Letters From a Slave Girl

Title:Letters from a slave girl

Author: Mary E. Lyons

Publisher:Simon Pulse

Place andyear of publication- New York, NY, 1992

Number of pages: 163

Where I found the book: CHS Library

The title fits the book perfectly. The book is about a girl, Harriet, who is a slave. She writes letters to her family and to the man she loves.

There were themes of slavery, depression, hope, and racism in the book.

The author is plotting the book from what happened first to what happened later. There wasn’t a lot of jumping around from time periods to another; it was all chromatically in order

SUMMARY

HarrietJacobs was born into slavery; it was the only life that she knew. When hermistress, Margaret Horniblow, who taught Harriet to read and write (veryunusual practice), becomes ill on her deathbed, Harriet has hopes that she willbe set free. But when it comes time to read the will, she’s devastated thatshe’s instead being gifted to Miss Horniblow’s three-year-old niece. With hernew mistress being so young, she falls under the control of Dr. Norcom and hiswife Maria.

It isn’t long before Dr. Norcom begins making sexual advances on Harriet, even to the point of building Harriet her own cottage to be out of the house from his wife. Harriet begs to be married to a free black man, but Dr. Norcom becomes enraged. Thinking that if she becomes pregnant with a white man’s baby, Dr.Norcom will sell her, she does just that not once but twice. When she realizes that he plans to sell her two children to a plantation owner, she knows thatshe must take matters into her own hands.

She does manage to trick Dr. Norcom to selling the children who are then purchased by their white father, who although is a kind man, doesn’t set them free.Harriet then sets her eyes on her own escape to freedom. Harriet runs away and leads Dr. Norcom to believe that she has fled north, but in all actuality she is hiding in a crawlspace at her grandmother’s house. She lives in this tiny crawlspace for SEVEN years watching her children, unbeknown to them, through a peep hole in the wood. She eventually does escape to the north and is able to be reunited with her children and become a force in the abolition movement and writing her autobiography.

Christian Perspective

Harreit and her family were somewhat Christians. They knew there was a God and they also mentioned about him in the book. They were slaves and people who hated them owned them. The owners could do anything they wanted to do with their slaves, so that didn’t give the slaves a lot of freedom. Harriet’s family knew some of their owners were pastors, but because of what they were treated like by them, it didn’t quite convince them. The slaves weren’t allowed in the upper part of the churches. They got the run down basement, but they used it anyway. Looking at this book at a Christian perspective, this book teaches me a lot. Hope is a big part of Christianity and also was to the slaves. Hope is what kept them going every day. We as Christians believe in a God that we can’t physically see and some slaves like Harriet believed in God and believed in freedom to come. Harriet dealt with things in a mature manner and a miner that id Christ like. When Dr.Norcom was threatening her and her children, she held them close and prayed. She always cared of the well beings of others, and will do anything to take care of someone else. She hid from everyone for 7 years to protect her children!! Her children didn’t know about her until it was safe for them to. To me I think that is genuine behaviour. God was with her and her family and the hope of freedom became reality!

My Thoughts

I chose this book because I liked the topic and I like realistic fiction books. This book was a real story and it actually happened which made to like it even better. This book is really good and I really enjoyed reading it. I would recommend this book to a person who would like to learn more about slavery and how it affected people. Even though it was a bunch of letters put together it told astory which I enjoyed.