Harriet Jacobs

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiography by a young mother and fugitive slave published in 1861 by L. Maria Child, who edited the book for its author, Harriet Ann Jacobs. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book documents Jacobs life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her children. Jacobs contributed to the genre of slave narrative by using the techniques of sentimental novels "to address race and gender issues." She explores the struggles and sexual abuse that female slaves faced on plantations as well as their efforts to practice motherhood and protect their children when their children might be sold away. Jacobs book is addressed to white women in the North who do not fully comprehend the evils of slavery. She makes direct appeals to their humanity to expand their knowledge and influence their thoughts about slavery as an institution. Jacobs began composing Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl after her escape to New York, while living and working at Idlewild, the Hudson River home of writer and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis. Portions of her journals were published in serial form in the New-York Tribune, owned and edited by Horace Greeley. Jacobs reports of sexual abuse were deemed too shocking for the average newspaper reader of the day, and publication ceased before the completion of the narrative.

This classic memoir of slave life, written by a highly-literate North Carolina slave, was first published at the beginning of the Civil War when Jacobs had escaped to the North and begun campaigning for abolition. Her narrative focused especially clearly on the ways that slavery degraded women through sexual abuse and the separation of mothers from their children.

'Peripecias en la vida de una joven esclava, escritas por ella misma' (1861) de Harriet A. Jacobs es texto fundacional de la tradición literaria de mujeres afroamericanas. En primer lugar, y contrariamente a los textos de los escritores blancos, aqui no hay 'mammies' alienadas que dediquen sus vidas al cuidado de niños blancos, ni mulatas agonizantes ante la certeza de que no pueden participar, por culpa de su gota de sangre negra, en las prebendas del Sur aristocratico. En segundo lugar, y contrariamente a las narraciones de esclavos escritas por hombres, en este texto no hay negras pasivas, que se pudran en un agujero o a las que se mutile, lacere el cuerpo y viole, o a las que se les impida hablar con un hierro en la boca, ni tampoco esclavas que alcancen la libertad con un gesto heroico. Aqui, al contrario, aparece una esclava que emprende una contienda contra todas las representaciones distorsionadas anteriores y contemporaneas de la mujer negra. Aqui se oye la voz de una esclava que habla a su hija de como enfrentarse a la violencia, para que ella misma aprenda a rebelarse, para que jamas se someta ni pierda nocion de su identidad como negra y como mujer. Pero, ademas, como texto emblematico y como producto literario derivado de unas determinadas relaciones entre el rac

arriet Ann Jacobs luchó desde niña por huir de la esclavitud y alcanzar la libertad que solo parecía ofrecer el norte idealizado. Su primera ama le enseñó a leer y escribir, las únicas armas con las