Fugitive Voices, by Edlie Wong
The slave narrative is a
unique genre of early black expression, bringing together
elements of travelogue, spiritual autobiography, sentimental
novels, captivity narratives, and political polemic to profoundly
impact nineteenth-century literature and society. Because
it was illegal for slaves to learn to read or write, the very
existence of each narrative has significance in itself, requiring
students to think both “inside” and “outside”
the text. Students of early nineteenth-century black expression
are trying to comprehend literature as a political practice
that served to distinguish, for many readers at that time,
the human from the non-human. It is a difficult mindset for
us to reconstruct today.
For example, I taught The History of Mary Prince
in both my undergraduate seminar and lecture courses this
past semester. This book is the only known narrative by an
enslaved West Indian woman, making it a significant historical
document of Caribbean slavery as well as a fascinating literary
text, though it has only recently begun to be taught. Prince
was stranded in England, unable to return to her native home
and remain free. She had repeatedly attempted to purchase
her own manumission and was thwarted. “To be free is
very sweet,” she declared, dictating her autobiography
to journalist Susanna Strickland. Thomas Pringle, the secretary
of the British Anti-Slavery Society, also tried and failed
to secure her freedom, then edited the text and published
it in London in 1831 so that readers “might hear from
a slave what a slave had felt and suffered,” even though
Prince could neither read or write. A preface, supplements,
footnotes, and appendices were all added to “authenticate”
the narrative’s veracity, but still two libel cases
emerged to dispute it. As an unavoidably collaborative and
multiply mediated text, Prince’s History encourages
students to think about questions of authorship and representation
– issues central to all literary studies. Studying a
narrative like Prince’s requires students to recreate
a complicated historical context, and to consider how our
understanding of that context always becomes an integral part
of our literary interpretation of a text.
Teaching in this spirit, I try to accompany literary works
with a diverse array of cultural materials, including advertisements,
periodical accounts, book reviews, maps, and legal cases from
the period. Although slave narratives are historically understood
as a rhetorical attempt to “reach the hearts of men”
and sway readers to political action, students today often
question the limits of empathetic identification and the effectiveness
of violent depictions. Taking a historical approach to such
powerful narratives may seem incongruous at first, but eventually,
connecting these texts to their contexts helps us see how
they do more than simply describe a past injustice. Slave
narratives address issues of violence and representation and
human rights that continue to be relevant into the twenty-first
century.
Related Links
The
full text of The History of Mary Prince from
the New York Public Library's online collection
The
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a national
research library devoted to collecting, preserving and providing
access to resources documenting the experiences of peoples
of African descent.
Born
in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project
1936-1938, contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts
of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
back
to article >>
|