Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Jacobs, Harriet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140437959 ISBN 13: 9780140437959

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2000

Synopsis

A haunting, evocative recounting of her life as a slave in North Carolina, and her final escape and emancipation, Jacobs' narrative, written between 1853 and 1858 and published in 1861, is one of the most important books ever written documenting the traumas and horrors of slavery in the antebellum South.

About this title

Review:

[The book] is a major work in the canon of writing by Afro-American women...Jacobs's book--reaching across the gulf separating black women from white, slave from free, poor from rich, "bad" women from "good"--represents an early attempt to establish an American sisterhood. --Wayne Lionel Aponte "The Nation "

From the Back Cover:

The true story of an individual's struggle for self-identity, self-preservation, and freedom, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North.
Written and published in 1861 after Jacobs' harrowing escape from a vile and predatory master, the memoir delivers a powerful and unflinching portrayal of the abuses and hypocrisy of the master-slave relationship. Jacobs writes frankly of the horrors she suffered as a slave, her eventual escape after several unsuccessful attempts, and her seven years in self-imposed exile, hiding in a coffin-like "garret" attached to her grandmother's porch.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0140437959
• ISBN 13: 9780140437959
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Painter Nell Irvin