7.4: The Slave Narrative
The slave narrative can broadly be defined as any first-person account of the experience of being enslaved. Read this introductory essay on the slave narrative as a literary genre.
Read Douglass' incredibly influential work from 1845, which became a bestseller and provided a textual model for many slave narratives that followed. Take notice specifically about how he comes to literacy and realizes his own self-worth.
Jacobs' 1861 narrative draws on and overturns many of the conventions of domestic sentimentalism embraced by mid-century American women. Read this revisionary account of the life of a slave woman.