The unflinching nineteenth-century autobiography that broke the
silence on the psychosexual exploitation of Black women--with an
introduction by Tiya Miles, author of All That She Carried and
National Book Award finalist
"[A] crowning achievement . . . [Jacobs] remodeled the forms of
the black slave narrative and the white female sentimental novel to
create a new literary form--a narrative at once black and female."
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The New York Times
In clear and unshrinking prose, Harriet Jacobs--writing under the
pseudonym Linda Brent--relates the story of her girlhood and adolescence
as a slave in North Carolina and her eventual escape: a bildungsroman
set in the complex terrain of a chauvinist, white supremacist society.
Resolutely addressing women readers, rather than men, Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl seeks to make white women understand how the
threat of sexual violence shapes the lives of enslaved Black women and
children. Equal parts brave and searing, Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl is a triumph of American literature.
The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on
their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of
resistance.
AMERICAN INDIAN STORIES - THE AWAKENING - THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY -
THE HEADS OF CERBERUS - LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET - LOVE, ANGER, MADNESS -
PASSING - THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER - THERE IS CONFUSION - THE
TRANSFORMATION OF PHILIP JETTAN - VILLETTE
