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Fires Of Jubilee Summary

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The Fires of Jubilee Book Review
In 1975, prize-winning biographer Stephen B. Oates, wrote the Fires of Jubilee; Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion along with many of his thirteen published books and more than seventy articles. Oates book, Fires of Jubilee, brings back the history of slave rebellion in the eyes of a smart, talented, and gifted African American, Nat Turner. As Oates writes this book, he tells the life and struggles that was brought upon Turner and many of the other African Americans on their whim to become free people. With the abilities Nat had as a child, many people including him self were convinced that he was “chosen” from the Lord.
Initially, Nat Turner was established gifted growing up and was the talk of most Caucasian and African Americans communities. He started preaching about religion to many African American slaves around Southampton County, Virginia and with the hope of doing this, Nat thought he would soon be set free. Unfortunately, due to the many slave owners Nat had, he was sent to the field at age twelve to work. He was raged with anger and would do anything to have his freedom even if it meant to kill the whites/slave owners. At the age of twenty-five, Nat conceived an idea that God sent him a sign, which was a solar eclipse that initiated …show more content…

Oates keeps the story and name Nat Turner alive, almost 200 hundred years later. This is especially important in a time when schools are teaching less and less about the bruteness innate to slavery. However, the severe distortions that plague the book opens up discourse to how one can preserve and present the authentic story of Nat Turner. Seeing how these distortions in the telling of the life of Turner are rooted in the dynamics of our society, it shows the importance in whom the author of a story is and how that matters. The misrepresentations of communities in authorship in histories will continue to perpetuate these

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