Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the first full-length narrative written by a former woman slave in America.KLIATTThis is a new and enlarged edition of one of the classic female slave narratives. It includes not only the account, as first written by Harriet A. Jacobs in 1861, but a newly discovered autobiographical sketch, entitled "A True Tale of Slavery," by her brother, John S. Jacobs. He, like his sister Harriet, escaped from slavery; John was active as an abolitionist. Harriet A. Jacobs was born into slavery in North Carolina in 1813. She was a house servant, and constantly fearful of sexual predation from her master. She bore two children by another man whom her master despised. Her plight was made worse by her master's wife, whose jealousy seemed to know no bounds. Finally she ran off, and hid for seven years in a narrow part of an attic. When the opportunity arose, she was able to flee north on a steamboat, with the cooperation of its sympathetic captain. This narrative is considered one of the great works of African American women's literature. It is a book that one cannot put down, a book that is immensely informative and inspiring, a book, which, like other classic slave narratives (e.g., John Brown's Slave Life in Georgia), demonstrates the resistance of slaves to every aspect of their enslavement. White readers may cringe, for they will see the criminality behind what is called Southern "heritage," and will be stirred by a recognition of the dignity that slaves maintained by active resistance and by refusing to be brainwashed. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000 (orig. 1987), Harvard Univ. Press, 336p, notes, index, 24cm, 99-088151, $16.95. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: John Rosser; Professor, Boston College,Chestnut Hill, MA, July 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 4)
Childhood8The New Master and Mistress11The Slaves' New Year's Day16The Slave who dared to feel like a Man17The Trials of Girlhood26The Jealous Mistress28The Lover33What Slaves are taught to think of the North39Sketches of neighboring Slaveholders41A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl's Life47The new Tie to Life51Fear of Insurrection55The Church and Slavery59Another Link to Life65Continued Persecutions68Scenes at the Plantation73The Flight80Months of Peril83The Children Sold88New Perils92The Loophole of Retreat95Christmas Festivities98Still in Prison100The Candidate for Congress103Competition in Cunning105Important Era in my Brother's Life109New Destination for the Children113Aunt Nancy118Preparations for Escape122Northward Bound129Incidents in Philadelphia132The Meeting of Mother and Daughter135A Home Found138The Old Enemy again140Prejudice Against Color143The Hairbreadth Escape145A Visit to England149Renewed Invitations to go South151The Confession153The Fugitive Slave Law154Free at Last159Appendix165
