Within Soul By Soul Summary

For the following book review, I have read Soul by Soul written by Walter Johnson. This book is 220 pages and was published in 1999. This book has been chosen for review as a requirement for American History I. Within Soul by Soul, Johnson covers aspects in slavery within different sections of which they appear. Johnson does a thorough job of presenting slavery in an unbiased form using several sources as proof. Some strengths of Soul by Soul are the emotions that Johnson receives as response to this book. Johnson truly shows how these white men did not see these slaves as people, but as a used car they were selling to the next man for usage. He does show paternalism and how people are frowned upon for portraying such nature. Johnson does not present his opinions within the writing and I find that was thoroughly important within this book. Slavery is already a difficult subject that is faced within the American school systems today. Johnson provides information on how both men and women within the slave trade are looked down upon and there truly is no equality, which was a rising issue in this time for women to begin with. He
The book was more focused on what the white man did than how slaves felt about it all. Although it’s easy to assume that slaves were miserable, what were they whispering within the corners of their Master’s homes? I have personally read Clotel within the past few weeks so I was adding to what I was reading that I had just received from Clotel. Another downfall I feel was that the novel was repetitive in nature, there is only so many times you can speak upon the fixing up of slaves and getting them in nice clothes. It felt as if Johnson was telling me the same things. If there would have been a chapter on the response of some slaves, I think there could have been a more powerful message on how much these slaves were being torn apart