Renee C. reviewed The Free State of Jones and The Echo of the Black Horn: Two Sides of the Life and Activities of Captain Newt Knight on + 5 more book reviews
It is rare for me to not finish a book but I was too nauseated to get very far through this one. It's really a collection of two books - one by Newt Knight's son and another by a distant relative - that were originally published separately.
The book by his son had some level of discernible biased, but anyone writing a biography of their dad will be. He does a decent job of trying to include information from sources other than just himself. And for the most part, it's a chronicle of his experiences with his dad, stories he remembers his dad telling him, newspaper articles, etc.
The book by Ethel Knight is a different beast altogether. The publisher claims she was a historian, but it doesn't read to me like she knew the first thing about how historians write. It is clearly written as historical fiction since she includes extensive dialog, detailed descriptions of body language and even the personal inner thoughts of slaves which couldn't have even come from diary entries since they were illiterate. There is heavy use of derogatory terminology in places and ways that had nothing to do with the thoughts of the era but everything to do with her personal mindset. There are repeated claims that slaves were happy and well cared for. Again it was in the context of modern reflections back, not in a way that was meant to document the opinions of the era or any evidence that the slaves left behind. Further she never once cites a source which even Newt's son did despite not claiming to be an historian.
My whole purpose for reading the book was to gain more insight than I got from the movie. Not only was Ethel's book extremely difficult to stomach it was clear that her bias was too great for me to believe anything she included and therefore I wouldn't gain the insight I wanted. Without that, there wasn't any point in torturing myself with her nasty bigotry.
The book by his son had some level of discernible biased, but anyone writing a biography of their dad will be. He does a decent job of trying to include information from sources other than just himself. And for the most part, it's a chronicle of his experiences with his dad, stories he remembers his dad telling him, newspaper articles, etc.
The book by Ethel Knight is a different beast altogether. The publisher claims she was a historian, but it doesn't read to me like she knew the first thing about how historians write. It is clearly written as historical fiction since she includes extensive dialog, detailed descriptions of body language and even the personal inner thoughts of slaves which couldn't have even come from diary entries since they were illiterate. There is heavy use of derogatory terminology in places and ways that had nothing to do with the thoughts of the era but everything to do with her personal mindset. There are repeated claims that slaves were happy and well cared for. Again it was in the context of modern reflections back, not in a way that was meant to document the opinions of the era or any evidence that the slaves left behind. Further she never once cites a source which even Newt's son did despite not claiming to be an historian.
My whole purpose for reading the book was to gain more insight than I got from the movie. Not only was Ethel's book extremely difficult to stomach it was clear that her bias was too great for me to believe anything she included and therefore I wouldn't gain the insight I wanted. Without that, there wasn't any point in torturing myself with her nasty bigotry.
