Possibly the first novel written by a black woman slave, this work is both a historically important literary event and a gripping autobiographical story in its own right. When her master is betrothed to a woman who conceals a tragic secret, Hannah Crafts, a young slave on a wealthy North Carolina plantation, runs away in a bid for her freedom up North. Pursued by slave hunters, imprisoned by a mysterious and cruel captor, held by sympathetic strangers, and forced to serve a demanding new mistress, she finally makes her way to freedom in New Jersey. Her compelling story provides a fascinating view of American life in the mid-1800s and the literary conventions of the time. Written in the 1850's by a runaway slave, THE BONDSWOMAN'S NARRATIVE is a provocative literary landmark and a significant historical event that will captivate a diverse audience.

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A Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a forward by Henry Louis Gates Jr. In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, was first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author’s identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author’s name and, in The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, he finally tells her story. In this remarkable biography, Hecimovich identifies the novelist as Hannah Bond “Crafts.” She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity. After escaping to New York, the author forged a new identity—as Hannah Crafts—to make sense of a life fractured by slavery. Hecimovich establishes the case for authorship of The Bondwoman’s Narrative by examining the lives of Hannah Crafts’s friends and contemporaries, including the five enslaved women whose experiences form part of her narrative. By drawing on the lives of those she knew in slavery, Crafts summoned into her fiction people otherwise stolen from history. At once a detective story, a literary chase, and a cultural history, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts discovers a tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and violence set against the backdrop of America’s slide into Civil War.

Here is the story of Molly Williams, an African American cook for New York City's Fire Company 11 who is considered to be the first known female firefighter in U.S. history. New York City’s Fire Company Number 11 is in trouble. A deadly snowstorm is blowing, and many of the volunteers are sick in bed. When the fire alarm sounds, who will answer the call? Who will save the neighborhood? Molly Williams, the company’s cook, for one! Clapping a weathered leather helmet on her head, strapping spatterdashes over her woolen leggings, and pulling on heavy work gloves —it’s Molly, by golly, to the rescue. Young readers will enjoy plucky Molly Williams’s legendary adventure as they learn how fires were fought in the early 1800s.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Regensburg (Amerikanistik), course: Slave Narratives and Neo-Slave Narratives, 19 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The following term paper deals with the question of reliability or unreliability of the narrator in Hannah Crafts' The Bondwoman's Narrative. But before the narrator's reliability is analysed, some definitions and background information on reliability and unreliability shall be presented. Table of Content 1. Introduction to Reliable and Unreliable Narration 2. Signals for Unreliable Narration Inside the Main Text 2.1 Different Types of Unreliable Narrators 2.2 Point of View 2.3 Characters 3. Signals Outside the Text for (Un-) Reliable Narration 3.1 Records of the Real Author, the Story and the Text Itself 3.2 The Knowledge of the Reader 4. Text Signals for (Un-) Reliable Narration 4.1 Admitted Unreliability 4.2. Paratextual Signals 4.3 Explicit Contradictions of the Narrator 4.4 Discrepancies between the Reconstructed and Narrated Story 4.5 Signals for a High Degree of Emotional Involvement 4.6 Deliberate Addressing and Controlling of the Reader 4.7 Genre, Copying and Language Style 5. Conclusion 6. Works Cited

Three years ago, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discovered an unpublished manuscript, The Bondwoman's Narrative, By Hannah Crafts, A Fugitive Recently Escaped From North Carolina, which turned out to be the first novel by a female African-American slave ever found, and possibly the first novel written by a black women anywhere. The Bondwoman's Narrative was published in 2002. In Search of Hannah Crafts now brings together twenty-two authorities on African-American studies to examine such issues as authenticity, and the history and criticism of this unique novel, including Nina Baym, Jean Fagan Yellin, William Andrews, Lawrence Buell, Karen Sanchez-Eppler and Shelley Fisher-Fishkin.The Bondwoman's Narrative will take its place in the African-American canon, and In Search of Hannah Crafts is the book that scholars and students of African-American Studies, of women writers, and of slavery, need to have to understand this unprecedented historical and literary event.