I have a hard time rating memoirs, because it's a person's life, and how can that be rated? So, when I rate memoirs I try to focus more on the writing and the lesson. Well, the writing challenged me at times, but that's because of the time period it was written in.

So, the lesson. Slavery is bad. (Fortunately I already knew that.) But of course it's different reading about it in the words from someone who was enslaved. Someone who had their freedom stolen from them, was sold like chattel, was treated worse than livestock, who was whipped and forced to whip others, who witnessed children stolen from their mothers, and was beaten, abused, starved, disparaged. At the end, Northrup writes that he has "no comments to make upon the subject of slavery," despite having written a book that is one long comment on slavery.