DOCSLIB.ORG

UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Aberrant Time: The Peculiar Temporalities of Black Women’s Labors in Nineteenth-Century African American Autobiographies Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hk9s194 Author Onugha, Erica Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Aberrant Time: The Peculiar Temporalities of Black Women’s Labors in Nineteenth-Century African American Autobiographies A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Erica Leeanne Onugha 2018 @ Copyright by Erica Leeanne Onugha 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Aberrant Time: The Peculiar Temporalities of Black Women’s Labors in Nineteenth-Century African American Autobiographies by Erica Leeanne Onugha Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Richard Yarborough, Chair Aberrant Time argues that the additional burdens of involuntary sexual and reproductive labor during slavery led both male and female slave narrators to articulate black women’s uniquely gendered experiences of time. It also asks how newly emancipated women writers portrayed their work time to express agency during Reconstruction. Black women’s work was unorthodox because they were forced to perform manual and domestic labor in addition to sexual and reproductive labor for the personal gratification and financial benefit of their owners. Even after emancipation, the labor and time of black women remained peculiar as many continued to work outside of the home and were subjected to discrimination in a profoundly racist labor ii market. Drawing from slave narratives by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Solomon Northup and Elizabeth Keckley, Aberrant Time identifies and analyzes the slave laboring temporalities unique to black women. It also examines how the depictions of black women’s time and labor changes as they progress from puberty to motherhood and transition from slavery to freedom. In analyzing gender and time in African American autobiographies, this dissertation endeavors to correct the implicit scholarly assumption that nineteenth-century African American women and men—slaves in particular—experienced time in the same way. iii The dissertation of Erica Leeanne Onugha is approved. Yogita Goyal Uri McMillan Brenda Stevenson Richard Yarborough, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iv For Isioma and Osinachi v CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii VITA ix INTRODUCTION 1 1. THE LIMITS OF THE MALE SLAVE NARRATOR’S GAZE: Black Men’s Portrayal of Black Women’s Laboring Times 33 2. VOLATILE INTERRUPTIONS: The Temporalities of Black Slave Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Labors 68 1 3. “IT WAS A STILL GREATER SATISFACTION” : Excavating Harriet Jacobs’s Pleasure as a Fugitive Slave Mother 99 4. SELF-EMPLOYED BLACK WOMEN ARE AMERICA’S FUTURE: Elizabeth Keckley’s Radical Vision for Rebuilding Reconstruction-Era America in Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House 142 CONCLUSION 206 WORKS CONSULTED 208 1 Jacobs 116. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee members—Yogita Goyal, Uri McMillan, Brenda Stevenson, and Richard Yarborough—for their astute guidance and unwavering encouragement. I am especially indebted to Richard Yarborough, my dissertation chair, not only for his generosity with his time and meticulous feedback but also his mentorship and impeccable model of professionalism. I also thank the faculty in the English Department for enriching my studies and providing a stimulating intellectual environment. In particular I wish to thank Arthur Little, Chris Mott, and Caroline Streeter in addition to Nora Elias, Rick Fagin, Jeannette Gilkison, and Michael Lambert for their advice and support at various stages in graduate school. This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the UCLA Graduate Division, the UCLA English Department, and the UCLA Institute for American Cultures. I am deeply indebted to the colleagues and friends who inspired me with their brilliance and nourished my spirit during this journey. I especially thank: Kim Mack, Courtney Marshall, Marilu Medrano, Emily Morishima, Theri’ Pickens, Valerie Popp, Dennis Tyler, Brandy Underwood, and Joyce Pualani Warren. Thank you to all of the Revolutionary Women without whom I would not have completed this dissertation. Finally, I must thank my family for always cheering me on despite my steadfast refusal to discuss this dissertation. To my mother Cathy Powe, thank you for teaching me to love books. It all started with our weekly trips to the classics section of the Carson Public Library. To my grandmother Etter Thomas, I return to your example of poise and grace whenever I face adversity—thank you. Thank you to Osita Onugha for your sometimes-baffling yet unshakeable vii belief that I can literally do anything. I am lucky that I can always rely on your optimism and humor. And to my little bears Isioma and Osinachi, you have all of my love forever and forever until the end of time. viii VITA 2003 B.A., English with High Honors University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California 2005-2007 Teaching Associate Department of English University of California, Los Angeles 2008 M.A., English University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California 2008-2016 Instructor (Tenured, 2013) Foothill College, Department of English Los Altos Hills, CA 2010 Visiting Scholar University of Cambridge, Department of English Cambridge, UK 2011 C. Phil, English University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California 2013 Stanford Human Rights Educator Fellowship Stanford University Stanford, CA 2015 Institute of American Cultures Predoctoral Fellowship University of California, Los Angeles 2016 Department Dissertation Fellowship Department of English University of California, Los Angeles SELECT PRESENTATIONS Onugha, Erica. “‘Virtuous Freedom’: Elizabeth Keckley’s ‘Hardworking Temporality’ and Black Working Women as Exemplars of American National Character.” Paper presented at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference, Portland, OR, November 2015. ---. “Dignity and Human Rights: Learning to Write and Research with Cultural Humility.” Presentation at the Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative (SHREI) Symposium: “Critical Conversations—Human Rights Across the Curriculum,” Stanford, CA, June 2014. ix Aberrant Time: The Peculiar Temporalities of Black Women’s Labors in Nineteenth-Century African American Autobiographies In chapter five of Incidents in the Life a Slave Girl—“The Trials of Girlhood”—Harriet Jacobs describes her entry into her “fifteenth year—a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl.”2 By collapsing any distinction between her life story and those of all slave girls, Jacobs indicates that what she experiences is both universal and inevitable. This quotation addresses what Jacobs suggests throughout her slave narrative: that enslaved black women experienced time differently than enslaved men. Jacobs identifies puberty as the precise period in a slave girl’s life when her experience of time will begin to diverge from that of enslaved boys. Jacobs maintains that the experience of puberty is fundamentally different for enslaved girls because of the sexual harassment and forced sexual labor that slave girls will almost certainly face.3 By exposing how enslaved black women perform constant manual and domestic labor while vulnerable to coerced sexual and reproductive labor, Jacobs reveals that it is the demand for black women to perform multiple forms of work that produces their uniquely gendered depictions of time. Jacobs’s narrative reveals not just the racial experience of labor and time, but also the gendered experience of both. My dissertation seeks to widen this window into the experiences of enslaved women by exploring how the burdens of sexual and reproductive labor affect how slave narrators depict 2 Jacobs 27. All citations are taken from the Harvard edition of the text. 3 Although Jacobs discusses the sexual harassment and rape of enslaved men briefly in her narrative (See Valerie Rohy, Anachronism and Its Others: Sexuality, Race, Temporality), she suggests that these instances are rare. In contrast, she describes the sexual harassment and threat of rape as an experience that all slave girls endure. 1 black women’s experiences of time during slavery and immediately after emancipation. My dissertation—Aberrant Time: The Peculiar Temporalities of Black Women’s Labors in Nineteenth-Century African American Autobiographies—offers a feminist reading of the multiple temporalities of black women’s labors as narrated in nineteenth-century African- American autobiographies to consider how black women’s labor was “peculiar” in both senses of the word.4 On the one hand, black women’s labor was unorthodox. As Jennifer L. Morgan explains, slave owners “inverted the gender ideology that they applied to white women and work […] African women and girls found themselves in the field.”5 Black women were forced to perform manual and domestic labor—often working side by side with black men in the fields. In addition, they were also treated like sexual property and forced to perform sexual and reproductive labor for the personal gratification and financial benefit of their owners. Even after emancipation, the labor and time of black women remained
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Witness for Freedom: Curriculum Guide for Using Primary Documents
    WITNESS FOR FREEDOM A Curriculum Guide for Using Primary Documents to teach Abolitionist History By Wendy Kohler and Gaylord Saulsberry Published by The Five College Public School Partnership 97 Spring Street, Amherst, MA 01002 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Witness for Freedom project began in 1995 with the vision of Christine Compston, then Director of the National History Education Network. She approached Mary Alice Wilson at the Five College Public School Partnership with the idea of developing an institute for social studies teachers that would introduce them to the documents recently published by C. Peter Ripley in Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation. Together they solicited the participation of David Blight, Professor of History at Amherst College, and author of Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. The Witness for Freedom Summer Institute was held in 1996 under their direction and involved twenty teachers from Western Massachusetts. The project was made possible by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives with additional support from the Nan and Matilda Heydt Fund of the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. The publication of this guide by Wendy Kohler and Gaylord Saulsberry of the Amherst Public Schools offers specific guidance for Massachusetts teachers and district personnel concerned with aligning classroom instruction with the state curriculum frameworks. The Five College Public School Partnership thanks all of the above for their involvement in this project. Additional copies of this guide and the Witness for Freedom Handbook for Professional Development are available from the Five College Public School Partnership, 97 Spring Street, Amherst, MA 01002.
    [Show full text]
  • Slavery in America: the Montgomery Slave Trade
    Slavery In America The Montgomery Trade Slave 1 2 In 2013, with support from the Black Heritage Council, the Equal Justice Initiative erected three markers in downtown Montgomery documenting the city’s prominent role in the 19th century Domestic Slave Trade. The Montgomery Trade Slave Slavery In America 4 CONTENTS The Montgomery Trade Slave 6 Slavery In America INTRODUCTION SLAVERY IN AMERICA 8 Inventing Racial Inferiority: How American Slavery Was Different 12 Religion and Slavery 14 The Lives and Fears of America’s Enslaved People 15 The Domestic Slave Trade in America 23 The Economics of Enslavement 24–25 MONTGOMERY SLAVE TRADE 31 Montgomery’s Particularly Brutal Slave Trading Practices 38 Kidnapping and Enslavement of Free African Americans 39 Separation of Families 40 Separated by Slavery: The Trauma of Losing Family 42–43 Exploitative Local Slave Trading Practices 44 “To Be Sold At Auction” 44–45 Sexual Exploitation of Enslaved People 46 Resistance through Revolt, Escape, and Survival 48–49 5 THE POST SLAVERY EXPERIENCE 50 The Abolitionist Movement 52–53 After Slavery: Post-Emancipation in Alabama 55 1901 Alabama Constitution 57 Reconstruction and Beyond in Montgomery 60 Post-War Throughout the South: Racism Through Politics and Violence 64 A NATIONAL LEGACY: 67 OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF SLAVERY, WAR, AND RACE Reviving the Confederacy in Alabama and Beyond 70 CONCLUSION 76 Notes 80 Acknowledgments 87 6 INTRODUCTION Beginning in the sixteenth century, millions of African people The Montgomery Trade Slave were kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas under horrific conditions that frequently resulted in starvation and death.
    [Show full text]
  • Elizabeth Keckley, Confidante to Mary Todd Lincoln Lady Edison?” It Was Rare Enough to Be a How Would a Child Born a Ter’S Son As a Wedding Gift
    Vol. 11, Issue 2 Dr. Jeanne Ramirez Mather, Ed. March 2009 Who was called “The Elizabeth Keckley, Confidante to Mary Todd Lincoln Lady Edison?” It was rare enough to be a How would a child born a ter’s son as a wedding gift. While well known for her self- woman inventor in the 1800s, slave in Virginia grow up to Liz suffered various episodes of centeredness and unstable tem- but combine that with only an become the confidante to Mary abuse as a young slave, it was perament, but unlike most Liz elementary school education, Todd Lincoln? Since 2009 is between age fourteen and twenty- could see past all of this. Ap- and starting a career of inventing the bicentennial of Abraham four that she bore the brunt of both parently Liz recognized that as a child, and it becomes obvi- Lincoln’s birth, it seems appro- physical and sexual abuse, result- Mary’s life as a child was any- ous how Margaret Knight even- priate to introduce the reader to ing in her one and only child, a thing but perfect, and that they tually would be referred to as the child born Elizabeth son. shared an unhappy childhood. “The Lady Edison.” Born in Hobbs. Eventually she went back to Liz eventually would be in 1838 in Maine, Mattie was At her birth, Liz was con- live with her master’s widow and charge of caring for the Lincoln raised with her two older broth- sidered the daughter of literate children, and develop into ers by her mother.
    [Show full text]
  • BLACK WOMEN ARE LEADERS Long Form
    BLACK WOMEN ARE LEADERS IN THE MOVEMENT TO END SEXUAL & DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Ida B. Wells The Combahee River Collective Wells, a suffragist and temperance activist, famously and fearlessly This Boston-based collective spoke against lynchings, and also of black feminist lesbians worked to end sexual violence wrote the seminal essay The against black women. Radically, Combahee River Collective Wells identified scapegoating of Statement, centering black black men as rapists as a projection feminist issues and identifying of white men's own history of sexual white feminism as an entity violence, often enacted against black that often excludes or women. sidelines black women. They campaigned against sexual assault in their communities and raised awareness of the racialized sexual Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw violence that black women face. A legal scholar, writer, and activist, Crenshaw famously coined the term Loretta Ross "intersectionality," forever impacting An academic, activist, and writer, the way we think about social identity. Ros s has written extensively on Crenshaw's work draws attention to the topic of reproductive justice the fact that black women exist at the and is a pioneer of reproductive intersection of multiple oppressions justice theory. Her work has and experience the dual violence of brought attention to the ways both racism and misogyny. reproductive coercion, racism, and sexual violence intersect. Harriet Jacobs Tarana Burke Jacobs was born into An activist and public speaker, Burke slavery and sex ually founded the wildly successful assaulted by her owner, #MeToo movement. Specifically and eventually escaped created to highlight violence by hiding undetected in experienced by marginalized an attic for seven years.
    [Show full text]
  • Racial Identity in Women's Life Writing of The
    University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--English English 2018 AMERICAN MNEMONIC: RACIAL IDENTITY IN WOMEN’S LIFE WRITING OF THE CIVIL WAR Katherine Waddell University of Kentucky, [email protected] Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.13023/ETD.2018.169 Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Waddell, Katherine, "AMERICAN MNEMONIC: RACIAL IDENTITY IN WOMEN’S LIFE WRITING OF THE CIVIL WAR" (2018). Theses and Dissertations--English. 71. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/71 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the English at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--English by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT AGREEMENT: I represent that my thesis or dissertation and abstract are my original work. Proper attribution has been given to all outside sources. I understand that I am solely responsible for obtaining any needed copyright permissions. I have obtained needed written permission statement(s) from the owner(s) of each third-party copyrighted matter to be included in my work, allowing electronic distribution (if such use is not permitted by the fair use doctrine) which will be submitted to UKnowledge as Additional File. I hereby grant to The University of Kentucky and its agents the irrevocable, non-exclusive, and royalty-free license to archive and make accessible my work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known.
    [Show full text]
  • Frederick Douglass
    Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES Edited by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph. D. Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection Zbe Hmcrican Crisis Biographies Edited by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph.D. With the counsel and advice of Professor John B. McMaster, of the University of Pennsylvania. Each I2mo, cloth, with frontispiece portrait. Price $1.25 net; by mail» $i-37- These biographies will constitute a complete and comprehensive history of the great American sectional struggle in the form of readable and authoritative biography. The editor has enlisted the co-operation of many competent writers, as will be noted from the list given below. An interesting feature of the undertaking is that the series is to be im- partial, Southern writers having been assigned to Southern subjects and Northern writers to Northern subjects, but all will belong to the younger generation of writers, thus assuring freedom from any suspicion of war- time prejudice. The Civil War will not be treated as a rebellion, but as the great event in the history of our nation, which, after forty years, it is now clearly recognized to have been. Now ready: Abraham Lincoln. By ELLIS PAXSON OBERHOLTZER. Thomas H. Benton. By JOSEPH M. ROGERS. David G. Farragut. By JOHN R. SPEARS. William T. Sherman. By EDWARD ROBINS. Frederick Douglass. By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. Judah P. Benjamin. By FIERCE BUTLER. In preparation: John C. Calhoun. By GAILLARD HUNT. Daniel Webster. By PROF. C. H. VAN TYNE. Alexander H. Stephens. BY LOUIS PENDLETON. John Quincy Adams.
    [Show full text]
  • Defying Conventions and Highlighting Performance 49
    Defying Conventions and Highlighting Performance Within and Beyond Slavery in William Wells Brown's Clotel Eileen Moscoso English Faculty advisor: Lori Leavell As an introduction to his novel, Clotel or, The President's Daughter, William Wells Brown, an African American author and fugitive slave, includes a shortened and revised version of his autobiographical narrative titled “Narrative of the Life and Escape of William Wells Brown” (1853). African American authors in the nineteenth century often feared the skepticism they would undoubtedly receive from white readers. Therefore, in order to broaden their readership and gain a more trusting audience, African American authors routinely sought a more socially accepted and allegedly credible person, namely a white American, to authenticate their writing in the preface. Brown boldly refuses to adhere to this convention in an effort to rid his white readership of their assumptions of black inferiority. Rather, he authorizes himself. My paper illuminates Brown's defiance of authorship conventions as an act of resistance rooted in performance, one that strategically parallels other forms of resistance that take place in his literary representations of the plantation. I argue that all counts of trickery enacted by Brown can be better understood when related to the role CLA Journal 1 (2013) pp. 48-58 Defying Conventions and Highlighting Performance 49 _____________________________________________________________ of performance on the plantation. Quite revolutionarily, William Wells Brown uses his own words in the introduction to validate his authorship rather than relying on a more ostensibly qualified figure's. As bold a move that may be, Brown does so with a layer of trickery that allows it to go potentially undetected by the reader.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rhetoric of Education in African American Autobiography and Fiction
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 8-2006 Dismantling the Master’s Schoolhouse: The Rhetoric of Education in African American Autobiography and Fiction Miya G. Abbot University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Abbot, Miya G., "Dismantling the Master’s Schoolhouse: The Rhetoric of Education in African American Autobiography and Fiction. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2006. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/1487 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Miya G. Abbot entitled "Dismantling the Master’s Schoolhouse: The Rhetoric of Education in African American Autobiography and Fiction." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of , with a major in English. Miriam Thaggert, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Mary Jo Reiff, Janet Atwill Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Miya G.
    [Show full text]
  • Text Complexity Analysis
    Text Complexity Analysis Text complexity analysis Michelle Henry Teachfest Connecticut: Summer Academy Created by: Event/Date: July 29, 2014 Excerpt from Narrative Of The Life of Frederick Public Domain Text and Where to Access Douglass, An American Slave, written by Frederick http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/dougeduc.html Author Text Douglass Text Description Published in 1845, Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave was the first volume of Douglass’s autobiography. In this excerpt, Douglass revealed the mental oppression that he had experienced as a slave and the importance of literacy as a means to enlightenment and freedom. It could be inferred that illiteracy perpetuated a slave’s ignorance and compliance while literacy inspired critical thinking and self-empowerment. For instance, alluding to his reading of the “Columbia Orator”, Douglass demonstrates how he was able to see the evil of slavery and how this realization instilled a profound sense of discontentment. This excerpt would fit well in an American Literature or U.S. History unit, highlighting the slave narrative genre and the struggles of slaves during the antebellum period. Douglass employs pedantic and emotional diction to convey the injustice of slavery. Quantitative th Lexile and Grade Level 1070L- 11 Grade Text Length 483 words Qualitative Meaning/Central Ideas Text Structure/Organization Literature has an impacting influence on readers. During the slave era, This text is a well-known excerpt of Douglass’s autobiography. The organization is literacy was a means to freedom. In today’s society, literacy and education sequential with Douglass introducing his first exposure to reading and then are just as important.
    [Show full text]
  • The Woman-Slave Analogy: Rhetorical Foundations in American
    The Woman-Slave Analogy: Rhetorical Foundations in American Culture, 1830-1900 Ana Lucette Stevenson BComm (dist.), BA (HonsI) A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Queensland in 2014 School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics I Abstract During the 1830s, Sarah Grimké, the abolitionist and women’s rights reformer from South Carolina, stated: “It was when my soul was deeply moved at the wrongs of the slave that I first perceived distinctly the subject condition of women.” This rhetorical comparison between women and slaves – the woman-slave analogy – emerged in Europe during the seventeenth century, but gained peculiar significance in the United States during the nineteenth century. This rhetoric was inspired by the Revolutionary Era language of liberty versus tyranny, and discourses of slavery gained prominence in the reform culture that was dominated by the American antislavery movement and shared among the sisterhood of reforms. The woman-slave analogy functioned on the idea that the position of women was no better – nor any freer – than slaves. It was used to critique the exclusion of women from a national body politic based on the concept that “all men are created equal.” From the 1830s onwards, this analogy came to permeate the rhetorical practices of social reformers, especially those involved in the antislavery, women’s rights, dress reform, suffrage and labour movements. Sarah’s sister, Angelina, asked: “Can you not see that women could do, and would do a hundred times more for the slave if she were not fettered?” My thesis explores manifestations of the woman-slave analogy through the themes of marriage, fashion, politics, labour, and sex.
    [Show full text]
  • The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:An American Slave by Frederick Douglas
    Study Material On The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:An American Slave By Frederick Douglas For the students of The Department of English, University of Calcutta MA Semester II DSE II Nineteenth Century American Literature Prepared by Dr. Sinjini Bandyopadhyay Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Calcutta I. Knowledge and Power: If the trajectory of Frederick Douglass’s life refers to a movement from oppression to liberty then it certainly involve a journey from ignorance to knowledge. Douglass’s freedom is amenable to the urge of knowing. With an innate ‘Humanist’ zeal Douglas is keen to know the ideas of the world; language, history, space, culture and so on and at the same time is eager to trace his identity. The issue of identity may be elaborated with reference to the following points: a) Confusion regarding his parental identity b) The rumour has it that his master is his father c) Vague memory of mother (Students may work upon the metaphor of the darkness of night as his mother was allowed to meet him only at night) d) Less attachment to his siblings who worked in the same plantation Such an absence of proper familial identity exasperated Douglass’s desire to establish an identity on his own which, he realized even at an early age, can be developed only with knowledge and learning. Douglass’ journey towards freedom is coterminous with knowledge the begins with a programme for literacy that he chose for himself, continued with, despite hurdles of several sorts coming along all the way and where he involves other fellow slaves.
    [Show full text]
  • Texts Checklist, the Making of African American Identity
    National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox The Making of African American Identity: Vol. I, 1500-1865 A collection of primary resources—historical documents, literary texts, and works of art—thematically organized with notes and discussion questions I. FREEDOM pages ____ 1 Senegal & Guinea 12 –Narrative of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (Job ben Solomon) of Bondu, 1734, excerpts –Narrative of Abdul Rahman Ibrahima (“the Prince”), of Futa Jalon, 1828 ____ 2 Mali 4 –Narrative of Boyrereau Brinch (Jeffrey Brace) of Bow-woo, Niger River valley, 1810, excerpts ____ 3 Ghana 6 –Narrative of Broteer Furro (Venture Smith) of Dukandarra, 1798, excerpts ____ 4 Benin 11 –Narrative of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua of Zoogoo, 1854, excerpts ____ 5 Nigeria 18 –Narrative of Olaudah Equiano of Essaka, Eboe, 1789, excerpts –Travel narrative of Robert Campbell to his “motherland,” 1859-1860, excerpts ____ 6 Capture 13 –Capture in west Africa: selections from the 18th-20th-century narratives of former slaves –Slave mutinies, early 1700s, account by slaveship captain William Snelgrave FREEDOM: Total Pages 64 II. ENSLAVEMENT pages ____ 1 An Enslaved Person’s Life 36 –Photographs of enslaved African Americans, 1847-1863 –Jacob Stroyer, narrative, 1885, excerpts –Narratives (WPA) of Jenny Proctor, W. L. Bost, and Mary Reynolds, 1936-1938 ____ 2 Sale 15 –New Orleans slave market, description in Solomon Northup narrative, 1853 –Slave auctions, descriptions in 19th-century narratives of former slaves, 1840s –On being sold: selections from the 20th-century WPA narratives of former slaves, 1936-1938 ____ 3 Plantation 29 –Green Hill plantation, Virginia: photographs, 1960s –McGee plantation, Mississippi: description, ca. 1844, in narrative of Louis Hughes, 1897 –Williams plantation, Louisiana: description, ca.
    [Show full text]