Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl' is a powerful and compelling story of Harriet Jacobs whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North. This is one of the few slave narratives written by a woman. Jacobs writes frankly of the horrors she suffered as a slave, her eventual escape after several unsuccessful attempts, and her seven years in self-imposed exile, hiding in a coffin-like ‘garret’ attached to her grandmother's porch.

Slavery is a terrible thing, but it is far more terrible and harrowing for women than for men. Harriet Jacobs was owned by a brutal master who beat his slaves regularly and subjected them to indignations that were far worse. Jacobs eventually escaped her master and moved to a northern state. Though she was unable to take her children with her at the time they were later reunited.

Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813-1897) was an African American writer, who was born into slavery, but managed to gain her freedom. She was a reformer and an abolitionist speaker. In addition, under the name Linda Brent, she wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, one of the first autobiographies about living in slavery. That narrative included her accounts of the sexual abuse female slaves suffered, as well as the struggle for freedom.