Nineteenth-Century African American Women's Autobiography as Social Discourse: The Example of Harriet Ann Jacobs

Autor/in	Stover, Johnnie M.
Titel	Nineteenth-Century African American Women's Autobiography as Social Discourse: The Example of Harriet Ann Jacobs
Quelle	In: College English, 66 (2003) 2, S.133-154 (22 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0010-0994
Schlagwörter	African Americans; Females; Slavery; Autobiographies; Personal Narratives; Writing (Composition); Literary Styles; Discourse Modes; Social Environment; Historical Interpretation + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Afroamerikaner; Weibliches Geschlecht; Sklaverei; Autobiography; Autobiografie; Autobiographie; Erlebniserzählung; Schreibübung; Literarischer Stil; Diskursethik; Soziales Umfeld; Historische Interpretation
Abstract	The power of black women's personal narratives emerging out of nineteenth-century America rested in their sociopolitical as well as in their literary contributions. These slave narratives and autobiographical texts, however, were either ignored, sentimentalized, or reduced in scope as addenda to the abolitionist-inspired texts produced by black male former slaves. More recent scholarship has recognized the value of nineteenth-century African American women's autobiography while not always acknowledging its uniqueness as an innovative approach to a genre that is specifically driven and shaped by black women's views of society, politics, and communication. The typical nineteenth-century black woman's autobiography is much more than a personal narrative that merely remarks on her personal growth; it is a social discourse that applies a unique black woman's voice to the interpretation and recording of her life experiences within a historical context that saw black Americans attempting to establish their humanity and self-worth in the eyes of a dominant white American society that granted them neither. Harriet Ann Jacobs's 1861 "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself," the black female slave narrative most often studied and anthologized, offers an excellent example of an African American woman's use of a revamped autobiographical genre as social discourse. In this article, the author focuses on nineteenth-century African American women who chose to share their personal and secular life experiences in a public arena and who used the written medium of the dominant society to do so. While a number of scholars have noted ways in which these seemingly silenced black women addressed and challenged American sociopolitical and literary institutions on a public platform, the author asserts that the power of their narratives goes further; it establishes a unique communicative style in the structure and in the content of nineteenth-century black women's autobiography. The author's aim is not only to identify the historical and sociopolitical constructs that hindered nineteenth-century African American women autobiographers like Jacobs, but to demonstrate the ways in which these women both covertly and overtly thwarted attempts to muffle their voices by reconfiguring the defining characteristics of autobiography. (Contains 6 notes.) (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	National Council of Teachers of English. 1111 West Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096. Tel: 877-369-6283; Tel: 217-328-3870; Web site: http://www.ncte.org/journals
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10