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A Slave No More
Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation
1 of 1 copy available
Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama plantation, John Washington an urban slave in Virginia. They never met. But both men saw opportunity in the chaos of the Civil War, both escaped North, and both left us remarkable accounts of their flights to freedom. Handed down through family and friends these narratives tell gripping stories of escape.
Working from an unusual abundance of genealogical material, historian David W. Blight has reconstructed Turnage’s and Washington’s childhoods as sons of white slaveholders and their climb to black working-class stability in the North, where they reunited their families. In A SLAVE NO MORE, the untold stories of two ordinary men take their place at the heart of the American experience.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
November 6, 2007 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781415942505
- File size: 261910 KB
- Duration: 09:05:38
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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The author has taken two recently discovered slave narratives and, through research, constructed the principals' childhoods and post-escape lives. Both escaped from their bondage during the Civil War and established lives for themselves afterwards. This combination of primary and secondary source material is mirrored in the performance of the work, with Arthur Morey for the secondary material and Dominic Hoffman for the narratives. Both give suitable readings of their respective texts. Delivering the secondary material, Morey gives a competent but somewhat restrained, almost pedantic, reading. Hoffman, however, reading the actual slaves narratives, gives a spirited and engaging performance with appropriate accents. M.T.F. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine -
Two rare slave narratives, firsthand accounts of slavery and escapes to freedom during the Civil War, form the backbone of Yale Professor David W. Blight's book. While Blight reads his portion, which puts the narratives in historical context and discusses the lives led by the writers, a different reader takes on each of the narratives. Thus, John M. Washington's story is told in a reflective, eloquent voice, while Wallace Turnage's story dramatically brings home the risks and dangers involved in his escape attempts. The abridgment leaves some repetition between Blight's writing and the slave narratives, and his narration tends toward the scholarly. Nonetheless, the power of the unedited manuscripts is compelling. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
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August 20, 2007
Three fascinating works are packaged here: two unpublished manuscripts by former slaves Wallace Turnage (1846–1916) and John Washington (1838–1918), and an illuminating analysis of them by award-winning historian Blight. Turnage's journal (“a sketch of my life or adventures and persecutions which I went through from 1860 to 1865”) is about his attempted escapes and their dire consequences: from his first, when he “didn't know where to go,” to his successful “fifth and last runaway.” His account is particularly noteworthy in its revelation of the slave and free-black networks he found and utilized. Washington's “Memorys of the Past” moves from his “most pleasant” early childhood through “the many trials of slavery” and the disruptions of the Civil War, ending with his successful escape in 1862. As Blight observes, it's “very much a coming of age story,” offering a unique window on life (learning to read, falling in love, finding religious faith) in a slave society. Blight provides an accessible historical and literary context for the manuscripts and explores, as fully as possible, the men's lives not covered in their manuscripts (both are self-emancipated). These powerful memoirs reveal poignant, heroic, painful and inspiring lives. -
Starred review from January 28, 2008
If ever a book cried out for an audio version, it's this fascinating study of the lives of John Washington and Wallace Turnage. Both were sold or born into slavery, ran away repeatedly and eventually freed themselves. Although Blight, a Yale professor who specializes in the study of these rare documents, does a splendid job in setting up their stories, it is the superbly talented narrators who make listening such a richly nuanced delight. As Washington, Richard Allen (Ragtime: The Musical
) is wise and jaunty, remembering his early years with pleasure and masking his bitterness at being a slave with Mark Twain–like ironic humor. Dion Graham (from TV's The Wire
) portrays Turnage with barely restrained anger. Although both narratives apologize for their lack of education and writing skills, they add immensely to our knowledge of what it was like to be a young man growing up in a world he never made. Simultaneous release with the Harcourt hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 20).
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