A Culture book review
Life is really a difficult thing. One day you are at the summit of glory and the other one are suffering a defeat. It looks like a gambling game where after each great winning should always be even bigger loss. The task is to learn to overcome all the difficulties and never give up in your life path. Take you own way, do your best and put a finish to everything you intended.
No matter how preoccupied with the daily routine you are never miss a chance to find the beauty around you even in the simplest things. Sometimes people are so busy with their day-to-day activities that they forget to admire all the perfectness of nature. You should only take a view of the beauty around and your perception would never be the same again. Do not miss the opportunity to observe the gorgeous and incredible works of art. You will never remember those boring days spent at work doing things you just are obliged to do. What you will remember are feelings and emotions you get from the outside world. Learn to love this amazing originality which will bring you peace of mind and soul. Your spirit as well as your body needs feeding. The best food ever is of course your culture development. It is not even important to visit famous picture galleries, read serious books or to keep up with culture events every day. However, it is vital to taste a culture, to explore it step by step in order to fully understand it. Besides you can dream about the future knowing nothing about your past.
Today we will try to make one big move forward by deeping in one of the greatest culture books that provides a good example of the time past. It is called Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery written by John Michael Vlach. At first sight the story may seem a complicated one, with a lot of historic stuff, too boring and detailed for the readers to comprehend. However not judge the book for its title and give it a chance to win your sympathy.
Here the writer made a really splendid job. Using photographs and drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), agricultural journals, modern agricultural histories and the vast literature on the history of slavery, Vlach managed to depict an account of plantation life in the slave's territory in a very tangible and moving way. This is a truly journey through African American culture you will surely remember till the rest of your life. Even if there was not any text at all it would not loose its fascination thanks to great images. Vlach in this book relied on the pictures which he believed would not leave anybody indifferent and his intuition had not disappointed him.
The writer gives the key to open the door of unknown story. Nobody is aware how this one will end but from the very beginning you are interested in examining every small piece of it. It turned out that behind the big houses of wealthy men of the antebellum South, existed a completely different world. There you won’t see luxurious kitchens, spacious living-rooms or exquisite halls. It is socially and architecturally peculiar place of submissive slaves. Exactly these people knew for certain every inch of the plantation they were working on better than their owners. For some of them it was the only precious place in the whole universe, though not the happiest one. They were born here, fell in love, grown up, aged and died. As most their lives passed on these fields who if not slaves could depicts the plantation landscapes more truthfully and faithfully. John Michael Vlach explored the structures and spaces that had surrounded these hard-working ones and formed the slaves' environment. All the diaries, ledgers, travel accounts together with photographs and the words of former slaves helped to make the image of the plantation landscape in a way every slave saw it, from the slaves' own point of view. Though the main creators of the plantation landscape were undoubtedly slaveholders, Vlach was faithfully convinced of the slaves’ big influence on the making process. He believed that slaves embellished this landscape and added there a piece of them.
The writer was not going to criticize the wealthy in his book. His idea was to compare two completely opposed worlds despite of their close relationships. He not only provided a useful analysis of the spaces and structures peculiar to the architecture of those times but actually presented a new way of perceiving this mixed culture.
Vlach himself regards the plantation as an “ensemble” or the interconnection of slaveholders and slaves .Their relationship surely defined the sense of space in plantations. Without Big Houses the slave quarters would not seem so miserable one. In such a way they strengthened the contrast and helped to define each other. For example, in order to evoke readers’ firsthand impressions of the slaves’ accommodation conditions and working places the writer depicted in details former slaves touching testimonies drawn from the Federal Writers' Project (Thomas W. Hanchett, 1994). However, it was not only for the sake of readers’ sympathy but for their comprehension of the culture development of those times too.
Vlach agreed with the suggestion that Southern culture must somehow be perceived as the result of black and white interactions. The author concentrated more on the black side of it which allowed readers to go far into race relations, understand its content and how they affect each other and only then do final conclusions.
This book is not the one you will eager to share with. It is the one you will keep for yourself and which will make you ponder over and over again. There are still a lot of undecided questions which the writer left for everyone’s thinking. It’s your choice to choose what side is the best one. Will you be the plantation owner and allows slavery to exist for the rest of your life or it will be you from whom the great changes are going to start.
As the book went on everything began to change. The building changed their structure, the landscapes changed its admirers, and the plantations changed their owners. Some people came and other left. Reading this book you live hundreds of lives at once and visit millions of places not even supposing how far the journey could end.
You became more and more curious as the story finishes one decade and immediately starts the next one. Here excitement arouses anew and makes you rush through the book swallowing greedily page after page. The Civil War brought with it some changes namely in the relationships between slaveholders and slaves. Though the slavery had finally ended black people and white people continued to live with each other and even make some business together. However what remains the most important issue it is the nature.
The plantations and landscapes keep the history of all their owners and slaves and continued to bring spiritual satisfaction for everybody. It doesn’t actually matter what the century is, what the weather is like or who takes care or admires them. They are just mute observers who deserve to be treated appropriately. Landscapes can be altered in drastic, but also in subtle ways. Be careful with any landscape and don’t treat it as if it is frozen in time.
The book had received a lot of positive comments and is placed on the top of the best culture books. South Carolina Historical Magazine, for example, admits that “this book is at once album, introduction, and overview of the complexity and diversity of southern plantation architecture." American Historical Review adds that Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery written by John Michael Vlach is "one of the most user-friendly studies of African-American material culture ever written" (Thomas W. Hanchett, 1994).
Most of people obviously would not pay attention to these numbers or facts when evaluating the book for them. They actually trust moments and feelings. If the book makes you happy or even sad, if you are reading it all day long don’t even observing the time is the right reaction. The Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery by John Michael Vlach I believe is exactly that kind of a book. If you’re looking for an easy-to-read and page-turning book, you had already found the perfect one. It will be hard to put it down and you will be enthralled till the last page.
Conclusion
So, it’s up to you to make this life worth to remember. Subdue new summits, open new planets and live as if it was your last day of life. Books will accompany you in this interesting and unforgettable journey. They are surely the ones who will always be there for you at any time and day. You just need to open the first page and do the first step forward. The rest has already been prepared for you. Don’t be couch potato and learn to broaden your outlook and understand the culture around you.
Works Cited
Project Muse. Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (review) Thomas W. Hanchett., 1994. Web, 25 November. 1994.
