LITR 4231 Early American Literature Research Posts 2014 (research post assignment) Research Post 1

Zach Thomas     

3/26/14  

Slaves Have a Voice

          My interest in slaves and their background brought me to a place where I can focus on their literature. Unlike that of the dominant culture’s literature and even that of captivity narratives, slave narratives focus on a deeper aspect of kidnapping and the voices within this struggle. What initially struck my attention was the movie 12 Years a Slave, which focused on a free man’s account of being sold into slavery in the late 1800’s. I learned quickly that our course focuses on slave narratives that were even before the story of Solomon Northup and that much of its literature revolves around slavery and overcoming it. We will center in on the question: why are slave narratives uniquely beneficial unlike any other literature?

          Slave narratives are unique in how they focus on a minority that seeks to gain freedom from their current bondage. While doing some research, I found that most, if not all slave narratives say the same things and incorporate the former statement of wishing to be freed and able to make their own decisions in that freedom. The slave narratives focus specifically on the Africans who were brought to America to be as property for the dominant culture. They are taught how to write and even read by their masters. It brings to light the difference this literature has on the dominant culture’s literature. “Of the slave narratives, one must ask: who is entitled to claim, to possess these lives? In whose language do they appear?” (Sekora 485). Sekora reports that these individuals who are under their master’s authority gain the right to learn and to write only under their master’s choice. The literature that was found in slaves’ diaries was to show the condition they were under, their hope for freedom, and their growing anxiety to gain knowledge. Slaves were very inclined to find time to talk of their new life in America. Taken across the world in boats to a life where they were not free to do anything but work is the hard reality they faced. Unlike captivity narratives, which depicted mostly women’s capture by Native Americans, slaves were taken from their continent and brought to a new world where they had no hopes of returning home. Dominant literature is very exclusive when it speaks of the other races that filled America’s borders. Slave narratives seem to encompass that the new world they live in is dependent on all who reside there. Frances Smith Foster suggests that “the protagonists exhibit more strength and more inclination to fight and to think their ways to freedom—independent of white support.” (x). Slaves began writing in hopes of freedom and hopes of becoming educated beyond the constraints of living under someone’s constant authority. Slaveholders not only stole from slaves their physical freedoms, but also their freedoms to achieve higher learning that could benefit the country as a whole.

          There are arguments that slave narratives were not a genre of literature because of the repetitive content that they contained. Yet they help define the struggle that the minorities face in America. Being that slaves had no real back story in America at this point, they were self-perpetuating their existence in writing. Russ Castronovo depicts slaves in this way by saying “slave narratives stand as acts of self-authorship precisely because their authors had no patriarchal legacy that would inscribe their bodies and their memories with a citizen’s rights, duties, or legitimacy” (29).  Slaves tend to be seen as illegitimate and silent in their servitude. With the absence of literacy, slaves could not have a voice amidst a dominant culture in America. Slave narratives focus on the present age and their circumstances in that moment. Looking back in the past was not beneficial for those who really did not feel like they would have a legacy to leave, most didn’t. These narratives are a cry for hope, a plea for freedom, and a desperation for rights to all Africans in America. Without the slave narratives, there is suffering for minorities in general. Arna Bontemps shows the need for slave narratives in the minority community: “The disappearance of the slave narrative, unlike the phasing out of the minstrel show, deprived black people in the United States of a medium of self-expression for which there was no ready substitute” (vii). The struggle, in my opinion, goes beyond any other struggle that was noted in other works of literature. The necessity for blacks to read of their ancestors now is what makes America an ever-growing and ever-changing nation. Slavery is an apparent nightmare that we cannot forget about, but should be thought about in forms of hope and freedom.

          Slave narratives are unique in benefiting the reader unlike any other literature because there is a deep struggle uncanny to other writings. Slave narratives also focus primarily on freedom through stories of first-hand experiences. The different perspectives that blacks have on the new world are unique because they are enslaved and brought to a new place. Not only that, their narratives bring to light the reality that they will never see home again. Slave narratives capture a particularly gruesome era in history, but those authors were not quick to give in to the lack of rights given. These narratives focus on overcoming the seemingly impossible in order to be educated, gain rights as a human being, and become a unique people with thoughts and ideas that are equal to that of the dominant culture.

·        Bontemps, Arna. Great Slave Narratives. Beacon Press, 1969. vii-xix. eBook.

·        Castronovo, Russ. Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. 1-283. Print.

·        Foster, Frances Smith. Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-bellum Slave Narratives. 2nd ed. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979. ix-189. eBook.

·        Sekora, John. "Black Message/White Envelope:Genre,Autheniticity, and Authority in the Antebellum Slave Narrative." 32 (1987): 482-515. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.