Twelve Years a Slave
by Solomon Northup..................report by Colton Siebert
Overview
Questions
I enjoyed how Solomon describes the experience so well. For example, he spent nearly a chapter explaining how cotton and sugar picking work, so the reader can understand what all he had to go through and experience.
2. What was the author's purpose for writing this book?
Mr. Northup wrote this book in order to reveal the horrors of slavery and to describe to people who hadn't seen slavery firsthand what exactly it meant to be a slave.
3. What interesting facts do you know about the author?
Northup was one of many free African-Americans that were illegal brought into slave state and sold into slavery. His intelligence and physical and mental strength allowed him write back to people he knew and for them to rescue him from bondage.
4. Would you recommend this book?
I would absolutely recommend this book, and I think everyone should have to read it. The book describes exactly what happens when a culture decides that enslaving a group of people is ok. Slavery leads to corrupt leaders and sad cases of individual talents being stifled or completely extinguished.