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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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English 45B
Pages: 92
Started: 18 April 2024
Finished: 21 April 2024
Summary:
Frederick Douglass recounts his life, from his childhood enslaved on a planation to his education as a slave in Boston to his escape to the North.
Thoughts:
Douglass's language in this memoir was wildly effective. His use of brutal descriptions heavy with injustice was extremely impactful, and it's easy to see how he was lauded as an abolitionist speaker. His way with words is intense and impressive, and although he is explaining his childhood and escape from slavery in harsh retrospect, it's easy for the reader to feel like they are with him in his striving for freedom.
In some ways it's fascinating to think of his writings as a captivity narrative in the vein of others we've read in English 45B this year, but in others it's hard to analyze a piece of writing that is so heavy with injustice and suffering from an analytical or literary lens. Even considering this, I am very glad that my class gave me a reason to read Douglass's writing.