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Overview

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself is a memoir by Harriet Jacobs that was first published in 1861. Like other slave narratives, it chronicles slavery’s abuses, the author’s struggle for self-definition and self-respect, and a harrowing escape. However, Jacobs’s story also emphasizes the unique problems faced by women slaves—particularly sexual abuse and the anguish of slave mothers who are separated from their children. Because to this perspective and to the novelistic way Jacobs tells her tale, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl has become one of the most enduring slave narratives of all time.

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