Kidd at the end of her book "The Invention of Wings." Lester writes, "One of the greatest overlook source for information concerning slavery has been the words of those who were slaves." To write this book, Lester read through over six thousand pages of manuscripts and organized it into chapters and tied it together with a bit of his own commentary. The result is this short (156 pages) and very interesting book. The accounts cover everything from the beginnings of slavery in Africa and the Auction block as slaves arrived in America to Emancipation and the years immediately following emancipation. I was completely drawn in, especially by the accounts that were taken word-for-word (as opposed to those been taken down by white abolitionists and made to conform to the literary standards of the time). The only thing wanting in this book is more. I felt it ended abruptly. I wanted to continue reading and learning.
  
  One additional note: This has received the Newbery Award, but I offer a word of caution before giving it to young children. The "n-word" is used frequently in the accounts. I wouldn't want to hand it to my children without first having a discussion about the terminology.
• 
  Gordon

  Julius Lester's "To be a Slave" was a great book that taught me a lot about slavery. What surprised me the most about this book was how emotional it could be, especially when the slaves were talking about how they were treated by their masters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
  
  When I first started reading this book, I was worried it was going to be a boring historical fiction book about slavery. After I read the introduction, I learned that it was written by a descendant of slavery who had done a lot of research about the lives of slaves. When Lester did was take the narratives of the former slaves and weave them together with his own written. The final product is a piece of literature that portrays the evils of slavery and explains them for the reader.
  
  I gave this book four out of five stars because there was not a true story line. I appreciated its historical accuracies and point of view.
• 
  Alex Schwartz

  Honestly, I absolutely hated this book. The text did not keep me interested throughout the whole book, let alone the first 40 pages. Not only that, but the words were stated in such a way that the English language would have been spoken in the 19th Century. The text was hard for me to understand and very disinteresting. Maybe if I try to read this book again when I am a little bit older, I might be able to understand the text better and enjoy what I am reading. I don't think I would read another book by Julius Lester because I don't like his style of writing. Also, the life stories from the slaved nearly scared me to death.
  
  I definitely would not recommend this book to anyone. The style of writing that the author uses is something that you have to like from the beginning; it is not something that you can easily learn to like. If you like learning about history, then you might enjoy this book, as well.
• 
  Guo Hui

  I felt that this book really took the definition of quoting to a whole new level. Not only is this book made entirely of quotes, the author also connected and organized the quotes in a way that made sense to the "story" he was trying to tell. Reading this book not only made me realize the styles novels can come in, it also made me realize that slavery was more devastating than it seemed. Not only were the slaves treated as property, there were even slaves that were treated as animals for breeding new slaves; the fact that these events happened, caused me to mentally question the white men during that time about where in the world these intolerable acts made sense. However in the end, it was a great experience reading it, other than the explicate quotes. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to be in the shoes of slaves.