I never walk alone—got my shadow and a black halo

[sovay]

So based on a lacuna which skygiants observed in Stacy Schiff's otherwise amazing-sounding The Witches: Salem, 1692 (2015), I asked a_reasonable_man for references on slavery in colonial New England. One of his recommendations was C.S. Manegold's Ten Hills Farm: The Forgotten History of Slavery in the North (2009). Ten Hills, I wondered, like the neighborhood in Somerville that's like ten minutes northeast of me?

Indeed, that Ten Hills. History is an optical illusion: everything is closer than it seems. It's not a new thought (New England, with Bibles and Rum!), and yet a person still gets these arresting little moments: how crowded with ghosts this ground is.

So I'll read that and it will be stranger.

(Hello. My week disappeared into medical. At present I have a wicked headache but also a cat crouched dragonishly beside me, so. I aten't dead.)

Comments

[skygiants]

I also am extremely interested in this book! Do you have a lead on acquiring it?

[sovay]

Do you have a lead on acquiring it?

There are multiple copies in the Minuteman Library system and I plan to acquire one tomorrow! (Just not from Somerville, because for reasons unknown to me that branch's copy does not circulate.)

[skygiants]

That is extremely useful information, thank you!

[sovay]

That is extremely useful information, thank you!

You're welcome!

He also recommends Elise Lemire's Black Walden (2011), which can be obtained similarly.

[yhlee]

I hope your headache goes away soon. What an excellent cat!

[sovay]

I hope your headache goes away soon. What an excellent cat!

Thank you! I feel very lucky in our cats.

[alexxkay]

Please continue the not-being-dead behavior.

[sovay]

Please continue the not-being-dead behavior.

I am doing my best!

[brigdh]

What a funny coincidence – I just came across a reference to that same "Ten Hills Farm" book yesterday! I hope it lives up to its promise. And I second the recommendation for "The Witches: Salem, 1692"; I enjoyed that one a great deal.

[sovay]

What a funny coincidence – I just came across a reference to that same "Ten Hills Farm" book yesterday! I hope it lives up to its promise.

It feels a little weird to say that I am enjoying a book about slavery close to home, but it is full of information I didn't know and that I would rather know than not, well structured and presented, generally devastating but essential to an accurate picture of New England, and only occasionally do I think the prose hopped the gap between scene-setting and punchy.