Summary Of The Biography Of A Runaway Slave By Miguel Barnet

The Biography of a Runaway Slave is written by Miguel Barnet is about a slave who escapes slavery and lives to tell his story of the ordeal he went through to accomplish this feat. The author of this book is Miguel Barnet who is a Cuban author who is a skilled professional on Afro-Cuban Culture. This book reminded me of the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” a book I read in High School, because it was about the life of a slave in the United States that escaped slavery and later told his story of what he went through. The only difference between the Biography of a Runaway Slave and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was the fact that the Biography took place in Cuba and he provided a more graphic account of his experience than Frederick Douglass did. I think this book was written to tell the world what Esteban Montejo went through and what other slaves in Cuba faced during this time period. If it was not for Esteban Montejo there

“All the slaves lived in Barracoons” (Montejo 23) in this example the author is talking about the place where slaves lived in. They lived in “small and hot…Rooms! In reality they were furnaces.” This descriptive detail shows you how hard it was for them to live and also they were cramped together because of how large a number of slaves were forced to live in a small room. “Lottery ticket vendors got into their housing establishment.” During a slaves free time they sometimes gambled or played agonizing games. Slaves encountered religion while living in there housing establishment. The “Lucumi and the Conga…Conga was the most important religion” (Barnet 33). Barnet said that the difference was that the Lucumi were oral and believed what was going to happen next while the other religion carried out an extreme approach when their followers felt they were