Review by Choice Review
General editor William L. Andrews (English, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), one of the leading authorities on slave and ex-slave autobiographies, reprints four North Carolina slave narratives in this valuable anthology: Moses Roper's A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from Slavery (1838), Lunsford Lane's The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N. C. (1842), Moses Grandy's Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America (1843), and Thomas H. Jones's The Experience of Rev. Thomas H. Jones, Who Was a Slave for Forty-Three Years (third edition, 1885). Andrews contributes a general introduction, and four editors introduce and annotate the texts. Collectively, the narratives underscored the horrors of slavery and provided fuel for the national and international abolitionist movement, illustrating the cruelty and hypocrisy of whites, the resiliency and resolve of blacks to keep their families together, and, above all, the determination of the slaves to be free. Scholars will welcome the introductions, annotations, and texts, but a subject index would have provided a valuable window to view themes and arguments common to the four narratives. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All college and university collections. J. D. Smith University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
