This book was difficult to read, in part because it depicts, sometimes graphically, horrific scenes of brutality and inhumanity, and in part because it is written in a narrative style that reports events without necessarily drawing the reader into the story. It is worth reading because of its historical importance, and it is occasionally poetic in the dramatically flourishing style typical of many American abolitionists. (This style can be over-the-top, however, and often is. The abolitionists were never known for their subtlety, because subtlety would not have worked.) As important as this book is for informing readers of the horrors of slavery, the story could have been so much better written. The events themselves are highly dramatic and the character of Frederick Douglas seems fascinating, so why is the narrative itself so...well..frankly...don't hate me for saying it...BORING? Because although the author is clearly educated (and one marvels how he taught himself to read and write in secret), he is just not gifted as a storyteller. I would love to hear the story of Frederick Douglas re-written by a great storyteller.

The most arresting part of the book, for me, was surprisingly the Appendix, in which Frederick Douglas clarifies why he speaks so negatively of religion throughout the book, insisting that he is not an opponent of religion in general or of Christianity in particular (rather, he says, he supports “true Christianity”), but specifically of the “slaveholder’s religion.” It is a poignant reminder of how religion can be used as a tool of self-justification rather than of self-transformation, how it can be used to harden rather than temper its practioners. He quotes at length Jesus’s explicit and vehement condemnation of the hypocrisy and callousness of the religious leaders of His day and concludes, “Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America.” Although I wish he had spent some of his time in the appendix to address also the religion of the abolitionists, virtually all of whom were deeply motivated to seek an end to slavery by their fervent Christian convictions, I suppose that would have too much softened the impact of the chapter.