Product Description

Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is one of the most compelling accounts of slavery and one of the most unique of the one hundred or so slave narratives -- mostly written by men -- published before the Civil War.

The child and grandchild of slaves -- and therefore forbidden by law to read and write -- Harriet Jacobs was defiant in her efforts to gain freedom and to document her experience in bondage. She suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her master at the age of eleven. In 1842, she fled North and joined a circle of abolitionists that worked for Frederick Douglass's newspaper. In 1863, she and her daughter moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where they organized medical care for Civil War victims and established the Jacobs Free School.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1407941 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-27
• Released on: 2003-05-27
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Library Journal
Published in 1861, this was one of the first personal narratives by a slave and one of the few written by a woman. Jacobs (1813-97) was a slave in North Carolina and suffered terribly, along with her family, at the hands of a ruthless owner. She made several failed attempts to escape before successfully making her way North, though it took years of hiding and slow progress. Eventually, she was reunited with her children. For all biography and history collections.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. One of the major autobiographies of the African American tradition.

Louise Meriwether Harriet Jacobs in her narrative reveals how she refused to be victimized within her own mind, but rather chose to act instead from a steadfast conviction of her own worth....Hers is an example worth emulating even in these modern times.

Ingram
One of the few existing slave narratives authored by a woman, this work offers a unique perspective on the complex plight of a black woman as slave and writer. In a story that emerges the conventions of the slave narrative with the techniques of the sentimental novel, Jacobs describes her ultimately successful struggle for freedom. 2 cassettes