I Read Twelve Years a Slave, and Now I'm Going to Go Spit on Edwin Epps' Grave

I read a bunch of these one-star Goodreads reviews to the family, and we were simultaneously horrified and howling with laughter. People are so hilariously awful!

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My teenager and I have been listening to this book together as part of her AP US History study, usually listening for an hour or so at a time... but this last time, we listened to two and a half hours together, all the way to the end, in the audiobook equivalent of not being able to put it down because it was so exciting!

The teenager chose this book over both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and other possible slave narratives because, frankly, it was the shortest. I'd never read it before, and neither of us have seen the film, so we both came to it fresh. I was interested to see what each of us thought about it, she who's read several children's fictional accounts (shout-out to Addy Walker!) and YA histories about US slavery but nothing this graphic or wrenching, and me who's read fairly widely on the subject, but almost entirely in college classes. We've taken a lot of road trips to Civil War sites, but shamefully few to sites where we could learn about the enslaved. 

Spoiler Alert: OMG this book is EPIC. It is INCREDIBLE. It is distressing, and action-heavy, and suspenseful, and sad. It has vivid characters who I can't get out of my head, villains whose graves should be spat upon, heroes who should have statues made and scholarships founded in their honor, and victims who bring to life the vile nature of enslavement.

Like, seriously. I was shocked at how good this book is! Because it's for my teenager's history course I was prepared to read it even if it was dry or boring or we just didn't enjoy it--I mean, it's school, that's kind of what it's known for! So I was shocked and thrilled that this book is genuinely good, genuinely exciting, genuinely interesting. I saw some people in other reviews griping about having to learn all about how to pick cotton in the book and they didn't like learning about it and thought it was boring. I mean, though... it's high-key NOT?!? If you don't pick cotton right, or don't pick enough of it, you get your ass kicked! And then get your ass kicked more the next day when you can't pick even that much on account of you're injured from getting your ass kicked! And if you're female, you're also getting raped on the regular, and then when the enslaver's wife finds out that her husband is serially raping you, you get your ass kicked for that, too. That... doesn't feel boring to me. It feels uncomfortable, which I'm guessing is what the negative reviewers are actually not liking about Northup's memoir.

Everyone should read this book, and I'd say that ideally they should read it in high school. It's pretty graphic, but the graphic scenes are terrible in the way that graphic scenes ought to be, in that they're in service of telling a very important story. It's not boring, unless you're just completely uninterested in learning about any type of life different from your own. And it's a living testament to the value of human life and the importance of those who give service to help others.

Under the theme of Some People are Incredible but Other People are Terrible, here is a gross bit of backlash to Northup's memoir: 163 years after the publication of Twelve Years a Slave, a person unaffiliated with any academics at all wrote and published a book (through the small press that she owns and serves as the editor, designer, and proofreader for) entitled 200 Years a Fraud, in which she claims that Northup lied about the events of the book? That does make some of the other one-star reviews that were a lot more racist, revisionist, and conspiracy theory-forward make more sense. Here's an excellent series of rebuttals to that very weird book, including some primary source evidence of its veracity.

I was so invested in this book that after the teenager and I finished it, I went on a deep-dive to learn more about Northup's life afterwards. Unfortunately, by all accounts, Northup did not cope well with his trauma upon his return to freedom. His mother had died during his incarceration, and the seven-year-old daughter he'd left greeted him as a 19-year-old woman who introduced him to the newborn son she'd named "Solomon." Northup spent time as a speaker on the abolitionist circuit, and, of course, helping author his book, and became famous enough that during the Civil War, Union soldiers who traveled through that Louisiana area sometimes sought the plantations were Northup had been held. They sent back news of this in their letters, so happily we know that Patsey, the woman who'd been repeatedly raped, and at least once beaten almost to death, by Epps, had left earlier in the war and so had at least survived long enough to achieve freedom. 

I wish we also knew what happened to the small child Emily, daughter of Eliza, who had also been held with Northup in Washington, DC. She wasn't sold onward to Louisiana but was instead retained to be forced into sex work. 

Census records tell that Northup and his wife often separated, and eventually official record loses track of him entirely. It was rumored that he suffered from alcoholism, and was likely often unhoused, as Anne Northup's obituary refers to him as a "worthless vagabond." I am so sad that this was not a happy ending!

This is a better ending: The Hollywood Reporter collected portraits of 46 of Solomon Northup's direct descendants. I LOVE this!

There are two more happy stories: that of Dr. Sue Eakin, the historian responsible for publishing a new edition of Northup's memoir and bringing his biography into prominent academic light, and that of Samuel Bass, the Canadian who successfully got actionable information to Northup's family and lawyer and was directly responsible for Northup's rescue. When my teenager and I listened to this book together, one of our favorite parts is when Bass is discussing why he'd put himself in so much danger to help Northup. He says that he wants to do this good deed so that later in life he can think about what he did and feel good about it. I mean... FAIR! 

We don't know what happened to Northup at the end of his life, but we know the entire biographies and final resting places of his enslavers (because of COURSE we do, sigh...). You can actually still visit the house that Northup was forced to help build for Edwin Epps--it's currently on the LSUA campus! I high-key love how people are using the memorial page for Epps' Find a Grave entry to roast him, and I'm definitely not NOT going to make a point of looking him up and spitting on his grave if I ever happen to be in the area, although I will probably gag myself trying and then end up barfing all over his grave because spitting is so nasty.

I guess barfing would be better anyway?

My teenager and I listened to this book together as inter-disciplinary work for her AP US History and AP English Literature and Composition studies. For a high school student, there are some excellent extension activities to add more meat and rigor for these studies, in particular. For students who need more practice writing about literature, or in using close reading as evidence for implications, I really like the reading/writing prompts at Edsitement. 

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries (where I promise I NEVER spit on graves!), handmade homeschool high school studies, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!