Frederick Douglass escaped slavery and then did something his former masters feared more than his escape: he wrote about it, brilliantly. His Narrative told the world exactly what slavery was, in prose so powerful that skeptics refused to believe a formerly enslaved man had written it.
At its heart is a single conviction, that literacy is the pathway from bondage to freedom, proven by the author’s own life. It is short, it is unforgettable, and it belongs on every shelf where books are taken seriously.
