Book description
Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains the most-read woman's slave narrative of all time. Jean Fagan Yellin recounts the experiences that shaped Incidents-the years Jacobs spent hiding in her grandmother's attic from her sexually abusive master-as well as illuminating the wider world into which Jacobs…
Why read it?
1 author picked Harriet Jacobs as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Like the thousands of other readers who’d been haunted by Harriet Jacobs’ 1861 autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl when it resurfaced during the civil rights era, I had questions. Were the horrific events of her enslavement and escape really true? Did Jacobs herself write the book, or was it the work of the white abolitionist she identified as her “editor”? In this biography, we’re given answers based on the documentary evidence Jean Yellin unearthed over 30 years of research. We learn that Jacobs’ stranger-than-fiction slavery narrative is factually accurate and that it was the work of…
From Katie's list on Black women disruptors.
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