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Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writer's Project, 1936-1938

First, read the questions below and keep them in mind as you read and study a selected Slave Narrative.  Then, answer the questions below based on your reading.

Title of life history:
Date recorded:
City and/or state:
Narrator:
Interviewer:

1. What interests you about this person's life history? Why did you choose it?
2. Did the interviewer describe the setting where the interview took place?
• If yes, briefly describe the setting.  How does the description help you to visualize the place?
• If no, where do you think the interview took place? Describe the place you imagine and why you think it took place in that setting:
• How does the description help you to visualize the place?
3. Did the interviewer (circle one)
• quote the person interviewed telling their story
• mix his/her words with quotes from the person interviewed
• re-tell the story without quoting the person interviewed
• How does this affect the way you read the narrative?
4. What is the general tone or attitude of the person being interviewed?
5. What do you infer about the person/family from their tone or vocabulary as recorded in the interview?
6. What are the circumstances of this person's life?
7. What seems to have led to these circumstances?
8. Is there anything interesting or surprising about the situation represented by this interview?
9. What problems or frustrations is the interviewee dealing with?
10. What adaptations can you assume or infer the person is making to his/her situation? Why?
11. Select several lines from the narrative to provide support for your answers to the above questions.  Copy them below or highlight them on a printed copy of your narrative.
12. What do you know now from reading these narratives?  What remains unknown?  What are the limits of reading the narratives?  What parts of the slave experience are impossible to glean from them?  How should we use these?

 

 

For information about how these narratives were compiled, you may also want to read An Introduction to the WPA Slave Narratives.
See also The Frederick Douglass Papers.