For this pillar I took English 210 known as Neo Slave Narratives. This class was meant to discuss what life was like after slavery had been abolished. We read to learn about what it life was like during these times for the newly freed African Americans. Throughout the class we read Beloved which showed a mother’s regret over killing her baby for fear of its life through slavery and how that spirit has now come back to haunt her and the community. We also read The Underground Railroad, Zong!, and Feeding the Ghost. There were also articles we read that showed how at that period of time slaves were not even thought of as human beings and the difference between how women and men were treated. Towards the middle of the semester we were put into groups to select an article and then do a twenty minute presentation on. We presented on Spiller’s Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe. This was written more towards the time during slavery and gives powerful images and explanations of how they were treated on slave boats or on the plantations. My favorite reading was the first two biography’s of Douglass and Jacob to introduce the class into what slavery was like. After we read the two books we had to write a four page comparative analysis on them. It was interesting because the reader can see a man and woman’s point of view through slavery. This was a great assignment to introduce the class because it is important to have an understanding of slave literature in order to understand neo slave literature.

url=”http://blogs.longwood.edu/smithsk2/files/2019/05/Shannon-Smith-Comparative-Analysis.docx”