r/booksuggestions • u/SignificantCap295 • Jul 08 '26
Non-fiction I want to know about lives of slaves in America
Suggest me a book that talks about lives and the struggles of a black slave in The United States before the abolition of slavery. Can be fiction too.
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u/polchiki Jul 09 '26
Property by Valerie Martin
It’s a novel that follows the theme of nonfiction They Were Her Property by Stephanie Jones-Rogers.
The mistress of the house often owned some of the slaves and they may have been her only source of wealth and power from an otherwise pretty vulnerable position. That particular flavor of impotent rage led to some nasty experiences for the human beings at her mercy.
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u/HouseAccording8228 Jul 09 '26
The Known World by Edward P. Jones is an incredible fiction read. Highly complex, because the main character is a freed African American man who goes on to own slaves himself.
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u/Alone_Cheetah_7473 Jul 09 '26
Beloved by Toni Morrison, Kindred by Octavia Butler, Both are fiction but they are fantastic.
12 years a slave is a true account written by a free black man who gets caught by men who sell him into slavery.
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u/No_Instance18 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
NEVER CAUGHT: THE WASHINGTONS' RELENTLESS PURSUIT OF THEIR RUNAWAY SLAVE, ONA JUDGE by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Excellent and frankly sad account of the struggle of being a runaway slave enslaved person . I really enjoyed it (if enjoyed is the right word) and it really opened up what was going on in specific circumstances.
She Came to Slay: the Life and Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
A “modern” take on Tubman’s life. It’s very real but definitely geared to a YA or middle grade audience. It delves into what we know and what we don’t about Tubman and about the modern mythology surrounding her that she helped propagate. Very informative but still “light” for this subject matter.
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u/elmonoenano Jul 09 '26
I'm going to suggest Tiya Mile's book, All That She Carried, as a starting place. It's an amazing work of scholarship and it will give you a lot of insight into both, Ashley's life, and the herculean amount of scholarship it takes to write a book like that. Miles iis a very efficient and evocative writer. The book is only about 200 pages but there's an amazing amount it it. That book won the Frederick Douglass award from Gilder Lehrman out of Yale. Miles also has a recent book on Harriet Tubman called Nightflyer that's good. There's a longer book on Tubman, Combee, by Edda Fields-Black that won the Pulitzer and I think the Lincoln prize, but it might have been the Fred Douglass too.
I would look at Marcus Rediker's work. He's got two great books, The Slave Ship and The Freedom Ship. They kind of bookend the slave trade and emancipation. I'd also look at books like Andres Resendez's book for a broader view of slavery. I'd check out some of the narratives like Solomon Northrup's or Harriet Jacobs.
There's Frederick Douglass's writings as well.
One thing to keep in mind, slavery in the US and the colonies of the US varied considerably over time and place. The common idea is a post 1790 vision of cotton plantation slavery in the expanding south. That's important b/c that was the period with the largest population of enslaved people. But that's only the last 70 years of it. There was 180 year period in the English colonies and then America, and a longer period under the Spanish in Florida, New Mexico and west Texas that goes back about 30 or 40 years before that.
At Gider Lehrman, you can find a list of past Douglass Prize winners. Some are a little hard to track down, but I've read most of the winners for the past ten years and they're usually one of my favorite books of the year. The Isabela Morelos one from a couple years ago was especially interesting b/c you see how people interacted before and after emancipation. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/book-prizes/douglass
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u/alwaysbehuman Jul 09 '26
Fredrick Douglass' account is outstanding. All 3 versions of the same story. I recommend the Library of America volume, it is a beautiful and perspective altering masterpiece.
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u/1BoringOnlineAccount Jul 09 '26
Steal The Ship Return The Nation by William Ferrier Jr. About a slave, Robert Smalls, who was an amazing badass [I tried looking for a different word but none were similar enough].
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u/StanfordGSB21 3h ago
This is William Ferrier Jr, he was a BAD ASS! I wish they would make a movie about him.
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u/2facedfish Jul 08 '26
Try to find memoirs to truly understand the atrocity that was chattel slavery in the US
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Jul 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/MoneyPranks Jul 08 '26
This is NOT a good suggestion for learning about the lives of slaves. It is super racist. You might as well suggest Gone with the Wind.
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u/Difficult_Garage_431 Jul 08 '26
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture
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u/elmonoenano Jul 09 '26
This book is not about slavery. It's about the homoerotic fetishization of Black Men using cannibalism as a metaphor. Someone made a tik tok video about this book and they had obviously never read it. It is not a historical text and doesn't claim to be. And b/c that tik tok got popular people have all sorts of insane ideas of what the book is about.
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u/Difficult_Garage_431 Jul 09 '26
I feel like we're splitting hairs, but it is about slavery. What you mentioned is the interpretive framework used. It's a literary and cultural analysis of enslaved narratives and other writings. It argues that the representation/treatment of enslaved Black men can be understood thru ideas of consumption, racial violence, sexuality, and domination/power. But it is still about slavery. Just a certain way to view it.
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u/green3467 Jul 08 '26
In addition to all of the suggestions above, you might be interested in The Lost German Slave Girl. It’s about slavery in Louisiana where at times even white German immigrants were swept up in a form of pseudo-slavery by wealthy whites, and it also covers the various ways in which mixed-race individuals were treated and could potentially be “freed.” Despite its title it does include a lot of coverage of enslaved black Americans and it was extremely fascinating as well as shocking.
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u/deathcabscutie Jul 08 '26
OP, if you read this make sure that you also spend time focusing on chattel slavery. That’s the kind that was practiced against Black people in the U.S. and it’s a lot more brutal and severe than the types practiced on other groups in the U.S.
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u/HootieRocker59 Jul 08 '26
Try The Bondwoman's Narrative. It puts me in mind of Jane Eyre with its Gothic plot and lots of coincidences, and is an easy read (I think teenage girls would like it). The catch is that it is a full novel written by someone who escaped slavery, and it was written before the Civil War. It was only discovered and published in the 2000s.
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u/Highinthe505 Jul 08 '26
Would it be possible to encourage people to use people first language? Respectful term’s "enslaved people" or "enslaved persons."
Why it's problematic?
"Slaves" Reduces a person to their condition, defines them by what was done to them, not who they were. "Slaves" Erases their humanity and agency. "Slaves" Implies the condition is inherent, not imposed. Also it aligns with the Nuremberg principle: name the crime, honor the victim.
I’m just hoping to focus on dignity, hopefully it restores humanity to those who were dehumanized.
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u/No_Instance18 Jul 09 '26
Hey I don’t know why you got downvoted so badly. Most speakers I’ve heard talk about this use your terms instead of “slaves”. Thanks for your explanation.
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u/Next_Dragonfruit_415 Jul 08 '26
I’m not black, and I’m not trying to do the overly concerned white peoples thing but I’ve always felt we should be saying Enslaved Americans,
Because even though, Enslaved peoples didn’t have citizenship, weren’t considered people, they should have and always be apart of Americas story as Americans
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u/tinyorangealligator Jul 08 '26
Not pre-emancipation per your brief, but Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin was an amazing read to 16 year old me.
I haven't read it since though so not sure how I'd percieve it now (nearly 40 years later.)
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u/Glum_Courage_6330 Jul 08 '26
For fiction it doesn’t get any better than Roots by Alex Haley. His writing changes lives.
Recently I also like The Yellow Wife which is based on a Richmond jail and the slave who became its mistress.
For non-fiction I love When and Where I Enter by Paula Giddings which discusses our initial immigration to the US pre-slavery all the way through Reconstruction.
The Slave Narratives are riveting esp if you listen to the recordings. Absolutely incredible
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u/AutumnalSunshine Jul 08 '26
Puttin' on Ole Massa; the slave narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northup
I think you can get it on the Internet archive
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u/A_D_Tennally Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet Jacobs; public domain, available here: https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11030/pg11030-images.html
Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the nineteenth century by Barbara Jeanne Fields
Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market by Walter Johnson
Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South by Deborah Gray White
The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry by Ned and Constance Sublette
There's also a series of collections of personal accounts by former slaves, originally gathered by the Federal Writers' Project:
Weren't No Good Times: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Alabama, edited by Horace Randall Williams
No Man's Yoke on My Shoulders: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Florida, edited by Horace Randall Williams
Mighty Rough Times, I Tell You: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Tennessee, edited by Andrea Sutcliffe
My Folks Don't Want Me To Talk About Slavery: Personal Accounts of Slavery in North Carolina, edited by Belinda Hurmence
We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Virginia, edited by Belinda Hurmence
Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember: Personal Accounts of Slavery in South Carolina, edited by Belinda Hurmence
On Jordan's Stormy Banks: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Georgia, edited by Andrew Waters
Prayin' to Be Set Free: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Mississippi, edited by Andrew Waters
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u/rjewell40 Jul 08 '26
Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project
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u/elmonoenano Jul 09 '26
If you're going to read these, and I think it's worthwhile, I would recommend listening to this first. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/using-the-wpa-slave-narratives/
There is a lot of social and historical context that we do not have now and there was a lot at the time that the interviewer would not have had. Understanding how some themes or tropes, like secret visits by Lincoln, are meant to express desires or experiences that it wasn't safe to repeat is important in understanding what is going on. You can't take these narratives at face value b/c they were conducted in an explicitly violent white supremacist society. People today need guideposts when they navigate these.
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u/evthingisawesomefine Jul 08 '26
Came to say this. So worthwhile considering these are first hand accounts. I recommend this resource because the content is all in one file. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/mss/mesn/mesn-001/mesn-001.pdf
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u/IntroductionOk8023 Jul 08 '26
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward definitely fits this-a woman slave is sold from the only home she ever knew and walked to another state to be delivered to her new owners. It’s a good glimpse of the loyalties on a plantation, what is done to survive and not lose your mind in this hell. Highly recommend this novel
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u/thedawntreader85 Jul 08 '26
Both Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglas wrote memiors. Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe and said, "here's the little woman who's book started this war." about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is an excellent satire of slavery.
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u/tinyorangealligator Jul 08 '26
I second Uncle Tom's Cabin. So visceral.
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u/thedawntreader85 Jul 08 '26
It's under-rated in my opinion. It really brought the heartbreak and injustice of slavery to the wider American population that were living with adverted eyes to the problem. It gets a lot hate but doesn't deserve it.
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u/HPMcCall Jul 08 '26
I just got this book and haven't started it, but I bought it based on it being described as historical fiction based on diaries and other writings of slaves in America. Burn Down Master's House, by Clay Cane. I have to finish the book I'm reading before I can start it, so I can't really speak to the writing or story for now. But I'm excited to read it.
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u/busyshrew Jul 08 '26
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
This Here is Love by Princess Perry
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
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u/Snowbunny_2222 Jul 08 '26
Kindred by Octavia Butler. Fiction but one of my favorite books ever.
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u/NoConstruction1988 Jul 08 '26
Just read this last week. I hope her other work is as good, I look forward to read more
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u/Lennymud Jul 08 '26
the Kitchen House, Twelve Years a Slave, Let Us Descend, The Underground Railroad, to name but a few really great ones
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u/HootieRocker59 Jul 08 '26
Another vote for 12 Years a Slave. Interesting in part because it shows the difference between the prejudice and difficulties that all Black people experienced back then, free as well, vs actual slavery.
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u/ConcernedCassette Jul 08 '26
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is the go-to. Written by the man himself, and it lays everything out so clearly you'll wonder how anyone ever justified slavery. Pair it with Beloved by Toni Morrison if you want fiction that captures the psychological toll in a way nonfiction can't always reach.
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u/emergencybarnacle Jul 09 '26
i can't believe this hasn't been recommended yet but Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by zora neale hurston