Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

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Summary

Of many slave narratives published before the Civil War, this is one of the few written by a woman. It blends and manipulates several narrative techniques, including those of sentimental novel, of autobiography, and of the classical slave narrative.

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

One of hundreds of slave narratives published just before the Civil War, this account is unique in that it is written by a woman. This offers a different, perhaps more realistic, perspective on slave experience than that presented in the more typical `heroic' male narrative. The work is notable for its blending and manipulation of several narrative techniques, including those of the sentimental novel, of autobiography, and of the classical slave narrative.
"A viable alternative to male save narrativesThe specific problems faced by female slaves are clearly portrayed."--Ray Doyle, West Chester Univ. "My personal favorite...Jacobs confronts the contradictions inherent in the category 'the black woman writer.' By engaging these issues and negotiating a course through them, she anticipates the literary and ideological position of subsequent generations of black women writers."--Jean Fagan Yellin, The Washington Post Book World "A corrective to those who have identified the slave narrative primarily as a male genre....This particular edition, with its introduction by Valerie Smith, sheds new light on the choices its heroine Linda Brent makes."--The Women's Review of Books "A viable alternative to male slave narratives. The specific problems faced by female slaves are clearly portrayed."--Ray Doyle, West Chester University "My personal favorite...Jacobs confronts the contradictions inherent in the category 'the black woman writer.' By engaging these issues and negotiating a course through them, she anticipates the literary and ideological position of subsequent generations of black women writers."--Jean Fagan Yellin, The Washington Post Book World "A corrective to those who have identified the slave narrative primarily as a male genre....This particular edition, with its introduction by Valerie Smith, sheds new light on the choices its heroine Linda Brent makes."--The Women's Review of Books
Harriet Jacobs (1813-97) was a reformer, Civil War and Reconstruction relief worker, and antislavery activist. Born a slave to mulatto parents in North Carolina, she was only fifteen when her master, Dr. Flint, began his pursuit of her. This abuse and the resulting oppression from Flint's wife forced Jacobs to take drastic measures to protect herself, so she encouraged a relationship with Mr. Sands, an unmarried white lawyer for whom she bore two children. When the situation with Flint became intolerable, she left her children and took refuge in a small garret of her grandmother's house, where she lived for seven years. She finally escaped to the North, and her children eventually followed. She managed to support herself while evading numerous attempts by Flint to return her to slavery. At age forty, Jacobs was purchased and then emancipated by an abolitionist who was Jacobs's employer and friend. During the Civil War, Jacobs began a career working among black refugees. In 1863, she and her daughter moved to Alexandria, where they supplied emergency relief, organized primary medical care, and established the Jacobs Free School--black led and black taught--for the refugees. After the war, they sailed to England and successfully raised money for a home for Savannah's black orphans and aged. Then they moved to Washington, DC, where they continued to work among the destitute freed people, and her daughter worked in the newly established colored schools and, later, at Howard University. In 1896, Harriet Jacobs was present at the organizing meetings of the National Association of Colored Women.

Myrlie Evers-Williams is the author of For Us, the Living, depicting the life of Medgar Evers and the Civil Rights struggle in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s, and Watch Me Fly, her autobiography. Chairman emeritus of the NAACP, she is president and founder of the Medgar Evers Institute as well as CEO and president of MEW Associates, Inc.

Dawn Lundy Martin, PhD, is a poet, scholar, and assistant professor in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of the poetry collections A Gathering Matter/A Matter of Gathering and Discipline, coeditor of The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism, and a member of the avant-garde African-American poetics group the Black Took Collective.

SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780195066708
ISBN 10 0195066707
Title Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Author Harriet Jacobs
Series The Schomburg Library Of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Year published 1991-08-29
Number of pages 352
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note Unavailable