(Publisher's Note: The author failed to fold my laundry in the proper
manner, so I am letting the cat out of the bag-these are not actual
biographies. They are closer to maps of the author's ego than they are
texts about the namesakes adorning their covers. So, if you want to read
about Freud or Douglass or Hitler I suggest you do so elsewhere.)
Frederick Douglass stands as one of American history's most
extraordinary figures, overcoming the evils of slavery and racial
construction by force of will and grit. As a fervent abolitionist,
gifted orator, and sagacious editor and author, he became one of the
most outspoken and influential social reformers of his time. During his
life, he published three autobiographies chronicling his struggle from
childhood to adulthood, from slave to free man, from ignorance to
power-knowledge. And yet the full narrative of the life of Frederick
Douglass, contrary to popular belief, has been incomplete ... until now.
Recently recovered on an archeological dig in Ireland, where Douglass
lectured extensively in the 1840s, this heretofore "lost" autobiography
marks the fourth and final work in the library of his selfhood. Tying
together loose ends in the previous three autobiographies while exposing
remarkable, often disturbing secrets about his private life, Douglass
portrays himself not only as a man of words and character but as a kind
of anachronistic hipster and proto-beatnik. There is a reason this
volume never saw publication during his lifetime. A reason-and a method.
