I hope we all know this story by now, seeing as this was made into the Academy Award winning film of the same name, the film that some Academy voters never even bothered to watch. I took great issue with that revelation at the time, and it still rankles. Not because of the perverted sanctity of the Academy Award, but because the logic behind not watching the movie in the first place (the subject matter is too difficult to watch) is made worse by the […]
A Free Man at Heart
Before the Academy Award-winning film came out, I had no idea who Solomon Northup was, or that he had written about his experience as a free man ensnared by slavery for twelve awful years. And then, once the movie came out, I didn’t know if I had the courage to see it. I decided to read the book first. Wow. Told from the first-person perspective, Solomon Northup is born a free man, though his father was a freed slave. He is educated, hardworking, married with […]