Both Beloved by Toni Morrison and 12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen, are neo-slave narratives. Neo-slave narratives focus on black humanity and the interiority of black lives. These two neo-slave narratives explore the immediate after effects of slavery and how it presently impacts the people that were involved. Bernard Bell first identified neo-slave narratives as “residually oral, modern narratives of escape from bondage to freedom” (Li). Although Beloved goes into more depth on how slavery made an impact on the present lives of its characters, 12 Years a Slave also shows its audience how slavery had such an extreme impact on the lives of those involved, such as Solomon Northup and his family. Like Beloved, 12 Years a Slave shows…show more content… Although this is a very different and severe attempt of “mothering” from Sethe, it still addresses the extreme sense of motherhood that Sethe is attempting to portray here. The act of murdering her children is a sensitive, touchy, and controversial subject, but one could argue that although slavery did not directly separate Sethe from her children, it does indirectly separate her from Beloved because of her murder. Sethe believed that the only option for her children was death, rather than enduring slavery. This is also an example of how Beloved is a neo-slave narrative because of its exploration of the immediate effects that slavery had on Sethe and her children and the issue of gender that is addressed throughout the…show more content… This effect of slavery is seen in 12 Years a Slave when Solomon Northup is taken from his family for 12 years. There would definitely be a feeling of emptiness and longing, a loss of masculine identity, for Northup because he just all of a sudden loses his family to slavery. Black men were paired with their female partners during slavery not to be husbands and family men or to provide a family home, but to be treated like animals and have their identity taken away from them by only reproducing for the slave-owners. We see this in 12 Years a Slave when Eliza is standing with her children to be sold to a slave master. The seller remarks on the children saying that the boy will grow up to be big and strong and be a hard worker in the fields. These people definitely lose a part of their identity in the slave trade because they are viewed like animal or objects; possessions, not