Six narrations by slave women about their lives during and after their years in bondage, honoring the nobility and strength of African-American women of that era.

Authentic recollections of hardship, frustration, and hope — from Mary Prince's groundbreaking account of a lone woman's tribulations and courage, to Annie Burton's eulogy of black motherhood.

The slave narrative has become a crucial genre within African American literary studies and an invaluable record of the experience and history of slavery in the United States. This Companion examines the slave narrative's relation to British and American abolitionism, Anglo-American literary traditions such as autobiography and sentimental literature, and the larger African American literary tradition. Special attention is paid to leading exponents of the genre such as Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, as well as many other, less well known examples. Further essays explore the rediscovery of the slave narrative and its subsequent critical reception, as well as the uses to which the genre is put by modern authors such as Toni Morrison. With its chronology and guide to further reading, the Companion provides both an easy entry point for students new to the subject and comprehensive coverage and original insights for scholars in the field.

Prince — a slave in the British colonies — vividly recalls her life in the West Indies, her rebellion against physical and psychological degradation, and her eventual escape in 1828 in England.

"Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women," Harriet Jacobs states plainly in this riveting account of her life as a slave, and then sets out to recount, in chilling detail, the particular horrors for women caught in that terrible snare. Published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, *Incidents* was the first account of slavery to explore the sexual abuse female slaves endured... in Jacobs' case, a catalog of harassment she suffered while working in the home of a doctor known to have sold children he'd fathered with slave women. Long believed to have been written by a white author as a fictional novel, *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl* rings with a ghastly truth that still has the power to haunt modern readers.

Straightforward, yet often poetic, accounts of the battle for freedom, these memoirs by three courageous black women vividly chronicle their struggles in the bonds of slavery, their rebellion against injustice, and their determination to attain equality.

The ten works collected in this volume demonstrate how a diverse group of writers challenged the conscience of a nation and laid the foundations of the African American literary tradition by expressing their in anger, pain, sorrow, and courage. Included in the volume: Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw; Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; The Confessions of Nat Turner; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Narrative of William W. Brown; Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb; Narrative of Sojouner Truth; Ellen and William Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Narrative of the Life of J. D.Green. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.