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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
By Frederick Douglass

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Product Description

This second edition of Douglass's Narrative reprints this classic document together with speeches and letters, all in a volume designed for undergraduate students. An extensive introduction places the Narrative in its historical and literary contexts with annotations on needed background.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #63120 in Books
  • Published on: 2002-12-25
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 188 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David W. Blight is Professor of History at Yale University; he taught at Amherst College for thirteen years. His scholarly work is concentrated on nineteenth-century America, with a special interest in the Civil War and Reconstruction, African-American history, and American intellectual and cultural history. He has lectured widely on Frederick Douglass and served as a consultant to documentary films on African-American history, including the PBS television film Frederick Douglass: When the Lion Wrote History. His book, Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee is an award-winning intellectual biography of Douglass and a study of the meaning of the Civil War. His work Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory was awarded the Bancroft Prize in American History, the Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize, as well as four awards from the Organization of American Historians. He is the author of numerous essays on abolitionism and African American intellectual history, and his latest work is a colelction of essays entitled Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the Civil War.

Customer Reviews

Required Reading4
I read this book as part of a summer assignment entering into the 11th grade in addition to "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs. Both are great pieces of African-American historical literature and well worth the read. I couldn't read this book all in one sitting, due to the need to fight the urge to throw up. He detailed descriptions of physical, psycological, and emotional abuse are enough to sicken any one and make you disgusted with the human race.

The Rest of the Story5
In the classic slave narrative genre, Frederick Douglass' narrative of his life brings to life, in all its horrors, American slave society, and one slave's life-long protest against it.

When we read Frederick Douglass in his own words, he is less the radical and more the reformer than we've been led to believe. He is also more the Christian statesmen and less the Christianity critic than we might imagine. Douglass' oft quoted comments about Christianity had much more to do with a righteous critique of distorted Christian living practiced by white masters than with any critique of Christianity or of Christ. In reality, Douglass, like so many enslaved African Americans before and after him, saw in Jesus a Savior they could identify with--a suffering Savior.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.

Not Just a African, but an American Hero!5
Frederick Douglass is the complete ressurection of the saying, "Knowledge is Power." With the more information he aquired as a slave the more he lusted for freedom. He also provides an excellent example of what black people in this country could do for themselves, interms of their economical status. Looking further, Douglass loved to think and imagine the endless possiblities, while he was still in bondage physically. When he began to read and understand the "Hypocrasy" that this country was based on, using christianity as it main tool, and what every human should be allowed by right, this released his psychological enslavement. If blacks throughout this country could read and understand there were blacks that went through worse situatians and overcame them, and the current situation that destroy the black communities were created for them to fail, just like slavery, many would wake up and take on the mask of Douglass. The mask that says, "regardless of class, race, or creed, this world was created for everyone to enjoy including me."