I just finished listening to the audio verson of "The Known World." It's a fascinating novel about Black slaveholders before the Civil War.
The characters are complex human beings who often disappointed me by becoming mean or violent. This was depressing but made the point that a system that is inherently evil (slavery) tends to enmesh people in evil as they attempt to cope with it. The book does not sugar-coat plantation life, but by making Black slaveowners a key part of the story, it does not paint slavery as a strictly racial institution. I found the book both a riveting narrative and a thought-provoking commentary on the attitudes of the slave-owning gentry.
June 12, 2007
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