Today I'm sharing the best book I read in October.
After a long dry spell, I finally had a 5-star read this month! It was the only one of the nine books I read this month that merited above a 4-star rating, so it's definitely my Best of the Bunch.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was an excellent autobiography. It takes a bit to get accustomed to the 19th century language, but otherwise I found it very readable. It was interesting to read Jacobs' account after reading so many stories (fictional and true) of chattel slavery in the American South that try to shock the reader with stories so brutal that, I find, you almost end up becoming desensitized as a coping mechanism. As Jacobs says herself, she was never subjected to brutal beatings or field work or rape, and so you're left with a case where slavery is depicted as wrong not because it's brutal but because it's slavery. I don't think this book should be read as anyone's sole account of the history of American chattel slavery, but in concert with other books about the worst horrors of the institution, this is an important contribution.
What is the best book you read this month? Let me know in comments, or write your own post and link up below!
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