Mariah Inzunza

5 years ago

12 years a slave a memoir by Solomon Northup. This memoir really put a feeling in me because i look at things in such depth and this book taught me something. What it taught me isn't what it has to teach everyone because everyone is different in our own way and that is fine but i am writing this review about my experience so here it is. The point of this book was about american history and what people had to go through because of how unfair our system was. Now it's better but we can still grow as a community and make it way better. Anyway Solomon Northup was a free slave at the time living in New york state. He was then captured and taken into slavery. He was exposed to slavery for 12 years. So let's start from the beginning since i got carried away. So Solomon was a free black man in New York. He was a carpenter and he also played the violin. One day he was approached by two circus promoters , they offered him a brief, high-paying job as a musician with their traveling circus. Solomon didn't tell his wife or anyone he just left. Solomon was then beaten and was forced to not tell anyone about his free life in new york. Solomon was on a ship and he gave a letter to the captain to his family and i believe his family received the letter but it took sometime to deliver so by the time they got it , they didn't know were he was at. When Solomon claimed that he was a free man he was beaten pretty badly. After he was beaten he did not tell anyone else his true story and where he's really from. Solomon then met samuel bass who would sent letter from solomon to his family and friends back at home. An attorney got a hold of solomons letters and was able to locate solomon. So this book taught me a few things. One of them being how you can't trust anyone no matter how much how you want to because you think that it can benefit you. That is what solomon did he thought those two guys were trying to help him and he went with them because he thought he can make it big in the musician industry. The whole time the two guys knew that they were trying to steal solomon into slavery. This story has also taught me that even though something bad happened doesn't mean it's going to stay like that forever. Solomon went through a tough time and even though it took a long time for him to get out he still got out and went back to his family. Time was tough for him but he decided to write this memoir and tell us his story. Solomon tried to fight back but he soon realized that when he tries to fight back he would get beaten really bad and if he kept on fighting he would probably be killed and he wanted to go back to his family. This memoir also showed me how bad our system was and how people were treated. It really makes me think how so much has changed. Right now our times are better but they can always be better than what they are now because we still have many flaws and they're is still racism in our country but we are evolving and trying to get better. I found this memoir to be really good. It was good because it showed the readers what really happened back then and also it was interesting to here solomons story and how he got captured and what people put him through because they had that privilege. It was also very interesting to see his journey and how many slaves owners he had to go through. Then he was writing letters to his family and eventually he got an intourney and the intourney found him and they went to court to prove that he was a free man. Solomon that became a free man and went back to his family and after a while and some time he wrote this book. It is incredible what a person can go through and survive only if they continue to fight and have hope that one day it will get better. 12 years a slave was about a free black man living in New York who was captured by two men who tricked him and he spent 12 years as a slave.