The Bondwoman's Narrative

The Bondwoman's Narrative PDF Author: Hannah Crafts
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 0759527644
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
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.

The Bondwoman's Narrative

The Bondwoman's Narrative PDF Author: Hannah Crafts
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 0759527644
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book

Book Description
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.

In Search Of Hannah Crafts

In Search Of Hannah Crafts PDF Author: Hollis Robbins
Publisher: Civitas Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
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The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts PDF Author: Gregg Hecimovich
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062334751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
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.

Something Akin to Freedom

Something Akin to Freedom PDF Author: Stephanie Li
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143842972X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
2010 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Why would someone choose bondage over individual freedom? What type of freedom can be found in choosing conditions of enslavement? In Something Akin to Freedom, winner of the 2008 SUNY Press Dissertation/First Book Prize in African American Studies, Stephanie Li explores literary texts where African American women decide to remain in or enter into conditions of bondage, sacrificing individual autonomy to achieve other goals. In fresh readings of stories by Harriet Jacobs, Hannah Crafts, Gayl Jones, Louisa Picquet, and Toni Morrison, Li argues that amid shifting positions of power and through acts of creative agency, the women in these narratives make seemingly anti-intuitive choices that are simultaneously limiting and liberating. She explores how the appeal of the freedom of the North is constrained by the potential for isolation and destabilization for women rooted in strong social networks in the South. By introducing reproduction, mother-child relationships, and community into discourses concerning resistance, Li expands our understanding of individual liberation to include the courage to express personal desire and the freedom to love.

Hagar’s Daughter

Hagar’s Daughter PDF Author: Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1770487913
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Hagar’s Daughter is Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’s first serial novel, published in the Boston-based Colored American Magazine (1901-02). The novel features concealed and mistaken identities, dramatic revelations, and extraordinary plot twists, including a high-profile murder trial, an abduction plot, and a steady succession of surprises as the young black maid Venus Johnson assumes male clothing to solve a series of mysteries. Because Hagar’s Daughter demonstrates Hopkins’s keen sense of history, use of multiple literary genres, emphasis on gender roles, and political engagement, it provides the perfect introduction to the author and her era. In the appendices to this Broadview Edition, advertising, other writing by Hopkins and her contemporaries, and reviews situate the work within the popular literature and political culture of its time.

If I Had Two Wings: Stories

If I Had Two Wings: Stories PDF Author: Randall Kenan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324005475
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Finalist for 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction Longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction Finalist for the 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Mingling the earthy with the otherworldly, these ten stories chronicle ineffable events in ordinary lives. In Kenan’s fictional territory of Tims Creek, North Carolina, an old man rages in his nursing home, a parson beats up an adulterer, a rich man is haunted by a hog, and an elderly woman turns unwitting miracle worker. A retired plumber travels to Manhattan, where Billy Idol sweeps him into his entourage. An architect who lost his famous lover to AIDS reconnects with a high-school fling. Howard Hughes seeks out the woman who once cooked him butter beans. Shot through with humor and seasoned by inventiveness and maturity, Kenan riffs on appetites of all kinds, on the eerie persistence of history, and on unstoppable lovers and unexpected salvations. If I Had Two Wings is a rich chorus of voices and visions, dreams and prophecies, marked by physicality and spirit. Kenan’s prose is nothing short of wondrous.

Molly, by Golly!

Molly, by Golly! PDF Author: Dianne Ochiltree
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
ISBN: 1635924375
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
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.

The Female Gothic

The Female Gothic PDF Author: D. Wallace
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230245455
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This rich and varied collection of essays makes a timely contribution to critical debates about the Female Gothic, a popular but contested area of literary studies. The contributors revisit key Gothic themes - gender, race, the body, monstrosity, metaphor, motherhood and nationality - to open up new critical directions.

The Book of Barkley

The Book of Barkley PDF Author: L. B. Johnson
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 1478734345
Category : Pets
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
L.B. Johnson knew how to get things done. She had been immersed in a world of complex puzzles, and tangled story lines of physical and governmental laws. She was quite sure she was up to the task of raising a black Labrador retriever puppy. His name was Barkley, and in being himself, he led his owner down a path of joyful discovery, loving frustration, and self-sacrifice. Their journey together will speak volumes to anyone who has ever had a beloved animal as a heart’s companion…from the gentle nuzzles that healed in moments of crisis, to the saintly patience needed to deal with a small pink ball with feet, named “Mr. Squeaky,” who interrupted many hours of sleep. It is the story of rambunctious trespasses such as “the bacon incident,” and the loving trust that bound a woman and her dog together in unspoken understanding. The Book of Barkley is a tribute and memoir that will resonate with everyone who has reached out unthinking to pet a beloved animal…only to remember that a beloved friend is no longer present. Honest, transcendent, and beautifully written, The Book of Barkley is a love story that will enrich every animal lover’s library.

Jane Eyre's Fairytale Legacy at Home and Abroad

Jane Eyre's Fairytale Legacy at Home and Abroad PDF Author: Abigail Heiniger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317111303
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Exploring the literary microcosm inspired by Brontë's debut novel, Jane Eyre's Fairytale Legacy at Home and Abroad focuses on the nationalistic stakes of the mythic and fairytale paradigms that were incorporated into the heroic female bildungsroman tradition. Jane Eyre, Abigail Heiniger argues, is a heroic changeling indebted to the regional, pre-Victorian fairy lore Charlotte Brontë heard and read in Haworth, an influence that Brontë repudiates in her last novel, Villette. While this heroic figure inspired a range of female writers on both sides of the Atlantic, Heiniger suggests that the regional aspects of the changeling were especially attractive to North American writers such as Susan Warner and L.M. Montgomery who responded to Jane Eyre as part of the Cinderella tradition. Heiniger contrasts the reactions of these white women writers with that of Hannah Crafts, whose Jane Eyre-influenced The Bondwoman's Narrative rejects the Cinderella model. Instead, Heiniger shows, Crafts creates a heroic female bildungsroman that critiques fairytale narratives from the viewpoint of the obscure, oppressed workers who remain forever outside the tales of wonder produced for middle-class consumption. Heiniger concludes by demonstrating how Brontë's middle-class American readers projected the self-rise ethic onto Jane Eyre, miring the novel in nineteenth-century narratives of American identity formation.