A Short Story : The Story Of Ella's Story

The story that I am telling you today is about Lita Morgan. A little girl who was adopted at the age of two by a cruel woman, who turns into a torturous nightmare in her childhood and adolescence. Christine Morgan forced her daughter from 4 years old to countless of cruel situations which broke her little soul and body. The abuse included: make her drink bleach from a cloth used to clean toilets, holding her head under the bath water until she felt breathless, and the constant threat to kill her.

---reading review of <<Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and a True Tale of Slavery>>

Trista had always been a normal kid except for her stories. It wasn't that they were disturbing or horrific, they were just unusual. Sometimes they seemed exactly like the kind of thing you'd expect from a kid, but other times, I'd have to look at her and wonder how she came up with such things. It started when she was four, shortly after our dad split, leaving the two of us on our own.

She was physically tortured and chained to a bed in different areas in Castro’s home on a dirty mattress, naked with no blankets even through the winter (Connors, 2014). She was forced to “use a bucket for a toilet that he hardly emptied and was not given the chance to shower or wash herself, for the first eight months” of captivity (Connors, 2014).

The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear. The lash and the foul talk of her master and his sons are her teachers. When she is fourteen or fifteen, her owner, or his sons, or the overseer, or perhaps all of them, begin to bribe her with presents. If these fail to accomplish their purpose, she is whipped or starved into submission to their will.(Jacobs.ch.9)

Slavery Then and Now Precis In this excerpt from Slavery in the Land of the Free by Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter we are told the story of twelve year-old Maria. Maria was lured into slavery by Sandra Bearden, who promised her an education and a taste of the American Dream. She then endured terrible abuse at the hands of Bearden, who is now serving a life sentence for human trafficking and slavery. Bales and Soodalter use Maria’s horrific experience to provide evidence for their argument against modern slavery, helping readers to realize that the abuse and violence we associate past slavery with are still alive today. This is a piece that will help those who are in the dark on current issues become more enlightened on the topic.

Dorothy Allison's voice is one of authenticity, experience, and wisdom. This is apparent in her recounts of her mother's death and rape by her abusive stepfather as a child. She uses her storytelling as a way of sorting out her inner demons and memories of her broken life, “the [story] I wish I could make you hear,” as she says, because “the need to tell [her] story was terrible and persistent, and [she] needed to say it bluntly and cruelly, to use all those words, those old awful tearing words” (39, 42). She strives to get to the root of her own unresolved issues and, by her own admission, “[works] to make you believe [her]”:

In this paper I’ll discuss the life of enslaved children and what those experiences tells us about the institution of slavery. Over the course of the semester we have been introduced to several readings concerning the enslavement of Africans. I will be basing my paper on information gathered from these readings, “African American Voices,” By Steven Mintz, “Prince Among Slaves,” By Terry Alford, “Lose Your Mother” By Saidiya Hartman and lastly a secondary piece of literature by Frederick Douglass, “My Bondage My Freedom.” The life of a child captive in slavery would vary depending on their environment and whom they belonged to. Their experiences ranged from what was perceived as normal, aside from the fact that they were slaves all the way to cruel and unusual punishment. Childhood is essential to understanding slavery, focusing on children brings attention to the brutality of slavery, and also brings to light the system of enslavement children and parents dealt with regarding its sufferings and horrors. Even though some enslaved children had normal lives and were unaware that they were slaves at all; slavery was very harsh for most children. They were expected to do adult work, and punished when unable to do so, also many children were separated from their families at a young age.

This account reveals several disturbing truths about slavery as a first hand account of the trauma and suffering this slave endured. This girl Linda was exposed to physical, emotional and psychological abuse. Nothing was sacred to her in any way. Something as simple as visiting her mothers grave to mourn was interrupted by her master showing up to show his dominance. In a sense the slave was the owned by the master and the master had the right to do anything to his property. Slaves were degraded and sometimes if there were other slaves they were made to watch the torture of fellow slaves. Slaves had to keep all of their torments and sufferings to themselves and this took its own painful toll. This like many other slaves is a very true account

The narrative of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs gives insight to the cruel treatments and the distressing existence of those and that she encountered herself in bondage during the early 1800s. Harriet writes of her own life under the pseudonym ‘Linda Brent’ and shares personal tales of her experiences with merciless masters and mistresses prior to her escape, and also the historical events of other slaves and the impact it had on them as a community during the Antebellum time period. The book follows Linda throughout her quest for freedom to save first and foremost, her children, from the brutalities of enslavement and the corruption of their young minds, as Linda’s was similarly polluted at a young age. Jacobs makes the profound statement that no human should ever be obligated to participate in captivity held by other humans who feel superior to their slaves, whether with kind masters or not.

This is questionable because of the harsh treatment the adults show her. From the day she began working there, she experiences the painful occupation as being a slave, where she is constantly abused and treated very unfairly. There is no reason and excuse for the harmful pain she has endured before she finally sought freedom. Even when she did finally reach the freedom, there was a fear of what if she was captured. Individuals who were slaved were constantly being degrading and treated terribly.

To illustrate, female slaves in the 19th century had enormously more adversity to cope and manage with then the male slaves; such as sexual assault from the male slave owners and harassment from the female slave owners. Many slave girls would start to be harassed and sexually assaulted around the young age of only 15, “But I had now entered my 15th year – a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words into my ear” (26 Jacobs). This shows that not only did female slaves have to deal with these kinds of harsh conditions; they had to begin to cope with these circumstances at a very young age. Throughout

She realized she was in a slavery camp, owned by the Japanese soldiers. Soon-Young desperately dropped herself onto the icy, cold floor. Not even a hint of hope could be seen in the room. The girls looked sick- their skin seemed to lose its original color. Bones and veins were faintly visible on their ghost white skin.

In this Video, it documents a seventeen year old girl’s journal for education, her name is Agnes. How terrible sad is the world that a sick fifty two year old man, a teacher at a school, would rape and torture a young girl. Agnes reports the sexual and physical abuse from her teacher began an early age after she was an orphan, following the loss of her parents. Every time Agnes showed up to school the teacher would take her out and sexually and physical abuse her. He used her deep desire for an education to abuse her for so long. At the age of seventeen, she requested help from International aid, since her abuser never fulfilled his promise to her, of education. She is now starting back to school with the help of the International Aid agency

Every morning she wakes up wishing she didn't , she forces herself up and out of bed. She walks to her closet and gets dressed, She puts on her dark clothes and her boots. . She curls her hair. Then she puts dark shades of makeup on her pale skin. She stares at the girl in the mirror, her reflection