The Bondwoman's Narrative

This book may have great value as a historical document, however, I evaluate it from the 'fun to read' point of view. I did not find it a greatly enjoyable read. It is written in the old novel style- "Perils of Pauline" comes to mind. Neither did I find that I learned much about it was like to live like a slave during that time. I am now reading a historical novel in which there are a few pages describing a slave market in the USA during the Revolution; which gave me a much clearer picture than Bondwoman's Narrative did. The description of how the field hands lived left me wishing to read more about that, and in fact, I felt I did not even get a good picture of how the house servants lived. There was quite a bit of philosophizing during the entire book so the author came across as an intellectual. In this respect, her comments about the death of a fellow runaway slave towards the end of the novel were very interesting to me.

I found the lengthy introduction to this book as intriguing as the story itself; it details the intense investigation conducted by several librarians and educators to authenticate the book as being written by a fugitive slave, and to attempt to identify the author.
These were some determined people! But the result is a very convincing, so that once the reader begins reading the story he/she truly believes that it is a first-person account of a slave who eventually escaped to a better life. The impact of the autobiographical novel is more intense than third-person descriptions of the cruelty and indignity of slavery. I had a hard time putting this book down.

This narrative, supposedly by a slave, is rendered in a vocabulary that's literary, even for a college-educated white. In this regard it's unlike slave narratives I've read, except for Frederick Douglas and those biographies edited/written by abolitionists. Because Hannah Crafts's history doesn't suggest she had access to an education, I would expect the language to reflect some slave idiom common to the time. How does her experience give her the wherewithal to reference mythology, play the harp, and take dictation? Or give her such astuteness in depicting political characters and situations? This sounds more like Fanny Kimble's journals.

The presentation of the actual story was excellent , but Mr. Gates's over riding narrative was a serious detractor to a well written work on slavery .

pretty good read

This book is a triumph. It seems insane to call a slave narrative "delightful," but this book truly was.

Fast service I love it

One of my favorite books.

Good

I would not, however, buy it again. It is a difficult read-hard to separate the author of the book from the actual account of the bondswoman