Read via the LibriVox recording by James K. White, one of the best narrators around, free or otherwise. Hughes wrote this memoir in 1897, 32 years after his 30 years of slavery, but it is fresh with many telling details. It has informed scholarly books on slavery, Hughes is often quoted. For a slave POV in the Memphis area, it is one of the best primary sources available. Hughes was enslaved from birth to 1865 - or 33 years. However, the Emancipation Proclamation was in 1862, and therefore Hughes was not technically a slave the last 3 years, rather a worker unpaid as he transitions to full freedom - thus the "Thirty" years. Hughes would not let himself be a slave one year longer than truth would allow. One has a sense Hughes was more intelligent than his so-called masters, whom he takes pity on in the end. This account includes the kind of brutality seen in other memoirs, the whippings in particular are hard to read. But there is also the Madam McGee who is emotionally and physically abusive - boxing ears and face, pinching ears, never praising and always complaining now matter how hard one works, it is Chinese water torture of the soul. I really liked this, on par with Twelve Years a Slave, as noted by another reviewer the only failing being not long enough. ( )

Hughes was born in Virginia and sold to a wealthy planter who resided in Pontotoc, Mississippi and later outside Memphis, Tennessee. His first-hand account gives intricate detail about everyday life, not found in academic works, about the lives of slaves and owners and how things changed drastically during the Civil War.

Anyone interested in the Memphis area during the Civil War will enjoy this memoir. I learned about a few folk medicine remedies, what slave women with infants had to do between working in the fields, I learned about Nathan Bedford Forrest's slave yards in Memphis and what took place there. Funny how Hughes mentions Forrests slave yards quite a bit in this book which is ironic because there is current controversy (as of July 2015) surrounding the removal of Forrest's statue and grave from a local park.

Hughes even describes what Memphis was like when whites fled and the Union Army took over. I must say I wish there was more---I really really enjoyed this narrative! ( )