In honor of Juneteenth.
I recently learned that brick-and-mortar bookstores are reviving nationwide, despite the availability of e-books, online magazines, and streaming media.
I think that’s absolutely wonderful. There is no better gathering place than a bookstore, especially if it has coffee shop available.
All the same, I confess that I absolutely adore my e-reader. I have over 200 books stored on it, and I constantly add to my collection, using free book apps and organizing my collection into folders with titles like “Definitely Re-Read” and “Delete With Prejudice!”
Nevertheless, I admit that there’s something less satisfying about holding my e-reader instead of a physical book. For one thing, that great “book smell” is totally missing (and I’d pay good money to someone who could come up with a light spray scent that I could spritz onto the cover on my Kindle!)
Yet the e-reader also has advantages. I am fascinated with words, and love having my vocabulary challenged, so it’s magnificent to be able to simply long press an unfamiliar word, calling up the dictionary to discover its meaning. Just as wonderful is the ability to punch out to an internet encyclopedia when I come across some unknown tidbit of information. Recently, for instance, while reading a mystery set in WWII, I happened upon the fact that Japan had launched incendiary balloons across the Pacific Ocean, some of which made it to American shores, one actually killing six people. I thought this was utter nonsense until I long-pressed the word Fu-Go and discovered an encyclopedia entry.
Often, my free book apps have introduced me to stories I might never have encountered. One such book which I recently stumbled across is Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs under the pseudonym Linda Brent.
Finally published in 1861, after many failed attempts to find a publisher, this is not a work of fiction like the well-known Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but an autobiography, written by a literate, escaped, later freed slave woman. I was startled. Why had I never heard of this book?
Why? Well, I thought cynically, possibly because it was written by a Black freed slave woman, not a White abolitionist or a Black male intellectual, such as Frederick Douglas.
In any case, I dove breathlessly into Linda/Harriet’s story, finding myself, for the first 15 chapters, trapped in fascinated horror, unable to put it down. I read far into the night, and rose, tired, in the morning to pour myself a cup of coffee and continue reading.
But at some point late in the morning I discovered that I had to break away from the book for awhile. I could no longer immerse myself in the unrelenting dreadfulness of Harriet’s story. The nearly 200 years that had passed since she had lived, written, and died, in no way lessened the pain I felt upon reviewing the story of her life.
Unable to continue, I spent a few days reading the most innocuous book I could find, which happened to be Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Partway through my re-read of that novel, though, I realized what had drawn me to it from Harriet’s story: not the novel itself, but the 1999 movie. Roundly criticized, that movie version had departed from Austen’s book to depict, accurately, the fact that Sir Thomas’s “interests” in Antigua indicated a plantation worked by slaves. But the movie was coldly accurate. Slavery in the British Empire had not ended until 1834, while the novel was written in 1814. Antigua was a nation enslaved. The movie stated baldly what Austen had so carefully glossed over.
I could not escape Harriet Jacobs’ story even by hiding in Jane Austen.
Returning to the autobiography, I finished reading the story, rejoicing in its end, learning that friends purchased Harriet’s freedom. She was safe. Tears scalded my cheeks on behalf of this woman who had lived so painfully and finally died nearly two centuries ago.
As I closed Harriet’s story, I recalled with disgust a debate I’d been forced to participate in during high school. Two pamphlets were supplied, written as they might have been in 1860: one an abolitionist’s tract, An Indictment of Slavery; the other, In Defense of Slavery. Happily, in that long-ago debate, I was allowed to take the side of abolition. Even as a 16-year-old, I knew there was no possible defense of slavery.
Now, as a 70-year-old woman reading Harriet Jacobs’ story, I know once more that there is not, never was, any possible defense of the horrific evils of slavery.
There is no defense, either, for those who wish to bury the past in the lightless depths of some hidden cave, never to be acknowledged or recognized; to reframe history in carefully couched lies; to ban books and refuse to teach the truth.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl should be required reading, not just in every high school in the U.S., but for every citizen. Harriet’s autobiography should be known to every person of every race, because it demonstrates the depths of depravity to which racial prejudice sinks the soul, and the convoluted, insupportable thinking which justifies that abominable evil.
Speaking to the Heart of Many Matters 