articles+ search results

SLAVE narratives, SENTIMENTALISM in literature, AFRICAN American women authors, AFRICAN American history to 1863, AFRICAN Americans, RACISM -- United States -- History, and HISTORIOGRAPHY

The article discusses the book "Our Nig," published in 1859 and considered the first novel by an African American author, Harriet Wilson. Although a work of autobiographical fiction by an ostensibly free black woman in the antebellum northern United States, the book is seen as falling into two apparently contradictory genres: the slave narrative and the sentimental novel. Wilson's portrayal of the de-facto slavery of indentured servitude and the racist attitudes of American whites, even northern abolitionists, is discussed in historical context.