Sources: Slave Culture: A Documentary Collection of the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project

Slave Culture: A Documentary Collection of the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project. Ed. By Spencer Crew, Lonnie Bunch, and Clement Price. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2014. 3 vols. acid free $294 (ISBN 978-1-4408-0086-3). Ebook available (978-1-4408-0087-0), call for pricing.

Although primary source content from the Slave Narratives of the Federal Writers' Project exists in many other locations and formats, Slave Culture is the first reference work that attempts to order selected narratives from these collections into thematic categories, allowing readers to "better understand what aspects of enslavement reverberated most forcefully for them [the interviewees] as well as why they [the aspects] were important" (xi).

This collection of selected narratives begins with an introductory essay highlighting areas of controversy, namely the unbalanced power relationship between interviewers and interviewees, as well as the emergence of oral history as a legitimate scholarly record. This introduction, like much of the edited material in the volumes, is simply written and prone to euphemism and elision (for example, "sexual imposition and enslaved women"), suggesting an intended audience of juvenile readers or novice researchers. Followed by a brief chronology, the reader is then introduced to the thematic categories themselves, which include "The Enslaved Community Culture," "Childhood for the Enslaved," "The Enslaved Family," "Enslaved Women," "Work and Slavery," "Physical Abuse and Intimidation," and "Runaways and the Quest for Freedom". Each thematic category is introduced by a brief summary of overarching themes before presenting the narratives themselves, which are listed alphabetically by interviewee name. The narratives themselves are often short, one to two paragraphs, and as instructed by the Federal Writers' Project guidelines, are transcribed in an attempt to "capture the verbal cadence of the interviewee" (xxiii). The content of the narratives themselves defies easy categorization as imposed by the editors; this reviewer felt that excerpting interviewee's narratives to fit a thematic construct obscured the nuanced reading that may be possible when reading an interviewee's narrative cohesively. While there is a name index should readers wish to pursue more narratives by the same interviewee, the thematic categorization seems best suited to specific curricular needs in school or public libraries.

Researchers interested in reading slave narratives cohesively may choose instead to pursue one of the more comprehensive collections available. The Library of Congress' American Memory website contains a collection of over 2,300 digitized slave narratives, freely accessible to the public and searchable by keyword, narrator, or state (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/). In addition to this free online resource, many libraries may also already have in their collections the multi-volume print collection The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Series 1, Greenwood, 1972; Series 2, Greenwood, 1979), which collects over 2,000 additional slave narratives not included in the Library of Congress documents, and organized by state. These three collections are the source for all of the narratives included in Slave Culture.

As a derivative source, Slave Culture succeeds in applying themes to the narratives; how intuitive or useful those themes are, and what such thematic ordering adds to the already extensive literature, is up for debate. Barring a unique curricular need or surplus acquisitions funds, this volume is not recommended with so much other identical primary source material freely available.—Kristin J. Henrich, Reference Coordinator, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho