“Incidents in the life of a slave Girl” is a very powerful text that unfortunately is relevant in today’s world as well. “I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is. Only by experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations” (Preface). Harriet Jacobs’ goal is to educate the free world about slavery, hoping that such horrors will cease to exist, but it seems that the more progressive we became as a society the more we learned to call slavery different names and became more indifferent to the sufferings of others. During slavery in America, people were enslaved in plantations, people nod their heads and draw a clear difference between the world we live in today and the world and cruelty that used to excised. But the truth is that not everyone is free in 2019.
The ability to choose a profession, place of living, a spouse, sexual orientation, or even the food one might eat is not as easy as one might think. For example, most of the population in the western world do not know who stands behind the everyday food they purchase on a daily basis in the supermarket. Those very people who grow the avocados that we are exposed to year-round, do not know the taste of this fruit simply because they cannot afford it. They are being ripped off by large companies, being enslaved in horrible conditions in their countries, work unreasonable hours from a very young age, even die because of criminal organizations that arose due to the avocado demand in the western world. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, and so the criminal organizations rule the crops and the farmers are their slaves, while the criminal organizations are slaves as well to an even bigger party. So we are facing a new kind of slavery, modern slavery, where everything is legal on the paper, and where invisible people are more invisible than ever.
