Slave Narrative Research

I read Harriet Ann Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. I read several different parts of her story that I thought were interesting. First I read about her childhood in Chapter I. Harriet begins by talking about how she was born a slave but her parents neglected to tell her until she was six years old. She mentions how her grandmother, a free black woman, was kidnapped during the Revolutionary War and sold as a slave. Harriet talks very highly of her grandmother and of her experiences and how she was born as a slave. The next chapter I read was Chapter V "Trials of Girlhood." Harriet talks of her experience as a female slave. Here, like in the first chapter, Harriet talks highly of her grandmother and how she wished she could share what was happening to her with someone else who would understand. She struggles with the idea of how her master treated her once she started to become an "adult," "both pride and fear kept me silent.”(47). The last chapter that I read was Chapter XLI entitled "Free at Last." In this chapter, Harriet talks about her emotions toward the end of her time as a slave. She gives the reader insight on what it is like to become a free woman and realize everything that you've missed. It is almost as if she is angry and sad because she has been kept apart from her family and has missed out on some huge milestones, for example she specifically mentions her uncle Philip. Harriet's choice of diction and tone allows for the reader to understand the impact that slavery had on her and the hideous and grotesque practice that it is. On page 303, she writes, “It has been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could.” Some questions I had after reading parts of Harriet's book were: How many free black men and women were kidnapped and sold to slave holders? Why were women treated the way they were as slaves? Were there any kidnapped slaves that couldn't find their way back to their families?