Black History Month Review: Twelve Years A Slave

Twelve Years A Slave: Full Book and Comprehensive Reading Companion by Solomon Northup
Publisher of this edition: CreateSpace
This book was first published in 1853 and is public domain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Because of the Academy Award nominated movie based on this book, I think most everyone is acquainted with the story of 12 Years a Slave. It’s the memoir written by Solomon Northup, a free black man who lived in New York state with his wife and three children. He was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841 and was a slave for twelve years before he was rescued.

As one can imagine, Solomon’s time as a slave was utterly horrible. Because of the media coverage of the movie, I expected the worst in terms of what Solomon and the other slaves went through and the truth of it was even worse than I could have ever imagined. Not every scene is intense and graphic – I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading this book. It’s an important book and should be read by everyone. There are some scenes that are to read though, I won’t lie about that.

I was surprised by how accessible the language Solomon used was. I’ve read other books from the 19th century that were really hard to follow and understand (Dickens, anyone?) This book was very beautifully and descriptively written but I still was always able to follow what was happening. I bought this version of the book because I anticipated struggling with it but I would have been just fine with the regular book.

I haven’t seen the movie yet so I can’t draw any comparisons between the two but I still highly recommend this book to everyone.