Many people see slavery as a time that would like to be forgotten. In the time of slavery people either was for it or against it, there was no place in the middle. The author Jennifer Flieschner states what is needed to fully understand the key factors of the slavery system. She uses many women slave narratives to justify her what she feels slavery really is. Even though she focuses on female slaves her writings still imply all the aspects of slavery itself. Many stories are used in the book to show the miserable lives that people were forced to live in which then angered anti-slavery groups who worked extremely hard to lift slavery laws. Flieschner uses pieces of slave autobiographies, which talk about how every slave had a different life than one another. Life in the south was seen by whites as a place to raise a family, work in their fields, and to have slaves do the work at no charge. Life for a black person was seen very differently, they were prisoners of a system that was make believe. Through these narratives we can see how society has changed and where we came from in which shows us how good our time has it. These stories express more than emotion and in fact show us how bad our country once was. Flieschner uses slave narratives to educate today's people to let them know that at one time there was slavery, but now wants us to benefit from those times and make sure that something like that does not happen again.
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Many of the narratives express the emotions of the slaves that they could not show to their master or to their families. These narratives showed how many slaves were separated from their families once they were old enough to work in the fields. These prisoners at times were beaten for just the fun of it. Many of the slaves were both physically and mentally distraught, the men and women were abused and life was not a pleasure to them as it should be for all.