Hamilton addresses many kinds of human cruelty in Anthony Burns.

Slavery involves the separation of parents and children, denial of education, profound physical abuse, and obvious emotional abuse. For female slaves, the threat of being "breeder women" is added to the other forms of cruelty. Breeder women are forced to have one child after another; often these children are bred for sale, and there is little or no chance that the family will be reunited. Moreover, a jealous slave owner's wife such as Missy (herself relatively powerless) can make her husband's unwilling mistress suffer terribly. Slave women are subject to one of the most profound degradations possible; as Mamaw so powerfully puts it, "My own me don't belong to me nohow...Say who come to my bed...Say who sleep-a-me where. That why that Missy hate me and mine so."

While Hamilton outlines the perils of...