Enslaved and slaveholding family histories narrate the same events divergently.

Evidence

Upon returning home, I could not wait to get into all the genealogy and other documents Dr. Edmund Taylor gave me; I was sure I’d find interesting overlaps. Amazingly, after reading the information provided by Dr. Taylor, it was apparent that what I had, what I was witnessing, was the intersection of two family histories. The same stories, told from two very different points of view: one from the enslaved man Papa Renty, and the other told by the slaveholder Benjamin Franklin Taylor. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 501

Categorization

• SEED: The two-family-history contrast is the book’s structural method and a strong essay angle on archival polyphony.