Incidents in Life of a Slave Girl although sets the same tone with how they view slavery as Narritive of the Life of Fredrick Douglas, Harriet Jacobs had vastly different experiences. Jacobs unlike Douglas was not only subjected to physical abuse due to manual labor but also subjected to sexual abuse due to her gender. Jacob describes her experience in an extremely harsh way that hiding and living practically lying down for seven years in a hole with no light nor air is far better than going back to live with her master. Another way Jacobs differed with Douglas is how Jacobs had a kid, Benny. For the years she was hiding in her small dark hole, the laughter of her children is what kept her going, what gave her the power to stay hidden. However combined with Douglas’ experiences, it truly paints a picture, an egregious one for me about what being a slave really was like. Being a slave is not just about white men owning African Americans, but also the mentaly and physically tormenting them for decades, even after the Emancipation Proclamation which was suppose to set them free.
The first important thing I found about modern slavery is how broad the definition is, I knew forced labor and sexual exploitation is considered slavery but I didn’t know that forced marriages is also under the umbrella of slavery. Being someone who is an Asian American immigrant, I have heard multiple stories throughout my life whether it was my own family lineage or my friends family lineage about how common forced marriages were. I would have never guessed that it was considered a form of slavery. Another interesting fact I came to learn is that 1 in 4 people trapped in a form of modern slavery are children, most of them are force to do labor and even join children militias across the world. The last thing I found is that, slavery is not only prevalent in developing countries, but even in first world countries too, like many of countries in Europe. It’s a such a big problem that modern slavery in developed countries made an esitmate of almost 50 billion dollars in 2014.
Child slavery is indeed an important issue. Your mentioning of children who serve in militias is interesting; I’ve read about them and have seen photos, but didn’t realize that they weren’t serving of their own volition. Do you disagree with the idea that forced marriage is a form of slavery, or does it make sense to you?