excerpt from To Be A Slave

Major Ellison bought me and carried me to Mississippi. I didn't want to go. They 'zamine you just like they do a horse; they look at your teeth, and pull your eyelids back and look at you eyes, and feel you just like you was a horse. He 'zamined me and said, "Where's your mother?" I said, "I don't know where my mother is, but I know her." He said, "Would you know your mother if you saw her?" I said, "Yes, sir. I would know her. I don't know where she is, but I would know heer." They had done sold her then. He said, "Do you want us to buy you?" I said, "No. I don't want you to buy me. I want to stay here." He said, "We'll be nice to you and give you plenty to eat." I said, "No, you won't have much to eat. What do you have to eat?" He said, "Lots of peas and cottonseed and things like that." But I said, "No, I'd rather stay here because I get plenty of pot licker and bread and buttermilk, and I don't want to go; I got plenty." I didn't know that that wasn't lots to eat. He said, "Well, I have married your mistress and she wants me to buy you." But I still said, "I don't want to go." They had done sold my mother to Mr. Armstrong then. So he kept talking to me, and he said, "Don't you want to see your sister?" I said, "Yes, but I don't want to go there to see her." They had sold her to Mississippi before that, and I knowed she was there, but I didn't want to go.
I went on back home, and the next day the old white woman whipped me, and I said to myself, "I wish that old white man had bought me." I didn't know he had bought me anyhow, but soon they took my cotton dresses and put 'em in a box, and they combed my hair, adn I heard them tell me taht Mr. Ellison had done come after me and he was in a buggy. I wanted to ride in the buggy, but I didn't want to go with him. So when I saw him I had a bucket of water on my head, and I set it on the shelf and ran just as fast as I could for the woods. They caught me, and Aunt Bet said, "Honey, don't do that. Mr. Ellison done bought you and you must go with him." She tied my clothes up in a bundle and he had me sitting up in the buggy with him, and we started to his house here. I had to get down to open the gate, and when I got back up I got behind in the little seat for servants, and he told me to come back and get inside, but I said I could ride behind up to the house, and he let me stay there, but he kept watching me. He was scared I would run away, because I had done run away that morning, but I wasn't going to run away, 'cause I wouldn't know which way to go after I got that far away.

Anonymous
Fisk, pp. 191-192

Narrowing Down

Unfortunately I was unprepared for my meeting because I didn't find any patterns within the two or three cultural objects I had chosen. However, afterwards, I had a better idea of what I needed to be doing. I decided to focus in on the book that I had chosen, To Be A Slave, because it seemed like it was the richest as far as finding patterns. I actually had no idea what I wanted to do before the meeting, and afterward I was probably even more frustrated because I was expecting to know what I wanted to do. After the meeting, I went back to my friends that I'd interviewed for a previous assignment and they helped me to realize that doing To Be A Slave was probably my best choice. Also, I had another friend to show me how to find patterns; anything from the font of the text (see previous post) to the subtle actions of the slaves, such as a repetition of bending over or the words of a song that they sang. I think that was the biggest help to me.

TBAS: Finding Patterns

The first thing I noticed about To Be a Slave was the separation between the voices- Lester is telling the story of slavery, as many people have done, yet he uses the voices of those who are best fit to tell a story of a slave: the slaves and their children. First noticed is a visual separation; Lester's voice is in italics as he narrates the story, and the accounts themselves are in regular print. Also, Lester's voice is articulate and scholarly, while the accounts tend to keep the distinctiveness of the dialect of the slaves. (In the preface, Lester points out that he tried to preserve the language as much as possible, but had to change somethings just to make some of the statements comprehensible.)

The stories the slaves are the brick of the story and Lester's commentary is the mortar that holds these stories together.

Also, something else that I see recurring throughout the book is the slave's cries. It seems that the slave actually has two cries for the fate of a fellow, the cry of praise and the cry of sorrow, which seem to be, at first glance, contradictory, like on pages 42 and 56, respectively: The cry of praise follows the death of a child, while the cry of sorrow follows the transport of slaves even though they are still alive. This illustrates that slavery is a worse fate than death.