Slave: My True Story
Mende Nazer, Damian Lewis, 2003
PublicAffairs
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 97815863180
Summary
Mende Nazer lost her childhood at age twelve, when she was sold into slavery. It all began one horrific night in 1993, when Arab raiders swept through her Nuba village, murdering the adults and rounding up thirty-one children, including Mende.
Mende was sold to a wealthy Arab family who lived in Sudan's capital city, Khartoum. So began her dark years of enslavement. Her Arab owners called her "Yebit," or "black slave." She called them "master." She was subjected to appalling physical, sexual, and mental abuse. She slept in a shed and ate the family leftovers like a dog. She had no rights, no freedom, and no life of her own.
Normally, Mende's story never would have come to light. But seven years after she was seized and sold into slavery, she was sent to work for another master—a diplomat working in the United Kingdom. In London, she managed to make contact with other Sudanese, who took pity on her. In September 2000, she made a dramatic break for freedom.
Slave is a story almost beyond belief. It depicts the strength and dignity of the Nuba tribe. It recounts the savage way in which the Nuba and their ancient culture are being destroyed by a secret modern-day trade in slaves. Most of all, it is a remarkable testimony to one young woman's unbreakable spirit and tremendous courage. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
• Birth—ca. 1979 to 1982
• Where—Nuba Mountains, Sudan, Africa
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK
Mende Nazer [as of 2004, the time of the book's U.S. printing] was approximately twenty-five years old (the Nuba do not record exact dates of birth). She was granted political asylum by the British government in 2003. She currently lives in London.
Damien Lewis is a British journalist who helped Mende escape and transcribed her story. A Sudan expert, he is an anti-slavery activist. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews>
The Nuba Mountains of Sudan ... serve as the backdrop to the early chapters of Mende Nazer's harrowing tale, Slave. Nazer's book describes her oddly idyllic childhood; her subsequent capture and rape during an Arab raid on her village; her years of enslavement in the home of a well-to-do Arab family in the capital of Khartoum; and later, her life in London, where she served as the slave of a high-ranking Sudanese diplomat, also an Arab, before her ultimate escape, with the help of co-author Damien Lewis, a British journalist, in September 2000.
One of Britain's leading newspapers, the Sunday Telegraph, reported the story ... without speaking with Nazer. The former diplomat filed a libel suit against the paper, and even claimed to have letters written by Nazer to her family that refuted her story. The paper eventually paid damages and published an apology declaring Nazer's story false....
The Sudanese government has been extremely reluctant to investigate Nazer's claims, however, and given its obvious stake in wanting damning evidence of the country's slave trade refuted, this silence certainly lends credence to Nazer's story. If the experiences Nazer recounts here prove true, they will stand as an important reminder of the real, lived terrors of thousands of black southern Sudanese whose stories will never be told, and whose freedom may never be won.
Alex P. Kellogg - Washington Post
(Starred review.) The shock of this title is that it refers to what is happening right now, in Sudan, Africa, and also in the West.... The details are unforgettable, capturing both the innocence of the child and the world-weariness of one who has endured the worst.
Booklist
Born into the Karko tribe in the Nuba mountains of northern Sudan, Nazer has written a straightforward, harrowing memoir that's a sobering reminder that slavery still needs to be stamped out. The first, substantial section of the book concentrates on Nazer's idyllic childhood, made all the more poignant for the misery readers know is to come. Nazer is presented as intelligent and headstrong, and her people as peaceful, generous and kind. In 1994, around age 12 (the Nuba do not keep birth records), Nazer was snatched by Arab raiders, raped and shipped to the nation's capital, Khartoum, where she was installed as a maid for a wealthy suburban family. (For readers expecting her fate to include a grimy factory or barren field, the domesticity of her prison comes as a shock.) To Nazer, the modern landscape of Khartoum could not possibly have been more alien; after all, she had never seen even a spoon, a mirror or a sink, much less a telephone or television set. Nazer's urbane tormentors—mostly the pampered housewife—beat her frequently and dehumanized her in dozens of ways. They were affluent, petty and calculatedly cruel, all in the name of "keeping up appearances." The contrast between Nazer's pleasant but "primitive" early life and the horrors she experienced in Khartoum could hardly be more stark; it's an object lesson in the sometimes dehumanizing power of progress and creature comforts. After seven years, Nazer was sent to work in the U.K., where she contacted other Sudanese and eventually escaped to freedom. Her book is a profound meditation on the human ability to survive virtually any circumstances
Publishers Weekly
Nazer heart-wrenchingly describes the ragged unpredictability of beatings, the crowding thoughts of home, the repulsive food, and the drear of daily toil. Sent to London to work for her mistress's sister, the wife of a Sudanese diplomat, Nazer manages to contact a fellow Nuban who helps her to escape and gets her a lawyer.... Revelatory in the truest sense of the word told with a child-pure candor that comes like a bucket of cold water in the lap.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Slave: My True Story—
1. How does the controversy surrounding Nazer's accounts of her enslavement affect your view the book? (See the Washington Post review above.) Does her story, even if embellished or patently untrue, help focus attention on the practice of slavery in the Sudan and surrounding nations? Or does it weaken the cause for putting a halt to slavery?
2. Talk about the disparity of Nazer's idyllic childhood in a primative culture and the cruelty she experienced at the hands of her captors in the more affluent culture of Khartoum. In what way does her dehumanization call into question the idea of progress?
3. What are the ways in which Nazer coped with the inspeakable cruelty and beatings? To what degree did her personality or inner strength enable her to remain intact?
4. Also imagine what it would be like—how disorienting, bewildering, awe-inspiring—to be exposed for the first time, as Nazer was, to all the comforts and trappings of a modern society—plumbing, tv, phones, mirrors, even silverware.
5. Discuss Nazer's first-person-narrative voice in Slave. Do you find her open, almost childlike, candor appealing ... authentic ... or disingenuous? After all, the book was written by a man.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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