Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup • 1853
Devastation Rating
historical injustice trauma survival
Our Take
A free Black man is kidnapped and sold into slavery and writes his account twelve years later with a precision that refuses sensationalism. The horror is in the mundane machinery of it: the paperwork, the indifference, the professionalism of cruelty. Northup's restraint is more devastating than rage could ever be.
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