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BOOK REVIEW: TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE Name Course Date BOOK REVIEW: TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave is the blood-curdling true story of Solomon uprooted from freedom in upstate New York by dubious slave traders who dupe him to travel with them to Washington DC where they drug him and sell him into slavery. It outlines the sickening plight of slaves in the bayous of the Louisiana and New Orleans describing in vivid detail the daily routine of hard, unrelenting labor, whippings for very puny mistakes, short nights and extremely long days with little to no food. The story itself is told from a first person perspective of Solomon, but it is recorded by David Wilson, a white legislator, and lawyer who claimed to have recorded the history “from Solomon’s lips.” Before he was enslaved, Solomon was born in Minerva, New York to a family enslaved but later freed by the Northup Family. And Solomon enjoyed close to thirty odd years of freedom, got married to Ann, and worked as a raftsman in the upstate waterways of New York. He also developed a talent for fiddle playing and established quite a reputation in that field. It was his prowess in music that later immersed him into trouble; it was used by the two men who approached him to lure him to travel with them to Washington where they then spiked his drink, disorienting him and later selling him to the slave trader James H Burch. Burch brutally whips Solomon with a cat ‘o’ nine tails and a whipping board for asserting his freedom. He is later on sold to the south where he works first on a lumber mill then on a cotton farm. He whips his master
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