The Slave Girl
by
Harriet An Jacob
Translated into Bengali
by
Professor Amirul Alam Khan
First Edition: February 2019. Publisher: Songho Prokason. Cover Design: Concord Emporium Shopping Complex, Katabon, Dhaka-1205. Price: Tk 500.00. Rupee 400.00, US and other countries: 20$.
Human trafficking is the ugliest slave trade around the world. It has been a curse for human civilization for ages to come. Harriet Jacob has given a detailed description of the Slave Girl in her book, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Seven Years Concealment in Slavery.”
It appears to be her own auto-biography. This book was published from Boston, USA in 1861.
Professor Amirul Alam Khan has translated this book into colloquial Bengali very distinctly with a view to let us know, “What man has made of man?” This ugliest slave trade appears to have been still in vogue throughout the world in cognito. We used to call that in modern language: ‘Human Trafficking’! In the sense of human civilization this sort of opprobrium from human beings must go. Now the question is here, “Who will bell the cat?”
The writer of the book Harriet Ann Jacob was herself a slave and as such she could make out the vivid descriptions of the slaves (mostly black niggers, both male and female) and their physical as well as mental tortures perpetrated upon them time and again by the white American Slave Traders. This slavery was absolutely atrocious, inhuman and merciless. Here white men are slave traders while their merchandises are black Negroes of Northern and Southern America. The harrowing tales of inhuman tortures of those American Niggers have been mirrored in the description of the authoress that appears to us horrid till now.
To be mentioned here a heinous character of a physician Dr. Flint, an infamous debauch out and out having fifty slaves at his disposal who tried his level best every way to catch the authoress of this book to have his vicious carnal desire fulfilled but failed ultimately and later died of heinous death.
Though there was a great awakening since World War-II, inequality among mankind in all respect saps its vitality morally till today!
The Great Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam has mentioned in his poem – ‘The Woman’
I sing of equality.
In my eyes there’s no distinction
between man and woman.
Whatever good and beneficial works
have been done for human beings in this world
the half of them have been done by the woman
and the other half done by man.
Translated by M. Mizanur Rahman
This book ‘The Slave Girl’ is well bound and hardly there’s any printing mistake. The cover design appears to be appropriate in accordance with the contents of the book itself. The price is moderate.
Thanks Prof. Amirul Alam Khan for presenting the Bangla translation of such a valuable book to us while we talk high of US democracy! n Reviewed by M Mizanur Rahman
