Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives - Hardcover

Crew, Spencer; Goodman, Cynthia; Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0821228420 ISBN 13: 9780821228425

Publisher: Bulfinch, 2003

Synopsis

Unchained Memories is a riveting compilation of more than forty narratives drawn from interviews with former slaves conducted in the 1930s by the government's Works Progress Administration. The book is an adaptation of HBO's documentary special for 2003, also titled Unchained Memories . From slave auctions to emancipation, the narratives trace the extraordinary experiences of lives spent in slavery.

About this title

About the Author:

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the editor of The Bondwoman's Narrative (Warner Books) and co-editor of Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience and has written numerous books. He is director of the Afro-American Studies department at Harvard.
Spencer Crew is the director of the National Underground Freedom Center and the former director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
Cynthia Goodman, a writer, curator, and expert on digital media, is organizing the exhibition of Unchained Memories for the Freedom Center.

From Publishers Weekly:

Set to air February 10, the HBO documentary chronicled by this book (and sharing its title) is narrated by Whoopi Goldberg and features dramatic readings by Samuel L. Jackson, Ossie Davis, Oprah Winfrey and others, while a traveling exhibition has been organized by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, and an expanded DVD is set for release the same day. Yet the testimony and 60 duotones here still speak for themselves. Bringing together more than 40 recollections from the more than 2,000 interviews conducted by the Depression-era WPA, this book acts as a small-scale, superlative introduction to the huge memory repository to be found in libraries and in the recent book-and-audio collection Remembering Slavery, which presents actual WPA slave narrative recordings along with much longer transcriptions. (The WPA's 17-volume set, archived as the Slave Narratives collection, remains available.) After short introductions from Harvard eminence Gates, and Crew and Goodman of the Freedom Center, the editors divide the book into eight chapters ( "Slave Auctions," "Work," "Family," "Living Conditions," "Abuse," "Special Occasions," "The Runaway," "Emancipation"), each with an explanatory introduction, that juxtapose slavery-era photos with the recollections of former slaves, sometimes shown in photos from the time of the interview. With its featured selection by Black Expressions, the BOMC and the History Book Club, this title should do exactly as intended: raise individual awareness of the terrible legacy every citizen a former slave-holding country must carry.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bulfinch
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0821228420
• ISBN 13: 9780821228425
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160