Twelve Years a Slave (some thoughts).

[fjm]

As by the time I joined LJ I was no longer teaching American history, most of you probably don't know that I taught African American history (17th through the end of the 20th century) for almost a decade. My specialist period was 1880 to 1950 (the civil rights era everyone has forgotten) but I studied US and Carribbean slavery as an undergrad and

Comments

[kjn]

Your last point on how people look is probably true for just about every film made about past times.

How to handle the "small things", yes. History is far too often made into a set narrative, which is then taken for the true thing. I'm not sure if you've read Eric Flint's 1812: The Rivers of War - it's one attempt to show a wider and more detailed picture of the antebellum USA.

Then there is the need to put in the US slavery into its historical context, with the slavery in Brazil and the Caribbean, the impact in Africa, and so on, but then you're going far beyond the beaten paths.

[fjm]

The Flint looks fascinating.

[kjn]

It (and its sequel) is not without its flaws, but it does manage to show that many of the labels we nowadays use to think about the era are very simplified.

I still think it's a pity that the publisher decided to skip the planned second part, Trail of Glory, which would have shown an alternate Cherokee migration.

[kjn]

Another great book series that looks at the period is Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January books, mysteries set in New Orleans with a black protagonist in the 1830s. Starts with A Free Man of Color.

[nancylebov]

Sidetrack about a book: Have you read _Jubilee_?

[fjm]

By?

[nancylebov]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(novel)

Margaret Walker-- based on the life of the author's grandmother, who'd been a slave.

[fjm]

I haven't and will look it up.

[saare_snowqueen]

Almost utterly unrelated, but, I was looking at photos of the Viking warriors whose skeletons were in the burial ship fund recently here on Saaremaa. What amazed me was how incredibly good their teeth were.

[danieldwilliam]

I recall reading somewhere that not eating sugar meant that people of the more distant past often had better teeth than you might expect.

I have no idea if this is true or not.

[fjm]

It's true, but in the South molasses was a cheap calorie.

[danieldwilliam]

Aye - if you’re on a sugar plantation sugar is going to be cheap.

*files application for Nobel Prize for Economics*

[danieldwilliam]

Aye - if you’re on a sugar plantation sugar is going to be cheap.

[cakmpls]

Thanks for a really informative review! In reading history, I have always been interested in those little details of people's daily lives, because that's where most living takes place.