Frederick Douglass - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
My rating: ★★★★☆ (80%)
Frederick Douglass shares his life story. He was born as a slave and managed to escape slavery.
This is a short book but very touching. Douglass experienced unimaginable hardships but wrote about them with calmness and eloquence. He escaped at age twenty and was twenty-seven when he published the narrative.
This is the first account of slavery (not counting movies) and the issue gets more gravity when written by an ex-slave. It’s puzzling that people back then accepted slavery as something compatible with virtue and good morals
Skip the two preface chapters written by other people. They are written in the early 1800s style, where the authors ate a dictionary. Douglass himself writes in simple language and to the point.
The book is a three-hour read. Have fun reading.