Uncovers the strategies early African American writers used both to create an African American identity and to make their visions and stories accessible to white readers. Alongside these pioneers of black American literature Zafar juxtaposes some familiar European American Writers. Beginning with Phillis Wheatley's implicit engagements with other colonial era poets, and ending with the ultimately tragic success story of Elizabeth Keckley, ex-slave, seamstress, and confidante to a First Lady, black authors employed virtually every dominant literary genre while cannily manipulating the nature...

Harriet Jacobs, today perhaps the single most read and studied Black American woman of the nineteenth century, has not until recently enjoyed sustained, scholarly analysis. This anthology presents a far-ranging compendium of literary and cultural scholarship that will take its place as the primary resource for students and teachers of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The contributors include both established Jacobs scholars and emerging critics; the essays take on a variety of subjects in Incidents, treating representation, gender, resistance, and spirituality from differing angles.

Uncovers the strategies early African American writers used both to create an African American identity and to make their visions and stories accessible to white readers. Alongside these pioneers of black American literature Zafar juxtaposes some familiar European American Writers. Beginning with Phillis Wheatley's implicit engagements with other colonial era poets, and ending with the ultimately tragic success story of Elizabeth Keckley, ex-slave, seamstress, and confidante to a First Lady, black authors employed virtually every dominant literary genre while cannily manipulating the nature...