2.5 stars

Thank you to Brilliance Audio and NetGalley for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I wrote an essay in high school about Nat Turner, and I was interested to get this audiobook and learn more about him from my previous research.

I understand that Nat Turner’s life centered heavily around his religious beliefs and practices, but so much of this book was centered more around the Protestant history in America rather than specifically on Nat Turner himself.

I had a really hard time finishing this book due to feeling disappointed around the information that was covered in a large majority of the book.

CW: war, violence, death, slavery, racism

Being an English person there's a lot of American history that I simply do not know. I know the "big" dates and have an understanding of what led to various aspects of US history and even some of the major players but until I saw (not read) a copy of Nat Turner's Confessions I had not heard of this man at all. Mea culpa.

In Nat Turner: Black Prophet Gregory Downs has completed and augmented/interpreted the work of the late Anthony Kaye.

The book describes Nat's upbringing and that of his wider family, his very early beginnings as, perhaps, a child genius and then prophet following which he leads a revolt within his home town amongst other enslaved people that he hoped would bring about a general revolution.

Sadly this did not happen and the book describes exactly what occurred during the revolt and it's equally horrific aftermath.

It is not an easy read and the hypocrisy of the church going whites is often extremely hard to deal with. However it is clear that Nat Turner should be considered as one of the most influential people of the time along with Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman and John Brown.

I listened to the audio which was beautifully narrated by Leon Nixon who had a measured delivery and did not over dramatise even the most disturbing aspects of the story. A thoroughly enjoyable listen.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Brilliance Audio for the audio advance review copy.
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I had a really hard time getting through this book. It wasn't a bad book, and it had some great information.

But the way it was written and the way the narrator narrated it?? Not great.

It read like a (somewhat boring) history book, and the narrator didn't do anything to make it more exciting or less boring. I also found it a bit... suspect? in places. It seemed like the author put too much of himself into the work. His opinions, his thoughts, his bias, etc.

It didn't always read like a factual account of history.

It's worth reading just to be exposed to the information (because there WAS some info in this book that I'd never heard before). But it's not presented in a very interesting and engaging way.

This audiobook was made available for me to listen to and review by Anthony E. Kaye, Brilliance Audio, and NetGalley.

This has very interesting historical aspects but there are serious problems with the portrayal of Nat in this narrative.

This text offers rich a plethora of historical information on Protestant churches in early colonial America, through the Revolution and into the early part of the 19th Century in which Nat's Rebellion occurs. This includes quite a lot of biblical information, bordering on too much, as well as information about the formation of the American Methodist Church.
The text also included interesting and relevant information about other Slave Uprisings in the Americas and the Caribbean, such as Gabriel Prosser and the Haitian Revolution. Not as successfully handled is the focus on assumptions regarding how enslaved folks felt about and processed the christian god. Missing in this narrative is the very real and documented practice of what are today called 'African Traditional Religions'(ATR) amongst the enslaved, even christians. Black American religious traditions & superstitions are entirely left out of this narrative and that includes meaningful discussion of Hoodoo, Conjure, Voodoo, etc. The idea that these cultural ideas and mythology in no way impacted Nat or that this was not as much a part of his everyday life as christianity is not a reasonable deduction.
For example Frederick Douglas, who was not known to be a believer in or practitioner of ATR, credited High John the Conqueror Root for fighting back against his overseer/enslaver.
It's not unreasonable to believe that if Nat was led by religion, it was likely more than Christianity.

The entire theory set forth in this text rests on the belief that the white interviewer, Gray, who recorded Nat's confessions in jail did so honestly. That's highly unlikely, as in there is to date no recorded incident of this ever happening, even when the white interviewer/biographer was friendly towards the Black person they interviewed. Also it assumes that Nat was candidly honest with Gray and I don't know why any adult with a reasonable understanding of history at this time period would give weight to either of these assumptions.
For an example I offer the debacle regarding Sojourner Truth's famous, 'Ain't I a Woman?' speech. The speech supposedly given by Ms. Truth and recorded by white feminists and abolitionist, Frances Dana Barker Gage, is now understood to be the offensive exaggeration of Ms. Gage. Frederick Douglas began his own paper, The North Star, in part because of the inaccuracies of white abolitionists. This theory is a major reach and the text never even addresses these questions in a frank and real manner.
The narrative attempts to tie Nat to biblical warriors more than other Black leaders of Uprisings during chattel slavery. Unfortunately over the course of the text this framing conjures up 'magical negro' stereotyping which is cringey at best.

The narratives tone toward Nat's Uprising is a touch condescending. There was a reference to Nat's 'bias' towards white people or white enslavers? It's unclear. This is a white supremacist view of Enslaved folks uprisings. Clearly, the biased party are the enslavers, who enslaved Black people. When someone is oppressed, hating your oppressor is both natural and normal. As Malcolm X said, it's not violence, it's common sense. In a very real sense its self defense. Bias would be if West Africans showed up in Europe to steal people and enslave them because they were European. Just wildly offensive to refer to an actual enslaved person as biased against their enslavers. I don't understand how that wasn't removed in editing, it's horribly white supremacist.
The modern understanding of and use of the word bias and why being biased is wrong is predicated on the idea that the biased person has no reason to hold bias, they are unharmed by the party they are biased against. For a victim to harm their enslaver isn't bias or violence, it's both common sense and self defense. The author is by default arguing that slave owners are more entitled to life than the Black people they enslaved. This racist thinking further implies that slavery is ok for Black people and for Black folks to fight against it and by default the white people employing that violence, using the same violent tools used against them is somehow immoral or biased on the part of the Black folks rebelling. This is just deeply offensive and unacceptable in a modern text about slavery.

The text directly states that Nat wasn't lead by 'modern' 'liberal' values like freedom and equality. This is just factually untrue. Even during the Antebellum period, enslaved folks repeatedly risked everything for freedom. Equality was a founding principle of both the French & Haitian revolutions. This is demonstrably not factual and reeks of a white historian will study this rationally and let the emotionally compromised Black folks know how they should feel about and view a member of their own community. This is just a horribly dated and white supremacist view of history.

In the final chapter the narration again seems to imply that Nat wasn't entitled to meet violence with violence in order to gain freedom. The text states that the slave owners that died might have changed their mind. This pretends as if slavery is a victimless, nonviolent crime. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those that died, died for the crimes they had already committed. Slavery itself was a crime characterized by unspeakable violence to an extent that can still be read on the bones of the enslaved today. The text doesn't really address the horror that made up everyday slavery: the beatings, the starvation, the lack of basic necessities like clothing and shelter, the family separation, the sexual violence participated in by every stratus of white society from the poor to the wealthy white men, women, children and everyone in between raped Black enslaved men, women, children and everyone in between. Black enslaved infants were used as bait for gators. Black enslaved peoples could have their anuses packed with gun powder because white men were bored. White men raped in packs in the slave quarters and they raped men particularly as part of the practice known as 'slave breaking'. Children were hung in closets for hours by their thumbs because they were the product of rape and it upset their white enslavers wives. The text overly focuses on the violence of the Uprising and refuses to equally focus on the violence that was everyday part of the system of chattel slavery in the Americas. How were Black folks supposed to be respond to that level of violence peacefully in a way that honored that their torturers might at some point have a change of heart? This is just an offensive and white supremacist view that values white life during what was a genocide of Black lives. It's a deeply offensive and tone deaf viewpoint.
This is disrespectful in the extreme because Black folks employed every avenue open to them to get away from slavery. They used every tool in their arsenal from lawsuits in court to outright running away. White people as a group employed vast amounts of violence including death to oppress Black folks. They deserved to be met with the force they employed and every white person that died in every single slavery uprising deserved it and more. The genocided don't owe their genociders anything. To suggest otherwise is deeply offensive and a core function of white supremacy.
The violence of white enslavers started at birth. Most white enslavers babies were nursed by Black enslaved women. Usually those women's own infants died of starvation while their milk was often exclusively reserved for the white enslaver infant. There were no innocent white folks who were enslavers, independent of their age. Also this is for the surviving descendants of the victims of this violence to decide, not the descendants of the enslavers of those victims to characterize and own. How dare this author even fix his fingers to type such an offensive, racist and white supremacist nonsense.

This was mostly disappointing and offensive. I'd say roughly 25% of the history contained in this text adds meaningfully to the history of Black folks enslaved in what is now the USA. Less than 5% of that useful information pertained to Nat Turner. This texts real value lies in the study of the rise of Protestant religions in North America. It's weakness is it's entire narrative on Nat Turner.

The narrator of this audiobook is Leon Nixon. Leon does a wonderful job keeping the text moving. This is somewhat weighty and heavy subject. The author's tone was lively and respectful.

Thank you to Anthony E. Kaye, Brilliance Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. All opinions and viewpoints expressed in this review are my own.

I went into this knowing about Nat Turner and his rebellion, but as I soon found out, I didn't actually *KNOW* about this man, his rebellion, and all the events leading up to it.

This book does a deep-dive into that time frame [the 1830's] and all that it encompassed, especially from the unique perspective of religion [I grew up in church - Baptist - and I learned quote a bit from this book that I had never heard before in church {go figure} and all the Biblical knowledge that is within its pages], how religion affected [and often encouraged] slavery, and how religious fervor factored into the rebellion itself. The dive into the Methodist church and its fall into the evils of slavery was so disheartening to read and helped explain why Nat finally turned his back on that and chose rebellion [from what his prophecies were telling him]. Reading this book was a completely eye-opening experience.

Expertly written and meticulously researched [both by the late Anthony Kaye and then by the man Mr, Kaye left his work to, Gregory P. Downs], this is a ust read for anyone who loves history, has heard this story and thought they *knew* it all, is interested in the time leading up to the Civil War, and all those who are continually doing the work to learn the truth and aren't afraid to do a deep-dive read to seek more of the truth.

I really love Leon Nixon as a narrator and was thrilled to see that he was narrating this book, and boy does he do an amazing job. He reads this often difficult book with ease and the right inflections and tone and I was sucked immediately into the story as soon as I turned this audiobook on. I highly recommend this audiobook - you will not be sorry.

Thank you to NetGalley, the late Anthony E. Kaye and his family, Gregory P. Downs, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and Brilliance Audio for providing the eBook and audiobook ARC's in exchange for an honest review.