Harriet Wilson's sentimental narrative, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, draws on two specific literary areas to disclose the tale of a young, mistreated Mulatto heroine, encumbered by an excessive amount of injustice,...

For the abolitionists and intellectual opponents of slavery during the 19th century, fruitless sympathy from the “enlightened” liberals of northern states was simply not enough. In the literary works “Benito Cereno” and Our Nig, authors Herman...

For centuries, slave narratives have been ignored by literary scholars and historians, and according the John Sekora, it wasn’t until the era after World War II that historians reevaluated their position on these early examples of African American...

From the earliest days of Colonial America, to the end of the Civil War, slavery was an established practice. This brutal, amoral, and dehumanizing system prompted nineteenth-century American writers, black and white alike, to advocate for its end...