Editor: L. Maria Child. Commentary by Jean Fagan Yellin and Margaret Fuller. Includes bibliographical references.
Contents:
Preface by the author -- Introduction by the editor -- Childhood -- The new master and mistress -- The slaves' New Year's Day -- The slave who dared to feel like a man -- The trials of girlhood -- The jealous mistress -- The lover -- What slaves are taught to think of the North -- Sketches of neighboring slaveholders -- A perilous passage in the slave girl's life -- The new tie to life -- Fear of insurrection -- The church and slavery -- Another link to life -- Continued persecutions -- Scenes at the plantation -- The flight -- Months of peril -- The children sold -- New perils -- The loophole of retreat -- Christmas festivities -- Still in prison -- The candidate for Congress -- Competition in cunning -- Important era in my brother's life -- New destination for the children -- Aunt Nancy -- Preparations for escape -- Northward bound -- Incidents in Philadelphia -- The meeting of mother and daughter -- A home found -- The old enemy again -- Prejudice against color -- The hairbreadth escape -- A visit to England -- Renewed invitations to go South -- The confession -- The Fugitive Slave Law -- Free at last.
Summary:
"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 sexist, white supremacist society. Resolutely addressing women readers rather than men, Incidents in the life of a slave girl seeks to make the reader understand how the threat of sexual violence shapes the lives of enslaved Black women and children. Equally brave and searing, Incidents in the life of a slave girl is a triumph of American literature, and the unflinching narrative that broke the silence on the psychosexual exploitation of Black women"--Back cover.
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