"I was born..." All the slave narratives begin this way, with an affirmation that the narrator was, just like you and me, born. But the slave narrators know that what should be the most inconsequential, obvious, and non-controversial statement was an act of defiance. For often it was not clear when the narrator was born, and often the date and place of birth was never revealed, kept secret so that the slave would never find his or her mother and father, brothers and sisters. Read the passages that begin "I was born..." and remember that nobody told the narrator happy stories of the birth. The declaration "I was born" and whatever followed that--stories of family, friends, stolen attempts to learn to read and write--was the product of painful research, of reconstruction and not of shared memory. But you had to know when and where you were born. The narrator to say something about being born--when, where, to whom--or be cut free from even the meager ties to land, property, family, history that the narrator might have claimed. "I was born" is the first true statement and the foundation for everything else one might say.
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