Slave Narratives

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Slave Narratives

1.

Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives
by Paul D. Escott. 221 pgs.

Book

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Title Page

Contents

Tables

Preface

Introduction: The Narratives as a Source

1: Two Peoples and Two Worlds

2: Conditions of Life: The Slaves' Experiences on the Plantation

3: Improving the Conditions of Life: Forms of Slave Resistance

4: Bases of a Black Culture

5: Seeing How the Land Lay in Freedom

6: Starting Uphill, Den Going Back

7: Life Patterns of the Freedom Generation

Afterword

Appendix A: Methods of Recording and Coding Information

Appendix B: Race of Interviewers

Appendix C: Additional Tables

Appendix D: New Narratives

Notes

Bibliography

Index
2.

I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives
by Yuval Taylor. 770 pgs.

Book

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This volume includes astonishing tales of heroic slaves. One, born free, was kidnapped and enslaved for twelve years; one was experimented upon by a doctor to see how deep his black skin went; one disguised herself as a male slave-owner; one hid herself from a lustful master in a crawlspace for seven years; one delighted in playing cruel practical jokes; one went whaling to avoid being recaptured; and one led an armed posse to battle would be kidnappers.

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The Library of Black America

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw

Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself

The Preface to the Reader

Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa)

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself

To the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,14 and the Commons of the Parliament of Great Britain

List of Subscribers.15

Contents of Volume I

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African

Contents of Volume II

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

William Grimes

Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave. Written by Himself

To the Public

Life of William Grimes

Nat Turner

The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va.

To the Public

Charles Ball

Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, ,: A Black Man

Preface

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter II

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Moses Roper

A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery;

Preface

Introduction

Frederick Douglass

Preface

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter II

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Appendix

Lewis and Milton Clarke

Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke, Sons of a Soldier of the Revolution, during a Captivity of More Than Twenty Years among the Slaveholders of Kentucky, One of the So Called Christian States of North America. Dictated by Themselves

Preface

Narrative of Milton Clarke

Preface

Appendix

Order of Exercises for a Slaveholders' Meeting

William Wells Brown

Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave

Preface

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter II

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Josiah Henson

The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself

Life of Josiah Henson

Bibliography
3.

African American Slave Narratives: An Anthology, Vol. I
by Sterling Lecater Bland Jr. 293 pgs.

Book

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African American slave narratives of the 19th century recorded the atrocities of the antebellum South and provided a solid foundation for the African American literary tradition. By presenting 16 such narratives in their entirety, this reference conveniently documents this historically significant literary genre. Unlike other anthologies, which often contain excerpts from readily available narratives, this work offers complete versions of largely unavailable texts. To add to the value of this reference for the researcher and general reader alike, each narrative is accompanied by a preface, explanatory notes, and suggestions for further reading. The work begins with an introductory essay that fully contextualizes the slave narrative genre and concludes with a general bibliography.

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Contents

1: NAT TURNER

2: MOSES ROPER

3: LUNSFORD LANE

4: LEWIS CLARKE AND MILTON CLARKE

12: JOHN THOMPSON

8: HENRY "BOX" BROWN

15: WILLIAM AND ELLEN CRAFT

13: AUSTIN STEWARD

6: WILLIAM WELLS BROWN

11: WILLIAM GREEN

7: HENRY WALTON BIBB

5: WILLIAM HAYDEN

9: JOSIAH HENSON

10: JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON

14: REVEREND NOAH DAVIS

16: JAMES MARS
4.

African American Slave Narratives: An Anthology, Vol. II
by Sterling Lecater Bland Jr. 321 pgs.

Book

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African American slave narratives of the 19th century recorded the atrocities of the antebellum South and provided a solid foundation for the African American literary tradition. By presenting 16 such narratives in their entirety, this reference conveniently documents this historically significant literary genre. Unlike other anthologies, which often contain excerpts from readily available narratives, this work offers complete versions of largely unavailable texts. To add to the value of this reference for the researcher and general reader alike, each narrative is accompanied by a preface, explanatory notes, and suggestions for further reading. The work begins with an introductory essay that fully contextualizes the slave narrative genre and concludes with a general bibliography.

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Contents

Further Reading
5.

African American Slave Narratives: An Anthology, Vol. III
by Sterling Lecater Bland Jr. 389 pgs.

Book

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African American slave narratives of the 19th century recorded the atrocities of the antebellum South and provided a solid foundation for the African American literary tradition. By presenting 16 such narratives in their entirety, this reference conveniently documents this historically significant literary genre. Unlike other anthologies, which often contain excerpts from readily available narratives, this work offers complete versions of largely unavailable texts. To add to the value of this reference for the researcher and general reader alike, each narrative is accompanied by a preface, explanatory notes, and suggestions for further reading. The work begins with an introductory essay that fully contextualizes the slave narrative genre and concludes with a general bibliography.

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Contents

12: JOHN THOMPSON

13: AUSTIN STEWARD

14: REVEREND NOAH DAVIS

15: WILLIAM AND ELLEN CRAFT

Editorial Notes to Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom

16: JAMES MARS

Bibliography

Index

About the Editor
6.

Rethinking the Slave Narrative: Slave Marriage and the Narratives of Henry Bibb and William and Ellen Craft
by Charles J. Heglar. 171 pgs.

Book

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The African American slave narrative is popularly viewed as the story of a lone male's flight from slavery to freedom, best exemplified by the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845). But in stressing Douglass's narrative as a model for the genre, scholars have ignored the formal and thematic importance of marriage and family in the slave narrative. This book examines the central role of marriage in The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave (1849) and Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (1860). In doing so, the volume points to the influence of those narratives on the later fiction of Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Martin Delany, and invites a reexamination of current assumptions about slave narratives.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

1: Introduction

2: The Slave Narrative Genre

Notes

3: The Narrative of Recursion: Slave Marriage and Henry Bibb

4: The Narrative of Collaboration: Slave Marriage and William and Ellen Craft

5: Antebellum African American Fiction

6: Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

About the Author
7.

Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772-1815
by Henry Louis Gates Jr., William L. Andrews. 446 pgs.

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The complete texts of the most important & absorbing slave narratives in the African-American literary tradition.

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

Editor's Note

Introduction: the Talking Book

I: A Narrative of The Most Remarkable Particulars In the Life Of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw An African Prince, As Related by Himself

The Preface to the Reader

2: Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful Dealings With John Marrant, A Black

Preface

4: The Interesting Narrative Of the Life Of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself

Contents

5: The Life, History, And Unparalleled Sufferings Of John Jea, The African Preacher, Compiled and Written by Himself
8.

Voices of the Fugitives: Runaway Slave Stories and Their Fictions of Self-Creation
by Sterling Bland Lecater Jr. 184 pgs.

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African American fugitive slave narratives are receiving growing amounts of attention for their literary and historical value. This book examines the techniques the slave narrative writers used to authorize and rhetorically create themselves in their writings. By examining such issues as voice and identity formation, the volume demonstrates how identity may be seen as a cultural fabrication. Former slave narrators used a series of masking and doubling techniques to address their experiences as African Americans. This book crosses the boundaries between literary criticism and historical study by examining the tensions between generic conventions and the impulses that created and reinforced them.

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CONTENTS

PREFACE Reading in the Breach

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Part I: The Call . . .: The Literary and Cultural Landscape

INTRODUCTION Let the World Dream Otherwise: The Literary Masks of Fugitive Slave Stories

1: Dismantling the Master's House: The Cultural Context

Part II: And the Response: Speaking for Themselves

2: Religion, Revolt, and the Commodification of Language: The Limitations of Voice" In the Confessions of Nat Turner"

3: Behold a Man Transformed": Sacred Language and the Secular Self In Frederick Douglass's Narrative"

4: Authority, Power, and Determination of the Will: The Dilemma of Rhetorical Ownership In Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl

5: Ambiguity, Passing, and the Politics of Color: The Reconstruction of Race in William and Ellen Craft's Running a Thousand Miles For Freedom

EPILOGUE Of Being and Nothingness: Caliban's Reprise

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

About the Author
9.

Black Women Writers and the American Neo-Slave Narrative: Femininity Unfettered
by Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu. 186 pgs.

Book

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The neo-slave narrative is an important development in American literary history and has serious revisionist intentions at its foundation. This book examines how contemporary African American women writers have shaped the genre. These authors have written neo-slave narratives to reinscribe history from the perspective of the African American woman, most specifically the nineteenth century enslaved mother. The writers considered in this study--Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, J. California Cooper, Gayl Jones, and Octavia Butler--explore American slavery through the lens of gender, both to interrogate the myth that enslaved women, denied the privilege of having a gender identity by the institution of slavery, were in fact genderless, and to celebrate the acts of resistance which enabled enslaved women to mother in the fullest sense of the term.

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Title Page

Copyright Acknowledgments

Contents

Preface

1: Slavery, Freedom, Jubilee: Reclaiming, Repositioning, and Revaluing the American Slave Narrative

Notes

2: Cause I Can: Race, Gender, and Power in Sherley Anne Williams' Dessa Rose

Notes

3: The Politics of Gender in Toni Morrison's Beloved: If "A Man Ain't Nothing but a Man," Then What Is a Woman?

4: Myth-Making, Myth-Breaking: "Such a Thing . . . to Marvel Over" in J. California Cooper's Family

Notes

5: So Many Relatives: Twentieth-Century Women Meet Their Pasts

Notes

6: Children of Those Who Chose to Survive: Neo-Slave Narrative Authors Create Women of Resistance

Notes

References

Index

About the Author
10.

Neo-Slave Narratives: Studies in the Social Logic of a Literary Form
by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy. 288 pgs.

Book

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NeoSlave Narratives is a study in the political, social, and cultural content of a given literary form--the novel of slavery cast as a first-person slave narrative. After discerning the social and historical factors surrounding the first appearance of that literary form in the 1960s, NeoSlave Narratives explores the complex relationship between nostalgia and critique, while asking how African American intellectuals at different points between 1976 and 1990 remember and use the site of slavery to represent the crucial cultural debates that arose during the sixties.

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Race and American Culture

Acknowledgments

Contents

1: Master Texts and Slave Narratives

2: Toward 1968

3: The Discourse Mobilized

4: The Possession of Resistance

5: Meditations on Story

6: Conserving the Order

7: Revising the Form, Misserving the Order

8: Conclusion

Notes

Index
11.

The Problem of Embodiment in Early African American Narrative
by Katherine Fishburn. 202 pgs.

Book

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Offering a revolutionary way of reading 19th-century slave narratives, Fishburn seeks to recover the philosophical foundations of African American literature. Underlying slave narrative is an expression of the problem of physical embodiment; that is, the dualistic thinking of the mind-body division. Fishburn's work uncovers the tension between needing to acknowledge the fact of human embodiment and wishing to overcome its consequences in a racist society. One of the strongest points made by this pioneering work is the controversial claim that these slave narratives offer one of the most telling, if largely overlooked, pre-Heideggerian critiques of liberal humanism ever attempted in the West.

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Recent Titles in Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies

Contents

Preface: What the Body Knows

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Seeing Otherwise

NOTES

1: Thinking Through the Body

2: The Body's Recollection of Being

NOTES

3: Disappearing Acts

NOTES

Epilogue: Justice in the Flesh

NOTES

Bibliography

Index

About the Author
12.

Romanticism and Slave Narratives: Transatlantic Testimonies
by Helen Thomas. 332 pgs.

Book

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Helen Thomas' study opens a new avenue for Romanticism by exploring connections with literature produced by slaves, slave owners, abolitionists and radical dissenters between 1770 and 1830. In the first major attempt to relate canonical Romantic texts to writings of the African diaspora, she investigates English literary Romanticism in the context of a transatlantic culture, and African culture in the context of eighteenth-century Britain. In so doing, she reveals an intertextual dialogue between two diverse yet equally rich cultural spheres, and their corresponding systems of thought, epistemology and expression.

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Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I

Chapter One: The English Slave Trade and Abolitionism

Chapter Two: Radical Dissent and Spiritual Autobiography Joanna Southcott, John Newton and William Cowper

Chapter Three: Romanticism and Abolitionism: Mary Wollstonecraft William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth

Chapter Four: Cross-Cultural Contact: John Stedman, Thomas Jefferson and the Slaves

Part II

Chapter Five: The Diasporic Identity: Language and the Paradigms of Liberation

Chapter Six: The Early Slave Narratives: Jupiter Hammon, John Marrant and Ottobah Gronniosaw

Chapter Seven: Phillis Wheatley: Poems and Letters

Chapter Eight: Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative

Chapter Nine: Robert Wedderburn and Mulatto Discourse

Notes

Index
13.

Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity, and Singularity in African-American Narrative (Chap. 2 "Freedom and Fugitivity: The Subject of Slave Narrative")
by Samira Kawash. 266 pgs.

Book

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This book provides a historical context for the recent resurgence of racial division by tracing the path of the color line as it appears in the narrative writings of African-Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In readings of slave narratives, "passing novels", and the writings of Charles Chesnutt and Zora Neale Hurston, the author asks: What is the work of division? How does division work? The history of the color line in the United States is coeval with that of the nation. The author suggests that throughout this history, the color line has not functioned simply to name biological or cultural difference, but more important, it has served as a principle of division, classification, and order. This book seeks not only to understand, but also to bring critical pressure on the interpretations, practices, and assumptions that correspond to and buttress representations of racial difference.

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EDITORIAL BOARD

Preface

Contents

1. Conditions:: Hybridity and the Color Line

2. Freedom and Fugitivity:: The Subject of Slave Narrative

3. A Question of Justice:: Chesnutt's Twins Across the Color Line

4. The Epistemology of Race:: Knowledge, Visibility, and Passing

5. Community and Contagion:: Zora Neale Hurston's Risky Practice

6. Speculations:: Hybridity and Singularity

Reference Matter

Notes

Bibliograpby

Index
14.

Identifying the Image of God: Radical Christians and Nonviolent Power in the Antebellum United States (Chap. 5 "Throught the Blood-Stained Gate: Violence, Birth, and the Imago Dei in Fugitive Slave Narratives")
by Dan McKanan. 294 pgs.

Book

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Between 1820 and 1860, American social reformers invited all people to identify God's image in the victims of war, slavery, and addiction. Identifying the Image of God traces the theme of identification--and its liberal Christian roots--through the literature of social reform, focusing on sentimental novels, temperance tales, and slave narratives, and invites contemporary activists to revive the "politics of identification."

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Acknowledgements

Contents

Identifying the Image of God

Introduction: The Power of Identification

1: The Liberal Encounter with Puritan Violence

2: The Emergence of Radical Christian Liberalism

3: Theology and Literature of Ultra Reform

4: Violence and Theology in Temperance Narratives

5: Violence, Birth, and the Imago Dei in Fugitive Slave Narratives

6: Nonviolent Power in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Antislavery Novels

7: Radical Christian Liberals and the Civil War

Conclusion: Liberal Irony

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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