Voices of Carolina Slave Children

Nancy Rhyne usually does an excellent job in chroncling South Carolina's folklore and rescuing fascinating anecdotes from obscurity. She does the same here in these chronicles of the WPA Slave Interview narratives of the 1930s where the elderly ex-slaves talk about their childhood experiences. Some of these are really fascinating. Folklore fans in particular will enjoy the recollections of ex-slaves talking about hearing, as one interviewee put it-"Br'er Rabbit stories long before Joel Chandler Harris wrote them down." These are excellent examples of the role of storytelling in the lives of non-literate people. Unfortunately, there is the bowing to the false prophets of political correctness. Granted, a book intended for younger readers cannot be faulted for not using the "N-word" that often appeared in these original narratives. But in her editing of the narratives, she has these ex-slaves in the 1930s unrealistically using modern politically correct terms such as "enslaved Africans" to describe themselves! Come on! Additionally, a casual comparison of what appears here to the actual original narratives these were "adapted" from (see the WPA Slave Narratives' website) shows that these particular narratives were almost gutted beind recognition. Ms. Rhyne's versions alone make for interesting (if somewhat stilted) reading, but his is best used as a reference for the original works, which are far more compelling. Those issues aside, it's certainly worth a read and Ms. Rhyne deserves her usual kudus for bringing material usually buried in archives to the availability to the casal reader.

I got this book beacause I heard an interview with the author and it sounded interesting. I did not know if I would like it or not; I'm not some bleeding-heart liberal, just your average WASP Southerner. The story of how the information in this book came to be recorded is amazing enough, but when I started reading the short little stories told by adults who had been slaves in their childhood, I could not put it down. Funny, Southern, touching, sad, memorable! If you want to know what it means to live in the South today, you MUST read this book. It is the history we build on today.