12 Years a Slave.

Solomon Northup.

I have not seen this movie. It's one of those that I have meant to watch since it came out, but just haven't quite gotten to. Either because it was not available (i.e. not on Netflix and I don't have a physical copy) or because I did not feel I was in a proper emotional state to undertake it. Sometimes I overestimate (or correctly estimate) the emotional toll a particular movie will take and put off watching it until I feel I am in a particularly resilient state. I do this a lot with 'based on real life' dramas. For me, 'based on real life' dramas usually fall into two categories. This is definitely not their actual classification, but simply the categories my brain (often incorrectly) puts them into. (1) looks kind of boring but you are supposed to think its inspiring or (2) will be emotionally ravaging and because it really happened to someone your empathy will engage and it will be extremely emotionally painful to watch. 12 Years A Slave was firmly in category two. 

I'm actually kind of glad I didn't watch it before I read it. Well, listened to it. I listened to this book while I drove between Edmonton and Cranbrook last weekend. It was about 16 hours of driving total and this book took up a good chunk of it. 

It is a direct account and Solomon clearly sets out at the beginning that he plans to tell his story with nothing beyond the facts as he experienced them. He tells you what he saw and felt. Occasionally he will try to make sense of an event or wonder why a person acted the way they did, but this is always accompanied by an assertion that he does not know and cannot assume the motives of others. He laid out his intent at the start of the book: to lay out the facts of his life and let the reader judge for themselves the implications of those facts (i.e. whether or not slavery is a good system). This was written in 1853 and I imagine at that time he really was simply trying to show people that slavery was bad. 

This book was heavy. I cried no less than five times. But it is important to read these sorts of things and feel horrified. It feels important to acknowledge the lived experience of people even when we know a lot of the overarching facts already. It feels like the least I can do to simply listen to his story, feel pain and grief about the things that were done to him, and acknowledge that slavery was horrific and morally wrong. Obviously that is not where my involvement in decolonization should end, but it feels like an important step in the process. 

I'll probably watch the movie now and point out all the things that are different from the book. I'll probably watch it alone, both to save someone from enduring my 'know it all'-ness and also so I can ugly cry in peace.