Critical Contexts Autobiography as Rhetoric: Reading Douglass with Franklin, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 3 Frederick Douglass’s Rhetorical Autobiographies, Kimberly Drake 17 Frederick Douglass and the (Im)Possibility of Being: An Afro-Pessimist Reading, Jade M. Becker 32 Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution: A Gendered Reading of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Tammie Jenkins 46

Critical Readings Canonization and Its Discontents: Narrative of the Life in the Context of Douglass’s Intellectual Development, David Lawrimore 61 The Many Roles of Listening in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life and The Heroic Slave, Mike Kolakoski 77 “The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon”: Self-Reliance and Selfishness in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Regina Yoong 92 The Anticipatory Print Life of Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852), Lori Leavell 105 Racial Geopolitics in Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave, Srimayee Basu 120 “Self-Made Men”: Frederick Douglass’s Reframing of Nineteenth-Century American Personhood, Rachel Boccio 136

v Making the American Self and the Self-Made Man in The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, Amina Gautier 151 Black Voices for Freedom: Frederick Douglass and José María Samper’s Florencio Conde, Nydia R. Jeffers 168 Frederick Douglass: Legacy and Influences,Dike Okoro 182 Frederick Douglass in James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird, Robert C. Evans 199 Black Writers Matter: Frederick Douglass in the Literary Present, Laura Dubek 219

Resources Chronology of Frederick Douglass’s Life 237 Works by Frederick Douglass 241 Bibliography 243 About the Editor 249 Contributors 251 Index 257

vi Critical Insights