Daina Ramey Berry: The price for their pound of flesh - the value of the enslaved from womb to grave in the building of a nation

Daina Ramey Berry kertoo mitä orjien omistaminen tarkoitti USA:lle ja miten orjista pyrittiin saamaan maksimaalinen taloudellinen hyöty: The price for their pound of flesh - the value of the enslaved from womb to grave in the building of a nation (Beacon Press, 2017; ISBN 978-0-8070-4762-0).



Kirjan teksti on kuivan toteavaa, asiantuntevaa, mutta lukijana oli pakko moneen otteeseen laittaa kirja hetkeksi sivuun, niin pahaa teki. Tällaisia me ihmiset olemme toisille ihmisille. Jos vain taloudellinen hyöty on riittävän merkittävä, mikään ei estä orjuuttamasta toisia ihmisiä, ja yhteiskunta sulkee silmänsä siltä mitä tapahtuu.

Groundbreaking look at slaves as commodities through every phase of life, from birth to death and beyond, in early America The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives--including from before birth to after death--in the American domestic slave trades.

Covering the full "life cycle" (including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death), historian Daina Berry shows the lengths to which slaveholders would go to maximize profits.

She draws from over ten years of research to explore how enslaved people responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold. By illuminating their lives, Berry ensures that the individuals she studies are regarded as people, not merely commodities. Analyzing the depth of this monetization of human property will change the way we think about slavery, reparations, capitalism, and nineteenth-century medical education

Sue Monk Kidd: The invention of wings

Sue Monk Kidd kertoo orjuuden ajasta Amerikan etelävaltioissa, siitä miten ajatus ihmisten tasa-arvosta vähitellen ottaa tulta, ja miten erilaiset ihmiset löytävät toisensa ja alkavat ymmrtää: The invention of wings (Tinder Press, 2014).



Teos voisi olla tiukemminkin kirjoitettu, nyt mukana on monenmoista sivujuonta, mutta toisaalta tämä tekee teoksesta yleispätevämmän, uskottavamman. Kirjailija ei suuresti romantisoi kerronnan kohteitaan, mutta monenlaista arkipäivän sankaruutta kirjassa on, eletyn elämän tuntua. Rasismin järjettömyys, sitä lukija ei voi väistää kirjaa lukiessaan.

Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.

As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Ben H. Winters: Underground airlines

Ben H. Wintersin romaani kertoo hyvinkin nykypäivän oloisesta Amerikasta, sillä erolla että orjuutta ei ole kaikista osavaltioista lakkautettu: Underground airlines (Random House, 2016; ISBN 978-1-4735-1932-9).



Romaanin perusasetelma on terävä, ja Winters kuljettaa juonta näppärästi, mutta syytä tai toisesta tarina ei napannut kiinni, olisiko sitten syynä se että orjuuden kokemus tuntui jotenkin päälleliimatulta, ja toisaalta mietitytti se missä määrin muun kuin valkoihoisen ihmisen kokemus elämästä nykypäivän Amerikassa poikkeaa siitä jota romaanissa nimellisesti kuvataan.

It is the present-day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: the Civil War never occurred. A gifted young Black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshall Service. He's got plenty of work.

In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four." On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right - with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself. A mystery to himself, Victor suppresses his memories of his childhood on a plantation, and works to infiltrate the local cell of a abolitionist movement called the Underground Airlines. Tracking Jackdaw through the back rooms of churches, empty parking garages, hotels, and medical offices, Victor believes he's hot on the trail. But his strange, increasingly uncanny pursuit is complicated by a boss who won't reveal the extraodinary stakes of Jackdaw's case, as well as by a heartbreaking young woman and her child who may be Victor's salvation.

Victor himself may be the biggest obstacle of all - though his true self remains buried, it threatens to surface. Victor believes himself to be a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he has worked so hard to earn. But in pursuing Jackdaw, Victor discovers secrets at the core of the country's arrangement with the Hard Four, secrets the government will preserve at any cost.

Underground Airlines is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe.