Belle

Based on a real incident in the eighteenth-century, this beautifully crafted story is also a visual treat for those that love elaborate costumes, majestic sets and wondrous landscapes. I have yet to read the book by Paula Byrne, but the DVD was a joy to watch.

Dido Elizabeth Belle was the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of Royal Navy Admiral John Lindsay. Slavery had been operating for many years at the time of Dido’s birth and her life could have been one of life-long servitude and misery but for the fact that John Lindsay – for whatever reasons – publicly acknowledged her to his titled family.

Dido was left in the care of her father’s Uncle, Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice, and was subsequently brought up in his household as his great-niece. Whilst her lineage and, later, the inheritance of her late father’s estate, gave her more freedom than most women in that period of time, the colour of her skin was a barrier to acquiring social standing. Ironically, Dido shared her childhood with a legitimate white female cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, whose own father made no financial provision for her so that Lord and Lady Mansfield were obliged to make a ‘good’ match for her.

When Dido formed a romantic attachment with the idealistic son of a local Vicar, they both embarked on a mission to abolish slavery in England through the initially reluctant auspices of Lord Mansfield.

Normally I read a book and then see the film, or just watch a film, but on this occasion the film has inspired me to find out more about both the Family and the origins of the Slave Trade in eighteenth-century Great Britain.  Fortunately there are plenty of resources available to assist me in this task at the Christchurch City Libraries.  (You can access the following resources in libraries or from home using your library card number and password/PIN.)

• Read about Dido Elizabeth Belle in World History in Context
• Read about William Murray, Lord Mansfield in Biography in Context
• Find out more about the abolition of slavery in Britain in World History in Context
• Find resources in our catalogue about Slavery and the Slave Trade in Britain

Anyone else out there ever been so impressed by a film that they have then wanted to delve more deeply into the history of the era?

Movie ticket giveaways for 12 Years a slave

Roadshow Films and Christchurch City Libraries are giving you the chance to WIN one of 20 double passes to the movie 12 Years a slave.

12 Years a slave tells the incredible true story of one man’s fight for survival and freedom. In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.  Facing cruelty (personified by a malevolent slave owner, portrayed by Michael Fassbender), as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist (Brad Pitt) will forever alter his life.
12 Years a slave in cinemas, February 6, 2014.

You can also read or listen to the book from our libraries.

View the movie trailer here
Rated:R16 – Contains graphic violence and sexual violence

How can you win? Just email and tell us the name of the slave whose story this is –  email us at competition@christchurchcitylibraries.com including your name, phone number, library card number and address. We’ll get in touch with the winners and hook you up with the tickets.

• The competition is open to Christchurch City Libraries members.
• Staff of Christchurch City Libraries and their immediate families are not able to enter.
• Competition closes on Sunday 9 February.
• Winners contacted on 10 February.

Please note: Tickets valid from 20 February at Event, Reading, Hoyts, Berkeley, Rialto or any participating independent cinema. Not valid on Saturdays after 5pm, on public holidays or at any “La Premier”, Cinema Delux, Gold Class, D-Box, Gold Lounge, Imax or Circle Lounge screeings. This voucher must be taken as offered and is not exchangeable, transferable or redeemable for cash and does not constitute a reserved seat. Cinemas reserve the right to refuse vouchers deemed invalid or tampered with. This ticket cannot be re-sold.

Slavery in war and peace

Tears in the darkness : the story of the Bataan Death march by Elizabeth & Michael Norman
This book’s title came from a Japanese kanji for “the loneliest despair” imaginable. So be warned, it is as heart-wrenching as it is compelling a read as you will ever find on the Second World War. The book recounts the desperate fighting in 1942 in which the American and Filipino force fought the Japanese until near starvation in the worst military defeat ever incurred by the United States. This was but a foretaste of the horrors which the 76,000 allied POWs faced on the notorious 70 mile long “death march” to the POW camps after surrender to the Japanese. During the march and their subsequent two and a half year long incarceration thousands of POWs were literally starved, worked and/or beaten to death.

Tears gives us a dimension that other recent books of ‘wartime voices’ (which tend to give excerpts of accounts from one side) often don’t – a biographical account of Ben Steele (one of the American soldiers) and accounts of his American comrades are juxtapsed with Filipino and Japanese accounts of the same events. So we get powerful insights into what this hell did to the bodies and minds of the POWs. It also lifts the veil on the psyche of the Japanese soldier. Certainly callous indifference through to deliberate cruelty typified many a Japanese soldier but some quite startling insights emerge as well. A film The Beast of Bataan about the post-war trial of the Japanese commander has been slated but appears to have stalled for the time being. If you would like this as an audio book it is available for download at Christchurch City Library’s Overdrive.

Slavery by Another Name : The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War 2 by Douglas A. Blackmon
The history of race relations in the U.S. has for long told of how slavery was abolished with Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation in 1863. Black Americans endeavouring to merge into mainstream American Society met fierce resistance from mainly white Southerners who waged a campaign of violence and enacted many laws that deprived Black Americans of their social and political entitlements. The Federal government’s resolve to help Blacks or to even roll back the so called ‘Jim Crow’ laws of the South quickly waned after the Civil War ended. But there was always more to the picture than this because it never fully answered the question of why the integration of Blacks into mainstream American economic and political life is still far from complete and why Black America is still littered with families and communities torn apart by violence, delinquency, drug addiction, crime and low self-esteem. At last, this book reveals the missing chapter. A chapter in U.S. history far more sinister than segregation ever was.

Blackmon’s book documents a little known but widespread and systemic exploitation and appalling mistreatment of large numbers of black American men by several Southern states between the Civil War and the Second World War. After it’s defeat in the Civil War, the South resolved it’s desperate shortage of labour through a very peculiar means which Blackmon reveals was often more barbaric, cynical and deadly than slavery ever was. He also shows how Federal officials investigating abuses were often meek or ignored in the interests of rebuilding relations with the South.

Ironically, it was the U.S. entry into the Second World War that quickly brought an end to this neo-slavery because President Roosevelt knew that his country’s own dirty little secrets could compromise its efforts to fight a moral crusade against regimes that brutalised their subject minorities. Reading Tears in the darkness soon after Slavery by another name certainly put the undeniable suffering of the American POWs and Black Americans into a jarring perspective. The POWs suffered and died for their country. Many Black Americans suffered and died because of their country.