"Twelve Years a Slave should be must reading for every young Southerner. Only in accounts such as this can they understand the true nature of the curse which, more than a hundred years later, still hangs like a millstone around the neck of the South, hampering final emancipation for white and black alike." -- Frank G. Slaughter, Florida Historical Quarterly
"A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's 'many thousand gone' who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation. It is also a chilling insight into the 'peculiar institution.' " -- Ernest Dunbar, Saturday Review