William L. Andrews

Six Women's Slave Narratives - The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers William L. Andrews

Jacket Description/Back: Six Women's Slave narratives contains stories that embody most of the predominant themes and narrative forms found in African-American women's autobiographies from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning with the first female slave narrative from the Americas, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (1831), the collection includes writings by 'Old Elizabeth, ' Mattie J. Jackson, Lucy A. Delaney, Kate Drumgoold, and Annie L. Burton. Review Quotes: "Great collection to augment male narratives and Jacobs."--Roma Johnson, Tufts University"Excellent."--Dr. Jane Buchanan, Bentley College (check name) Review Quotes: "Great collection to augment male narratives and Jacobs."--Roma Johnson, Tufts University "Excellent."--Dr. Jane Buchanan, Bentley College (check name) Review Quotes: "Great collection to augment male narratives and Jacobs."--Roma Johnson, Tufts University "Excellent."--Dr. Jane Buchanan, Bentley College (check name) Review Quotes:"Great collection to augment male narratives and Jacobs."--Roma Johnson, Tufts University"Excellent."--Dr. Jane Buchanan, Bentley College (check name) Publisher Marketing: The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (1831) was the first female slave narrative from the Americas. The Story of Mattie J. Jackson (1866) recounts a quest for personal freedom and ends with a family reunion in the North after the Civil War. The Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a Colored Woman (1863) is the tale of a 97-year-old ex-slave who became a preacher. Lucy A. Delaney's From the Darkness Cometh the Light or Struggles for Freedom (c. 1891) records a former slave's achievements in the quarter-century after the end of the Civil War. Kate Drumgoold and Annie L. Burton also describe their successes in the postwar North while eulogizing black motherhood in the antebellum South.

Contributor Bio:  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Ph. D. Cambridge), is Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and American Research, Harvard University. He is the author of Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513 2008; Black in Latin America; Tradition and the Black Atlantic: Critical Theory in the African Diaspora; Faces of America; Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self; The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Criticism; Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars; Colored People: A Memoir; The Future of Race with Cornel West; Wonders of the African World; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man; and The Trials of Phillis Wheatley. His is also the writer, producer, and narrator of PBS documentaries Finding Your Roots; Black in Latin America; Faces of America; African American Lives 1 and 2; Looking for Lincoln; America Beyond the Color Line; and Wonders of the African World. He is the editor of African American National Biography with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and The Dictionary of African Biography with Anthony Appiah; Encyclopedia Africana with Anthony Appiah; and The Bondwoman s Narrative by Hannah Crafts, as well as editor-in-chief of TheRoot.com. Contributor Bio:  Andrews, William L William L. Andrews (Ph. D. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) is the editor of The Literature of Slavery and Freedom; co-editor of The Literature of the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance. He is E. Maynard Adams Professor of English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is general editor of Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography and The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology, and co-editor of The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Other works include The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt; To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760 1865; Sisters of the Spirit; The Curse of Caste by Julia C. Collins; Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave; and Slave Narratives after Slavery.