The novel covered so much that high school history books never got into why America never fully recovered from slavery and why they exist still systems of oppression. After reading this novel, I understand why African Americans are still racially profiled and face prejudice that is not comparable to any race living in America. The novel left a mixture of frustration and anger because it is difficult to understand how heartless people can be. This book also increased my interests in politics and increased my interest in caring about what will affect my generation around the world. Even today, inmates in Texas prisons are forced to work without compensation because slavery is only illegal for inmates. Blackmon successfully brought out the book's audience by sharing what the book will be like in the introduction. It was an odd method as most would have expected this novel to be a narrative, but yet the topic of post-Civil War slavery has never been discussed before. The false façade of America as the land of the free and failure to confront its mistakes is what leads the American people to question their integrity