‘Slaves in the Family’ is Still Eye-Opening
It’s been ten years since Edward Ball wrote his 1998 National Book Award-winning work Slaves in the Family. I just read it this week. It was amazing. Ball, 50, is a descendant of a long line of white, slave-owning South Carolinian plantation owners. Ball traces not only his family line, back to 1698, but he traces descendants of some of the slaves his family owned. The book is meticulously researched. He traveled around the eastern United States as well as to Sierra Leone in West Africa, where people who were eventually sold into slavery started their awful journey. Ball covers so much ground — literally and figuratively — that it is stunning. I highly recommend this amazing work. Have you read this book?
An article from The Atlantic on Edward Ball and his book
An excerpt from Slaves in the Family
A video of Edward Ball delivering a talk about his book
