workin' like a slave

I'm taking a course in French Caribbean literature this semester. It's pretty terrible, although I'm not going to air my grievances at the moment.

For the past three weeks, we have talked about nothing but the horrors of slavery and how they were depicted in the first book for the course; different types of violence, oppression, and resistance were addressed and we talked about some pretty gruesome things, like how the level of infanticide was high because mothers wouldn't want to put their children through a lifetime of slavery.

As we were leaving this afternoon, my friend and I got caught up in a conversation with a guy in the class from Jamaica about employment.

"I'm saving up to spend the summer in Jamaica," he said, "So I'm going to have to work like a slave for the next couple of months to save up."

Some things are just better left unsaid.