Reviews with content warning for Racism - 12 Years a Slave

It's hard to rate something that's not only a classic, not only a nonfiction memoir of someone's life story, but also centered on such a tragically difficult and important topic. I don't know if I can say this was a book I enjoyed reading, although I do think it was well-written as well as insightful. Northup not only conveys the events that happened to him, but includes thoughtful meditations on the moral implications of slavery and the seemingly contradictory dichtomy of slaveowners that Northup believed to be good people at heart that were incredibly affecting. The descriptions of the brutality towards slaves in this novel also made me physical sick sometimes when I remembered that all of the events in the story were real.

As a novel, it lacks a certain sense of narrative in my opinion, going from event to event and describing a lot of the daily life of slaves, but again, I realize this a nonfiction memoir and not a story. Hence my difficulty with rating it. In any case, I do think this should be mandatory reading for students in North America, and I am very glad I read it.

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maink's review

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dark emotional informative sad fast-paced

4.5

An excellent source for trying to understand the institution of slavery in the mid 19th Century, and gain some insight to how the abolitionist movement gained traction

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