Book club selection (via Zach; session held (via Zoom) April 24, 2022).
I was wondering whether this 2013 book would be written the same way in 2022. All-talk wealthy urban whites now are considered heroes instead of windbags - as unsparingly portrayed in this book. Would the author even use the term "slave" in 2022? Would it be "enslaved person?" Anyway.
Author clearly is a good writer, and the book moves right along - gives a glimpse into the world of Kansas-Nebraska when law and order barely existed. Bad.
Interesting glimpses into slave relationship (even if we have no chance to have a good feel) - the danger of reading; "sir" every time; no backtalking; illuminating conversations about the pain of separation when family members sold down the river (still unimaginable). Being a slave in any geography at any point in history seems mostly awful.
As Onion deals with Annie - says being invisible as male doesn't make much difference because invisible as a Negro anyway - third parties just see your race. Hmm.
I don't have a good feel for how much John Brown moved the needle. He certainly was in the 1960s-1970s history books. His sons play a prominent role. In this telling, he comes across as much like as an insane killer as anything else.
Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman appear.
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