Twelve Years a Slave Lesson Plan

In Chapter One, Northup talks about his account, and invites the reader to consider the nature of fiction versus nonfiction in terms of depictions of slavery. What does this ask the reader to confront about the narrative?

Northup mentions in Chapter One the increasing prominence of slave narratives, both real and fictional. He emphasizes that he can only speak for his own experiences, and acknowledges that he cannot provide a broader sense of the ‘institution.’ While this perhaps points out a lack of completeness in his description of situations and experience, it also emphasizes that the impending cruelty he will describe is utterly true, and unlike such narratives as Uncle...