If slaves were such valuable property and so vital to their
owners as farmworkers, why did their owners starve them? Wouldn’t nutrition make them stronger and
more efficient? More puzzling is a slave
trader who drags slaves for weeks and miles to market. Wouldn’t they bring a higher price if they
looked strong and well-fed? Slave owners
treated their livestock better. Annis is
a young slave whose mother is sold and whose owner is her biological father. Hers is a hopeless and dreadful life, as she
endures every nature of hardship. A
spirit, who may be benevolent or may have her own agenda, visits Annis from
time to time, and I am not generally a fan of magical realism. With or without the help of this spirit,
Annis struggles to survive, although at times I think she just wants to die,
and who can blame her, when living is sheer agony. She has memories of a better life and
envisions a life of freedom that does not involve constant fear of capture by
the brutal slave patrols; constant anxiety for a runaway is not really freedom.
This country was not the land of the free for slaves. On the contrary, it was a hellacious place to
endure.
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