[Mrs. Y Reviews] Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass

Book cover via Amazon.com

This is the last week of #StayClassyFeb for me, and it’s also Black History Month. February is a significant month when it comes to the discussion of rights and equality for everyone. I want to take this week to give a spotlight to some of the classics in Black History by looking at those novels that helped us to move toward equality. For our first this week, I go to an autobiographical narrative by one of the fathers of Civil Rights, Fredrick Douglass. No cheesy intros this week my friends, please join me on a review of “Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass” by Fredrick Douglass. 



Opinion

Welcome back, my friends! I’m so glad to present you the final books for my #StayClassyFeb series. This one meant a lot to me to read and review. I chose to read this novel because I have seen it referenced in many documentaries and history books regarding the Civil War but also abolitionists. I picked this up on Kindle Unlimited, and I found myself swept away into this story.

For this part of the review let me go into the first impressions of the novel. Fredrick Douglass was a great writer, and he knew how to hook his readers. This book is about his real life, but he wrote it with such passion and eloquence that we who write books can learn a thing or two about narrative. There is a cadence to the story, and it builds both with the pacing of the story, but the tension of the subject matter.

Next, let me go into a critique here, and this comes from the “Story Structure, Foundation and Presentation” part of my review scoring. Again, and I think this is because it’s one of the Amazon Classics novels, the issue is with spacing. The book has no font issues, and no problems with the margins, but there is no such thing as an extra line of space between paragraphs. I realize I’ve mentioned this a few times about this version of the publication for anything that’s an Amazon Classic, but keep it in mind.

For this last part of the review let me go into what I enjoyed about this book. The Life of Fredrick Douglass was a hard one. The tale he tells us is both heartwarming but also heartbreaking over what happened to people he knew and cared for. From the fate of his grandmother to the conflict he had later about losing friends, we go with him on this journey of his life and how he felt. We learn things about the men who were his “masters” and the experiences and hypocrisy each had. We learn so much about morality at the time as well.

One thing I found particularly interesting about the story was the take that he had on the part of religion when it came to “forgiving” the slave owners. I found a lot of it, the descriptions of violence and violation of human beings, specifically eye-opening and painful. I had to think about this story after reading it, and my heart ached over how terrible people can be to one another. I love how important this story is, because some of the things that history books gloss over, is just how bad it was to have anything to do with slavery on any end of it.

I truly believe everyone should read this book and keep it on their minds as they think about people that they encounter. I think we should all care for strangers and anyone regardless of the color of their skin, creed, sexual preference and gender. We are all human beings. We deserve to be kind to one another and to be treated well by each other.  This story fully allows you to feel the weight of human worth and how we should care for everyone.


Score

With all of that in mind and the math involved in my scoring, “Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass” receives a 97/100 which is a five-star review on Goodreads and Amazon. This also goes into my “Mrs. Y Recommends” pile, and I do believe people should read this book and keep it always in the back of their minds.

Have a beautiful day everyone, and I’ll see you next time.