The Significance of Slavery

I feel that slavery is the most significant event in African American Literature. Even if it is not specifically mentioned, it is somehow always there, like a spectre or a haunting of some sort. It is a memory, a ghost that is always lurking in the shadows of each narrative or novel we come across. It is significant because it shows the triumph and resilience of a people, and the suffering they had to go through to achieve their rights and freedom they deserved all along.

 I feel that if slavery never existed, African American Literature would be completely different today. I’m not really sure exactly what it would be, but I know it would not be the same. Slavery is always a  part of African American Literature, because it is part of their personal history, the history of their race. It is a history that all African Americans share. It’s a part of them, whether they themselves were involved directly or not.

Slavery is something that can only be expressed and understood by those who have experienced it directly. African American literature seeks to express the experience of slavery in a way that helps others to understand the horror, the pain, and the suffering that comes with being kept in bondage for many generations. I feel that only African American writers can express this suffering and fully understand it. 

Although slavery was a very horrible and negative time in the lives of African American slaves, it also is present within literature to show to positive strengths of the race. Slavery is significant because it shows the resilience of the African American people. The strength of their ancestors, who endured backbreaking work, abuse, torture, and starvation on plantations where they were kept in bondage reveal a lionhearted courage that never backed down. The courage it takes to be able to make family out of people you’ve been thrown together with on the plantation, when your own family has been sold and taken from you. The strength it must have taken to get up every morning knowing that your family is gone and you will probably never get to see them again, and to keep on living and breathing while knowing that and enduring that emotional pain.  I honestly can’t imagine such agony.

All of these qualities about slavery and the African American people have shaped the literature we read today. Slavery was a history, an experience, a memory, and a haunting for these people, but it shaped the way we read their words today. No one can fully understand the horror of the slavery experience except those who have lived it themselves. We can only attempt to experience it through their own personal words, but we have only understood the tip of the iceberg in relation to their suffering. We can only skim the surface of trying to understand how much pain and suffering has been inflicted on this race of people, and taken away so much that they will never be able to get back.

That, is what I feel is the significance of slavery in African American Literature.

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