A-Z Wednesday

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Vicky of Reading at the Beach

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!
To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link (amazon, barnes and noble etc.)

Be sure to visit other participants to see what book they have posted and leave them a comment.(We all love comments, don't we?) Who knows? You may find your next "favorite" book.

This week's Letter is 'I'

Are you guys sick of my non-fiction books yet?

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
by Harriet Jacobs (176 Pages)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the first full-length narrative written by a former woman slave in America.

Harriet A. Jacobs was born into slavery in North Carolina in 1813. She was a house servant, and constantly fearful of sexual predation from her master. She bore two children by another man whom her master despised. Her plight was made worse by her master's wife, whose jealousy seemed to know no bounds. Finally she ran off, and hid for seven years in a narrow part of an attic. When the opportunity arose, she was able to flee north on a steamboat, with the cooperation of its sympathetic captain.

This narrative is considered one of the great works of African American women's literature. It is a book that one cannot put down, a book that is immensely informative and inspiring, a book, which, like other classic slave narratives (e.g., John Brown's Slave Life in Georgia), demonstrates the resistance of slaves to every aspect of their enslavement.

White readers may cringe, for they will see the criminality behind what is called Southern "heritage," and will be stirred by a recognition of the dignity that slaves maintained by active resistance and by refusing to be brainwashed.

I read this book in 2006 and was blown away. Well written and so interesting. I have never read a slave narrative before (or since). I don't think I could find one to top this.