Adrian’s Reviews > The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism > Status Update

“Out here hands were turning their own muscles into someone else's cash. So every song was a question. (Am I born to die, and lay this body down?) Some say that songs talked in cipher about running away. (On Jordan's Stormy Banks I stand, and cast a wishful eye / To Canaan's fair and happy land, where my possessions lie.) … these songs acknowledged that tears watered any Eden their singers could imagine.”

“The white men took aim and made Amar’s body dance with a volley of lead. In his head, as he slumped and fell, were 50 billion neurons. They held the secrets of turning sugarcane sap into white crystals, they held the memories that made him smile at just such a joke, they held the cunning with which he sought out his lover’s desires, they held the names of all the people who stood circled in silence.”