My Southern Home or, The South and Its People

Description

Published as “My Southern Home, or The South and its People” is a novel written by the seminal author and abolitionist William Wells Brown. Born into slavery in 1814, he eventually managed to escape and become a fighter for the freedoms of African Americans, as well as a critic and a playwright who would dig deep into the conscience of man and the slavery he created.

William Wells Brown was born in Kentucky in 1814 to his enslaved mother Elizabeth. He successfully managed to escape in his second attempt in 1833. During his first freedom years, he managed to learn to read and write and sought more education. He was the first African American to write and publish a novel, and his work Clotel, published in 1853, became seminal in the American literature.

His last work, “My Southern Home, or The South and its People”, is among his last writings and a testament to the free spirit of a man who dreamed of the better. The novel also sheds some light into the southern American landscape as it was at the end of the 19th century.

Brown became a fervent and celebrated abolitionist, and he later travelled through the southern states, looking to understand both the conditions and the underlying causes of slavery. My Southern Home is a painful return to the past as he visited places he once could barely call home. He witnessed his African American brothers going through what he had been through while also describing the different states.

As he revisits these states, Brown provides his readers and himself with a different vantage point, not the slave he once was but the emancipated person he had become. Brown manages to create an accurate and colorful portrayal of a man searching for his home amidst chaos and a polarized society.
[amz_corss_sell asin=”1775425762″]