I really enjoy reading about the hardships endured when living in a strange land, so of course i loved this book. I thought Mrs. Hurmence plotted it well and she really described the events well. I enjoyed reading it and I well read it again.

My folks don't want me to talk about slavery is the perfect book to start a new generation reading about slavery.( it has 103 pages) Belinda Hurmences book gives you the real story from all sides. When Thomas Hall says "I dont like Mr. Lincoln and I hate Harriet Beecher Stowe". He is no less intense than Betty Cooper mourning for her Miss Ella for two years. I have collected slave narratives for years and Belinda Hurmence has given me one more reason to continue. The bibliography is helpful to old & new collectors and new readers of this important subject matter.

"My Folks Don't Want Me To Talk About Slavery" is a book compiled of condensed life stories from former slaves who were still living in the 1930's.

This is not a book of white people's interpretation of what slaves had to say, rather it is a collection of interviews of former slaves. The interviewers were from the Federal Writers project, and they went around finding these old slaves and put on paper what they had to say!

All the accounts in this book were taken form North Carolina and total twenty one.

There are more than 2000 of these interviews and all can be accessed online (....at the library of congress....)

This book is very good as are all the other interviews that can be found at the above web site.
These interviews are unsophisticated, but do more than enough to let us glimpse, however slightly, what slavery must have been like.

This book was perhaps overused in my senior thesis for college. The information was highly informational and very sincere. What stories were told in this book hit me like a pile of bricks. If only there were more people dedicated to destroying slavery! I would recommend this book for research or just for anyone interested in what really happened during slavery!

I've read the original South Carolina Volumes of the WPA Slave Narratives that this book was edited from. This book could have been a whole lot better. While the current editor did a good job of making the SC African-American dialect more accessible to lay readers (even she admits to having trouble with printed versions of this dialect), many of the better stories were either highly edited or left out, such as Elijah Green's Reconstruction Narrative that was heavily edited and Isreal Nesbitt's recollections of the Vesey Rebellion, which aren't included.

However, to the layman and non-historian, this is a good start in understanding slavery from the sources. Some interesting stories do remain, such as the Union County narrative about the Ku Klux Klan. So it's good for starters. The Tennessee and Georgia anthologies in this series are better, though.

This book was given to me by my social studies teacher as an extra credit reading assignment, so I read it just for the credit thinking that I would hate it. Little did I know how many metaphors and parallels to my life I would find. When I finished the book, I could not believe what some slaves had gone through. There were many theories that came out of this book, including that for many slaves, freedom was a two-edged sword. Yet to figure out what I mean by that, you will have to read the book yourself! I would strongly recommend this book to any 8th grade social studies teachers teaching the Civil War who want to make an impact on their students and wake them up to realize that history repeats itself and that the "killing of an old person is like the burning of a book in a library" - Mrs. Mahoney (my awesome 8th grade social studies teacher)!

A fantastic book that reveals the details of slave life through personal interviews of former slaves. Throw away the history books, forget what you learned in social studies, this is real. The book is printed using the dialects of the interviewees, so you almost feel as if you can hear the person speaking. A great read. Difficult to put it down once you pick it up.

This book was very intriguing. I love to learn about the lives of african americans and this was very helpful. The collection of interviews where great and I learned a lot from this book. I think that anyone who reads this book will enjoy it. That is all I have to say!

We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard is a quick read, but it gives ample food for thought. During the Great Depression, writers interviewed surviving ex-slaves and this book is a collection of their stories. Although the reason for the inclusion of the specific stories in the book is that all lived in Virginia at one point in their lives. The feelings shared pertaining to emancipation were quite interesting, and like many who are survivors of abuse, some of these tragic people seemed to feel some attachment to their abusers (slave owners.) Their indifference to the Civil War was unexpected, and their lack of direction after emancipation is something not often written about. The shame that we experience as a previously slave-owning culture is unearthed in the process of reading this little book, and I somehow felt as if I were doing something wrong by reading it. I don't think I'll ever forget it.

Wow! This book is eye-opening. If you think you understand slavery read this book. I thought I did - I didn't. Real interviews from former slaves. It's a short book. I'm glad I read it.

The story takes place in North Carolina were Blanche Overtha Yancey (Boy) is living with her family, They often talk about her ancestors who were once slaves. She is tired of hearing about the issue. She then magically gets transported back to the 1850's where blacks are slaves. She is learning how to live her new life and how to be a slave. She realizes that being a slave is difficult. Boy now understands what they had to go through and why this is an important subject to her family. She is learning to live as a slave and realizes that they depend on each other. Whenever one would need something they would ask another slave. Most owners were very brutal to their slaves and would beat them constantly whenever they would do something wrong. This is a great book if you want to better understand slavery. I thought this book was kind of boring at the beginning but towards the middle and the end it got interesting. I would rate this book a six out of ten because it was boring at first but then started to pick up towards the middle and the end. It was still very difficult to understand, so you would probably have to be a good reader to better understand and like this book.

I think this book was boring at first, but as I read farther into the book, it got more interesting. Boy is a stubborn girl that goes back in time and doesn't realize it at first. I think what makes this story interesting is how she learns to survive through her new life. What I learned from this book is slaves count on each other, no matter where they're from, because they really believe in friendship and they have to trust each other. It's a very good book.

The story "A Girl Called Boy" is about a young eleven-year-old black girl that hates her name. She disslikes her name because it's innitials spell "BOY" (Blanche Overtha Yancey). She also disslikes her name on the account that it is a direct connectionwith traditional names that her ancesters, whom were bonded in slavery, had. She thinks that her family's traditional past is a weakness for her.
One day though, her entire world changes; she gets lost in the mountain forest of North Carolina. while wandering around she gets caught in the space-time continuum and is sent back to the 1850's. It's a story about embracing who you are by repecting the heritage of which you are made. It's a great book; I recommend it!

Okay, this book is horrible! I'm sorry; maybe it was because I had to read it for a school assignment, and I wanted to read Uncle Tom's Cabin but didn't have the time, but I really could not stand it! How is it that in 1865 RIGHT AFTER the end of the Civil War and RIGHT AFTER slaves were freed that a FEMALE BLACK, (newly freed) could just walk away from her old mistress, make friends with a white woman, get a job, and not face any prejudice at all? (White man: Oh! It's just Tancy! Come on it, Tancy!) Also, maybe I'm naive, but how many slave masters slept with and impregnated TWO of their slaves? The only good part of this entire story is the child, Jemmy, and that's probably because he's actually based on a real-life character. This book is slow and choppy with unrealistic setting and characters.

Tancy is an incredible book. All though it is fictional, the book is an excellent portrayal of the life of a slave girl during the civil war and her search for her long lost mother. I highly recommend this book to all teen-aged readers.