Six Women S Slave Narratives

Six narrations by slave women about their lives during and after their years in bondage, honoring the nobility and strength of African-American women of that era.

Includes the personal narratives of Mary Prince, "Old Elizabeth," Mattie J. Jackson, Lucy A. Delaney, Kate Drumgoold, and Annie L. Burton

Authentic recollections of hardship, frustration, and hope — from Mary Prince's groundbreaking account of a lone woman's tribulations and courage, to Annie Burton's eulogy of black motherhood.

Given the rise of new interdisciplinary and methodological approaches to African American and Black Atlantic studies, The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative will offer a fresh, wide-ranging assessment of this major American literary genre. The volume will begin with articles that consider the fundamental concerns of gender, sexuality, community, and the Christian ethos of suffering and redemption that are central to any understanding of slave narratives. The chapters that follow will interrogate the various agendas behind the production of both pre- and post-Emancipation narratives and take up the various interpretive problems they pose. Strategic omissions and veiled gestures were often necessary in these life accounts as they revealed disturbing, too-painful truths, far beyond what white audiences were prepared to hear. While touching upon the familiar canonical autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, the Handbook will pay more attention to the under-studied narratives of Josiah Henson, Sojourner Truth, William Grimes, Henry Box Brown, and other often-overlooked accounts. In addition to the literary autobiographies of bondage, the volume will anatomize the powerful WPA recordings of interviews with former slaves during the late 1930s. With essays on the genre's imaginative afterlife, its final essays will chart the emergence and development of neoslave narratives, most notably in Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, Toni Morrisons's Beloved and Octavia Butler's provocative science fiction novel, Kindred. In short, the Handbook will provide a long-overdue assessment of the state of the genre and the vital scholarship that continues to grow around it, work that is offering some of the most provocative analysis emerging out of the literary studies discipline as a whole.

In these classic memoirs, three indomitable women share their stories of surviving slavery and fighting for the freedom of others. Behind the Scenes: Born into slavery, Elizabeth Keckley used her talents as a seamstress to buy her freedom and eventually became Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker. Keckley and the first lady formed a close friendship as they endured tragedies together, including the deaths of their sons and the assassination of President Lincoln. Keckley’s autobiography is an intimate portrait of life inside the White House as well as the stirring story of one woman’s fight to rise above the horrors of enslavement. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: From the age of six, Linda Brent grows up serving a gentle mistress who teaches her to read and write. But when she tragically dies, Linda’s lecherous new master makes her life a living hell. Unable to join her two young children in their escape to the North, Linda hides in the attic above her grandmother’s house. For seven years, she waits for the opportunity to reunite with her son and daughter in the land of freedom. But when the chance finally comes, Linda discovers she has yet more pain to endure. Based on the true story of Harriet Jacobs’s escape from the South, this is one of American literature’s most powerful indictments of the evils of slavery. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: After escaping enslavement, Sojourner Truth sued for her son’s release—the first time in American history that a black woman brought a white man to court and won. From then on, she made it her life’s mission to free all those who were considered less than equal. A major force in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements, Truth inspired generations with her legendary “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. She also personally met with President Lincoln in 1864. Her stirring memoir is a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

The ten works collected in this volume demonstrate how a diverse group of writers challenged the conscience of a nation and laid the foundations of the African American literary tradition by expressing their in anger, pain, sorrow, and courage. Included in the volume: Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw; Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; The Confessions of Nat Turner; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Narrative of William W. Brown; Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb; Narrative of Sojouner Truth; Ellen and William Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Narrative of the Life of J. D.Green.

Slave Narrative Six Pack 4 is a mixed bag of narratives, biographies and eye-witness accounts from ex-slaves and abolitionists: The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave by Mary Prince. The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave by William Wells Brown. White Slavery in the Barbary States by Charles Sumner. The Freedmen's Book by Lydia Maria Child. Lucretia Mott by William Still. Lynch Law by Ida B. Wells Barnett.

The slave narrative has become a crucial genre within African American literary studies and an invaluable record of the experience and history of slavery in the United States. This Companion examines the slave narrative's relation to British and American abolitionism, Anglo-American literary traditions such as autobiography and sentimental literature, and the larger African American literary tradition. Special attention is paid to leading exponents of the genre such as Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, as well as many other, less well known examples. Further essays explore the rediscovery of the slave narrative and its subsequent critical reception, as well as the uses to which the genre is put by modern authors such as Toni Morrison. With its chronology and guide to further reading, the Companion provides both an easy entry point for students new to the subject and comprehensive coverage and original insights for scholars in the field.