Born a Slave: Anthology
Firsthand Narratives of Bondage, Escape, Resistance, and the Black Freedom StruggleBy Sojourner Truth, Solomon Northup, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Mary Prince, Boyrereau Brinch, Olaudah Equiano, Zamba Zembola, Solomon Bayley, William Grimes, William Craft, Ellen Craft, Moses Roper, Henry Watson, John Brown, J. W. Loguen, John Andrew Jackson, Willie Lynch, Nat Turner, Louis Hughes, Jacob D. Green, Elizabeth Keckley, Josiah Henson, Charles Ball, Austin Steward, Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, L. S. Thompson, James W. C. Pennington, Kate Drumgoold, Lucy A. Delaney, Moses Grandy, Leonard Black, John Gabriel Stedman, Henry Box Brown, Margaretta Matilda Odell, Thomas S. Gaines, James L. Smith, Joseph Mountain, Peter Still, Emma Ray, Lloyd Ray, Annie L. Burton, Nina Hill Robinson, Nicholas Said, George Henry, Israel Campbell, Lewis Clarke, Francis Fedric, Venture Smith
Length617h 53m
About this audiobook
Born a Slave: Anthology gathers a wide-ranging archive of testimony on enslavement, resistance, flight, family separation, literacy, religion, labor, and emancipation. Its selections move among autobiography, dictated narrative, spiritual reflection, political address, recollection, and abolitionist-inflected life writing, revealing both the formal variety and evidentiary force of Black testimony. Accounts of escape, self-emancipation, and the struggle to reclaim kinship stand beside narratives of bondage's daily violences, making the volume a significant entry point into the literary culture of slavery and antislavery. The contributors span generations, regions, genders, and circumstances, including formerly enslaved writers, lecturers, reformers, and witnesses whose narratives circulated through nineteenth-century print networks. Collectively, their voices illuminate the Black abolitionist tradition and the broader Atlantic history of slavery, while also registering distinct experiences of plantation labor, urban servitude, maritime worlds, migration, and Reconstruction. The anthology's breadth underscores how life writing became a crucial medium for contesting racial ideology and asserting intellectual, moral, and political agency. This volume is especially recommended for readers seeking an accessible yet substantial encounter with enslaved people's own accounts. By placing many perspectives in dialogue, it invites comparative study of narrative strategy, historical memory, faith, gender, and freedom. Born a Slave offers both indispensable educational value and a compelling record of survival, resistance, and self-representation.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★★ 4.6 (130)
Includes Amazon, Goodreads
GenreBiography and Memoir, Literary Classics
Length617 hrs 53 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateFeb 15, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Abraham Lincoln – The True Story of a Great Life (Vol. 1&2) (Annotated)
2NARRATIVES:
3Frederick Douglass:
4Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (pt. 1)
5Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (pt. 2)
Show all chaptersShow less
6Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
7INTRODUCTION
8FIRST PART
9CHAPTER I. AUTHOR'S BIRTH
10CHAPTER II. REMOVAL FROM GRANDMOTHER'S
11CHAPTER III. TROUBLES OF CHILDHOOD
12CHAPTER IV. A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE SLAVE PLANTATION
13CHAPTER V. A SLAVEHOLDER'S CHARACTER
14CHAPTER VI. A CHILD'S REASONING
15CHAPTER VII. LUXURIES AT THE GREAT HOUSE
16CHAPTER VIII. CHARACTERISTICS OF OVERSEERS
17CHAPTER IX. CHANGE OF LOCATION
18CHAPTER X. LEARNING TO READ
19CHAPTER XI. GROWING IN KNOWLEDGE
20CHAPTER XII. RELIGIOUS NATURE AWAKENED
21CHAPTER XIII. THE VICISSITUDES OF SLAVE LIFE
22CHAPTER XIV. EXPERIENCE IN ST. MICHAELS
23CHAPTER XV. COVEY, THE NEGRO BREAKER
24CHAPTER XVI. ANOTHER PRESSURE OF THE TYRANT'S VISE
25CHAPTER XVII. THE LAST FLOGGING
26CHAPTER XVIII. NEW RELATIONS AND DUTIES
27CHAPTER XIX. THE RUNAWAY PLOT
28CHAPTER XX
29CHAPTER XXI. ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY
30SECOND PART
31CHAPTER I. ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY
32CHAPTER II. LIFE AS A FREEMAN
33CHAPTER III. INTRODUCED TO THE ABOLITIONISTS
34CHAPTER IV. RECOLLECTIONS OF OLD FRIENDS
35CHAPTER V. ONE HUNDRED CONVENTIONS
36CHAPTER VI. IMPRESSIONS ABROAD
37CHAPTER VII. TRIUMPHS AND TRIALS
38CHAPTER VIII. JOHN BROWN AND MRS. STOWE
39CHAPTER IX. INCREASING DEMANDS OF THE SLAVE POWER
40CHAPTER X. THE BEGINNING OF THE END
41CHAPTER XI. SECESSION AND WAR
42CHAPTER XII. HOPE FOR THE NATION
43CHAPTER XIII. VAST CHANGES
44CHAPTER XIV. LIVING AND LEARNING
45CHAPTER XV. WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE
46CHAPTER XVI. "TIME MAKES ALL THINGS EVEN"
47CHAPTER XVII. INCIDENTS AND EVENTS
48CHAPTER XVIII. "HONOR TO WHOM HONOR"
49CHAPTER XIX. RETROSPECTION
50APPENDIX
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