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To Be A Slave Analysis

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Julius Lester is an American author who is famous for his novel To Be A Slave. Lester was born on January 27, 1939 in St. Louis, Missouri. He was the son of Rev. W.D. Lester and Julia Lester. Lester traveled a lot, never staying in one place for very long in 1941 his family moved to Kansas City, in 1952 to Nashville, Tennessee. In 1960 he was awarded his B.A. in English and one year later he moved to New York. While in New York, he met his wife Joan Steinau. Julius had little idea that he would become an award-winning author, he was interested in other hobbies such as photography and music; he loved writing songs, singing, and playing the guitar, banjo, clarinet, and piano. Because of this, partnered with Pete Seeger, he published his very …show more content…

“My interest in slavery was personal because three of my great-grandparents had been slaves. The need to know more about my individual past led me to begin studying slavery,” says Julius Lester. Julius states that three of his great grandparents were slaves and this led him to become emerged into the harsh reality of slavery. This can be seen clearly seen in his Newbery Honor Book To Be A Slave where he describes what it was like to be a slave during and after slavery. Altogether Lester’s motivation was not simply a curiosity of revealing the truths behind slavery, but an actual ancestral bond between him and his great …show more content…

Europeans tried to send more people to the American colonies by means of becoming indentured servants, people who would work for someone for seven years and be freed. This proved to have many flaws; since the servants were white, they could run away and live a new life without being questioned. When discussing how English colonists turned to Africans, Lester states, “Because they were black, it would be difficult for them to run away and escape detection,” (Lester 18). For this reason, slavery lived on for 245

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