Mary Prince Reflection:

            Mary Prince's narrative is by far my favorite so far. I know I have not read Harriet Jacobs yet, so I can't really say for sure, but right now it is my favorite. One reason I really liked this narrative is because I was able to connect to her more. I am not sure if it was because she is a woman or if her story was more captivating. I do think her being a woman is a big reason I liked it more. She is a woman and I am a woman so we already have that in common. I can relate to her on that level. I know more about woman's place during slavery than what the men's place was. I also think I understood her story a lot better than Equiano's story. He talked a lot about ships and about what he had to do on the ships. He focused quite a bit on the names of parts of the ship when he talked about his time on the ships. I do not know or really want to know about ships, or what different parts of the ship is called or do. That really turned me off with the ship talk, it made it more difficult to read. Mary Prince's story is so much more captivating. To me at least. She also focused more on the terrible things that happened. Yes, Equiano talked about the bad things as well, but Mary Prince was not afraid to call out her masters for being terrible masters. Equiano was afraid to talk badly about his masters. He was afraid that he would not be able to get his book published if he talk poorly of his masters. I also think that their audiences were very different as well. Equiano mainly focuses on English people in general while Mary Prince focuses her narratives on the English women.

            This narrative also made me think of season three of American Horror Story. When Prince was talking about when a slave did something that the white masters did not like, they would be taken and hung up on a tree outside and beaten until the masters were tired. Season three of American Story dealt with witches, and there was a rivalry going on between the white witches and the black witches. We are shown why there is rivalry and they flash us back to the early 1800's where we see Madame Delphine, a rich white woman who has many slaves. She accuses one of her slaves of raping her daughter and takes him up to her slave torture chamber in her attic. When we see this room, there are many slaves who are kept in little cages, some with their mouth and eyes sewn shut. When one of her slaves would do something she did not approve of she would torture them. With the slave she was currently about to torture for apparently 'raping' her daughter, she had him chained to the wall and stabbed him in the side, all while she placed a boar's head on his head. She said that if he was going to act like a beast, then he should look like a beast. I found it so very interesting that I could make a connection from what we had been reading to one of my favorite television shows.