The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan PDF
Preview The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan
THE MAN WHO STOLE HIMSELF THE MAN WHO STOLE HIMSELF THE SLAVE ODYSSEY OF HANS JONATHAN GISLI PALSSON Translated from the Icelandic by Anna Yates the university of chicago press chicago and london The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2016 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2016. Printed in the United States of America Revised and updated from the original Icelandic edition Hans Jónatan, maðurinn sem stal sjálfum sér, published by Mál og menning, Reykjavík, © 2014 by Gisli Palsson. 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5 isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 31328- 3 (cloth) isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 31331- 3 (e- book) doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226313313.001.0001 This translation has been published with the financial support of The Icelandic Literature Center. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gísli Pálsson, 1949– author. Title: The man who stole himself : the slave odyssey of Hans Jonathan / Gisli Palsson ; translated from the Icelandic by Anna Yates. Other titles: Hans Jónatan. English Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2016006354 |isbn 9780226313283 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226313313 (e-book) Subjects: lcsh: Hans Jónatan, 1784–1827. | Fugitive slaves—Iceland — Djúpivogur—Biography. Classification: lcc dl373.h37 g5713 2016 | ddc 306.3/62092—dc23 lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016006354 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper). For my grandchildren, Gisli Thor, Jon Bjarni, and Saga Ros | Contents | Prologue: A Man of Many Worlds xi I THE ISLAND OF ST. CROIX 1 “A House Negro” 3 “The Mulatto Hans Jonathan” 17 “Said to Be the Secretary” 37 Among the Sugar Barons 49 II COPENHAGEN 61 A Child near the Royal Palace 63 “He Wanted to Go to War” 75 The General’s Widow v. the Mulatto 93 The Verdict 105 III ICELAND 115 A Free Man 117 Mountain Guide 137 Factor, Farmer, Father 149 Farewell 163 IV DESCENDANTS 173 The Jonathan Family 175 The Eirikssons of New England 195 Who Stole Whom? 207 The Lessons of History 221 Epilogue: Biographies 225 Timeline 231 Acknowledgments 235 Photo Catalog 239 Notes 245 Bibliography 257 Index 275 Choose yourself. sØren kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1843 The views were immensely wide. Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequaled nobility. karen blixen, Out of Africa, 1937 All of our phrasing— race relations, racial chasm . . . , even white supremacy— serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. ta- nehisi coates, Between the World and Me, 2015
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