Slaves In The Family
(Edward Ball)
Abstract by: Wendy
Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball, 2003 National Book
Award winner, examines the shared
history of the Ball family, based in Charleston, South
Carolina, their slaves and their descendents in the
United
States from 1698 to the present. This is a book with
lively
prose for general readers and endnotes, index, and a
genealogy for scholars. His central goal is to find
out more
about the people he only knew as Ball family slaves.
Ball, a former journalist, uses a family history,
diaries,
plantation records, and interviews with surviving Ball
family members, which includes the descendents of
some of
the 4,000 Ball family slaves, to put human faces on the
slaves. In the process, he shares with the reader the
emotions both he and his relatives undergo as he
searches
for information.
Ball finds evidence that disproves many of his family?s
myths about their slaves. For instance, he finds
accounts of
beatings and cohabitation with the slaves that produced
offspring. The writer warmly introduces readers to
some of
his black distant cousins.
Taking his inquiry full circle, Ball even takes a
trip to
Sierra Leone to interview the West African families
who sold
their fellow West Africans into slavery. Here he
finds less
remorse than one would expect.
Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball is an intimate
history
of slavery, showing that the history of the slaves
was not
something separate and distinct from the history of the
white masters but commingled with it. In addition, he
provides tools for the scholar who wants to know
more while
giving the general reader a unique perspective on an old
story.
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