African American History: Books

This may be the most important story ever written by a slave woman, capturing as it does the gross indignities as well as the subtler social arrangements of the time. An introduction is invaluable in clarifying many incidents and personalities. Jacobs was fortunate in many respects. Her family was unusually stable, and she had a strong, determined grandmother who, as a freed slave, was to encourage, protect and sustain the author. Surviving everything from a jealous wife to betrayals of all sorts, she managed to do a great many things, any one of which could be considered remarkable given her oppressed status. She resisted the vicious sexual advances of a master, hid out for seven years in her grandmother's attic and eventually escaped to the North. She never ceased plotting the release of her children and though employed as a servant/nanny, managed to write, work for the abolitionist cause and be a source of strength to all. After the Civil War, she returned to the South to help those who were suffering. The author writes with passion and insight into the peculiar institution of slavery. Her writing, modern in several respects, prefigures many of the developments in the later literature of the South.