Solomon Northup was of slave stock but was
born a free man in the state of New York where he lived, worked, married and
started a family, enjoying life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness promised
by the constitution.
This however is 1841 when in the southern ‘slave’
states such niceties did not apply to those still in bondage; so when Solomon visits
Washington DC to work he takes the precaution of securing papers authenticating
his status. However this is no protection against kidnap, imprisonment and transportation
to Louisiana where he is sold into slavery.
His protestations to be a free man earn him
only a savage beating, leaving him resigned to using his wits and education to
survive the hard labour and pitiless whippings that comprise his new life as he
awaits an opportunity to reassert his freedom.
It is no giveaway that this takes a dozen
years, in the prime of his life, to achieve and his harrowing testimony is all
the more affecting for the lack of hyperbole. Told in a voice to which I
mentally attached Lenny Henry in his serious but Caribbean mode, it has truth
and humility as it intersperses the narrative of pivotal events with
informative sections on the day to day life of a slave in the American south.
There is action and tension (although we
know he gets get through it) but it is the matter of fact delivery that makes
for the compulsive reading. Several times it is necessary to remind oneself
that this is fact not fiction, and that such a set-up was ever thought, by
anyone, as defensible.
An uncomfortable but strangely
life-affirming read.
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