Why read The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict?

Book cover of The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict

Book description

The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America.

“[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent,…

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Indentured servants

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Anna Mae Duane

Author

This book surprised the scholarly community when the manuscript was first obtained at an estate sale. A handwritten memoir that had lain largely unread for over a hundred and fifty years, this narrative depicts the sort of child we rarely see in the history books. A defiant apprentice, a runaway truant, a bartender, a prisoner, and author, Austin Reed offers us one plot twist after another. As a free person of color in the nineteenth century, Reed offers a compelling view into the life of one man who was determined to maintain his own sense of self, even in the…

From Anna's list on The best books about 19th-century Black New Yorkers you wish you had learned about in history class.