Students are encouraged to go beyond the literal meaning of the text and to make inferences about Wilson’s purposes for writing the preface. Students will read the preface and identify and analyze statements Wilson makes to prove the narrative is true. Northup collaborated with a white ghostwriter, David Wilson. They will be challenged to go beyond the literal meaning of the text and to make inferences using their prior knowledge, including knowledge of narratives’ antislavery mission. In this lesson, students are asked to identify and analyze narrative passages that provide evidence for how slavery undermined and perverted marriage and the family.
The corrupting influence of slavery on marriage and the family is a predominant theme in Northup’s narrative. Slave narratives had a mission: to convert readers’ hearts and minds to the antislavery cause by revealing how slavery undermined and perverted the principal institutions upon which America was founded: representative democracy, Protestant Christianity, capitalism, and marriage and the family. In this unique literary tradition, formerly enslaved men and women report what they experienced and witnessed during their enslavement. Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841 and Rescued in 1853 (to be referred to as Twelve Years a Slave) is the focus of this lesson on analyzing messages in slave narratives. Andrews, Professor of English, University of North Carolina and Great Britain and their continuing prominence today testify to the power of these texts to provoke reflection and debate." "Although often dismissed as mere antislavery propaganda, the widespread consumption of slave narratives in the nineteenth-century U.S.
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