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Why is Harriet E. Wilsonâs Our Nig important in the history of African American womenâs fiction?
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African American literature
Frontispiece and title page of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) by Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to become a poet of note in the United States. The portrait on which the frontispiece's engraving is based is often attributed to Scipio Moorhead, an Black artist and writer who, like Wheatley, was enslaved and living in Boston.
Harriet E. Wilsonâs Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North. Showing That Slaveryâs Shadows Fall Even There. By âOur Nig.â (1859) is a landmark work in the history of African American womenâs fiction.12
Its importance stems from several key factors:
- Pioneering Status: It stands as one of the earliest examples of fiction published by an African American woman. While The Bondwomanâs Narrative by Hannah Bond was written in the mid-1850s, it was not published until 2002, leaving Wilsonâs work as a primary early contribution to the genre.21
- Thematic Significance: Unlike many contemporary narratives that focused on the South, Our Nig provided a rare, autobiographical look at the experiences of a working-class Black woman living in the North, exposing the pervasive racism and mistreatment she faced as an indentured servant.12
- Literary Rediscovery: The novel was rediscovered in the early 1980s by scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who confirmed it was written by a Black woman, correcting the long-held assumption that it was the work of a white author.1