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A review by purelytheoretical
Celia, a Slave by Melton A. McLaurin
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
This book is so clearly written for white people, spending so much time setting the scene of Robert Newsom and his cozy little family in Missouri, it’s fucking unsettling.
Like, even if it’s meant to make what comes next all the more jarring, it feels misguided at best.
McLaurin spends so much time talking about how much richer and more productive the slaveholders’ farms were than the nonslaveholders’ farms like that’s at all surprising? Like, why are we talking about this like it’s relevant? Yeah, getting rich is easier when you don’t have to pay your laborers, and it’s easier to pay the upfront cost for unpaid labor when you’re already rich to begin with. This is common knowledge shit, so if you’re gonna bring it up like this you gotta know it looks like you’re trotting out excuses for the slaveholders right now.
Like, even if it’s meant to make what comes next all the more jarring, it feels misguided at best.
McLaurin spends so much time talking about how much richer and more productive the slaveholders’ farms were than the nonslaveholders’ farms like that’s at all surprising? Like, why are we talking about this like it’s relevant? Yeah, getting rich is easier when you don’t have to pay your laborers, and it’s easier to pay the upfront cost for unpaid labor when you’re already rich to begin with. This is common knowledge shit, so if you’re gonna bring it up like this you gotta know it looks like you’re trotting out excuses for the slaveholders right now.
Perhaps even more aggravating, and likely the source of McLaurin’s habit of centering the white perspective so much in this book, is the fact that the prose is so damn repetitive. In the first chapter, McLaurin explains different types of transportation the Newsom family may have used to get to Missouri for like a whole page, and then a page later, explains the types of transportation other people may have used to get to Missouri, and they’re all pretty much the same modes of transportation.
This technique of writing like he’s trying to meet a minimum word-count never stops, and it makes reading the thing very tiresome very fast.
If you skim read this book, and are looking more for a “what was generally going on with the legality of slavery in and around 1855” type of read, detailing several political battles both within and without Missouri, then maybe pick up a copy of this. It’s simple enough prose and low enough page count to be a pretty fast read, especially if you’re skimming, as well as being cheap and probably popular enough to exist at your local library or one connected to it. But god, if you’re looking for anything like an account of an enslaved woman’s actual life, words, or thoughts, look elsewhere. I had to read this for a college class. Given my own choice I would’ve (and still may) sought out an autobiography or at least something own voices.
This technique of writing like he’s trying to meet a minimum word-count never stops, and it makes reading the thing very tiresome very fast.
If you skim read this book, and are looking more for a “what was generally going on with the legality of slavery in and around 1855” type of read, detailing several political battles both within and without Missouri, then maybe pick up a copy of this. It’s simple enough prose and low enough page count to be a pretty fast read, especially if you’re skimming, as well as being cheap and probably popular enough to exist at your local library or one connected to it. But god, if you’re looking for anything like an account of an enslaved woman’s actual life, words, or thoughts, look elsewhere. I had to read this for a college class. Given my own choice I would’ve (and still may) sought out an autobiography or at least something own voices.